Late game: the road to Meduna

By now you should hold the mining towns and a serious income — if not, go back to the mid game. What remains is the southern quarter of the map: two hidden facilities (Tixa and Orta), a junkyard that becomes your forward base (Estoni), the Queen's favorite town (Balime), and finally Meduna itself.

Full spoilers ahead

This page spoils every late-game location, the palace layout, and the ending of Jagged Alliance 2. See how to use the walkthrough if you want a spoiler-lighter route overview first.

The late-game map

Location	Sector(s)	What's there
Estoni	I6	Junkyard, defunct gas station, Jake's shop, helicopter refueling (after a quest)
Tixa	J9 (+ dungeon below)	Secret prison; Dynamo and Shank are held here
Orta	K4 (+ facility below)	Hidden Rocket Rifle manufacturing plant
Balime	L11, L12	Wealthy loyalist town, museum, three shops
Meduna	N3, N4, N5, O3, O4, P3 (+ underground)	The capital: airport, SAM site, arena, palace

Tixa and Orta start hidden — they do not appear on your map until you learn about them (see below). Neither can have militia, and the Queen counterattacks both persistently after you take them, so garrison them with mercs if you want to keep them.

Late-game enemies in 1.13

1.13 scales equipment with game progress: as your campaign advances, items of higher "coolness" appear in shops and in enemy hands. By the time you approach Meduna you will be facing troops with top-tier gear — around the capital that includes tanks, and defenders armed with mortars, RPGs, and heavy machine guns. Two settings control how this feels:

• Progress Speed of Item Choices (New Game screen) sets how fast better equipment becomes available to both you and the enemy. On Very Slow you fight the pistol/SMG war much longer; on Fast the late game arrives early.
• DROP_ALL (in Ja2_Options.INI under [Tactical Difficulty Settings]; on the New Game screen in r7609) makes enemies drop all their items instead of only a chance-based selection — which in the late game means mountains of high-end loot after every battle.

Difficulty also matters more now: higher difficulty levels give the Queen a much larger troop pool and convert part of every enemy group into extra elites (25% on Expert, 50% on Insane), and on Insane enemies get bonus APs on top. See New Game options and recommended settings for details, and the glossary for the progress/coolness jargon.

Meduna itself has a 1.13-specific twist: several of its sectors trigger enemy reinforcements from adjacent, unconquered sectors right after you capture them. Each sector section below notes where they come from.

Estoni (I6): the junkyard

Estoni is a single-sector town: a junkyard, a defunct gas station, a shack, and three inhabitants. Militia cannot be trained here, and strategically the enemy treats it like any other road sector — but it is one of the most useful bases in the late game.

• Jake Cameron runs the junkyard shop, 24 hours a day (he doesn't mind being woken up). He is a reliable source of glass jars, medical kits and first aid kits (usually used — combine them into full ones), canteens and break lights, and occasionally stocks tool kits, ceramic plates, and Compound 18. He pays better than anyone else for junk items (silver platters, watches, booze, and the like) and carries a small selection of pistols, revolvers, and knives.
• Skipper, an old homeless man rummaging through the junkyard, is quietly one of the most important NPCs in the late game — see the Orta section below.
• Kevin "Maddog" Cameron, Jake's son, is recruitable — see recruitable NPCs.

Talk to Jake with a merc who has decent Leadership and he asks you to check up on Breeham "Shank" Druz, a kid from Balime who was thrown into the prison at Tixa. This starts the Rescue Shank quest. Once you free Shank (see Tixa below) and bring him back to Estoni to talk to Jake, Jake starts selling fuel from his black-market stash — Estoni then works as a refueling station and landing pad for Skyrider's helicopter.

1.13: the Junkyard facility

In 1.13, Estoni's junkyard is a facility that boosts repair work: 120% performance for item repair, 110% for vehicle repair, and 175% for repairing MadLab's robot. Combined with the fuel supply, that makes Estoni an ideal mid-to-late-game base camp — park mobile militia in the sector to defend it, since you cannot train any there. A garrison here also slows down and gives early warning of enemy patrols heading for your towns. See town facilities.

