**Halo Wars 2: Light the Fuse — collect power without leaving the drills exposed**

**Halo Wars 2: Light the Fuse — collect power without leaving the drills exposed** **Awakening the Nightmare, mission three. Story spoilers.** The economy changes here. Power Extractors are unavailable, so the power for upgrades and the salvage drills has to come from crystals around the map. That makes every expedition a choice. You need to leave the base to collect power, but the Flood eruption cycle keeps bringing the fight back home. **Build a collection force and a home defense** Clear the opening attack and start improving the base. Use Harvesters for supplies, then invest collected power in the production, upgrades and defenses you actually need. Send Pavium with a combat escort to gather crystals. Keep enough defenders at home to catch an ordinary wave, and bring the expedition back when the pressure meter approaches an eruption. Gather after a wave has been dealt with. That gives you a cleaner window to clear a crystal patch, collect its power and return before the next attack. When the pressure gets high, finish the nearest pickup and withdraw rather than starting a fight on the far side of the map. Area damage helps with clustered infection forms and the enemies released from blisters. Keep Engineers behind the fighting units, not at the front of the collection group. **Turn exploration into objective progress** You need to discover all three Giant Bursters and remove four Flood bases for the full objective run. The base sites are spread around the map: - Larger sites in the northeast and southwest. - Minibase sites in the northwest and southeast. Clear one area thoroughly, then return to stabilize and reinforce before tackling another. Occupied expansion space can improve your supply income, but a remote economy is not worth losing the drills while the whole army guards it. Tentacles near the Bursters contribute to the ten-tentacle objective. Build a Mega Turret early enough to earn its thirty Flood kills during ordinary fighting. Give it vision and let it contribute instead of placing it at the end after all the convenient targets are gone. Check the objective counters after clearing each sector. That tells you whether the next trip is for power, a missed base, a tentacle or a collectible. **Prepare before committing to the drills** Each drill requires a substantial power payment; the mission lists 8,000 per drill. You need three activations, and power spent elsewhere still has to be replaced through collection. It is worth buying useful upgrades before hoarding the final activation amount. A large bank does not defend anything by itself. Have the following ready before the drilling defense: - A healthy mobile force. - Replacements already being produced. - Healing support. - Useful defensive powers off cooldown. - Coverage on both approaches to the drills. - The exploration objectives finished, if this is your all-objective attempt. The Flood pressure intensifies as the drilling phase develops. Avoid committing with the army scattered among distant crystal patches. **Stop Abominations before the drill area** The optional restriction is stricter than simply keeping the drills alive: **no Abomination may reach them**. Intercept these enemies out on the approach. Focus the main force on one and use Stasis to delay another if both sides are threatened. Reserve damaging powers for the large targets rather than spending everything on a small group of infection forms seconds before an Abomination appears. Keep vehicles positioned so they can concentrate fire without blocking each other's movement. If one flank begins to collapse, pull the mobile reserve toward it early. Waiting until the enemy is standing beside a drill can preserve the mission but lose the optional objective. A Scarab provides considerable firepower if you choose to invest in one, but its slow movement means you still need other units covering the opposite approach. **Logs and the final hold** The Phoenix Logs are: - **Warped Reflections:** east of the northeastern Flood base. - **Tread Carefully:** west of the southwestern Flood base. Collect them during the base-clearing circuit, before the final defense absorbs your attention. The complete side-objective list is three Bursters discovered, four Flood bases destroyed, no Abomination reaching the drills, ten tentacles defeated and thirty Mega Turret kills. Keep defending until drilling reaches completion and the chain reaction triggers. **Tapped** is the ordinary completion achievement. **Hidden Power** requires Gold and all objectives in the same run, without a Legendary requirement in its description. If the Abomination restriction keeps failing, prioritize a clean completion first, then replay with the entire defensive plan built around intercepting those targets. That is a more useful adjustment than adding more troops to a position they have already reached.