StarCraft - Bad Weather Co-op Mission Tips

06 Jun 2016

In a recent update to the cooperative (co-op) game mode in StarCraft 2, Blizzard introduced mutation challenges. Mutations change every week and take an existing mission and add mutations to it. Mutations are essentially handicaps like reduced vision for your units, enemy speed increased, and other things that generally make the mission more difficult.

This week’s mutation challenge Bad Weather is incredibly challenging (seemingly impossible at first) on Brutal difficulty. A mutation causes Void Rifts to periodically appear in random locations and these rifts spawn enemy units until destroyed. If you don’t take care of the Void Rifts quickly, you’ll easily get overwhelmed.

But the mission is do-able! Spencer and I beat it using Karax and Vorazun. Here are some tips:

• Karax will one-base the whole game. The Vorazun player should expand as early as possible and let Karax handle early attacks. Holding the right expansion seems a bit easier so have your party leader be Karax (leader spawns in the left position).
• Karax focuses exclusively on base defense the entire game. Build Photon Cannons, Khaydarin Monoliths, and Shield Batteries.
• Karax should get the Solar Forge efficiency upgrades because Orbital Strike and Solar Lance are helpful in tight spots.
• Use Vorazun’s Shadow Guard to take out the first Void Shard and if you’re lucky, snipe one or two Void Rifts.
• Vorazun should expand early and go mass Dark Templar (DT). You’ll be lacking anti-air, but with high DPS and Blink, DTs can get in, do damage, and run away from any trouble in the air. Also because of Emergency Recall any DTs that die will get recalled to your Nexus, which greatly lessens pressure on your economy.
• The general strategy for destroying Void Shards: once you have a handful of DTs, move out on the map and destroy Void Rifts while Time Stop is on cooldown. When Time Stop is about to be ready move towards the area where Void Shards are. When Time Stop is ready, activate it, and push onto Void Shards. Sometimes we sniped Void Shards and ran away; other times, we cleared enemies and then took out the Void Shards.
• When you have DTs clearing Void Rifts on the map, have Karax put down some static defense at the expansion on the left (the one Karax does not take) and have Vorazun take those gases to bring her total Assimilator count to 6. A few Photon Cannons and a Khaydarin Monolith should do the trick.

It won’t be easy, but it’s do-able. I’m even tempted to try to best it again. Good luck, commanders!