Starcraft 2 Shatter the Sky Brutal & Achievements Guide

Starcraft 2 Campaign Walkthrough --> Starcraft 2 Shatter the Sky (you are here)

Shatter the Sky is one of the final missions in Starcraft 2 and is a "choice mission" - players can either complete Shatter the Sky or Belly of the Beast.

Which Mission to Pick?

Completing Shatter the Sky will remove all air units from the "All In" mission (aside from Overlord drops) whereas completing Belly of the Beast will remove Nydus worms from the "All In" mission.

Generally, players find it easier to complete Shatter the Sky rather than Belly of the Beast. However, if you have the Hive Mind Emulator, I actually find the final version of All In is easier to beat if you select Belly of the Beast. Either way, there are viable strategies for beating All In on brutal mode no matter technology or mission you select.

Shatter the Sky Brutal Mode Guide

Shatter the Sky tasks players with destroying the cooling towers that supply each of the Zerg platforms. This will cause them to blow up, destroying all the Zerg on the platform. There are 4 total towers you need to attack and destroy to complete the mission. The platform in the center is modestly defended, while the northwest platform has almost no anti-air, the southeast has no anti-ground, and the southwest has balanced defenses.

The key to beating this mission is using your starting air units to take out the mini Zerg base directly to the south. Once you do that, expand there early. From here, you can sit back in your base and build up a large army of Battlecruisers. Once you have just 3-5 Battlecruisers (depending on whether you have Science Vessels or not), you can move out and start clearing the center platform since it is so lightly defended.

Avoid the spires that constantly spawn Mutalisks and just kill off the Spore Crawlers and the tower itself. Once the platform timer starts ticking down, just flee the area. Battlecruisers have a lot of HP so they can handle getting beat on by Mutalisks while they flee to safety. Once off the platform, you can turn around and attack any units that may be pursuing you.

Continue to train Battlecruisers and in between each platform, use Science Vessels or SCVs to repair. I recommend going for the middle platform, then the top left platform, then the bottom right platform, then finally the bottom left platform. The Top Left platform has almost no anti-air, so you can take it down with a few BCs. For the final two bases, you will need 8+ Battlecruisers to comfortably take them out.

Be sure to leave a few BCs or Marines in Bunkers behind for defense at your main base as well as the expansion. Once you clear out a few platforms though the number of attacks your bases will get will be very low.

Shatter the Sky Achievements

Shatter the Sky has 3 achievements associated with it:

Shatter the Sky: Unlocked by completing all objectives in the Shatter the Sky mission.

Demolition Man: Unlocked by not losing a single unit to the platform explosion on normal difficulty (or higher). If you are using air units only like I recommend, you have to go out of your way to lose units to the explosion, making this achievement easy.

Speed Too!: Unlocked by completing the Shatter the Sky mission on hard difficulty in less than 25 minutes. This is actually really easy - in the video guide below, you will see this done with ease on Brutal mode with about 5 minutes to spare. The key is expanding immediately to the south and using your first few Battlecruisers to destroy the central and top left platform. This gets you halfway through the mission before you build much of an army.

The Leviathan

About 2/3 of the way through the mission, the Leviathan spawns and starts to patrol the center of the map. If you kill it, during the All In mission, you will not have to fight it. If you do not kill the Leviathan, you will have to fight it during the All In mission. You do not want to fight this during the All In mission, so be sure you take the time to kill it.

Fight it near the end and not before you have about 12 Battlecruisers. Any less than that and you will struggle to take it down. Use Yamato Cannon on it and it goes down fast. You do need to spread out your Battlecruisers though, as the Leviathan has an AoE stun attack that will stop your Yamato Cannon from going off.

Shatter the Sky Brutal & Speed Too! Achievement Video Guide

The video above shows the completion of Shatter the Sky on brutal mode as well as the Speed Too! and Demolition Man achievements being unlocked at the same time. The key is to expand quickly to the south and use your first few Battlecruisers to take out the center and top left platforms while you build a larger army. Spend your excess minerals on defense for each of your bases - do not waste gas on defense!