Shank not showing up as a chopper pad?

A known bug can prevent Skyrider from recognizing the new refueling site after Shank talks to Jake. Move a merc out of Estoni and back in (keeping at least one merc in the sector) to trigger the speech.

Tixa (J9): the secret prison

Tixa is a hidden prison south of Cambria. Its location is revealed by talking to Matt Duncan, the head miner in Alma — he asks you to break his brother Greg "Dynamo" Duncan out of it (the Free Dynamo From Tixa quest). Beneath the prison is a dungeon where political prisoners are tortured and held for execution.

The complex is a single large L-shaped building: cells in the western half, staff quarters, barracks and offices in the east, the canteen in the center. Solitary confinement cells stand isolated west of the main building, and a small house on the grounds east of it belongs to the warden, Christine "Warden" Woltz. A fence rings the whole complex — without wire cutters, the only way in is the gate on the south side.

The alarm and how to beat it

When you are spotted or open fire, the Warden sounds the alarm and floods the prison with tear gas. The guards put on their gas masks when the alarm sounds, then fight you in the gas; the prisoners in their cells are unaffected. There is a better way, and the Warden's husband will hand it to you:

1. Approach from the east, preferably at night, and stealth into the house at the southeast corner.
2. Be nice to Brewster Woltz, the Warden's husband. He tells you everything about his wife, and if you keep talking to him he gives you the key to her office.
3. Sneak into the jail house at 17:00 to catch the Warden off guard — enter at any other time and she will be sitting in her office. (It takes about 3 hours to walk from the adjacent sector J10, so leave J10 around 14:00.)
4. Kill her before she reaches the switches, ideally with suppressed weapons.

Her office has two switches: a red button that alerts the guards to mask up, and a flip-switch that floods the prison with tear gas. If you kill the Warden quietly, you can flip the gas switch yourself without the mask warning — the guards inside get gassed with no chance to react. Bring your own gas masks, move fast, and you can strip unconscious guards of their (often good) weapons. Enemies outside still patrol regularly, so stay low and use the gas clouds as concealment.

Dynamo

Dynamo is locked in a cell on the western side of the ground floor. He is wounded — give him first aid, then talk to him again to complete Matt Duncan's quest (this also boosts loyalty in Alma). A merc with modest Leadership can then recruit him: he asks for $50/day, but if your Leadership is good enough you can refuse that offer and he joins for free.

The dungeon and Shank

The stairs down are behind a locked door in the northeast corner of the building — pick the lock. Below, enemies hold the long hall near the entrance and can interrupt careless mercs; use the table as cover and watch the door directly facing the stairs, which enemies sometimes open. Clear the main hallway, the medical area, and the torture chambers; a lone enemy with a CAWS lurks near the torture chamber and the last defender usually waits in the guards' leisure room at the end of the hallway.

Breeham "Shank" Druz is locked in a cell down here. Break him out and talk to him: he tells his story, offers to join you for $20/day, and offers to secure a fuel source if he can get to Estoni — which completes Jake's Rescue Shank quest and unlocks the helicopter refueling described above. Both recruits are covered in more detail on the recruitable NPCs page.

Loot

• One of the guards always drops a Steyr AUG.
• Lockers in the guards' quarters near the Warden's office hold Spectra vests, leggings, and helmets.
• Most defenders drop gas masks, and more sit in lockers all over the complex.

Sci-Fi mode

In Sci-Fi mode there is a Crepitus lair further underground beneath the dungeon. Wiping it out immediately triggers a Crepitus attack on your mine; if you raid it after killing the Crepitus Queen, the lair is empty.

1.13: Tixa is the best POW prison

Once Tixa is yours, its prison complex becomes a 1.13 prison facility — by far the largest in the game (60 inmates, four interrogator slots at high efficiency). If you play with the prisoner-of-war system, this is where captured enemy soldiers should go. See taking prisoners.

Orta (K4): the secret weapons facility

Orta never appears on your map at the start — it is always at sector K4, and you can learn its location from General Theo Humphey in Alma. From the outside it poses as a Bloodcat research facility, but it is suspiciously well guarded: it is actually a hidden manufacturing plant for Rocket Rifles.

