_ ___ _______ ______ | | | __| | _____| | __ | | | | |_ | | ___ | | | | | | | _| | | |_ | | | | | ~ROCK RAIDERS~ | |___ | |_ | |___| | | |__| | |_____| |___| |_______| |______| ~ A Strategy Guide by Kwingster ~ [0] INFO This is my first real attempt at a strategy guide so let me know if I'm doing any good. My email is thejunkiebox@gmail.com. This review is written based off of the PC release, so it may not be entirely correct in the Playstation release. You may distribute this anywhere you wish provided that you include a link to the original source of this strategy guide (on GameFAQs) and credit me as well. Lastly, to view this walkthrough, all of the following numbers should fit on one line; otherwise you need to make this text smaller or your window bigger: 12345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789012345678901234567890 [0.5] GENERAL GAMEPLAY You can save time drilling by going after strategic sections of a wall. Take Fig 1, for instance: Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 XFFFF FFFFFFF CDFFFF X - Solid Rock XDFFF FFDdDFF CDFFFF D - Dirt or Loose Rock XdFFF FFDdDFF CDdFFF F - Cavern Floor XDFFF FFFFFFF CDDDDF C - Undiscovered Cavern XFFFF FFFFFFF CCCDDF If you drill one of the upper-case Ds, you'll leave the other two Ds as two corners, but if you drill the lower case D in the middle, it will automatically make the other two Ds collapse. You can drill up to a maximum of 6 times faster using this trick, like in Fig. 2. Drilling either of the lower case Ds in this example will instantly raze all 6 tiles of wall. You can even get rid of tiles of Hard Rock and Solid Rock with this method when you cause sections to collapse! Another thing this is useful for is NOT drilling. If there's an "undiscovered" cavern with a bunch of monsters in it, you can keep yourself isolated from that cavern by drilling corners of walls, like in Fig. 3. Drilling the lower case D will keep you from stumbling upon a dangerous cavern that you're not ready to explore yet. Also, when I use the terms north, east, south, and west, I'm referring to north as being the area to the top of the screen when the arrow and rectangle depicting the screen on the scanner points upward. Don't assume north is the direction the camera faces at the start of the mission! [1] DRILLER NIGHT This is a cakewalk. Have your three Rock Raiders drill through all of the dirt that you see until you find the Tool Store. After that you can mash the Teleport Rock Raider to Planet button because you have unlimited air. Order all of the surrounding area to be drilled and just wait. Energy Crystals will be revealed and automatically collected. To make the process faster, you can individually order a Rock Raider to pick up an Energy Crystal. [2] THE PATH TO POWER Teleport as many people down as you can and search for Dirt to drill through. Drill around until you find an Energy Crystal Seam. If there re any landslides, go ahead and order them to be reinforced. In some levels, your men are multitasking and never get around to reinforcing walls, but this one is easy; they'll get around to it. All you have to do is drill, clear rubble, and then follow the easy sequence of building a Power Station. Upgrade your Tool Store (5 Ore), build a Power Path (2 Ore), Build a Teleport Pad (8 Ore), and then a Power Station (12 Ore, 2 Energy Crystals). [3] RUBBLE TROUBLE Go ahead and teleport down as many men as you can. Set Clearing Rubble to the top priority until your starting area looks acceptable, then drill all around the area, particularly upwards. There's a cavern at the top that has one wall concealing three out of the five Energy Crystals you need. Drilling this spot will make the mission go faster. [4] A BREATH OF FRESH AIR Start with five men to prevent from using up too much air. Set the highest priorities to Collecting Ore and Clearing Rubble. Drill the areas nearest to you and have them retrieve the ore. You should get two Energy Crystals by the time you're constructing the Power Station. By the time you're constructing the Support Station, there's an area on the east (and a tiny bit south) that has some water in it, and also three Energy Crystals very close to the opening of the cavern. Make sure to switch the priorities around mid-mission to prevent Rock Raiders from wasting your time. [5] IT'S A HOLD UP This mission is just a lot of clicking. Your priorities start pretty much where they should be so you don't even need to change those. Just click on all the Dirt and Loose Rock and drill them, while reinforcing all sections of Hard Rock that you see. [6] EXPLOSIVE ACTION To breeze though this mission you need to keep your Rock Raiders focused on what they need to be focused on. This means teleporting down a ton of Rock Raiders and shutting off priorities for collecting Ore and Energy Crystals, as well as clearing rubble. Select all of your Rock Raiders and have them individually drill northwest. As soon as you can see the three pieces of Hard Rock, just select the dynamite option for the