The REAL Final Experiment

Information
Name	The REAL Final Experiment
Categories	Story Formicarium challenge
Environment	Formicarium
Player species	Gene-thief ant
Player units	Gene-thief ant worker Black ant soldier Wood ant shooter (either) Leafcutter ant major (either) Fire ant soldier (either) Matabele ant medic (either)
Surface	Yes
Features	Unlockables Timed attacks

An unprepared colony will not survive the next challenge. Make sure you are well stocked on resources.

Objectives

• Survive the tests.

Rewards

• Base value: 6 territory, 475 food, 200 Royal Jelly

• Difficulty bonus: 1400%/ 1425%/ 1450%/ 1480%/ 1520%

• Completion bonus: + 200%

Setting

Your gene-thief ant colony must survive the final challenge by the male scientist.

Royal Jelly is dropped in your formicarium near at the start of each test. Royal Jelly can be gathered even when food storage is full and it is fed directly to the queen.

You can spend 5000/ 15000/ 50000 Royal Jelly to make your ants more resistant to each testing equipment. Your ants become immune and gain beneficial effects after you have upgraded the resistances to level 3.

• Acid resistance: Affected ants can leave acidic trail behind them to damage contacting enemies over time. Damage is venom.

• Laser reflectivity: Affected ants can reflect the laser onto nearby enemies.

• Electric grounding: Affected ants can discharge electricity once to damage nearby enemies. Damage is physical.

• Heat resistance: Affected ants are ablaze and can damage nearby enemies over time. Damage is physical.

You can only have up to 300 brood tiles before attempting the challenge.

Notable enemies

Enemies are on the same side. The testing equipments can affect any creatures.

The testing equipments inflict very high true damage, force the remaining enemies to invade your nest and evaporate any leftover Royal Jelly. Equipment choice is randomized. Range and strength of each test increases over time.

The male scientist uses only 1 equipment in the first phase (4 tests). Enemies are dropped in your formicarium between each test and the choice is randomized.

• Choice 1: Bombardier beetles

• Choice 2: Beach tiger beetles, nothern dune tiger beetles, six-spotted tiger beetles and African tiger beetles

• Choice 3: Beach wolf spiders, sand bear wolf spiders, jumping spiders, magnolia green jumpers, green lynx spiders and huntsman spiders

If you keep most of your soldiers inside, he knocks on the glass to stun and randomly damage any active creatures. This only happens during the first phase.

The male scientist uses 2 equipments in the second phase (3 tests). Leaf-mimic praying mantises and giant African mantises are dropped in your formicarium at the start and at the end of the phase.

The male scientist uses 3 equipments in the third phase (4 tests). He accidentally destroys many containers and drops various enemies in your formicarium at the start. Enemies are randomized among the following creatures.

• Woodland and beach: Devil's coach horse beetles, hermit crabs, northern dune tiger beetles and sand bear wolf spiders

• Rainforest: Green rove beetles, jumping spiders, harvestmen, spiny devil bush crickets, leaf-mimic praying mantises, velvet worms and whip spiders

• Swamp: Magnolia green jumpers, checkered beetles, bombardier beetles, false bombardier beetles, six-spotted tiger beetles

• Savannah: Earwigs, African tiger beetles, giant African mantises, huntsman spiders

He stabilizes the equipments and connects 8 feeding tubes to your formicarium. Attacking wave periodically enter your formicarium and invade your nest until the end of the level.

Wave enemies include leafcutter ants, trap-jaw ants, army ants, fire ants, little black ants, big-headed ants, Matabele ants and driver ants.

The male scientist uses 4 equipment at the same time in the fourth phase (1 test). Alligator back scorpions and large emperor scorpions are dropped in your formicarium at the start of the phase.

The equipment combination destroys your surface nest entrance. You lose if you haven't upgraded all resistances to level 3.

The equipments are automatically activated one at a time during the fifth phase. The activation order is exactly the same as the first phase.

The male scientist transforms into a human-ant hybrid. He destroys various containers in the process and drops various enemies in your formicarium. You can encounter all previous enemies, as well as dwarf salamanders, pine woods tree frogs, rainbow lizards, sun spiders and African giant centipedes.

You can control his hand to crush surface enemies after his transformation. It also affects your ants.

The fifth phase only ends after all non-ant enemies have been eliminated.

Achievements

(to be added)

Trivia

• During the ending cutscene, the primary colony mounts the transformed male scientist and is taken out of the lab offscreen.

Minimaps

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  Surface