There’s a mission in StarCraft 2 that’s designed to end up losing, but 14 years after its release, a player has finally outsmarted it.
What kind of mission is this? In StarCraft 2 there is a mission that you should never complete. It is titled “In Eternal Darkness” and is the fourth and final mission of the Zeratul mini-campaign of the base game.
In order for StarCraft 2’s story to work, the mission is designed so that you are finished at the end. To do this, after you have achieved your goals, the game simply spawns more and more ground and air troops until in the end there is nothing left of you. However, 14 years after publication, someone has outsmarted the mission.
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No defeat is a victory
What was the strategy of the game? Content creator Davey Gunface recently posted a video on his YouTube channel in which he explains in 40 minutes how he outwitted the mission. To achieve his goal, he exploited several of the game’s mechanics.
In order to survive against the endless horde of enemies, Gunface quickly realized that he had to move his troops to a place where the enemy’s melee units couldn’t reach. To do this, he teleported Dark Templars to a place where they cannot be reached by enemies using the vortex ability of the spaceship “Artanis”.
The Dark Templars can transform into the powerful anti-aircraft unit “Archon” at the push of a button. This allows them to protect the player’s remaining air units.
You can see the video here:
How did he outsmart the mission? Although the enemies spawn infinitely and so your own units always have to be defeated in the long run, Davey Gunface was able to outsmart the game. StarCraft 2 has a unit limit. If there are too many units on the field, no more will spawn.
However, if you defeat a unit, a new one will spawn. However, whether the new unit is a ground or air unit is a matter of chance. The player used this rule and tried to survive as long as possible while only taking out the flying units.
In the end, only the army of ground troops remained, but they didn’t have the same teleportation abilities and so Gunface can’t harm him. The player’s units were able to survive the mission unscathed for hours.
Is that a victory? Achieving victory in the mission is probably not possible. The mission objective is “Defend until the last Protoss falls.” To complete the objective, all friendly units must be eliminated.
In the end, it is still impossible to win the mission, but triggering a stalemate and saving your own troops from certain destruction was achieved for the first time 14 years after the mission was released. If you would like to play StarCraft 2, you can easily do so now: 2 of the best strategy games of all time are now in Game Pass and are still considered relevant titles in e-sports today