Lock & Load

Lock & Load is an Co-op Missions scenario in Legacy of the Void, added in Patch 3.1. The map is taken from the Legacy of the Void campaign mission Temple of Unification, but the missions objectives are different.

Background
When the Daelaam, Zerg Swarm, and Terran Dominion returned to Ulnar to enter the Void and face Amon, Amon's forces attempted to destabilize the temple's celestial locks to overload the temple's energies and destroy it, which would prevent their entry. Rohana led the defense of the locks. During the battle, Amon took command of a xel'naga construct, which Rohana requested that the allied commanders destroy.

Gameplay
This mission has players spawn on the southwestern corner of the map. Expansions are on low ground and are close together, but not enough that both can be defended at once, especially since the map is wide open. Over the course of the map, attack forces will spawn and move towards one of the five celestial locks, capturing it. Once the first lock is captured, the locks will begin to charge towards overload, represented by a percentage and a power gauge. The more locks Amon's forces control, the faster the overload will charge. When the overload reaches 100%, the mission is lost. The players must capture all five locks before this happens.

When both players have at least one unit at a lock, it will begin to be captured, but will pause if a player moves their units away. Once a lock is captured by the player forces, Amon will send attack waves to retake it. Destroying all enemy units near the lock before it falls under their control will stop the capture attempt. Static defenses are important on this map to relieve the stress of micromanaging an army across all the control points to stop enemy capture attempts. The western, southern, and central locks are lightly guarded by enemies, and the central lock is on high ground making an approach early on a bit dangerous. The northern and eastern locks are behind larger enemy bases which may include hybrid.

If the two players wish to capture multiple locks at once, a simple solution is for them to assign a worker unit to follow an ally's forces, allowing the ally to capture a lock on their own as long as the worker is near it.

During the mission a xel'naga construct spawns in the northeastern end of the map, behind an enemy garrison. It can be destroyed to earn bonus exp.

This mission is one of the few in Co-op that can be played indefinitely; if one player places a unit near the final lock to be captured, the overload percentage will not increase, and the players can keep playing. This is useful for completing the Co-op achievements. As another useful feature of the map, both the enemy bases that can be destroyed have resource nodes that can be claimed, a necessity for prolonged play as starting resources will eventually run out. Be aware though that enemy attack waves will continue to spawn.

Mutators
The following mutators have been applied to Lock & Load.


 * Wheel of Misfortune
 * Burning Legion
 * Spear of Your Doom
 * Time Lock

Development
The mission was designed to promote cooperative action between players, as per its point capture-type objectives. It is changed from the original map in that certain areas have been flattened for the multiplayer version. Adjustments were made to some resource expansion areas.