Issue 21, Wanted - The Minuteman 3

Primary Objectives:
Keep Liberty Lad safe
Defeat all the duplicate cops
Talk to the police chief at the station
Defeat Deja Vu

Secondary Objectives:
Protect the cops and their station

Enemies:
Police Clone
Deja Vu

Cannisters:
1x Gold (Prestige) in the alley towards the edge of the map, directly behind a building with a "Fried Chicken" sign (the building is one block away from the cop station).

The police clones in this level aim for the friendly (real) cops until your capes damage them. Because of their bad shots, use this to your advantage by getting close enough to not miss with the first hit (or go behind them) and use a single double overpowered attack to lay them to waste immediately. If a single friendly policeman dies from gunfire, you fail the secondary. If the Station is reduced to rubble, the secondary is failed.

If you have the Acid Guy on your team, you can use him to build the prestige by attacking Deja Vu's clones at the end of the stage. In the mean time, you can and should use Microwave or the Ant to lead the assault on the police clones. Once Alchemiss contacts you and gives you direction, you can take your sweet time and go around whole blocks to get behind the police clones (who will be facing the street, never the alley behind them) and fry their brains with continuous Microwave Beam attacks. The clones will never react since they are scripted to attack the real policemen and not your heroes -- but since Microwave's Microwave Beam is so long ranged, he can attack the clones before the real policemen are spawned on the map. If you think about it, the logic loop should be self-explanatory. Microwave can basically take out all the clones with no help from his/its allies.

When you need to talk to the chief, make sure every one is back in front of the station before you have Microwave talk to the Chief (Deja Vu shows up there). Liberty Lad and everyone else should stay back. If you want to build prestige now, use Acid Guy to wallop Deja Vu once and then attack his clones. Otherwise, to finish this quickly, have the Ant toss a few cars Deja Vu's way and he should be dead in a matter of seconds. For the record, Deja Vu is weak against Acid and Crushing damage and thinks Radiation is fun stuff to pour down his pants.

Training
New Heroes: None. But there's a party in Deja Vu's pants and everybody is invited.

By now, you should have a good idea of what kind of hero you want. Make sure that you read through the section about customizing your hero or you'll wind up with a hinderance more than a help. A custom hero who is radiation and acid resistant, who can fly or jump, and who has good acid and cold attacks should be considered. But if you really want to have some fun and put in almost any kind of hero, you should have about 12,000 Prestige now (you only hired Man O'War and Black Bird didn't you?) and hire the Acid Guy detailed in the secrets section to build up prestige.

If you already hired Acid Guy, but killed Deja Vu last mission, you shouldn't worry since you can do it again after completing the next two stages. Continue building the Ant and Microwave. El Diablo should have most of his attacks and Man O'War should be a flying lightning tosser by now. If you do not import good custom heroes, this should be the team that offers the most tactical flexibility (i.e., most varied attacks). You may have other preferences, but outside of constructing a 300,000+ prestige hero who can everything (yes, I named it after myself, huhuhuhu. I'm a dork) you're gonna need teamwork to pull that last mission off.

The next mission will only have three people and the Lad is filling one spot. Put in the Ant and anyone else you want. You'll be receiving a new hot-looking core heroine soon.

Issue 22, Deja Who 1

Primary Objectives:
Find Minuteman and rescue him
Liberty Lad must not be defeated

Secondary Objectives:
Defeat all the duplicate cops in the park

Enemies:
Tough gun thug
Police Clone
Femme clone
Male clone

Cannisters:
1x Green (xp) beneath some trees just past the park entrance.

Advance towards the park with caution and bomb the clone cop into oblivion. Liberty Lad must find four (normal, not clone) people that have the stanzas of Deja Vu's rhyme to free Minuteman (who is inside the statue from the first stage, 'Came a Hero'). If the person with the stanza is hit, they cannot die until after you've spoken with them. And if you have the Ant, you can waste the clones without too much trouble. Be sure to get someone who can shoot out a lot of stuff -- Alchemiss with her accurate Arcane Bolt is actually more useful here than anywhere else -- although Microwave can be useful in the next stage. You'll have to make the decision on who to take along. Be sure to have all three of your heroes take the cannister.

Issue 23, Deja Who 2

Primary Objectives:
Liberty Lad must not be defeated
Defeat the duplicate Minuteman
Rescue the real Minuteman

Secondary Objectives:
Find and defeat all clones in the park

Enemies:
Police Clone
Femme Clone
Male Clone
Fake Minuteman

Cannisters:
1x Green (Experience) inside a tree at a corner of the map. It'll be near where you start.

If you brought along Microwave, the dupe Minuteman is a snap. If you didn't, you'd better keep the Lad out of the guy's way or he might get 300 Percentered. Ignore the police dupes and flatten the clones who rush the team during the fracas. Ant can Acid Bomb the Minuteman dupe too, but be sure to keep everyone away. Once you whack the fake Minuteman and talk to Eve, she'll be added to the team.

