Issue 13, Here Today, Gone Forever

Primary Objectives:
Investigate the source of the earthquakes
Close the anthills to defeat the ants

Secondary Objectives:
Prevent the ants from stealing more than $50,000 of property

Enemies:
Soldier ants
Worker ants

Cannisters:
1x Green (Experience) inside a roof vent on a building towards the edge of the stage; you should be able to spot the FX glitter of the cannister even if the game is paused, so do an aerial survey prior to fighting the ants.

Take along El Diablo and Minuteman if you can. Move all your heroes to the cannister first and either knock off the cannister or level the building so everybody can reach it. Head for the source of the earthquakes once the team has their experience cannister secured. There is no end to the number of ants in this stage so concentrate on destroying the anthills. Use Man-Bot to play shocktroop and draw the acid spit away from Minuteman, who can use 300 Percenter and Smash to level the anthill with one or two blows (if the 300 Percent Smash doesn't level it, a second double overpowered Smash will finish the job).

You can also try softening up the anthill (and the ants) with Diablo's Inferno, but you risk damaging even more buildings. Try not to attack the black ants since they do not attack unless you damage them. The red soldier ants though, will attack you on sight. There are five anthills to level, with the last one being the biggest. Do not take Minuteman's advice and "split up." Chances are, one or more of your capes will bite the dust if you do so, even if you use Heroic Remedy or Recovery.

Training
New Heroes: Iron Ox (secret cape numero-two-o)

Mentor. Electron Beam. Level three to five. You buy it, you buy it. If you want, you can bring Man O'War along to give him some experience, but do not include him on the team when you go into Where Shadows Fall.

Issue 14, City of Darkness

Primary Objectives:
Explore the caverns to find the source of the ant menace
Man-bot must survive

Secondary Objectives:
Break the cages to free the prisoners

Enemies:
Soldier ants
Worker ants
Darkmen (blue)

Cannisters:
1x Green (Experience) in the second "city room" you come across; The cannister is behind a building by a prison pen.

2x Red (Health) in the second "ctiy room" where you found the green cannister, you will find a red health cannister behind the other building by the prison pen hidden underneath some boulders. The second cannister is found after the mushroom filled tunnel.

1x Gold (Prestige) in the third "city area" look around all the buildings to find the cannister.

This stage plays like a Star Craft "installation" level. The entire stage is revealed to you a bit at a time when your heroes breach the rock walls to reveal what's behind door number one. Unlike previous metropolis levels, the Freedom Dorks can do as much collateral damage as possible without losing any prestige, so feel free to stomp every building to rubble in the course of this mission. It's too bad El Diablo is not with you eh?

Notice how dark everything is? On multiplayer, you want dark skins to blend in with the background -- but on single player campaigns, you want all your heroes to show up easily. The good thing is that all of FF's heroes have bad fashion tastes and do show up quite nicely among the explosive fungus and weird glowing crap in the caves. Unfortunately, the badguys, notably the Worker Ants and Darkmen, do not return the favour. Try to demolish buildings to get rid of dark places for them to hide, and lay off smashing the glowing crap on the wall (it's a light source of sorts). Other than that, everything else is fair game in this stage.

One of the first useful objects you encounter in the stage are the giant mushrooms ('mutated by energy-x!'). They are explosive and can be lifted and thrown by almost anyone (even Sea Urchin and Alchemiss). Be ready to use them as thrown weapons, but DO NOT PICK THEM UP until you have encountered an enemy. The reason is simple: if a cutscene happens while a cape is carrying a mushroom (and is ready to throw it), the mushroom is deleted from the game after the cutscene finishes. For this reason, situate some of your heroes near mushrooms, and have either Man-Bot or someone else do some decoy work. If a cutscene occurs, you can be sure that you heroes can pick up the mushrooms once the cutscene is over and toss them into the fray later; if not, the enemies come out of the wood work and you can still do the same thing.

Head down the tunnel and smash the rock wall to reveal city room number one. The next "city room" you encounter will have the two cannisters mentioned above. After the cutscene with Ant, the soldier ants will attack Man-Bot. Use Focus and have Man-Bot draw the ire of the acid burn attacks -- no one else on the team right now can withstand that punishment. The explosive mushrooms can be used on the ants now. Sea Urchin's Bubble Swarm can also be used if you recruited and trained her, but she's not necessary to this mission; Mentor is.

Once all the ants are dealt with, you can move onto the next area by demolishing the rock slide, but you should first situate some of your heroes around the entrance with explosive mushrooms. When the wall comes down, soldier ants will immediately attack with acid spit. You should make it a habit to have your heroes all ready with full energy-x and have a mushroom or two to toss into the entrance once the rock slides are destroyed.