The door to the underground facility is heavily locked, set in an indestructible wall, and nearly impossible to pick. You have three ways in:

1. Skipper's keycard — give Skipper in Estoni any item (value doesn't matter) and he hands you a keycard for the Orta basement.
2. Bribe Walter Bazzon — this scientist on the ground floor of the main building opens the passage for $20,000. Killing him costs no loyalty, and if you kill him after paying he drops your money (plus his own $50).
3. Blow the wall — the door itself is indestructible, but firing a LAW at the wall just south of the door collapses it (explosives may also work).

The underground levels are defended even more heavily than the surface. One switch in the main hallway opens all the doors. Once the facility is secure, find Dr. Ernest Poppin in the back room and keep threatening him — he eventually gives in and opens a store room full of Rocket Rifles.

Do Estoni first

An item worth a dollar handed to Skipper saves you $20,000 or a LAW rocket. Stop by the junkyard before you assault Orta.

Like Tixa, Orta counts as strategically important to the Queen: expect a serious retake attempt shortly after you capture it, and repeated attempts afterwards. You cannot have militia here at all, so leave a squad behind if you want to hold it.

Balime (L11–L12): the Queen's favorites

Balime, on the southern coast, is where Arulco's rich live — "the chosen friends of Queen Deidranna". Most of the wealthy inhabitants flee to Meduna as you approach, leaving the manors largely derelict. There is no mine here, but the town matters for its shops, its museum, and as your doorstep to the capital.

Taking the town

• L11 (Balime West). Lots of open space between houses, so house-to-house fighting runs at longer ranges than in other towns, and there are almost no accessible flat roofs — all vantage points are on the ground. Several soldiers bunker up in the manor house at the southern end; its doors are trapped, and lethal interrupts are easy to walk into even at night. The local aristocrats Lora & Armand Ricci live in this half of town.
• L12 (Balime East). The main avenue is a sniper corridor for both sides, and most defenders fight along it. Night ops are unusually hard here because the streets and stores are dotted with lights. The defenders carry assault and sniper rifles, so engage at range or sneak. The museum holds nobody but Eldin — you can bypass it during the battle, though watch for enemies hiding in its entry hallway.

Loyalty and militia

Balime is heavily aligned with Deidranna's regime. Its "rebel sentiment" in the game data is a mere 12, so when loyalty tracking starts here it starts at 12% — below the militia-training threshold (MIN_LOYALTY_TO_TRAIN_MILITIA, default 20), which makes militia training impossible at first. That same low sentiment also scales every loyalty gain down, so Balime warms to you slowly. Returning the Chalice of Chance to Yanni in Chitzena adds loyalty in every town — only around +6% in Balime's case, but combined with battles won in and around the town it is the practical way to get over the 20% threshold.

The museum and the Chalice of Chance

The museum in L12 houses the diamond-encrusted Golden Chalice of Chance in a display case at the back, guarded around the clock by Eldin Fiddes, an elderly WWII veteran who doubles as tour guide and night watchman. The display case has a siren tripwire; a switch in the security office (or a merc with very high Mechanical skill and the Electronics trait) disables it. Do not simply shoot Eldin — killing him cripples your already-poor loyalty in Balime. Kingpin in San Mona pays $20,000 for the Chalice; returning it to Yanni in Chitzena instead earns a huge loyalty jump there (roughly +35%, thanks to Chitzena's strong rebel sentiment) plus around +10 loyalty points in every town, scaled by each town's own sentiment. The full quest, including how to get it from Kingpin and stealth options, is on the side quests page.

Shops

Shopkeeper	Sector	Deals in
Franz Hinkle	L12	Electronics shop; buys most firearms and armor, open to barter
Sam Rozen	L12	Tool store; sells only, buys nothing
Howard Filmore	L12	Pharmacy; sells medical gear, buys nothing
Dave Gerard	L10 (west of town)	Gas station

Meduna: the capital

Meduna sits in the southwest corner of the map — six surface sectors (N3, N4, N5, O3, O4, P3) plus an underground bunker, containing the airport, the last SAM site, a bloodcat arena, the gardens, a residential district, and the palace.