Now, Liberty lad must get clues from four clones scattered across the park before releasing the correct statue. He can try to release the wrong statues for extra prestige, provided the team can defeat the Minuteman Fake. There are more clones other than the ones with the clues, so be ready to run or fire if you see a civilian sprinting towards you. Don't miss the experience cannister on your way to free Minuteman.

Training
New Heroes: Eve (a.k.a., Lawn Spread, Nature Gal, Poison Ivy, She's-got-lovely-turf); Supercollider (a.k.a., secret character numero-three-o, Walking Particle Accelerator, Michelin Mascot Reject)

Eve sucks. That's all she does, besides being very accurate with sniper attacks. So keep that in mind when you include her in any team. If you want, create, recruit and implant the Acid Guy now. This is the last chance to rake in a massive amount of prestige normally (without using a console cheat). Otherwise, make sure the Ant (or a powered up Sea Urchin with Bubble Swarm) is on the team. Man O'War or El Diablo works too.

And if you feel daring, you can try putting in Minuteman for his 300 Percenter to destroy the Clone Ray with one or two hits. Also, if you can afford to, hire either Order or Law (you get both heroes if you hire one) and stuff Law onto the team. You basically want Law's healing ability ('Mercy') if things get rough. Plus you can upgrade her Mercy power if you have her get the Experience cannister with the rest of the team. If you want extra muscle, you can hire Supercollider for fun or as an extra hero to soak up radiation (on a later mission).

Issue 24, Seeing Double SEEING DOUBLE

Primary Objectives:
Find out what Deja Vu is up to
Destroy the Cloning ray-gun
Don't allow any part of the ray-gun building to collapse
Disable the shield generators
Defeat Deja Vu

Secondary Objectives:
None

Enemies:
Police Clone
Femme Clone
Male Clone
Thug with bat
Clone Ray
Deja Vu

Cannisters:
1x Green (Experience) under a crate in an alley on the side of the map.

1x Gold (Prestige) on top of a campus building on the side of the map. This is really close to the Clone Ray so decoy the ray first then have your other heroes get it.

This is the last stage to perform the infinite prestige trick -- it doesn't qualify as a cheat since you are doing most of the work normally anyway. When you pick your team, keep in mind that if the Clone Ray scores a successful hit on a hero, an evil likeness will come out and attack you immediately. If you want to, put in Man O'War and Microwave -- these two heroes can kill each other with their attacks if either are cloned, although Microwave will be more dangerous since its radiation attacks can affect your entire team. Either way, you should stay next to buildings as much as possible to avoid being sucker-duped.

When you start turn and head into the alley way (any one will do). Make your way to the experience cannister and if a clone tries to fight you, fight it in the safety of the alleys away from the range of the Clone Ray. Run the whole team behind the Clone Ray and the two very obvious shield things. Have Minuteman (if you put him in, otherwise substitute Man O'War) trash the generators and the Clone Ray or have any other hero continually melee attack the Clone Ray to death. Mentor, if he can levitate, can use Psyche Slash to destroy the device. If you somehow manage to get close to the Clone Ray, it cannot target you, so your best candidate is actually Minuteman, with Microwave standing by to kill any evil Minutemen that appear. Be sure to take out the Clone Ray before chasing down any wayward clones (unless they are becoming dangerous) since the Clone Ray can make more enemies out of your team.

Once the Clone Ray is destroyed, Deja Vu will come out and start creating more of himself. Lead the fight away from the Clone Ray building or you will fail (Deja Vu is not too particular about what he hits). If you are not aiming for the prestige harvest, simply have someone throw objects at him or use Microwave's radiation attacks to settle his hash. If you are reaping prestige, then order all your heroes except Acid Guy to a safe spot then spend the next half hour or so killing Deja Vu's clones. Remember, Deja Vu is vulnerable to Acid and Crushing damage and is resistant to Radiation.

Training
New Heroes: No more core heroes. On the other hand, Superman should cost about 60,000 prestige.

That's it, no more core heroes for Freedom Force. If you want, you can splurge the rest of your prestige right now since the next two sets of missions will prove to be the last ones before the big fight. I'm going to assume that you did not do the prestige trick since, well really, think about it -- would most people spend an hour "harvesting prestige" when they can simply add the prestige with a console command line in five seconds? Either you cheat or you don't; there is no half-way method. Women don't like guys who go half-way, unless they themselves are "half-way".

Now the challenge for which Man O'War was created. You can ditch Microwave for now, but keep upgrading to reach Clone Self. Stick El Diablo and Man-Bot back in for the Inferno/Transer combo (hopefully Man-Bot can fly now) and be sure to have a competent hero for the next few missions. A custom flying hero who can do acid, cold, electric, and piercing damage can come in handy right now.