Part X of Jagged Alliance 2 Walkthrough.
Jagged Alliance 2 Queen Crepitus
In the previous post our squad took the Cambria SAM site. They were going to push on into Cambria itself when they received the following radio message from the head miner of Drassen:
Now, the problem with a mine shutdown is obvious: it yields no income. That means we're missing out on $8,000 per day until we address the crepitus problem. What's happening is: the crepitus are burrowing their way up into the mines. If not dealt with, they can actually reach the surface and start killing off citizens and blueshirt militia:
So, we have Skyrider air-lift us from Cambria to Drassen. Then we rest until the early hours of the morning and make our way to the mine entrance:
Crepitus Checklist
- Is everyone healed and rested?
- Is everyone's arms and armor in good condition?
- Is everyone equipped with gasmasks?
- Does everyone have at least five clips of ammo? HP (blue) is superior to AP (red), but either will get the job done.
- Does everyone have a burst-capable assault rifle or submachine gun? The Deathclaw crepitus are tanks. We want to be armed to the teeth with H&K G41, MAC-10, CAWS, M-14 and Colt Commando. Going in armed with low calibre pistols, shitty shotties and rifles? Fail.
- Does everyone have room in their inventory? There are going to be many crepitus creature parts to loot such as claws, organs, flesh and jelly.
- Do we have a doctor and does he/she have Medical Kits?
- Got any mustard gas? At low level - at any level - it's our ace-card against Queen Crepitus.
- Got a couple of hours to spare? This is a seven-sector dungeon crawl comprised of two mine sectors and five creature sectors.
Remember what I said in Part VIII, when we first encountered the crepitus: as with the bloodcats, they were engineered by Deidranna's scientists at the research facility in Orta. Thus, they are not aliens but rather gigantic, mutated bugs:
Every single character in the game remarks on the crepitus in several ways as we make our way through the crepitus lair:
It's entertaining. Dr Q. calls the crepitus "scutter bugs", Buns call them "insectoids" and Dimitri calls them "land squid". After a while, that had me cracking up.
Crepitus Tips
Gabby is an old man who used to work for Deidranna. He knows a lot about the crepitus. His house is located in I4: Forest or H11: Desert (random). He sells Jars of Elixir x4 that causes bugs to ignore us if we remain stealthy. Each jar contains enough elixir for six applications. This is handy if we just want to get to the Queen Crepitus: we can basically just sneak through the caves to the QC. I didn't do that, though, because I like bug hunts. Cheesy players may also grind for Agility points while under the effects of "elixir stealth".
- Crepitus are nocturnal. However, they won't appear in the mines until about 1 a.m. If you delve the mines between 1 and 4 a.m, they should be there.
- Keep the squad spread out as much as possible in order to avoid squad-wide acid-splash.
- Don't just burst fire. Some squad members can't burst twice, but they can burst once and follow that up with a single shot. Every shot counts.
- Employ cover whenever possible: the range of crepitus acid-spit is impressive.
- Crepitus type, number and positioning is set upon entering the sector. In a given sector, you may face off against one crepitus or six.
- The larger, Deathclaw-like crepitus have about 130 HPs. In my game, and at this point, only Conrad and I.M.P are capable of slaying one with two bursts.
- Each bug can drop 0-3 creature parts. It's possible for one to drop all three parts.
- If the squad finds itself on its last legs before reaching the QC, it's possible to back out of the dungeon, heal up and re-enter on the next evening, but some crepitus will have respawned in the creature lairs, and the QC's lair repopulates completely in 24 hours.
- Don't take a subpar squad down to the QC; you will get pwnd.
Here, in desperation, Dimitri fires a LAW:
The Dungeon Crawl
This is what I mean by keep the squad spread out. Upon entry to the mines (D13:B1, screencapped above), we may be assailed by up to six crepitus. Like bloodcats, they just keeping coming.
In the next mine sector (E13:B1), we faced off against five crepitus. And then we found a hole that wasn't there before:
That hole leads into a series of "creature lair" sectors starting with E13:B2. We found five more crepitus here:
As we made our way through creature lair sectors F13:B2, G13:B2, G13:B3 and F13:B3 (Queen's lair), we must have taken out 25 more. So the total crepitus found in and under the Drassen mines can be as high as 40 or so.
Keep an eye out for the remains of people: in G13:B2, we found Spectra Leggings.
We encountered some kind of slime crepitus as well. Even these things have >50 HPs:
Epic overkill M-14/hollow point Psycho burst on a worm-like crepitus:
(I.M.P lvl 5, MRK 93).