Before you even reach the city: the surrounding sectors M3, M4, M5, and N6 all contain heavy resistance and tanks. Treat clearing them as part of the assault plan, and bring anti-tank weapons and plenty of ammo for everything below.

N3 — the airport (3 tanks)

Tanks dot the landscape — one waits very close to the southeast corner, a nasty surprise if you enter near there. Sandbags block most roads, and machine-gun nests ring the airport proper. The cleanest approach is from the northeast, which keeps you away from the armor and lets you pull soldiers out of their entrenchments. If you trust your tank-busting, entering from the southwest and killing the nearest tank immediately lets you occupy the army's own sandbag lines. Several soldiers linger inside the warehouse and rec room even after the main fight. 1.13: enemy reinforcements arrive in force from the south after you capture the sector, unless you already hold it.

N4 — the SAM site (2 tanks)

The most heavily defended SAM site in Arulco: heavy armor, a thick line of sandbag nests, and many defenders with mortars, RPGs, and heavy machine guns. Bring multiple squads and expect a grueling, ammo-hungry fight. The enemy considers the sector strategically vital and spends days trying to retake it if you grab it early. 1.13: reinforcements come in force from the south after capture, unless that sector is already yours.

N5 — the bloodcat arena

Deidranna's arena, where dissenters are fed to bloodcats, fills most of the sector. All the soldiers are inside the building; the entrance is on the southeast side and the structure has almost no windows, so it stays quiet until you round the front. At the entrance, expect heavy resistance plus at least half a dozen tamed bloodcats that rush your mercs (they never attack the army) — pack hollow-point ammo. The few windows on the southwest end will be used to shoot at your flank.

The walls are booby-trapped

A buried layer of stun grenades completely surrounds each of the four corner towers, and that layer is itself ringed by a layer of mines. Tread carefully.

1.13: possible reinforcements from the east/southeast — a handful of heavily armored soldiers, some carrying break lights and grenades (including mustard gas), and at least one with a LAW he is not afraid to use.

O3 — the gardens and the secret tunnel (2 tanks)

A maze of hedges and statuary along a single coastal road. Hedges give cover to both sides, and bullets penetrate a single hedge layer — exploit that when a merc gets caught at a corner. The two tanks only cover two short stretches of road on the east side and can be snuck around. The western side is clear of enemies but studded with mines — metal detectors are mandatory there. 1.13: reinforcements arrive in force from the south after capture; you can re-lay the mines you lift from the beach along the southern border to funnel the counterattack, and there are enough mines to disarm to train a merc's Explosives skill substantially — handy for the bunker below.

The secret palace entrance (spoiler)

Somewhere in the buildings of this area is a remote control (you may need to repair it first). Bring it to the destroyed statue between the two still-standing statues in the middle of the garden maze and use it: a secret entrance opens to an underground tunnel (O3-1) leading to the northern section of the palace's secret bunker. Entering this way is the only way you can normally obtain an Automatic Rocket Rifle. Opening the tunnel can also trigger a massive assault on O3, so be ready. The tunnel itself is straightforward with little resistance (sometimes, due to a glitch, the enemies inside don't spawn at all).

O4 — the residential district (1 tank)

Fighting centers on sandbag emplacements at the street intersections; as always in dense urban combat, watch windows and doorways. Despite all the homes and stores, there are no NPCs or shopkeepers here. 1.13: reinforcements come from the west after capture if that side isn't yours yet — though if the army has already spent its reserves reinforcing your earlier conquests, resistance here can turn out surprisingly thin.

P3 — the palace

For a frontal assault, bring a LAW or explosives: the front gate is sealed and otherwise impassable. Cover the breach and let the defenders come to you, then move in behind smoke grenades to avoid interrupts. Many doors are trapped — bring a merc with good Mechanical skill, or blow the doors open. A group of enemies holds the throne room no matter what chaos erupts outside.

Cleared the throne room and no Queen? Search the rooms (mind the trapped doors) for a trapdoor in the fireplace of the piano room — it leads down into the secret bunker.