wall and wait. After it's blown up, just grab a driver to reel in the vehicle. It's pretty simple. [7] SEARCH N' RESCUE As soon as you have your Support Station and upgraded Teleport Station, beam down as many Tunnel Scouts as you can. There's no purpose in only having one. As soon as you have drivers for them, have them explore the northeastern area of the map. Make sure to turn off collecting Ore and Energy Crystals, as some Rock Raiders may pick up Ore after drilling a section and just stand there because they can't take it to a Tool Store. [8] BREATHLESS There's not much to worry about in this mission. Teleport down three or four Rock Raiders and have them use dynamite on the area just south of the Tool Store. After it's blown up, drill east until you uncover a cavern with some drillable wall in the northeast corner of that section. Drill that section and you should find all three lost Rock Raiders. [9] FROZEN FRENZY The beginning of this mission will determine the rest of it massively. Drill as little as possible and build a Power Station as soon as you can. Keep your buildings close to the Solid Rock, and fence off the north area and the east area of the room you start in with Electric Fence. The north area should lead off to a bunch of other caverns, while the east area should lead to Hard Rock. Once this is done focus on getting a Support Station up and running. This can be quite a challenge because while there are many Energy Crystals in this level, Ice Monsters will scare your Rock Raiders into dropping them. Make sure you have Rock Raiders with Pusher Beams. As if this mission weren't hard enough already, there are tons of cave-ins in this level! Because of this you need to make sure that your priorities have reinforcing wall as being more important than clearing rubble or your Rock Raiders will kill themselves being hit with landslides. Obviously you want to drill the area around you first. After that, I drilled mostly northwest and along the left wall south. You probably won't need all of those resources though. You should really get a Small Transport Truck down when you can, and if possible, a Small Digger to make drilling easier. The Small Transport Truck is extremely important because it will snag Energy Crystals from being potentially eaten by Ice Monsters, as well as collecting Energy Crystals even if an Ice Monster is nearby, something no Rock Raider on foot does! After all of that, you're going to want to get a Super Teleport up and running. This will take a while mainly because it takes a while to get Energy Crystals in this level, and you have to be careful not to run out as this will cut off the energy supply for the Support Station. Once it's built, however, it shouldn't be hard to beam down a Chrome Crusher and then drill directly east of your base. The Tunnel Transport shouldn't be too far. One last note: The area northeast leads to a winding cavern with a TON of landslides occuring there. You really don't need the resources there, and the landslide messages will spam you ruthlessly if you uncover it. This is horribly distracting, so don't drill there. [10] ERODE WORKS The trick to this is simplicity. Simply drill west of where your base starts to find a new cavern with a pool of lava. Drill the entire area there and you should find a lot of Energy Crystals. Drill more of your surrounding area until you have 15 Energy Crystals. After or during this process, drill north and then west. Once you find an area farther west with a pool of lava in it, build a Power Path there and then a Tool Store. Teleport up your other Tool Store and begin the mining process at your new base. You should definitely have 10 Ore by now, so upgrade your Tool Store to level 2 so you can train explosive experts. From there, just use dynamite on the Hard Rock in the south section of this cavern. You should find another Tool Store and an order to collect 15 Energy Crystals. Since you already did this you should already win the mission. [11] WATER LOT OF FUN Don't build anything. Collect 10 Ore and upgrade your Tool Store to level 2. After that turn off collecting Ore. Drill every last piece of Dirt and Loose Rock, and then order all of 4 tiles of Hard Rock to be blasted with dynamite. There are 16 Energy Crystals in this area, and you only need 15 to win. [12] WATER WORKS This mission is very laid back. Drill the entire area north of where you start and build up your base. Because a certain section of ground is very flat, you can build your Power Path and buildings strategically so that your work is very easy. Once you have a Support Station, turn off Collect Ore as a priority, then teleport down one Small Digger and as many Transport Trucks as you can. Have your Small Digger drill through all of the Dirt and Loose Rock you see on the map, and once it's done, send it back to the HQ and teleport it up to harvest the Energy Crystal. The rest of the vehicles should be picking up resources. Have one lone Rock Raider with a drill go to the top right of the map to