This is the extracted map of the Queen Crepitus Lair (F13:B3). We took out ten crepitus as we made our way to the Egg Machine's sanctum:
How to Beat Queen Crepitus
That -37 is an M-14 shot. So the Queen Crepitus can be taken out by conventional weapons; it's just harder and more tedious (170 HPs). You want to position yourself where my I.M.P is in the above screencap. Then, duck in, take a shot, duck back out, and rinse repeat until fire retardant. That way the QC won't unleash the acid AoE.
The Queen can fire two acid attacks per turn. Screencap of acid AoE:
The best weapon to employ against her are rocket rifles loaded with HEAP minirockets. However, this is early in the campaign, and we haven't yet been to Orta, so we don't have them.
In the end, I had Buns blow its head off:
Note that each and every merc has a voiced comment upon vanquishing the QC. It depends on which one lands the killing blow. Amazing attention to detail.
The Queen drops six units of Royal Jelly:
The Queen drops six units of Royal Jelly:
Jagged Alliance 2: Best Armor Rating
Royal Jelly is a superior coating than Compound 18. It can be applied to vest, helmet and leggings. If that's Spectra armor, it results in 99% armor.
Base vs. C18 vs. RJ:
In addition, and these are rare, but ceramic plates can be fitted into Spectra vests for >100% armor. In practice, that means we can fully absorb one or two 5.56mm rounds fired from a H&K G41.
As can be seen, only Buns came out unscathed from the dungeon crawl. Everyone else incurred damage, and Ira nearly died. Without Dr. Q's medical expertise, she would be dead. A few others would have bled to death, too.
Fred radios in upon the Queen's destruction:
Thus, the mine reopens and we continue yielding income from it.
***
Part XI:
You'll have to follow the sector guide from this point on.
It's Day 26 of our campaign to liberate Arulco from the dictatorship of Queen Deidranna. Below depicts our Loyalty, Income and militia force on Day 26:
One can see that Tixa has been retaken by Deidranna. This happens in Orta as well. That's because we are unable to train militia there. Moreover, there is no point in defending a prison sector with no mine, income potential or NPCs that offer services -- and the Warden is dead. We're done there: the Queen can do what she likes; her days are numbered. Note that some squad members, if outnumbered, and if they surrender, can be imprisoned in Tixa or Meduna.
Current squad-wide killcount: 231. That includes bloodcats, crepitus, Deidranna's forces (redshirts and blackshirts) and NPCs such as the Warden, the General and Doreen Harrows. We've taken out quite a bit of trash, actually. We've freed people from slavery, imprisonment and certain death, and yet we've only scratched the surface of the Jagged Alliance 2 campaign. There is so much to see, do and discover. And the best part is? We've got so much freedom in our order of approach. There are so many ways to play this game!
Just a reminder that I'm playing on Novice mode despite being a fairly experienced (but very rusty) player. The campaign is much more challenging on Experienced, let alone Expert or Ironman. As I said from the outset, I'm playing on Novice because I just want to enjoy the nostalgia, relax and showcase the game. It's not easy to play such a complex and nuanced game and commentate on it at the same time. I have to write the posts up, format them, take screencaps, and resize, crop and annotate them. It takes ages, and it's easy to make silly tactical and strategic errors when one is doing all that at the same time. So yeah, Novice. We can call this "a warm up" that should also act as a good starting point for new players (in fact, a lot of people are reading this, which is great). After this run, I would like to replay on Experienced, Expert or Ironman.
To recap, we've liberated Omerta, Drassen, Alma and the Cambria SAM site. Better still, we've held the fort against Deidranna's reprisals. We've fought off several reprisal attempts on B:13: Drassen Airport, and one each on H14: Alma and I8: Cambria SAM site. And we've discouraged many more thanks to our militia build-up. Next on our hit list is H8: Cambria Mine.
We're pulling in a solid $23,600 per day from the mines, and we're sitting pretty on $100,000 in cold, hard cash. But we have expenses. Most notably, Conrad has cost us $46,200 to date ($3,200 per day). The daily cost of all mercs is $7332, so Conrad alone constitutes a whopping 43% of our payroll. I don't mind that: we don't need him but he keeps our wealth in check. Dr. Q and Buns are also comparitively expensive at $1,142 and $1,000 per day, but I like them as squad members. Two of our mercs are free (the rebels: Ira and Dimitri), and Shank and Dynamo only cost us $20 and $50 per day. Later, having taken five towns in Arulco, we can recruit two veteran rebels: Carlos and Miguel [pic], whom we spoke to in Omerta at the beginning.
Cambria Town (roof on):
Cambria Town (roof off):
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