Spoiler Free Walkthrough

This guide is being designed to be spoiler free. But as in any guide, names of characters need to be mentioned. So while this guide will have no storyline spoiling information, there is no way to avoid saying when a Mission Objective lists something like “Raynor must survive” without telling our readers that it is something they need to be aware of.

This particular part will be talking about basic game elements to help players get an understanding of how to go about playing the campaign mode in general. If you’d like to be surprised about this as well, you should play the first few missions of the game and then come back to read it.

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

Part 1: The Basics

Hello and welcome to the first installment of our Wings of Liberty Campaign Mode Walkthrough. This part will be focusing on the basics of how the campaign mode works.

Campaign mode features the game’s storyline. It is single player and pits the player against the computer controlled enemies. The player must complete certain missions in order to advance in the campaign and storyline. Unlike the original StarCraft and the Brood War Expansion, Wings of Liberty focuses primarily on the Terran Race so you cannot choose which race to play as. Another major change is that most missions are optional. You only have to technically complete 19 missions in order to finish the campaign. The Campaign features some unique upgrades and research from typical Melee games as well as old StarCraft Units and some new units exclusively available during the Campaign.

We’ll start off with the rewards you can get from the campaign.

Portraits, Achievements, and Feats of Strength

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

Blizzard wants to reward players who play through the campaign mode. You can unlock Unit Portraits to be linked to your account on Battle.net. The more you complete, the more portraits you can use to customize your account. Even for people who aren’t too thrilled about the campaign mode, they may enjoy unlocking these.

There are tons of Achievements in the Campaign Mode. For those who don’t know, Achievements on like trophies shown in your Battle.net account to show that you completed a unique task (Such as completing the Campaign on Normal in 8 hours). Achievements are often linked to Portraits when it comes to the requirements, so you can earn one of each for completing one task.

The final rewards you can get are Feats of Strength. These are basically hidden achievements (You won’t know what they are unless you see a friend who has unlocked them or you find them yourself) that do not add to your Achievement Point Value. They are basically just for show. You can earn 3 Feats of Strength from the campaign for doing special things in missions. There are 2 additional Feats of Strength in StarCraft II so far that you can get for buying the Collector’s Edition (shown above) and for league match victories.

So now that you know what you can get, let’s see where you begin. Click Single Player and then start a New Campaign.

Campaign Difficulty

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

You have 4 difficulties to choose from. Easiest to Hardest: Casual, Normal, Hard, Brutal.

- Casual: If you have no experience with the StarCraft series and very little with real time strategy games, this is a good place to begin.

- Normal: If you have experience with StarCraft this is where you should begin. Veteran StarCraft players may even want to start here to get a feeling for the missions first.

- Hard: You should have lots of experience with StarCraft or have played some of the campaign before taking on Hard. Your opponents will be stronger in this difficulty.

- Brutal: The hardest difficulty. You will need a good amount of experience with StarCraft II in order to succeed in Brutal. Brutal is locked at the fastest gameplay setting.

The difficulty you choose for your campaign cannot be changed per say. You can change the difficulty on any mission before you launch it so even those who begin at Normal can play on Brutal later on if you wanted to. Any mission will be default set to what you picked at first unless you change it before you launch the mission.

Aside from giving an extra challenge to the game, harder difficulties can give you Achievements and Portraits for your Battle.net account. You may have to start a new campaign in order to get some Achievements.

So now let’s move on to the basics of every mission.

Objectives

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

Each mission consists of Main Objectives and usually Bonus Objectives.

- Main Objectives: The primary goal of the mission. Main Objectives must be completed in order to finish the mission and move on in the Campaign. Completing missions also earns you credits to upgrade your units (more below).

- Bonus Objectives: Optional goals in the mission. You have to complete Bonus Objectives before you complete all the main objectives otherwise you will have to restart the mission in order to complete them. Bonus Objectives can give you additional Credits, Achievements, and Research Points.

Speaking of Credits, the next 2 sections are regarding what you can do with them.

Armory Console

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

The Armory Console is first available a few missions into the game in the Armory. You will notice The Tech Lab in game no longer provides upgrades to specific units along with similar research buildings. As you earn credits from you can use them to purchase upgrades to your units for the rest of the campaign. This extremely helpful, and the majority are unique to the Campaign (Which is pretty cool). There are three types of upgrades.

- Ability Upgrades: These types add abilities to the unit. Stim Packs for Marines is a good example.

- Statistic Upgrades: Increases in the Units’ stats including: Attack Range, Max HP, Weapon Bonuses (Such as Splash or Area Attack), Damage Boosts, and so on.

- Tech Upgrades: Upgrades that change the unit’s tech requirements or the units themselves. For a couple examples there is an upgrade that removes the Tech Lab requirement for building Medics and upgrade turning all Command Centers into Orbital Commands.

The next section covers another use for Credits.

Mercenaries

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

Mercenaries can be hired with the credits you earn from the Cantina. Once you buy the contract, you can then use more powerful versions of units in Missions. Mercenaries can be instantly called in using the Merc Compound building. They do have a cool down starting from the beginning of the mission and any time after you call some in. They also have a limit on how many times you can call them in. Mercenaries are typically higher Damaging and higher HP versions of the unit or group of units that are more expensive than the original unit (but worth it in the long run with resources).

The last way to bolster your troops is up ahead.

Research Console

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

As you complete missions, some objectives being completed will give you Research Points for either Zerg or Protoss. These Research Points can then be used later on to power up your units or add new ones to your army at the Research Console in the Lab.

When you reach certain amounts of Research Points you will have to choose between one of two choices. You will have to choose wisely because you cannot change this later on. Research is extremely powerful and it can be difficult to choose sometimes. A good example is between a bonus to your Command Center allowing it to construct 2 SCVs at once (like a free Reactor) or making it so that Refineries no longer need SCVs to mine from them, it will just automatically give you vespene.

The final section for Part 1 is below.

Mission Archives

Intro – Portraits – Achievements – Feats of Strength – Difficulty – Objectives

Armory – Mercenaries – Research – Mission Archives

This is available at the Bridge. You can use the Mission Archives to replay any mission you’ve completed on any difficulty as well as viewing Cut Scenes from the game. This is useful for unlocking Achievements, and playing missions you were not able to play. This is because a few times during the game, you will have to make a decision which boils down to choosing one of two missions. This is the only way to play the other mission and view the cut scenes they unlock as well as their Achievements.

A couple of things to note are when going through the Mission Archives the game will set your armory upgrades, research, units, and mercenaries to where they were at that point in the game for the duration of the mission. That way you cannot go through the game and get powerful upgrades then go back and play the easier missions with them. The last thing is that you cannot earn some Achievements such as Hard or Brutal 5/10/15/20/25 through the Archives and you must start a new campaign.

Well that is all for today. We will be bringing Part 2 online soon. We just wanted to get the basics up online for our readers. Enjoy the Campaign!