rescue the other Rock Raiders. The Rock Raiders are on a section fenced off by Solid Rock, but your Rock Raiders can actually walk on the Solid Rock to an extent and tread around the water. Have this Rock Raider drill the wall in that area to uncover 4 Rock Raiders and a ton of Energy Crystals. Now all you have to do is wait. If you have one Support Station and 7 or more Rock Raiders, you'll start running out of air when you unearth the other four Rock Raiders, so go ahead and teleport several up to solidify your win. [13] ROCK HARD [14] DON'T PANIC This is a very easy level considering you're more than halfway through the game by now. Drill the sections of Dirt on the farthest end of the cavern over and over, ignoring the Lava Monsters and high-speed erosions. Once you reach your base, drill the area directly north to create a shortcut and drill the surrounding area, especially the north, east, and south areas. Drilling north won't breach the lava flow, and a certain section of your base is immune to erosions from the west. Don't even bother constructing a Support Station and turn off the Ore collecting priority; just drill and collect the Energy Crystals. Teleport any idle Rock Raiders up. [15] ICE SPY [16] SPLIT DOWN THE MIDDLE [17] LAVA LAUGHTER Build a Support Station first, but avoid drilling east. Drill north and south as much as possible, and build as much as you can with the resources from there. Make all of your buildings as far west as possible. You may have to drill east a tiny bit for the resources you need, but don't drill east any more than you have to. Once you have all of your buildings, reinforce the two walls of Hard Rock that are a little bit north and south of the area you're in, then put Electric Fence around your entire base so that the only wall inside of your base is Solid Rock or Reinforced Wall. Teleport down two or three Transport Trucks and equip all of your Rock Raiders with Pusher Beams. Finally, drill east. You should enter a cavern with tons of sleeping Lava Monsters and a large amount of Energy Crystals on the far east. Hit the Action Stations button and send all of the Transport Trucks to the cluster of Energy Crystals. As your Transport Trucks are getting the Energy Crystals, make sure none of them stop for too long close to a Lava Monster, or it will take damage. After the battle has cooled down, focus drilling north and south in the closest areas to your base with a Small Digger. There should be an Energy Crystal Seam both north and south of your base. Just make sure you have a handful of Rock Raiders with Pusher Beams because there are a few more Lava Monsters in this level, although they're not much of a problem. After you get those two Energy Crystal Seams you should have enough to win, but if you don't just explore around until you do. [18] ORESOME! This level isn't that bad. Clear the rubble around your base and connect the Power Station to the Support Station, then search around for an Energy Crystal. As soon as you can, teleport down a Small Digger, then two Small Transport Trucks as soon as you can. Have the Small Digger drill all around, but especially northwest (close to the lava), and have the Small Diggers pick up the Energy Crystals in the area. There's also a way to drill a loop around a section of Solid Rock. If you do this, you can make the path for the Transport Trucks a little bit shorter. Ignore the erosions but try and work quickly. Building and Energy Crystals should be the top priorities. [19] FIRE N' WATER This can be tricky if you do things in the wrong order. You also have to keep your Rock Raiders working at all times or you may find yourself losing quickly. Start with five Rock Raiders and drill as much as possible around the lava. The more space the lava can erode, the more time it will take for it to spread all the way to your base. Make sure that you focus on building a Support Station as soon as possible, as air is very limited. Drill the spaces closest to you first, then drill the surrounding area. Don't even wait for the Support Station to finish building before ordering the Dock to be built. As soon as you have a working Dock, teleport down a Rapid Rider and have someone take it south and a little east. The southwest area doesn't have any drillable wall so make sure you don't go there. In the southern area have your single Rock Raider drill thorugh the wall, build a Power Path, and then put a Tool Store in the south area. Be careful about where you build things because the ground has a tendency to be warped making it unsuitable for building things near the water. Build toward a Support Station in the south area, and once you have a Support Station down there teleport down several Rock Raiders. Several of them will be teleported down in the south area. This will speed up your work. Let the Rock Raiders in the north area collect the rest of the Energy Crystals in that area. As soon as they finish, teleport up all of the buildings in the north area except for the Tool Store. The Rock Raiders in