EDF 5 / 6 Fencer weapons that have Side Thrusters or Jump Boosters

List of Fencer weapons with side thruster or jump booster.

EDF 5 / Earth Defense Force 5 Weapons Farming Guide - Inferno

In EDF 5, unless you cheat, you'll need to play all or almost missions in the campaign up to the last one, mission 110, in hard to unlock Hardest and Inferno.

Inferno is the most fun and interesting difficulty to play and that's where you can earn and improve weapons over level 76, which almost overwhelmingly is where the juicy and interesting stuff is. To be crystal clear, yes there are many weapons under level 76 that are awesome and very viable in inferno.

Suggested loadouts and basic strategies for EDF 5 Super Challenge DLC2 missions on multiplayer

Strategies are obviously somewhat different in multiplayer from the solo runs. For starters, you have the choice to use different classes and take advantage of each class's abilities.

DLC 2-13 The Last Stand 2

1 Air Raider - Combat Bomber KM6 Plan X18, Absolute Bunker DZ, ZE Blaster, Nix Assault

other ARs - Combat Bomber KM6 Plan X18, ZEXR or Combat Bomber KM6 Plan Z4, ZE Blaster, Nix Assault (or Barga to be a decoy)

Bunker to help all survive at the beginning, X18 is awesome due to the large number of silver spiders, ZE Blaster works nicely in open spaces. Z4 only really good against tadpoles, deroys and drones, but will wear down others too.

1 or more Rangers - Blazer and Buster Shot, Hybrid Protector XE

Blazer is very good for deroys, transports and blue tadpoles, Buster is exceptional for anything near, particularly silver spiders.

Wing Diver - Dragoon Lance ZM, second weapon Rapier to handle few enemies in close combat. Gleipnir is another option, it won't kill anything but will break most enemies' movements and attacks slowing them down.

Fencer - Dexter Automatic Shotgun ZGXE or YH7 Dispersal Mortar and Spine Driver MA, FGX High Altitude Impact Launcher and GX Arm Hound or Rapid Hound, Dash Cell G and Add Booster G

This mission has 5 waves and it's a bazillion times easier in multiplayer than solo. Incredibly it will even usually work with largely uncoordinated players. The only really important thing to handle is the red bees transport and the tadpoles, including 2 blue ones in 4th wave.

The weirdest thing about this mission is the transition between the first 3 waves and 4th wave. Supposedly it's 20 secs after all enemies from the first 3 waves are wiped out, but it's unreliable, and even the jp wiki mentions this. Anyway, it's important to leave the drone bomber alive, as it's the least obtrusive enemy on all 3 first waves, and take that chance to regroup to handle the 4th wave which is the worse.

At the start AR should install shields, and he and Ranger should handle deroys, while WD and Fencer should handle silvers. Drones are the least problematic enemies if you're inside the shields, so these should be the last. Again I stress that you should just avoid and ignore the bomber drone.

2nd and 3rd waves are "just" 30 gold ants and 1 heavy frog. A WD or Fencer on top of the future spawning silvers transport (front left from start) can aggro the enemies on these waves, so other classes can turkey shoot them).

Golds will spawn around the buildings beyond the rail overpass to the right of starting position. It's important to handle golds ASAP because during the 3st wave, 3 squads of NPCs will spawn around the right end of the rail overpass, and these will be very useful as decoys and help for the 4th wave. You can capture either the WDs or Fencer squads, or both, Rangers should be left there to die while annoying golds and tadpoles in the wave (or all of them).

Kill bomber, when grouped and shield protected under the red bees transport, which is the center one, and will stay around back leftish from the start position. When red bees transport opens, WD and Ranger should destroy it and falling red bees, better one class should destroy the red bees transport (essential) and another the goldies, AR kill golds and tadpoles around NPCS (tadpoles will take time to arrive) with X18, Fencer missile them. Fencer missiles will be awesome for blue tadpoles as it keeps them rolling around. Focus on killing tadpoles and the 10 dropped frogs (after the red bees and their transport of course). If you can drop the gold ants transport (right front from start). The silver spider one is the least problematic leave that for last.

