Hellwalker

Hero Strategies

When Hellwalker was first introduced, Protoss heroes were blocked from play. They have been enabled since version 11.13. For in depth Hero strategies, please see GhostDragon's Guides.

Mechanics

Punishment Drops

Hellwalker introduces Punishment drops/spawns that increase in severity as you play the game by increasing a "bad things" counter. There are 8 triggers that cause these drops to occur: 

1. Any player death (3x -1 to +1)
2. Staying in game 1 hour (2x +0 to +1)
3. Trigger Final Boss (3x +0 to +2), End of Final Boss spawns (6x +0 to +2)
4. Hurt Final Boss (5x -2 to +1)
5. Elite Bruta Death (1x -2)
6. BB/Levi Lairs and Hives Death (1x +0)
7. Any Major Boss (3x +0 to +2)
8. SE Omegalisk Hive Death (1x +0)

Additionally, the severity of the drops increase based on the following triggers: 

1. Any player death
2. Brutalisk Death
3. Omegalisk Death
4. SE Omegalisk Hive Death
5. Leviathan Death
6. Brain Bug Death
7. General Activation
8. General Death

The "bad things" severity counter starts at 1 when the game starts, and increases based on the triggers above. For example, if you die at the start of the game, all players will get 2 roach drops on top of them. If a second player dies, then all players will get 2 roach drops and Violent Air units (Guardians/Broods) will spawn in the middle of the map. A third death would only spawn 1 roach drop, Violent Air units, and Spine Crawlers. 

1. Roaches 
2. Roaches 
3. Brood Lords 
4. Spine Crawlers 
5. Roaches 
6. Spine Crawlers 
7. Hive Guardians 
8. Spine Crawlers (growing) 
9. Brood Lords 
10. Hive Guardians 
11. Omegalisks 
12. Nightmares 
13. Brutalisks 
14. Cerebrate Sentinels 
15. Toxic Omegalisks 
16. Toxic Brutalisks 
17. Toxic Boss Horde 

As you play, killing bosses will increase this value. At 4 deaths, the General will spawn Brutalisks if you've cleared all other bosses and the Omegalisk Hive, making the General waves extremely difficult. You will need to fight Brutalisks while dealing with a lot of Hybrids that will lift you, making you likely to die to Corrosive Bile.

Mastery Retaliation

Each mastery taken spawns a retaliation wave, which spawns from the center of the map (or from the General Hive after the General has been triggered). The types of enemies that spawn depend on the number of masteries a player has acquired according to the table below. Note that Tenacity and Weaponsmith Perks are not "taken" and do not trigger a retaliation wave, but they do count towards total masteries taken.  

For example, if Anvil takes Compartmentalization, Tenacity, and Weaponsmith perks, then proceeds to take Lightweight and two other masteries at the start of the game, he will spawn 3 waves of Violent Hunterlings and one Violent Ravager, as he has 5 total masteries learned.    

Masteries Taken	Violent Hunterlings (per player)	Violent Ravager	Violent Nemesis	Violent Hybrid Dominator
1+	Yes
5+	Yes	Yes
8+	Yes	Yes	Yes
10+	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

• Violent Hunterlings will be created for each player and attack each player in succession as they are created, with a few seconds between each. This means that the last player will be targeted by all of the Hunterlings shortly after they are all created. It is recommended to either kite the banes and kill them with toxic waste or dodge them and let them suicide on the CP forces. Anvil and Nova can cloak, which can also help them be a lure if they are in the last position. 
• At 5+ masteries, a Cloaked Violent Ravager will spawn with the Hunterlings. Since it does 3x damage, the corrosive bile will generally kill any hero in one hit. You can use the corrosive bile to kill the Ravager itself.  
• At 8+ masteries, a Cloaked Violent Nemesis will spawn with the Hunterlings and Ravager. They do around 1000 damage, so without block mastery you will die quickly if you engage them. 
• At 10+ masteries, a Violent Hybrid Dominator will spawn with all the enemies listed above. At this point in the game, additional masteries can be extremely dangerous to take, and often don't speed up the game significantly enough to make it worth taking.  

Unique Units Of This Mode

Locusts (Flesheaters)

Locusts are the "poop unit" for Hellwalker, and have a 70% chance to spawn when the CP complete any building, as long as the Leviathan is still alive. Locusts have a 90% armor piercing attack, making armor negligible and can quickly kill a hero if they are not paying attention. After killing the Leviathan, 60 Violent Flesheaters will spawn from its corpse. 