The second city room has the darkmen, but you should hold off attacking them since they are "not hostile -- yet" as described by Man-Bot. Instead, have Man-Bot go up to each Worker Ant and deliver a double overpowered Wallop to each ant while they are facing away from him. That will get rid of half your enemies before the fight starts. Just be sure not to head towards the prison pen or you provoke the Darkmen into attacking. Once the ants are gone, you can use Mentor's Electron Beam (at close range) to kill the Darkmen. Be sure to underpower the attack.

The Ant can be dealt with Mentor as well. Electron Beam up close and he should run off. After the first prison pen, there are only two more pens in the third city room to deal with and the extra prestige from the objective is yours.

Training
New Heroes: The Ant (a.k.a., John 'Peter Parker' Miller, Spiderman wannabe, Star Trek fan #00001)

Powerup any heroes you want, but be sure Man O'War is developing himself to earn flight and his electrical attacks. Ant will be going along this mission, and you can bring El Diablo along since the Ants are no longer your biggest problem. His Inferno attack will cause mass destruction so try to keep him out of range. If you have Man-Bot with Transfer, you can use Man-Bot to re-energize El Diablo when the Mexican runs low on energy-x. With Man-Bot as the recharger, El Diablo and him can go through the whole stage without risking the Ant's health or anyone else. You may want to consider bringing Minuteman along since you can use his 300 Percenter in the stage after (you will not be able to swap characters for the boss fight).

Issue 15, Where Shadows Fall 1

Primary Objectives:
Corner Shadow in her lair
The Ant must not fall . . . this is personal

Secondary Objectives:
None

Enemies:
Darkmen (blue)
Darkmen (purple)

Cannisters:
1x Green (Experience) in the back of the second city area, up on a ledge.

1x Red (Health) in the room where you find Shadow and have to pull both ropes to open her door. The cannister is in a corner of the room.

This stage is similar to the last one, but you'll be dealing with Darkmen rather than ants. Use El Diablo to bombard everything into rubble and have Man-Bot stand close by, but in the second rank. Ant's Acid Bomb is lethal if you throw it short or it explodes in Ant's face, so try to toss it far or on the ground and have it "slide" into an obstacle. This becomes more important when you overpower the Acid Bomb to reduce the chance of resistance by the Darkmen; however, when you overpower the bomb, you also increase the size of the explosion.

Use the El Diablo/Man-Bot combination to level all the Darkmen who appear -- remember that the Darkmen can cloak and become invisible, but that doesn't mean that they can't be hurt by explosives. In the second city room, you'll face off with Shadow (prematurely) and you'll need to do 55 hit points of damage to her to force her to retreat. Ant will call up some Support Ants to deal with the ambush, so try to help the ants by attacking the Darkmen with any attack. Chances are either the friendly ants will hit the Darkman, or your cape will. The rocky ledge where the rock slide is where a green cannister is (guarded by a Darkman). Rush the Darkman and have all four of your capes use the can.

When you reach the last room, you will find a very jungle like pillar area. You can loiter around and kill off the remaining Darkmen, or if everyone's life is high enough, simply make a run for the end and yank the two ropes (use two heroes to speed things up) to end the stage.

Issue 16, Where Shadows Fall 2

Primary Objectives:
Defeat Shadow

Secondary Objective:
None

Enemies:
Darkmen (blue)
Darkmen (purple)
Shadow

Cannisters:
2x Gold (Prestige) one is right at Shadow's altar; the other is in a corner of the room. You can use all four heroes to get each cannister except the one by the altar (for some reason Mentor could not jump over the obstacles to get it).

Shadow is invincible until you can put some sunlight where the sun don't shine. If you kill her, she taunts you, then regenerates with all her health. To get rid of her, you must get rid of the four pillars in the room that supports the roof. If you want to maximze your prestige though, you'll need to take a few lumps from the infinite number of Darkmen in the room. Run to the corner where one prestige can is, have everybdoy use it, then have them run to the altar (to save time, you can have Minuteman use 300 Percenter and double overpower Smash a pillar each time he runs to a cannister). Don't worry if not all your heroes can use the cannister (I've had problems with Mentor using the altar cannnister, but 700 bonus prestige is better than 200 bonus prestige any day).

Have Ant use his Acid Bombs to kill the Darkmen, but just watch the explosion or you'll regret throwing one out. El Diablo and Man-Bot can use their combo to floor the rest of the them while Minuteman finishes off the pillars. Once the light comes into the chamber, Shadow is one dead super-model (and we're not even talking about the anorexia). One Acid Bomb (keep everyone away), then an Inferno or two will make her re-think her career choice as a super villainess. Shadow vulnerable to both Acid and Radiation, and for some reason, resistant against Electricity.

Training
New Heores: Liberty Lad (a.k.a., Boy Toy, George Washington's 18th Century Bootlack, Thomas Jefferson's Other Dark Side)

Continuing training young grasshopper. A new core hero is going to be added soon. If you can, bring along Man-Bot and El Diablo -- that failing, you'll have to stick with El Diablo since the next stage after the Lad's offers massive destruction capabilities.