5th wave of 12 giant enemies will spawn, including 1 gold queen ant, a red giant bee and a silver king spider, once there is just 1 transport or 5 enemies alive including transports. Five hugely armored War Bargas will come to help once you've killed 4 of the big enemies, so just handle 4 of them which is easy with the firepower of the players, stall for the bargas to appear and turkey shoot the big enemies left while bargas entertain and destroy them. Bargas will handle queen bees and king spiders, but giant bees are more problematic for them. If the silver spider's transport is not downed at this point one of the bargas usually stays on top of it, and will aggro silver spiders under that transport (and other giant enemies).

I already did this mission 3 times with randoms, it's amazingly easy when at least 2 know what to do.

DLC 2-12 The Last Stand 1

Strategy 1

1 Air Raider - Heavy Bomber Phobos Z Plan 4, Combat Bomber KM6 Plan X18 or Tempest ATS, Absolute Bunker DZ, Nix Assault

other ARs - ZEXR, ZE Blaster, Guard Post M3, Nix Assault (or Barga to be a decoy), Z4, X18 or X5 (X5 does massive damage to what hits)

Phobos to destroy scenery and break enemies, KM6 X18 to destroy hives and wreck other enemies (very viable here due to the sheer number of silvers that generate a lot of points). X18 is faster to come, so aim Phobos first if using on the same enemy / hive. Tempest is more powerful to handle hives, can handle pylons, can handle frogs and can kill the giant red bee, but it will be troublesome to use with more than 1 big guy in sequence. It's always unreliable too.

Be careful that 2nd AR ZE Blaster will reach gold ants spawning from nearest pylon, when buildings are gone.

Silver spiders will provide 1700 points for each kill. For comparison, red bees will give 90, a gold ant 150, a colonist 420 (armored or not) and even a queen ant or bee around 1800. So it's easy to see the importance of leaving a silver spiders nest for last if there's an AR with points-based weapons (X18, X5, Z4, Phobos, Spritefall (not good here...)).

1 or more Rangers - Blazer and Buster Shot, Hybrid Protector XE

These will be the main defenders, especially against small stuff. Buster Shot is excellent against silvers, golds and big guys if they get near. Blazer against frogs, bees and pylons (since AR won't be able to destroy them, except theoretically could using the Nix).

Wing Diver - Dragoon Lance ZM, second weapon irrelevant, but Rapier to handle few enemies in close combat. Gleipnir is another option used on a corner, it won't kill anything but will break most enemies' movements and attacks slowing them, and it won't reach the pylon and its gold ants. Raijin Limit Custom could be interesting but be really careful with it, it has a spread shot and you can hit several enemies or hives / pylons at the same time

Focus on near enemies with Dragoon Lance ZM.

Fencer - Dexter Automatic Shotgun ZGXE and Spine Driver MA, dual Maximum Disruptors or dual 35mm Cannon, Dash Cell G and Add Booster G

Fencer can be a going deep team mate dragging all enemies behind him while the others shoot them, but he has to be very good to survive.

The Fencer (and WD) movement isn't useful, especially while red bees are on the map. Focus on near enemies like the WD. He's still good in case something goes wrong  (like the WD) to take a hike to the opposite corner of the map, aggro all moving enemies there, and come back to revive everyone else if necessary. Dual Maximum Disruptors can help with big guys. Mobility could always come in handy.

Fencer and WDs moving fast around the map will almost certainly mean the continuous death of rangers and ARs playing, as they can't escape. Even inside Nix Assault can become troublesome to survive as there will be enemies spread all over the map, and gold ants and silver spiders attacks in multiplayer do severe damage. So don't be selfish...

No missiles, no rockets, no aiming weapons.

Start by occupying one of the corners that have a pylon near it. Install shield, send phobos towards pylon, X18 dead center on bees hive. Destroy all incoming bees, ants and spiders, then stop. Rebuild and reinstall the shield, and get a Nix. Phobos should be used to clean the area around the stand position to make it easier to destroy coming enemies.

AR ONLY advances in the Nix and destroys next red bee's hive. Returns immediately to shield and rinse and repeat, destroy small enemies. Be careful at this point to NOT piss ANY of the dropped frogs. Rebuild and reinstall the shield, and get a Nix.

AR goes and piss a group of frogs with Nix. Handle them, and small enemies. Do this for all 6 groups of frogs, you can also destroy the nearest gold ants pylon at this stage.