the north should gather the Energy Crystals from the buildings. After that you can teleport up the Tool Store and the men and focus entirely on the south area. The Energy Crystals deposited in the north area are now usable in the south area! It's just like magic! Drill the area all around you and collect Energy Crystals at your own leisure. One last note is that your Rock Raiders tend to collect more Ore than they need to. Make sure to adjust the priorities so that they aren't wasting time collecting unnecessary Ore. [20] RUN THE GAUNTLET The first thing you want to do is pilot your Rock Raider north, have him dismount, and then drill the wall. Once it's drilled, have him get back on the Hover Scout and go up, around the corner, and then back south. Drill the Dirt in the south area until you find a cavern with a Small Digger in it. Dismount and have your Rock Raider get into the Small Digger. Go directly north of the area where you found the Small Digger, and then drill north and eventually east. As soon as you start goign east, Rock Monsters will start appearing. Just make sure you're moving at all times and that you're at least three panels away from a Rock Monster while drilling and they won't hit you. Drill east, then move south and east again. You should be able to start going back north soon. After that, keep going north until you find the Cargo Carrier. Bring your Cargo Carrier to the edge of the water and your Small Digger close to it and select Load Vehicle on the Cargo Carrier's menu. Then unload it on the area south in the water. Drill south and then east and you should find the Tool Store. Simply drive up to it and you win the mission. [21] AIR RAIDERS The first thing you have to do here is connect your Support Station to the Power Station, obviously. You have very limited air so the very first thing you want to do is clear the rubble in the way while one or two people drill some bits of the wall off. As soon as they're done, construct a Power Path between the Power Station and Support Station. As soon as you're done with this, have one or two Rock Raiders clear the nearby rubble while you put Electric Fences around your whole base. Make sure that there's no possible square where an Ice Monster could invade and damage your building. After that, reinforce all of the Hard Rock close to your base and then drill the area around you. Be careful not to drill too much; the more Energy Crystals you uncover, the more Energy Crystals are vulnerable to being taken by Ice Monsters. Make sure that you can safely escort Energy Crystals from one section of wall back to your base, or you may lose a lot of them. There's a lot of cave-ins, so you should deactivate clearing rubble and maximize the priority for reinforcing walls. After this, you may want another Support Station or two so that more Rock Raiders can help you. Alternatively, as soon as you can, teleport down a Small Digger or two, and some Transport Trucks. Because you're changing your priorities a lot in this mission, make sure you make drilling a high priority after you've reinforced areas and gotten everything worked out or the rest of the mission can take a long time. If you want to speed up the end game, just teleport up your Support Stations and gather Energy Crystals from them. [22] LAKE OF FIRE This one is clockwork. While the erosions will prove a problem, this level also has a very small amount of oxygen in it, making it essential for you to hurry up and finish the level quickly. Ignore all erosions and instead focus on drilling walls and building a Support Station. Once you have a Support Station, change the Priorities list so that Energy Crystals are the top priority, then teleport enough men so that you have 9 in total. A Support Station supports 10 people, so you should gain back some of the oxygen you lost while building it. As soon as you have enough Energy Crystals, teleport down a Small Transport Truck (or two). Get a driver for it and then teleport down a Small Digger. These two vehicles must act as a team, and since you don't have time to clear rubble or fix erosions, the speed these vehicles provide is absolutely essential. Open up the small map and scan around for any Dirt or Loose Rock, and order them to be drilled. The Small Digger will run around and drill them. Once they're all drilled, go ahead and return it to the base, then teleport it back to the LMS Explorer so you get the Energy Crystals back from it. In the meantime, the Small Transport Truck(s) will be running around collecting Energy Crystals. Make sure to order a Small Transport Truck to pick up individual Energy Crystals if they're in an area that's about to be cut off by an erosion, so that you keep Energy Crystals from being stranded on an island. [23] BACK TO BASICS This level can take quite a while. Build up a Support Station first and try not to drill near the bottom (as there's a cavern down there with tons of Rock Monsters. After you have a Support Station and sufficient air, build another two Support Stations (or three if you want) and then surround your base with Electric Fences. Teleport as many men as you can without losing oxygen. Now drill south to open up the other cavern. Your only problem now is the Slimy Slugs, since Rock Monsters are only a problem if you don't have Electric Fences. What I like to do is get a bunch of Rock Raiders that can only hold two tools and have them carry a Pusher Beam and a Sonic Blast. Get 5-10 of players that only have these tools and they are useless for anything except base defense. Because they can't do anything else like clearing rubble, they should just stand around your base defending it. That means if there's a Slimy Slug that appears, they'll shoot at it long enough for you to return to your base and tell them to set off Sonic Blasts. I've had as many as five slugs on my base at once, so prepare for a maelstrom. Even so, the level is more than possible. Go ahead and collect as many crystals as you can; Small Transport Trucks and Small Diggers are very useful to this effect. It takes a while, but if you drill between waves of Slimy Slugs, you'll eventually have enough Energy Crystals. If you're close but can't find anymore, teleport your buildings back to the LMS Explorer and use the Energy Crystals left over from those. This will also work for vehicles you've teleported down. [24] HOT STUFF This one can be really hard if you slip up and wake up the Lava Monsters. You're also going to need to multitask really well. The first thing you want to do is build up a Support Station and surround your base with Electric Fences. You won't need more than one Support Station (although I'd still build two or three) because the erosions aren't that bad, but you might want to build a Geological Center and upgrade it fully to see the surrounding area. While this is happening, you need to have a small group of Rock Raiders (maybe five) go up to the top left of the screen and drill through the Energy Crystal Seam there. There's probably 20 Energy Crystals in that one seam, but it's very close to the lava so you need to be quick. It's unlikely you'll be able to get all of them, since the lava will consume the area before you have the buildings necessary to teleport down a Small Transport Truck, but you can get a good amount. Once that area is off-limits, go ahead and drill any area you want aside from the north area. There's a lot of Energy Crystal Seams, but if any of them open up a cavern with lava in it, I'd suggest not to drill it. What I find useful is to send one person to drill the Energy Crystal Seam and watch it as it's being drilled. Energy Crystal Seams and Ore Seams seem to "slope" as they're drilled more and more, so you can see how close they are to being drilled all the way through. As they're drilled, Energy Crystals will fall out. Right before it's drilled all the way, get your lone driller to stop drilling and order that section of the wall to cancel being drilled, so that you get some of the Energy Crystals from the seam without breaching any lava flow. The rest of the level isn't too bad, just make sure you have enough men with Pusher Beams to protect any loose Energy Crystals on the cavern floor from a Lava Monster. [25] ROCKY HORROR This level is actually pretty easy. Start by drilling south and west until you find Solid Rock, building up a Support Station as you collect resources. Be careful with Rock Monsters and don't wake any up, or you'll have to hit Action Stations to have your men attack them, and some of them are stupid enough to shoot at sleeping ones. You'll have a whole wave of them coming if you're not careful! Once you have a Support Station, put Electric Fence around your base except for the area at the bottom and at the left. Instead of having the Electric Fence close around your base, have it stem off going west and south at the northwest and southeast corners of your base (respectively). This way you'll have lots of space to keep building your base. I'd highly suggest you drill all of the wall within this enclosed space, though. Rock Monsters can come out of any wall that isn't Solid Rock, so if there's any Dirt, Loose Rock, or Hard Rock inside of your Electric Fence, you're vulnerable to invasion. Once you have this set up, just drill the general area closest to you; don't bother going up the long corridors on the left and right of the screen. Once you feel strong, teleport down tons of Small Transport Trucks so that you have about 5 or so of them. Then go up to the way top of the middle (wider) corridor and dynamite it, or drill through it with a Chrome Crusher. You'll discover a huge cavern with about 60 Energy Crystals in it and five Rock Monsters or more running around in it. Send your Transport Trucks over to retrieve as many Energy Crystals as possible, as well as maybe 5-10 men with Pusher Beams. This will keep the Rock Monsters from eating too many Energy Crystals while the Small Transport Trucks will collect them. It's not too hard to get up to 50 Energy Crystals from there. (C) Copyright 2010