Ravagers

Ravagers are invisible, but very lethal. Corrosive Bile increases damage as the game goes on longer, and most of the Ravagers you will meet are from masteries and Violent, meaning they do 3x damage. Corrosive Bile starts out near 1000 damage base. 

Trap 6 will spawn normal cloaked Ravagers as well, which do significantly less damage than the Violent ones, but are still dangerous. 

Damaging the Hybrid General at any point will spawn a Ravager as well. 

Nemesis

Nemesis are cloaked flying Hybrid that do 300 damage to Heroic units, so are quite deadly to heroes without block. Creep Colonies can also heal them, making it difficult to kill them in the wrong spot.

In addition to the Violent Nemesis spawned by Mastery Retaliations, Nemesis can be spawned from other triggers:

• Killing the Hatchery that CP first target in the CP base will spawn patrolling Nemesis between the Omegalisk Base and Leviathan Base
• Starting Trap 19 will spawn a haunting Nemesis from the Leviathan lair every 215 seconds.
• Starting the Leviathan Boss will create 40 haunting Nemesis, one every 15 seconds. A Cerebrate Sentinel will spawn after the Nemesis have finished spawning
• Starting Trap 15 will spawn 6 patrolling Nemesis along the Highway.
• Killing the Lair south of the General base will spawn 10 haunting Nemesis per player.
• The Hybrid General's Final Boss Spawns will create 2 haunting Nemesis per player.
• Damaging the Hybrid General can create 1 haunting Nemesis per player.

Nightmares

Nightmares are Infested Terran that do 40-50 damage and attack quickly. After level 40, they will spawn on every 80 building kills. They will announce themselves before dropping, giving you time to find a Planetary Fortress or another Hero with adaptive armor mastery to stand next to. You can also run away from them, but they will all chase the closest hero. Patch 14.8 reduced their damage due to a bug introduced earlier, which makes the Marine and Marauder ignore armor now.

In all other difficulties a 4000 kill streak would give you a powerful battlecruiser to defend the base. In Hellwalker, once a player reaches 4000 kills, there will be a double Nightmare drop as punishment instead, so keep an eye on kill streaks and time them properly when fighting bosses.

Yagdra

The Yagdra is a new structure in Hellwalker. As with other enemy spells, the Yagdra attack ignores armor, so they can quickly kill end game Odins, and there are a number of traps that spawn Yagdras in key locations throughout the map. Yagdra's detection range is smaller than its attack range, so Anvil and Nova can attack it without being detected. Yagdras will rapidly heal when not under attack and get progressively more difficult the more you spawn.

Since Yagdra are so strong, they can be used to stop the CP from triggering bosses, and can be found in the following locations:

These two serve as progress control so you have time to level up:

• West right outside your base (before the brutalisk hive)
• East right before the hill to the lair

The rest:

• Two Yagdras on high ground right before you hit the middle hive (next to Hive Guardian spawning point)
• Omegalisk base (on the same level as the lair)
• The hatchery next to the bridge with a lot of scrap.
• Right outside entry to Leviathan base
• On the middle island that connects boss base and the middle area.
• Three Yagdras on the wall outside boss base. The north one can be ignored.
• One on the East wall in the boss base. You should be fine if you can reach this point in the game.

Brutalisks

All Brutalisks in this mode shoot Corrosive Bile like Ravagers. The Angry Brutalisk and Elite Brutalisks in the Brain Bug base do extra damage compared to the standard Brutalisks spawned.

In addition to the usual Brutalisk bosses in the Brain Bug base and the first "normal" Brutalisk boss, more Brutalisks can spawn from punishment drops, or they will spawn when you damage the General's shields down to 0.

The Elite Brutalisks are especially dangerous, as when they die they will spawn Hybrids on all the players and will trigger a Punishment spawn.

Behemoth

After you've killed the Brain Bug, a large Leviathan will attack. The Behemoth has 78 armor, so very little will damage it, and in 3-4 player games the Behemoth will aggressively attack a random hero. It is recommended to stand close to other CP units so they can tank hits from the Behemoth, as non tank heroes will have difficulty running away from the Behemoth's attack.