With all 18 frogs dead, you can destroy the nearest gold ants pylon, if you didn't, then either the last gold ants pylon or the nearest silver spiders hive. If going for the 2 gold ants pylons you should change to the nearest corner to each of them, before handling them. Try not to aggro any of the big enemies that will spawn. The advantage of going for the near silver spider hive us that you can attack the Red Queen Bee later without aggroing small enemies.

Of the big enemies, the most dangerous is the Giant Red Bee, so focus the X18 and Phobos on her, and whatever else is necessary to kill her. Even if all big enemies will wake, AR will have a huge number of X18s and Phobos refills to use at will, the ranger(s) will help with what is alive.

After all this handling the last spiders hive(s) and / or gold ants pylon is a joke compared to all that happened before.

Some coordination is required, it's not possible to do this one just shooting around. There are no NPCs throughout the whole mission.

The mission is easy as long as you don't rush it and piss what you shouldn't have.

Strategy 2

1 Fencer - Spine Driver MA and YH7 Dispersal Mortar, Dash Cell 5 and Add Booster 5 but G's preferable

1 Air Raider - KM6 Z4, Phobos Z 4, KM6 X18 (or X5 or Vesta DA)

Ranger - CA90, Blazer, running enhancement

WD - Gleipnir ONLY used on corners, Heaven's Gate D10 for likely suicide missions to destroy nests, pylons and Queen Bees as alternative to AR destroying nests and Ranger pylons

A strategy that just requires a Fencer to run around the map, and revive teammates while they suicide since they can't keep up the pace with him.

The only problem is dealing with the 2 bees nests, and to a lesser extent the 2 Queen Bees. From the rest, he can simply run away.

Occupy one corner near goldies pylon, better the front left one, AR sends Z4 and X18 to the nearest bees nest. Both should be rebuilt, and use them again when bees are closing. Fencer runs away in the direction of the destroyed nest, hopefully almost all the bees are gone. Ranger should try to kill what he can, they will likely die. Fencer goes around the map and revives them, they kill what they can and die again. Rinse and repeat until all enemies are on standby.

Go to the opposite corner, rinse and repeat, if frogs wake up there's no issue now. Ranger should use Blazer to destroy when possible nearest goldies pylon. Fencer should start to YH7 or use other weapons to damage the opposite goldies pylon to the place where AR and other players are. Once most frogs and the nearest goldies pylon to AR are gone, Fencer can destroy the other goldies pylon.

If Ranger is in the corner where red Queen Bee spawns, installing CA90 around that area is smart. If not, AR should send Z4, Phobos, X18 (these in this order) over red Giant Bee, if CA90 is there use it too. If the other Queen Bee wakes up, there's no issue Fencer can run away from here and she's a lot easier to destroy. Fencer keeps doing laps and waking up team mates, they kill what they can, and they die. Destroy the nearest silvers nest, and leave the last one so that AR can gather points.

Fencer will do most of the job, but it's just running around. AR is essential for its huge destruction, and there are a bazillion points to be gained on each attack so they will replenish fast. Without him, taking down the silver King and Golden Queen Ant takes forever. Plenty of crates for Fencer to pick. Even easier with 4, with 2 ARs, or 2 Fencers to assure one doesn't die. WD will run out of steam behind Fencer. Fencer (s) needs to wait in each corner for enemies to aggro there, otherwise they can all be over them when he returns near the AR (and other players). Ranger can be slightly ahead of AR so that he has time to install CA90's, which will have more than enough time to rebuild on each Fencer lap.

Fencer must be careful using YH7 near-dead team mates, even dead they can be blown away to awkward positions and mess up the run.

Fencer can use YH7 to blast away and destroy Queen Bees if necessary. Don't try to use Spine on them, its range is lower than the Queen Bees attack range.

Boring but simple and effective. Even simpler with 4, particularly with 2 ARs. One should then bring a Bulge Z for pylons. Vehicles are irrelevant, they shouldn't get away from their position.

Running away players if more than 1 need to keep together so that enemies don't spread around each other, but on both.

