StarCraft 2 Campaign Walkthrough

Echoes of the Future

Seek out the overmind on Aiur

Achievements

Objectives

Main Objective  |  Reach the nexus

Main Objective  |  Zeratul must survive

You start the mission with just Zeratul to command. Lead him north to take out some grounded zerg before finding the observer unit hovering overhead. The observer is able to spot zerg units buried underground, and you can immediately see buried enemies you didn't see before. Take the observer with you and continue east and then southeast to the nexus to activate your base.

Main Objective  |  Bring Zeratul to the overmind tendrils (4)

Let the resource gathering begin. While you've got a handful of probes gathering minerals and vespene, order one to strategically place a few pylons to power your surrounding buildings and photon cannon defenses. You'll inherit a pair of colossus units to add to your army. They're especially good at clearing swarms of small zerg units—as you'll soon find out—and so we actually recommend leaving them at base to play defense. With your base powered up, build another warp gate and start pumping out nothing but stalkers.

While your stalkers germinate, you can do some early recon with Zeratul. Move with an observer to the plateau just east of your base and let Zeratul start clearing out the buried protoss. When you've got some stalkers and all of the attacking units are killed off, move the stalkers to the plateau to shoot down the floating overseers. Step Zeratul into the glowing ring near the first overmind tendril.

Bonus Objective  |  Power the obelisks

You can then order a probe up to the plateau to warp in a pylon near the warp gate and protoss obelisk. The obelisk nets you research while the warp gate gives you a handful of free units. Your base is soon attacked by zerg coming from either end of the path that goes through the east end. Be ready to fight them off and target the nydus worms to stop 'em up quickly. These attacks come periodically (a countdown timer in the upper-right corner of the screen warns you) so it's good to leave some defense at base. As we suggested earlier, the pair of colossus units are good for defense.

Take Zeratul, an observer and some stalkers northeast from your base. You can use the cloaked Zeratul to kill some enemies and collect some resource caches before moving the stalkers in to help with the units that are within a detection ring that spoils Zeratul's stealth. There's an abandoned robotics factory that you can power with a pylon for use, but we don't think it's necessary and it's in a bit of a bad spot anyway. However, further north is another warp gate and protoss obelisk. After you've cleared out enemies, send a probe in to set up a plyon and power 'em up.

Further north is deep into enemy territory. Send Zeratul ahead to stealthily take out a spine crawler and an ultralisk. But before running to the next-nearest overmind tendril, call in your stalkers to help take down the flying mutalisks and other assorted baddies. Each overmind tendril you reach will restore Zeratul's health.

The last two overmind tendrils are similarly surrounded by zerg forces. Just keep warping in more and more stalkers to aid the cause, leaving some with the colossus units to play defense but otherwise amassing a sizable army for storming the eastern end of the map. Clear paths to each of the overmind tendrils (they're marked on your map so it's not a matter of finding them) and, when you've activated the last one, the mission will instantly end.