Detailed Timing schedule

1. When you enter the game the base is under attack by Mutalisks. So as soon as you picked the perks for you hero go right away to the primary fortress and kill those Mutalisks. It is very important to walk around the Mutalisks and kill them from behind, otherwise you'll be killed instantly. If you don't kill the mutalisks, the Orbital Command will die on 3-4 player games. After Quite quickly after you've dealt with the multalisk a small nydus worm pops up in the base and ultralisks pop out. do NOT take them on, or you'll die very quick. The best place to wait is north west in the base. As soon as that's safe go back in, because more mutalisks will come in and you need to kill them too. Many games end in the beginning. Either the base is destroyed by the mutalisk and/or ultralisks, or someone dies in the beginning spawning a whole lot of roaches and causing a chain effect so other die too. 
2. At approximately 3:27 many spines will drops right in front of the base and Hunterlings will attack the base.
3. 9:27 roach drops, hug a fortress or be away when you don't have armor mastery. 
4. At 10:47, Raptorlings will spawn in the middle of the map and attack the base from the north. Shortly afterwards Air will attack as well. 
5. 14:17 Utralisk drop (Brown). Every 14 minutes thereafter, there will be a stronger Ultralisk. 
6. 28:17 Ultralisk drop (Blue). 
7. 33:07 spine drops with spore crawlers and every 32:50 after that. 
8. 42:17 Ultralisk drop (Purple). 
9. 56:17 Ultralisk drop (Green) 
10. 1:00:17 Punishment drop at Current and +1 severity level. 
11. 1:05:57 spine drops with spore crawlers. 
12. 1:10:17 Ultralisk drop (2x Brown) 

Final Boss Spawns

The Final Boss spawns are as follows:

• 1 Hive Guardian Per Player
• 40x GM Random Event Strong
• 30-35 Hurtful Blue Primal Ultralisks
• Periodic Squad Hunterlings
• 15-18 Supreme Banelings
• Periodic Squad Brood Lords
• Spine Drop
• 8-11 Supreme Roaches
• 3-5 Supreme Queens
• Aberration drop (as of 14.8 disabled, used to be Ultralisk drop)
• Spine Drop
• Tyrannozor Loop 2x per player:
  • Supreme Tyrannozor
  • Periodic Squad Hunterlings
  • Odin
• Omega Sentinel Loop 1x per player:
  • Omega Sentinel
  • Periodic Squad Hunterlings
• Make Hybrid General vulnerable to damage
• 15-20 Hybrid Dominators
• Nightmare Loop 5x:
  • Periodic Squad Raptorlings
  • HW Mega Violent Hunterlings
  • Nightmare Drop
  • Hive Guardian
• Hybrid event (on player, 1x per player per player)
• GM Random Boss Pull Events Fixed Hard
• Boss Punishment Drop at +0, +1 and +2 severity
• Nemesis per player
• 2x Abberation drop (as of 14.8 disabled, used to be Ultralisk drop)
• Hybrid event (on player, 2x per player per player)
• Boss Punishment Drop at +0, +1 and +2 severity

The series of events takes about 10 minutes that you essentially need to survive and prevent the Hive Guardians from backdooring your base.

Damaging the general will spawn one set of enemies in this order, with a 4 second cooldown between spawns:

1. Hybrid Dominator
2. GM Random Event Strong
3. Nemesis per player
4. Ravager
5. Primal Ultralisk
6. Noxious Ultralisk
7. Violent Primal Mutalisk
8. Violent Primal Mutalisk
9. Violent Primal Mutalisk
10. Violent Primal Mutalisk

Bosses and Route

• Highly recommend to always push with Crap Patrol NPCs. It is certainly the not the fastest way, but it is mostly the safest way.
• It is safer to push out north, kill north yagdra, trigger Ultralisks on Scrapyard, then Brutalisk. Open North from lowground with Highground vision then clean up the middle Lair area without destroying it. Do the Roach hill from behind and clean up the map before triggering Omegalisk.
• You can kill the Hive where Hive Guardians spawn and the hidden lair. They will only trigger spawn waves and open the blockade on Western Hills.
• You'll easily hit 60 before omega, 50 before Roach hill and Brutalisks is the easiest trigger. Basically, the south-east yagdra that triggers 3 hybrid spawns will block your Crap Patrol from triggering anything to soon allowing you to clear almost the entire map before triggering omega. (Or you can kill this Yagdra and leave the one in front of your base alive)
• Really, keep that yagdra alive till you want to trigger Omegalisk. Omegalisk is the only hard part before "final" wave. This helps a lot.
• After triggering Brutalisk by either attacking him or killing his hatch you'll get 4 Nydus worms on each player. 3 of them will spawn in rapidly and spawn Ultralisks, Queens or purple Ultralisks. The 4th will be delayed and each spawn an Omegalisk. For most matches it is helpful to kill those before Units come out of them. Nova with six drones can kill them easily. However, for other heroes, you can wait down the front ramp where 4 Planetary Fortresses are in range. They will make quick work of the worms. Add a liberator or battlecruiser for safety. No worm, no Omegalisk.
• Toxic-gas Omegalisk from Omega's Lair should die as fast as possible. The Leviathan that spawns during that trigger is not too aggressive. It will usually stop right outside base and attack a single building as it goes. You get a lot of drops. Easiest way to handle the drops is probably outside your east wall near the place where the first yagdra died.
• Nuking Leviathan is highly recommended, since it does not trigger his base and you'll have less lag. A lot less lag. Nuke mastery on level 60 with decent Nuke talents or anvil solves this.
• A brutalisk will appear if you go left from Leviathan's base.
• Brain Bug, Behemoth and Harvester are easy.
• Brutalisks friendly fire themself and everything else with Bile. Except Angry and Elite, they don't bile themselves - however they can kill their own base in seconds.
• The hybrid general can teleport itself outside base. If you get the RUUUUNNNNNNNNN event and run to the brutalisk base north, you might get killed by the general as he teleports. Then when you are revived, the nukes will kill you again or multiple times. This is GG, so don't die when you get this event.