DLC 2-10 Engage Alien Troops 2

1 Air Raider - 150mm Cannon ν Lapis, ZE Blaster, Absolute Bunker DZ, Nix Assault

Vulcan Cannon and 105mm Rapid-fire Cannon are dreadful idea here. The chances to hit multiple enemies are huge. ZE Blaster works well against Red Drones which are some of the worst enemies.

1 or more Rangers - Blazer and Buster Shot, Hybrid Protector XE

These will be the main defenders. Buster Shot is excellent against near enemies. Blazer against everything far.

Wing Diver - Dragoon Lance ZM, Gleipnir good against red drones. As I said for mission 12, Raijin Limit Custom could be interesting but be really careful with it, it has a spread shot and you can hit several enemies at the same time

Fencer - Dexter Automatic Shotgun ZGXE and Spine Driver MA, 35mm Battle Cannon or 38mm Rage Cannon, Dash Cell G and Add Booster G or Muzzle Stabilizer S

The strategy is similar to mission 12. Occupy one back corner, left one from start is better due to elevated terrain of the destroyed silos, which will make it easier to hit enemies over the sea, particularly the red drones with the ZE Blaster or Blazer. Lapis is very good to level terrain and destroy scenery.

The biggest issue is a perspective error and you can be hitting a flying enemy that is much further back than it seems, so traveling along the map left side can help to check if they're far from the back where the most dangerous enemies are stacked. You need to handle as many flyers first as possible, particularly red drones. You should piss just one, kill everything that comes along, then proceed. Ranger is probably better for this, or fencer, go near hit one, retreat ASAP to shields. Always rebuild shields. The biggest problem is waking multiple deroys, 2 or more with a few drones and heavies and the shield will be gone in a snap.

The giant deroy has a bazillion lasers, try to get him alone at the end. Deroy missiles from pods are very weak, they won't destroy the shield. Deroys and red drones like to travel near non-aggroed enemies only hit them if you're sure not to wake anything else, so using something like a 105mm or Vulcan on them is usually a really bad idea.

As in the case of mission 12 this is easy if you are patient and do things quietly and with care. If you piss many of them at the same time it's 99.99% sure game over.

Some coordination is required, it's not possible to do this one just shooting around without a ton of armor. The starting squad of NPCs can be captured or not, they will be wiped out pretty quickly anyway.

DLC 2-8 Engage Aggressors 5

2 or 3 Air Raiders - Combat Bomber KM6 Plan X18, ZE Blaster and Nix Assault

Since the mission has only silver spiders and they provide a ton of points you can almost continuously call X18s. If they're almost all upgraded they do good damage and ZE Blaster will help finish the last ones. Just be careful to send X18 slightly to the front of the Nix as if done on top of it, the center of the attack can destroy it.

As a third weapon, each one can bring a different one from Guard Post M3 or Zone Protector ZM, Cannon Gun DZ which works really well here and can kill silvers in one attack, ZEXR is underpowered but an option.

One can bring a War Barga but it will be crushed in a snap by the silvers.

Ranger - Blazer, Slaughter EZ or Buster Shot, plus Reverse Shooter X and Hybrid Protector XE.

May I remind you how dangerous it is to use the Buster Shot near teammates. You can kill them faster than a silver spider...

Wing Diver - Rapier plus Phalanx, and Mighty core or VZ Plasma Core.

Mobile, handle stray near spiders and pick crates.

Fencer - mobile, close combat loadout (Dexter Automatic Shotgun, Spine Driver MA, Jackhammer MA, Dash Cell and Add Booster).

Mobile, handle stray near spiders and pick crates.

The strategy is to stay in the startup area. Install turrets and start X18 festival when silvers are approaching. Since X18 is fast unlike Z4 in everything (coming and time to recall), it can be an almost continuous summoning of them. All waves except the last will be almost in a row.

The last wave spawns away from the furthest beach so it takes some time, so be careful and save X18 when there are few silvers around and definitely rebuild turrets. The last wave has a lot of spiders, but they won't all come at once so it can be done.

No explosives, you'll be together so it's a really bad idea. The Nixes have them, but it's a close and somewhat controlled explosion.

Tons of crates thought.

EDF 5 - Air Raider's guide to handling cave missions

If the Air Raider had a few issues in cave missions in EDF 2025 and 4.1, in 5 he can be the either best or the worst class to handle them.