P3-1 — the secret bunker

You reach the bunker either from the palace fireplace or covertly through the O3 garden tunnel. Expect a large number of steel doors (a merc with high Mechanical skill opens them quietly) and explosive traps (high Explosives skill spots them in advance).

The Queen, Elliot, and Joe

Three named characters wait at the end of the road:

• Elliot, the Queen's battered advisor — slapped on camera after every major battle you win, and finally shot in the head when he reports your approach to Meduna (he survives, and promises to try harder to die next time). You find him in a section of the palace. He will not fight you or hinder you, cannot be bribed, bought, or recruited, and refuses to reveal where the Queen is.
• Joseph "Joe" Papanus, Deidranna's enforcer/bodyguard: near-maximum combat stats, an H&K 21 with 7.62 NATO magazines, Spectra helmet and vest, and the Auto Weapons and Martial Arts skills.
• Queen Deidranna herself, either in the throne room (guarded by elites) or down in the secret shelter. She fights with an Auto Rocket Rifle loaded with HEAP mini-rockets and wears a full Compound 18 Spectra set (helmet, vest, leggings) — her profile carries expert Auto Weapons, the Psycho disability, and 90 marksmanship, so do not treat her as a pushover.

Buying Joe off

Joe can be bribed — but you must act within the first tactical round after spotting him. Run a merc up to him and hand over cash: the code accepts the bribe once he has received $10,000 or more in total. If you pull it off, he walks away ("She is all yours. I'm out of here.") and leaves you to the Queen.

Victory

Killing Deidranna is the only main objective of the game: the campaign ends the moment she dies, and you do not need to clear the throne room or the rest of Meduna first. Every playable merc has a unique line for delivering the deathblow, so choose your executioner with care.

Two curiosities from the endgame, for completeness:

• If any of your mercs are captured or surrender, an interrogation scene plays at the N7 military base (the sector is INTERROGATE_POW_SECTOR in Mod_Settings.ini), where Deidranna appears in person alongside Elliot and Joe (Joe does the punching). A well-known glitch lets players end the game right there by planting a mine in the doorway she walks through before the scene. 1.13 reworks what happens to captured mercs afterwards — see defeat and capture.
• Deidranna murdered her husband Enrico Chivaldori's father, framed Enrico, and seized power — which is why Enrico hired you in the first place. Killing her completes the contract that started on day one.

Congratulations, Commander — Arulco is free.

Sources

• Estoni, Tixa, Orta, Balime, Meduna — Jagged Alliance Wiki (Fandom) location articles
• Deidranna Reitman, Elliot, Joseph Papanus, Jake Cameron, Skipper, Walter Bazzon, Eldin Fiddes — Jagged Alliance Wiki (Fandom) character articles
• Rescue Shank, Free Dynamo From Tixa, Chalice of Chance — Jagged Alliance Wiki (Fandom) quest articles
• Previous 1.13 starter documentation (play guide and recommended settings, r8741 era) — progress/coolness, Progress Speed of Item Choices, and DROP_ALL
• Data-1.13/TableData/DifficultySettings.xml from the 1dot13/gamedir repository — difficulty effects on the Queen's troop pool, extra elites, and enemy AP bonus
• 1.13 source code, 1dot13/source: Tactical/NPC.cpp and NPC.h (Walter's WALTER_BRIBE_AMOUNT of $20,000, Joe's $10,000 bribe threshold), Strategic/Strategic Town Loyalty.cpp/.h (town rebel sentiment values, chalice loyalty bonuses), and Strategic/Meanwhile.cpp (the N7 interrogation scene)
• Ja2_Options.INI (MIN_LOYALTY_TO_TRAIN_MILITIA = 20) and Mod_Settings.ini (INTERROGATE_POW_SECTOR, Orta/Tixa quest sectors) from the 1dot13/gamedir repository
• Data-1.13/TableData/MercProfiles.xml and FacilityTypes.xml/Facilities.xml from 1dot13/gamedir — Queen's profile stats, NPC sectors, and the Estoni Junkyard facility numbers