General - Boss 5

The new practice is to release the general ASAP. If you've got a Dune, it can be done as fast as 3min01s in Multiplayer games. Dune can teleport back to base upon releasing the general. He'll need conservator mastery in order to cast a shield over Smoker. Please do remember no other odins will come to up this way until the big waves are coming. If you don't have a dune, it's likely a better idea to first get and kill the Brain Bug (Boss 4), when he's dead odins will keep spawning. When you died 3 times or more, brutalisks and Omegalisks will spawn as well. With more death, more of them will spawn upon releasing the general with Toxic clouds. Odins or NO match against brutalisks, they'll die in seconds. You'll get frequent drops consisting of ultralisks, nightmares and other fun. Stay in the bubble (shield of the odins) to be save as long as no brutalisks are lose. After a small while the big zerg waves will start that end with I WILL END YOU huge ultralisks, these can kill odins. After that you'll get a multiple waves of nightmare dropping. They'll come in preparation for the possibly the most deadly event during the general: The Hybrid event. When the hybrid event begins, depending the amount of players, hybrids appear around EVERY player. When you play with a 2 player game, two hybrids appear around each player, 3 with three player and 4 with 4 player. You'll be lifted and you cannot walk or do you stuff, be in the shield of the odins. Very shortly after each player will get very heavy drops of purple and then green ultras. You'll need to be in the shield of the odins. However, when you died 4 times and more, with this event Brutas will appear as well, if you're lifted .... they'll kill you. No kiting. Only Anvil at that point can kite them. So kill ALWAYS the hybrids ASAP.

Final-Wave

In most games you'll get some kind of Final-wave event which is mostly based on deaths. If you see a wave of bosses coming from final Hybrid lair or an emote that you'll get hybrids soon (purple text) at the final hold then you know that it is happening right now. It is recommended that your team runs back to base while one of your teammembers collects Brutalisks- they simple run to the closest player, so basically he just has to wait outside your base. Recommended to wait a bit further outside so that no Brutalisk that spawns will ever reach an Odin. If you don't have Brutalisks - ignore this part.

However, no matter how many deaths it is recommended to stay near Odins to force any Ulralisk drop to attack them. They're immune to any damage except spell damage - including Bile from Ravagers, Nukes, Brutalisks Biles, Toxic cloud. Especially, Toxic clouds from 40 spawned Ultralisks are the thing you should worry about. Ultralisks from this event spawn in rapid succession. The green ones spawn directly after purple ones and that is the dangerous part.

Last but not least, the Units that spawn from the last base split after the long bridge. Hive guards prefer your east base entrance, everything else runs into Odins. You should be prepared to 8 Hive Guards crushing your east entrance if your Odins are far away from the bridge. In case you have Brutalisks the simple split is: 1 player takes Bosses, 2 players handle the odin push, 1 player takes care of east entrance while making sure that his ultralisk drops don't do more any harm. Air units leaking directly to your planetary fortress destroying it and the command center will happen on the start of the odinspawn and everytime your odin push gets crushed.

Don't pick a mastery during boss wave, or you will lose or get pushed back a lot. The ravagers' bile are just as strong as brutalisks' bile, plus Odins don't move and they are usually busy dealing with the bosses. If you don't die in the game, usually your Odins will group up on top of the Western Hills. This means most drops get far in your base. Once the ravagers push back your Odin wave, the boss wave will destroy your base and drop pods will kill CP HQ. There is too much space to cover once they get into your base.

P.S.

Final wave is:

Boss Punishment spawns before the "usual" final wave which consists of big monsters ending with fat green ultralisks. Followed by a wave of hybrids an emote of hybrids spawning near you and another boss punishment spawn.