He's the best in all cave missions where he can bottleneck enemies in tunnels, for the simple reason that it's the only class that can cover 2 sides of the tunnel (or even 3) at the same time and he can easily rotate through 3 sets of weapons that can likely deal damage from good safe spots. Once you have a vehicle you can use it too, and the turrets will rebuild in the background. It can also provide powerful firepower that will make him handle these with ease.

However, he's also the worst if you have to fight in open and large caves without an option to retreat to tunnels. Unfortunately, there are 2 missions in the main campaign that fall into this area and these are really hard to handle, although you can make your chances better by using better gear, specifically DLC2 ones if playing in Inferno.

The basic strategies to handle cave missions are:

- bottleneck enemies in tunnels, preferably in ones where there's just one end or where there are few to no chances of not getting all enemies coming from one of the sides

- equip 3 sets of turrets and use them wisely so that you always have one set covering the tunnel where enemies will come from, or spread them on two sides if necessary, and always have one rebuilt and preferably set up to use when the one running is exhausted

- correct use of vehicles will help with movement, either to progress, run away or shoot in all situations

- you need knowledge of enemy spawn points and waves, and what triggers them. The AR is the knowledge and brains class and all this is a lot more important in these missions as you need to prepare turrets and apply the right ones to handle what will be coming. Scouting with the WD in easy or normal can help in this.

- driving the Depth Crawler will be essential, even in walls and ceilings (this does drive me nuts as I get lost with the inverted controls 😁), but it has been greatly improved from 4.1 so it's not that hard to take advantage of it. Be careful however where you travel it's not unusual that due to clipping issues you end outside the map area without any chance to return and the mission is ended (very common on DLC1-11 for instance)

- there's no way to avoid unexpected damage through walls from enemies, either spider webs, cosmos flamethrowers, ants acid, Araneas grabs, or whatever craziness will happen. These "happenings" are a trademark of Sandlot EDF games, and even though they're less prone to happen in EDF 5 they're still common

Turrets

Turrets are awesome on EDF 5. Not only do they rebuild automatically in the background when they end (or you force that) there are 2 new ones that can be awesome.

FZ-GUNs - If you can use them, these are by far the best. They last a long time, stun enemies and hit several at the same time with the same turret, they do decent damage, you can have decent numbers of them with up to 5 of the best one, they rebuild fast (although it's true that once fully upgraded all turrets rebuild in the same time, 29.4 secs) and won't damage vehicles if installed on them. They do have issues as they will damage and stun you, vehicles and NPCs if installed on terrain, but will just damage NPCs if installed on vehicles (or you if you're outside the vehicle). If correctly installed near a spawn location they can freeze and kill the whole group of enemies.

ZEX Launcher - The ZEX Launcher is dangerous as it can easily damage extensively you, your vehicles and NPCs due to the large blast area. However sometimes they're awesome as they not only damage multiple enemies with the same blast, they project them hopefully away from you, although it's not unusual to have them sent towards your location particularly in the case of silver spiders. They won't kill any enemies in one shot, but manage to keep most at bay from you and work nicely against frogs and cosmos. However, they are pretty bad in open caves ( for instance they're a nightmare to use on mission 86 Secret in the Dark ) as the chances of damaging you and the NPCs become pretty big and can be dangerous too in missions with intricate caves as they will target enemies that can't be reached but technically are closer and can hit you (as it happens in DLC 2-6 Underground 3 ).

ZEXRs and ZERA - These are your bread and butter turrets. Not total problem solvers, but they provide all-round stellar service. Their biggest plus now is that they won't ever damage you, your vehicles or any NPCs either if they're on the ground or installed in vehicles. Unfortunately you can only have one set of them 😞. Their biggest problem is dealing with high-powered enemies and short duration. Most of their siblings are toys (ZE-GUN10, ZE Sniper).

ZE Blaster - These are the "worst" of the bunch. Although they are still good, they're very slow at tracking enemies and due to the small spaces where you'll usually have to use them, they are not very efficient. It's very usual that they're hitting and stunning an enemy, then another jumps over them and they lose a long time tracking either the last or the new one. They do work nicely on open caves though so they can make your life a lot less miserable in some missions ( 86 Secret in the Dark 😰 ). These need experimentation as I had a lot of bad experiences with them and the other 3 will generally work better.

