So, you having a bit of trouble with Abyss, huh? Or maybe it's a bit tricky with Terminus? Well, luckily I know how to help. This guide is very quick and to the point, so make sure you didn't skip any important details. As with all of my guides, I try to highlight as many details as possible, so I'm sorry if I bore you. Just try to read my boring ♥♥♥♥, and maybe you'll find something usefull.

Ok, so lets fill in some people who haven't even played Abyss yet. First off, your tech is limited. There are about 2-5 things that are randomly chosen that you simply can't build, as if you never researched them. This can prove to have some seriously bad consequences, such as being faced with enraged spawn while having miniguns and flamers disabled. There are some things that you simply cannot play without, and some that you surprisingly can.
Let's start with some misconceptions.

1. "If there's no healing, there's no chance." I'm not trolling you when I say that healing is not a must. It's very nice to have, but it isn't necessary if you play it safe and load the right map, which I will highlight after I'm done with misconceptions.

2. "If I'm surrounded, there's no chance!" Surrounded is oftentimes a very overused and not-so-true statement. If there are three spawners going your way, simply build Grenades. Grenades make even a single simple marine able to hold off a hive. You start with six. You can do math here guys. You have three spawners attacking, meaning you need to go after one. That means you need to leave two marines behind to defend against the other two hives. Well, if you haven't noticed, you start with 6 marines. That gives you 4 marines to assault a base with, which is more than enough. It can be done and is actually oftentimes better to be surrounded, as odd as it sounds.

3. "They have a seige cannon in the center of things. I can't possibly play against that!" Actually, you can. You know what counters seige turrets, and just about everything else? Scouts. A single scout can hit a seige cannon ONCE and then toss a beam (rocket) at it. Suddenly, that cannon is dead for a solid minute. If it comes back up before you take the hives, just rinse and repeat.

4. "They're simply too clumped up for me to do anything!" Too clumped up would be four spawners in a square, which is extremely rare. Three spawners is managable, just not early on. If they're close to you, just assign someone to guard and come back to it later. A sniper works wonders at killing those spitters, and so do the scouts (though they take a bit of ammo). If you are having trouble, like I said come back to it later.

5. "It's a good idea to attack the ones a little away from the walls first, because they can flank me if I take anything else" Once again, you're wrong. Actually, you're so wrong that I can't believe you said that. First of all, if you take the ones on the side, then it's you who does the flanking. And the hive only has so many troops it can send after you, and while they will take down the bunker, it's rare for them to actually take the base. If they do, simply hold them off with helicopter strikes until you surround them. ALWAYS go for the bases on the rim first. They will cause you the most trouble.


Ok, so I think I listed enough good ones. We went over a few things that you probably should do and things that you shouldn't. Hopefully, you will go in to this fight with the mentality I have installed via my secret hypnotizing secrets.

Let's get on to things that you simply will need to load a new map for.


1. If you have no scouts available - It is very rare to encounter a map that doesn't require them.

2. If you have both the flamers and the minigunners locked - You can try to beat it, but if the aliens mutate to enraged spawn, you're done for. You literally just wasted about 15 minutes for nothing but a bit of cash.

3. If you don't have any single-mission exhaustables - I really don't have much to say about this. You can attempt this without any exhaustables, but I have yet to beat it without any. A scout is not recomended as an exhaustable, since it's only going to be used for the first five minutes. Trust me, scouts are needed though.

4. If your base is instantly being attacked by a turret or a mortar - Do I really need to explain this one?

5. If you or a loved one suffers from alzhiemers - I really sound like I'm listing symptoms of some sort of medicine in this guide, don't I?

6. If an enraged spawn / brute spawn spawner is shoving aliens in your face as soon as you load in a map - There's simply not enough SP to go around for dealing with these guys.




This was an unfortunate spawn for me.






Guys, this is the biggest one. If there is no visible retreat or ultimately-defensible position, restart. - Guys, we are humans. We can't endure 20 minutes on nonstop micromanaging, adapting, and planning at the same time. If you are going to be forced to constantly be on the offensive until the very last base is captured, reload the map. Trust me, it isn't worth it.

First off, what is a turret? A turret is a generally defensive building that is used to hold back the infested and defend key points. What some people don't realise, however, is that most turrets are actually a waste of money. That's right, a complete waste of money.

Most turrets are able to hold off only one hive, unless placed at a very good chokepoint. 7 credits to hold off a hive is very inefficient, as you might expect. Instead, did you know that a single marine - which costs 4 for your first one - can hold off two if he has the grenades upgrade? That's a total of 10 credits for being twice as efficient, plus helping out all your other marines. Turrets, in general, are a bad investment. They may look cool, and feel powerful, but so does obama and you can see how that turned out.

So, when IS a good time to use a turret? Well, lets consider that basic turrets have very good pierce, so are very good if placed at a chokepoint. However, marines are much more cost efficient than turrets, and are able to do a better job. However, marines are NOT capable of holding off things like brutes or the reinforcement mutation. This is when it's a good idea to use turrets to defend your position.

Another good time to use turrets is when assaulting a hive cluster. Because of their great pierce, the are great for chewing away at large amounts of enemies. Keep in mind that seige cannons are good too, but take a lot of credits to build and take a long time. Don't be afraid to use normal turrets instead!

Ok, so you got a good map and now you're ready to play it. Don't botch this up, because it's actually hard to find a good map, and slipping up here will be heavily punished.

So you know how I said scouts are a good idea? Have your marines hold your base for the first five minutes or so. Don't worry about going around capturing ♥♥♥♥, because that's not what you're going to be doing. The first thing that you're going to be doing is messing around with your scout.

Let's go over the scout, shall we? So they are nearly undetectable, and have very strong rockets capable of bringing almost any small structure down no matter what. So, you know those annoying four buildings surrounding an SP crate that are scattered throughout the map? For the first five minutes, you are going to take your scout and you're going to destroy every single one on the map. This is one of the most important steps in the level, and this will make your advancements into enemy territory much easier.

After all of those annoying SP crate gaurds are gone, bring your scout behind your first target, and tell them to attack the turrets. Then, send as many people as you can to destroy the hive. Since little to no spitter turrets are remaining, you are free to advance without any healing. Remember, prioritize the rim hives,

Another thing to do is to plan out things. AVOID the easy-to-capture hives. Take out the hardest hives first, that way in the end you can deal with the easy hives that have tons of mutations. This way, you aren't assaulting an already hard-to-reach hive with tons of mutations on.

WATCH YOUR POSITIONS! The aliens here seem to have a bit more of an eratic AI, and often change paths simply to ♥♥♥♥ you up. Make sure that every single base is amply protected, because you never know when they might go for it.

ABUSE YOUR SPECIALTIES! The marines are able to freely change their class. Abuse this if say you want to move them really far really fast. Instead of keeping a guy on minigun the whole trip, turn him into a scout and sprint over there, then switch back. It saves mass amounts of time and eliminates a lot of stress from the game by having a squad that can be anywhere in a matter of seconds

REINFORCEMENT IS BAD! If a marine dies defending a position way far back, you most certainly don't want to have him walk the whole way back! Reinforcement is especially bad combined with life support, since everyone tends to die at the same time and arrives in a single spot rather than where they originally were defending.

You will need at least one extra marine. In these gamemodes, there's simply too much ground for only six troops to cover. Don't be shy when buying an extra marine or two, because the more marines you have, the more you can sustain your bases.



I'm afraid that this concludes our small guide! I'll add as much to it as frequently as possible, but for now I can't think of much else to add. Thank you for reading, and I hope you found this guide helpfull!