Lost Viking Achievements Guide

First off in case you do not know what this is about, this achievement is about beating the mini arcade shooter game that is found in the cantina room in the single player game of Wings of Liberty.

In case you're wondering why you should play it at all, it's a nice distraction and there are achievements to be won. You get an achievement for scoring 125,000, 250,000, and 500,000 points in it. You also get an achievement for killing the final boss, but since that happens every 3 levels and you need to play about 9 waves to get 500k points, that will happen regardless of what you do. The game itself is somewhat fun, albeit very repetitive.

Lost Viking Achievement

I got 500,000 points on my first try and it takes about an hour and a half. It got pretty difficult to fight the boredom near the end, but I knew what I was getting myself into. You can't check achievements in game, so either memorize the score benchmarks or pause the minigame and alt-tab to look up the score levels.

And now onto the guide:

Quick guide:

[Powerups]

Powerups come in a 4 varieties, side missiles, drone, plasma, and bomb. Any powerup that stays on the field will change in this order [the powerup will flash and become bigger for a moment before it changes.] |- ->Side missiles -> Drone -> Plasma --| Bomb -[note: with the exception of bombs every power up seems to have two levels of upgrade. Changing to a different weapon will loose your leveled up version though so be aware.]


The best option for success in my opinion is to follow a priority list on what to upgrade.

1. Drones x2

2. Plasma x2

3. All else bombs
 

Some notes:

• The best weapon loadout I could find is the double plasma + double drones. Plasma is way better at killing bosses and keeping drones alive allows you to deal with normal enemies.



• Your main weapon is either the dinky default gun, the side missiles, or the plasma. Both of those can be upgraded once by picking up the same upgrade again. For example, pick up the "side missiles", then pick it up one more time to have the upgraded version. Future pickups don't do anything.
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• If you're using the side missiles and pick up the plasma, you will switch to level 1 plasma. Same thing if you have plasma and switch to the side missiles.
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• Item drops are random, and rotate over time in a set sequence. The order is: side missile, drone, plasma, bomb.
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• You can hold two drones at any time. More drone pickups do not do anything. If you get hit by most weapons (some boss attacks instantly kill you), it will destroy one of your drones. If you have no drones left when you are hit, you die.



• If you die, you drop your main weapon upgrades as pickups.

[if you have recently lost your plasma weapon and you know a boss to be coming up soon, plasma should be your biggest concern]

Drones are important because not only do they provide homing spread to make up for our focus fire plasma, they also can take bullets for you. Use the Drone as an absolute last line of defense, as you should bomb before you lose a drone. if you have lost your drone and there is another upgrade but it is on top of enemies or their fire bomb aggressively while using the invulnerability time to get the drone. come late game having your drones is a must!

The plasma weapon type sacrifices all spread for focused fire and damage, which makes it very important to be under you boss at all times you can afford. getting the plasma upgrade once changes to small plasma shots, a second time and you have upgraded plasma shots.Bombs are the glorious apex of oh shi- buttons in most shmups. It is best to hold on to bombs as long as you can for two reasons. The first reason being that your goal is to get to 500k points, but bombs do not provide any benefit to score from killing enemies. The second being that you WILL need them towards the end.

Bombs are the glorious apex of oh shi- buttons in most shmups. It is best to hold on to bombs as long as you can for two reasons. The first reason being that your goal is to get to 500k points, but bombs do not provide any benefit to score from killing enemies. The second being that you WILL need them towards the end. Bombs of course clear the screen and give you temporary invulnerability, however at the moment I don't believe it to transfer over to your drones as well so still be careful.  Almost always use a bomb instead of risking a hit. Losing drones drastically hurts your ability to deal damage, ESPECIALLY in boss fights.

Side missiles - Can allow for a greater score on levels, especially the scourge on the zerg level. However this spread usually creates added danger on that level, including the added time the boss will be alive. Additionally after the side lasers are added in the terran level this shot type becomes quite good on that level. tl;dr this is better for getting score faster but is not as good for survivability.


[Techniques]

Streaming- Know that dodging bullets is an art. An art that doesn't involve anyone flying about as wildly as they possibly can. whenever you have a series of bullets that directly target you the best option is streaming. Streaming involves strafing in either direction just barely enough to dodge a bullet that's been shot at you. sounds obvious however the key is that you move just as much as you need but not more because there are many situations where there will be as many as 20 or more shots targeted at you in a row and space is a sparse resource at that point.

Aggressive bombing- Bombs are your precious oh shi- buttons, however they don't always have to be used for keeping your hide safe. If you have plenty of extras don't be afraid to bomb for the purposes of picking up a powerup you wouldn't normally be able to get to.

[Bosses]

Carrier - The toss carrier is pretty much a cakewalk. When he first materializes in you'll have a few seconds to shoot at him without any return fire so just lay waste to his health bar. After a few seconds he will start spawning interceptors these will just take up your drone fire for a few more seconds and aren't to be worried about yet so just keep firing. Eventually the interceptors will begin to fire at you at usually a very low rate, when that begins to happen use that time to dodge bullets and move towards a wall. After the interceptors fire the carrier will be charging up his main attack and will fire it. This attack can be dodged by using streaming, give the lasers a bit of breathing room but do not fly madly across the screen, if you run out of horizontal room move up. Rinse and repeat.

Quick tip I found REALLY helped me:

DO NOT get plasma for the Protoss level. Get the side cannons and aim so that the Carrier is in-between your front cannon and your side cannon. Farm the interceptors for points. Doing that allowed me to not fight the Terratron for a third time, which is what killed me every time.

Leviathan - Mostly a pushover. This is a Corruptor boss and has three attacks, the first two sometimes act combined. Her first attack method is that she launches her tentacles at you. This is the hardest part of the fight seeing that even if you bomb it will usually result in the loss of your drones, so be SURE to dodge these. The first tentacle attack she does will usually hit the center of the screen, so be ready and just do your best to predict where they will land and stay towards the back of the screen and find the openings. The second attack method is that she spawns four creep orbs that explode into a circle of bullets, usually only 3 or 4 per bullets per orb you will have to worry about. The last attack she will get in front of you and shake her body. That means she's going to ram you, just move out of the way and she hits the bottom of the screen.

Terratron [sp?]- as long as you keep your fire up you won't have to worry about his attacks too much. His first attack is fairly simple, basically he uses both hands to throw a few pencils at you. For this attack your best bet is to stay in the center to keep firing at him while watching the few attacks that head towards the middle and seeing where to go, often it's usually a step or two to the left or right. The second attack is similar to leviathans second attack in that he spawns two orbs that fires a circular pattern of bullets except there are many more than last time during this attack he also has a laser that will sweep across the screen from left to right or right to left. The laser will usually stop 3/4 of the way across the screen so just make sure to stay ahead of it or way out of it's way. The last thing the terratron will do is to launch it's whirling blade at you. If you were aggressive with your attacks you might have dropped him before he can do this. However all you really need to do is keep a watch on it and predict where it will be and just not be there. Many of his attacks can happen at the same time and if things get to crowded for you, just bomb.



[Other things of note]

Score - you don't get anywhere near 500k from the first play through so don't forget to hit continue to replay the game with added difficulty. after each replay the value of bosses go up but the other units seem to stay the same, so missing the scouts on the protoss level isn't something to cry about.

Terran stage - The only thing that will really change is that the terran stage will have side lasers that will turn on and off, the key there is just to stay 3/4 of the way down the screen and never to stay at the very edge otherwise you will get hit.