Vehicles

Depth Crawler - no choice here but there are differences between the ones you can have. The Depth Crawler IV Custom and V are almost equal, with the latter being faster, with more armor and slightly better weapons, but be careful with the Rapid Bazooka as it can damage the DC if you accidentally shoot NPCs or enemies very near you. The Depth Crawler IV is interesting if you have many tunnel exits or silver spiders as the cannons are slower but do a lot more damage per shot, and you risk no self damage unlike with the Rapid Bazookas. The Depth Crawler S Range Custom has an interesting flamer weapon but it gets empty pretty fast, and it's just available up to tier 52 which is pretty basic and difficult to be useful beyond hardest.

The machine gun is nice but imprecise and shooting angles are sometimes weird and make precision aiming difficult. Lots of ammo on them though.

EDF 5 - Missions Data - Info, tips and details

As it's easier to me I'll use reverse order of missions.

DLC 1-13 - Engage Aliens 3

The mission has 4 waves. The first wave has 3 deroys and several colonists. Second several tadpoles. Third even more tadpoles. Fourth, deroys from back and both sides from start, colonists from both sides and eventually 6 blue tadpoles.

Mission will not progress to 3rd wave until all deroys (and colonists) from 1st wave are dead. Keeping a deroy alive with its plasma cannons destroyed is clever to have time to prepare 3rd wave and pick crates for you and NPCs.

When starting there are 2 groups of NPCs on each side of the road below the cliffs: one of rangers and another of fencers on the left side, and 2 of rangers on the right side. It's very hard for Ranger and AR to grab both because they don't have speed for that, it's best to go to the right side as the fencers have better chances of survival than the rangers.

In the fourth wave you'll get from the right side 2 middle deroys and one multi launcher colonist, so going to the right is a lot more dangerous as you'll be immediately under their aim.

Mission 110 - The Nameless

From where you start the map end is reasonably furthest away to the left and slightly more to the front. It's good to know how much you can walk backwards before hitting the map border.

The special WD and Grim Reaper Fencer squads will show up a few secs after the appearance of the second mob of cosmonauts. They will come from the map edge at your back from start. but will be difficult to capture at this point. The WDs will stop slightly ahead of where you start in the train tracks, and the fencers slightly to the right of the starting point in the road.

At the third wave of cosmonauts the special ranger squad will also show up to the left near the indestructible area, but these will likely die anyway even if you capture them.

Mission 108 Online only - Under Siege

On the 3rd and last wave by far the best way to handle it is to have an Air Raider equipped with a KM6 Z4 and some turrets (ZEXRs or FZ-GUN MXs) on its loadout, and a Nyx Rad Guard (shields will help its survival). He should jump to and camp on the top of the transport dropping spiders. Then kill all remaining fliers immediately and piss all cosmos and frogs and wait for them to gather under the transport. He can then use Z4 to crush them, while not being hit, as Z4 does penetrate this transport. If the Nyx is being hit by Z4, jump up with it when it's coming. Other players can also turkey shoot them with sniper weapons from safe distances.

When all cosmos are gone, stop attacks on small fish, and other players can then destroy the 2 other transports that would be dropping pillbugs and goldies, which will be in peace since all enemies will be under the spiders transport. Resume Z4s until goldies and pillbugs are gone. Run away to aggro spiders far from the transport, and again someone else destroys silvers transport in peace, then finally the silvers.

The biggest problem is organizing such action, especially without voice chat.

Mission 108 Online only - Despair

The jp wiki says the super duper pylons have 700.000 armor for 4 players. It's wrong, it's more than that. A fully upgraded Tempest ATS + Bulge Z is not enough to destroy it:

479800 + ( 389.9 * 600 ) = 713740

Pylon should have around 20 to 30k more than this.

Crappy that ATS + Bulge Z doesn't work.

On 3 and 4 players or solo super sized pylons will be on the verge of destruction with 3 fully starred on damage Bulge Z attacks.

It is possible to avoid the spawn of the 2 big enemies if the last 2 super sized pylons are destroyed at a small interval, which is tricky to do solo.

Mission 108 - Scorched Earth

The 3rd wave has 100 tadpoles, plus 2 blueish big ones. Your NPCs can't handle them very well. If the pillbugs from wave 2 were already problematic for them, these are dreadful.

