Part 76: Custom: Dark Menace 6
https://youtu.be/LqsfMs552wkDark Menace 6
This is the finale in the six-part Dark Menace custom campaign. It breaks the general rule that most campaigns get lower scores the longer on they go, often starting well and decreasing in quality(or at least approval) later on.
** Likes: 89
** Dislikes: 1
** Average Time: 46:59
Here's the start of the level. It's a deep one starting us at the top. Phantoms incoming in 40 seconds. We've got lots of ore, and a lot of Creeper to fight through to get to the surface.
We have a LOT of help in doing so though. This AC Emitter cranks out 10 million every 0.03 seconds. 333 million AC per second. That's just insane. Every so often some of it comes down, essentially drilling a hole through the center of the surface creeper. This shot is 15 seconds at most into the level, and it's already doing so. Soon we've got access to the top level of the terrain thanks to this ally. Then we open up some of the artifacts, including the HoloCube.
We're missing a lot of story coming in at the end like this, but this rogue AI stuff doesn't sound good.
Lots of Phantoms, more than our two starting Coils can handle, and we lose one of them. For whatever reason, the phantom warning siren on this level is stupid-loud. But with the AC doing almost all our work for us at the moment, it's hard to complain about these things.
More coils, some reactors, and then some weapons on the surface here. Also look at the gravity display. Any direction but upside down is permissible, and apparently Hydrax Prime is a relatively high-G world. By the way, the turquoise-colored splotches are a different graphic for infinity-cost terrain. I soon get to work on nullifying the two surface emitters. Both of them produce 6M creeper per second, and have 2 health so they need to be nullified twice.
Here's the next section. I put these shields in place to backstop the AC from the makers, not noticing that it would also block the massive amounts of AC above from helping as well. Because I'm super-smart. Or something. I also didn't have enough weapons built, or enough reactors to power them, when I breached into this area. I pretty much didn't do anything right in this part, unfortunately. Of course I did eventually figure it out.
This is the latest in my attempts to use shields in a not-completely-self-destructive way; I want them to stop the AC from filling in the left, so it helps me push off to the right. With one emitter of two in this section down, I'm gaining momentum. The anti-creeper is really doing the heavy lifting still. Due to lack of energy, most of my launchers have been deactivated.
As I pushed off to the right here, I endured another self-inflicted energy crisis due to building a bunch of TechDomes.
Here I turned a couple blasters into drone-only firing(the ones with the green center circle) in order to make sure I had enough energy to take them down.
And now ... more fun. The sheer amount of accumulated AC is so high that I don't even have to defend against Phantoms anymore. They can hit a reactor directly and it doesn't matter; the creeper is instantly vaporized by the protective grey cloud.
Clearly there are some weird gravitational forces in the next section, but first another holocube.
You meant home, not tomb .... right?
The drones in this area held us back longer than they should have. Some were faster, others like this one just tougher, there's limited space, and I wasn't sufficiently prepared.
This part I misunderstood at first. It looks as if there is a hard cut-off, beyond which the anti-creeper won't sink. So my goal here was to move all my makers below it. But that's not actually what's going on. All the ac and creeper here gets sucked over to the left, snaking around the bottom of the terrain where the emitters are.
I went a little bit nuts with the blasters, devoting all energy to them and brute-forcing my way down to this gateway, creating room in this section.
Here's another feature of this section; small, dense creeper 'bullets' that get fired down from the super-concentrated top section periodically. Remember these. Those emitters are the same strength as the ones above(1M, 6 pulses per second) and by now that band is several million strong.
This alcove or whatever is just narrow enough though that I can't fit a nullifier in. I need to find another solution. The one I used wasn't the best ...
But it did work. Eventually. Took a while to wear down a 2-health emitter; the gateways thankfully are only 1-pointers. It's been over 15 minutes now since I moved into this area. A lot of barely-moving brute-forcing going on here.
This is the right answer; my old friend the conversion bomb. Also note that 'bullet' on the right. Now that we have control of that section, they still fire; it's just anti-creeper instead, adding to our attack. This method made short work of things, and soon I was able to nullify the remaining emitters on the top of this cavern.
One more HoloCube awaits before we deal with the creeper tendrils in the next chamber.
The creeper has done whatnow??
Oh look. It's the return of Super Drone. This has 250 more HP than the runaway one on Day 18. And 8M density creeper is lovely fun as well.
This is my response this situation. Pack the blasters in to the max.
The Super Drones did some damage to that formation, but not much. Meanwhile, bombs moved in to annihilate the massive creeper mass. Once that gateway went down, it was over.
I thought the beginning of this level was pretty weak; that AC emitter is just way stronger than it needed be. Even doing some real dumb things, that mass ensured there would be no real challenge. My favorite part was definitely the third section, dealing with that concentrated band of creeper and having to push through a couple different types of drones and a cloud of creeper to get to them, the creeper bullets, etc.