Part 8: Draco
Chapter 8: Draco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbV...eature=youtu.be
OPS appears to be none too thrilled about where the Rift has sent us this time.
There's good and bad here. Six emitters is a LOT. They're all on low ground, especially the four in the central caldera. You don't have to consider the situation long before it becomes obvious that this is going to Mortar Heaven. And Odin City is on the highest ridge. The Totems are scattered, and the Artifact is on the right, quite a ways away, but aside from that it doesn't look that bad. I'm not as intimidated as OPS.
I was curious about how long you really have here, so I did a 'how long would it take the Creeper to kill us' time-check. It took a lot longer than I thought. Almost six minutes to start trickling over the top of the rim anywhere, and even then it doesn't cover much, as most of it simply flows down into the lower-lying areas. A whopping 16:59, just under 17 minutes, compared to the 5:12 of Ara(the 'pyramid' world a couple missions back). Somewhat paradoxically, Draco has a lot of creeper to be killed but is still an easy world to not lose, even for this point in the game.
We start by gradually pushing along the rim both to the east and north. I've avoided going near the nearby Totem because I don't want to waste energy powering that up yet. However this would probably have been a good time to deactivate those packets(green button on Odin City) and get a collector or two down there. The Creeper is already making it's way from the corners onto the second level, and I need to keep it from getting too much of a foothold. A mortar has just been placed in the northwest, the best secure place to put anything right now.
By the time the mortar is operational, I've got several Collectors down on the next tier, and a Blaster is being prepared to make sure they don't get overrun from the northwest.
The combination gets us clear domination over the emitter in that corner -- but there are five others. The last few levels of the caldera are almost filled, and more and more creeper is coming in from the northeast. I need to make sure it has a place to run off in the middle while we expand around the edges. To that end, another mortar is placed here.
By the time it is operational, we have a lot less of a buffer on the east side but are still safe -- and this new Mortar will rip the creeper in the depths of the caldera to shreds. Well, vaporize it to particles anyway. It's a bit different describing the destruction of a liqueous force. At this point I think we've got enough firepower in place to hold the enemy off at worst, and we have only a fairly modest deficit.
I disarm the mortar in the northwest for a bit to give us some more energy. It's not long until I need to Arm it again, but it helps. After some while longer, we've got a mortar in position in the northeast, and the one in the south has moved down a level, allowing it to target the deepest levels of the caldera. It's all over now but the paperwork, though it'll take some doing to work our way to those central Totems.
This is what they have to say about the artifact(thanks for pointing out it was missing).
Wrapping up this world is rather enjoyable; a sea of collectors and more Mortars than I probably need bombarding the depths from all directions. There is no stopping the onslaught.
This was pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. No significant time-wasting mistakes, unlike the last couple. Could have been finished faster of course, but if you don't get to hitting the creeper fast enough it can get onto the ridge from the northeast and give you a bit of a nasty surprise. That was avoided, energy used and collected tracked well together until almost the very end, and we steadily killed more and more creeper as the fight went on while knocking down the early Creeper rush quite quickly. I'm happy with this performance. OPS is full of it.
Now we'll see what the crux of the matter really is at our next stop(*dodges thrown food particles and ignores the boos*)