On 4th wave the leftmost anchor from start "only" drops black and red ants (it will be the rightmost and back one if you are on the right map end when they spawn). The other 3 drop either spiders or bees (the 2 rightmost ones). The central large one will keep spitting queen ants and king spiders until destroyed. It will also produce tadpoles, spiders and black ants if another anchor is destroyed.

The initial wave that the 4 anchors send is larger than the following ones. It's the reason you'll see a sea of red dots in the map after the anchors spawn for the first time.

Mission 104 - Against All Odds

From your start position front, then clockwise  the transports drop the following enemies:

- bees

- tadpoles

- pillbugs

- bees

- black ants

- tadpoles

- pillbugs

- black ants

All classes except AR can go forward and destroy in sequence the first 4 transports, the AR will have to go left to gain points to get a vehicle, and then he can go for the transports. By killing the 5th transport you'll also get the heavy cosmos, the normal ones spawned at the 2nd downed transport.

This was clearly created with that in thought, as the first 4 transports are the ones most interesting to destroy and they're in sequence.

The place where the cosmos drop doesn't seem to be always the same.

Mission 101  - Crumbling City

All waves spawn points from start position.

First wave is front left.

Second is front right.

Third is front left. 

Fourth is 2 buildings, right just forward and right just backwards. WD cavalry will arrive before this one ends.

Fifth wave has 3 crumbling buildings one back left, followed in just a few secs by another slightly to the right of the first of this wave (back from start) and followed by another in just a few more secs just left from start.

Sixth wave will be when there's around 50 little ants alive, 2 buildings one far front from start and followed by another just back right.

A mess eh? 😋😁

Mission 100 - Greatest Final Confrontation

The 5 important waves are the small stuff ones as these are the only ones you can actively and successfully handle.

From start position:

1 - left, spiders and 5 Colonists with plasma cannons

2 - right, spiders and 5 Cosmonauts, plus spiders from front likely behind the main fight (these cosmonauts can destroy you EMCs but it depends if they focus on them or not) 

3 - (after the 10 new Erginus) front, black and red ants, 2 shield bearers, 10 heavy Cosmonauts

4 - bees from back, left and right (these will likely destroy EMCs, if they're still alive and you don't deal with the bees)

5 - from all over the map, tadpoles, these are crucial killing too (difficult that EMCs, if they're still alive, will survive)

Mission 99 - Intense Battle Underground

This mission has an usually pretty nasty end in a huge cave (where many missions are done).

There will be 5 pylons, 2 dropping spiders, 2 pillbugs and 1 ants. And 2 King Spiders. If the 5 pylons are active and spawning enemies they will all be aggroing along with the 2 kings, and it is hell to solve this.

However, you can avoid the pylons becoming active, by not touching the ground of the cave in front of the last group Ranger NPCs. This can be done it some ease by 3 classes. For Ranger this is extremely hard to do, and requires 2 bikes.

You can see this on my Air Raider video run at roughly 15 minutes. When I arrive at the huge cave everything is peaceful, instead of a huge enemy mob homing on you.

Air Raider run avoiding activation of pylons, and consequent aggroing of all enemies, on last cave:
https://youtu.be/bTHemPZKv2I

Mission 91 - Sparking Abyss

Photo of the cave area where the 3 spawn points and 3 cosmos are. The middle cosmos is the shotgun one. The larger ramp is the one going up to the center pillar.

The right teleportation pad will spawn ants. It will depend on opinion, but in mine this should be the first to go. Ants are even more unpredictable in movement than pillbugs and it's easy to get one shot by a senaky one.

Mission 90 - Broken Land

Not very important (or less) for Air Raider but crucial for other classes. Photos of the deroys placements, with most buildings that would block the views destroyed. Destroying all would be troublesome it's hard to destroy any without alerting the deroys or smaller stuff.

Right from start, at the top left corner it's the deroy just in front of you when mission starts, NPCs are further down the same avenue.

Right side from start, but looking towards the large deroy, just left of the tall building in the background. The other missile deroy, a small one, is the second in the photo to the left of the big one, just up left from WD's jet pack. It's roughly in the middle of the highest concentrated area.

Left side from start, just under the WD is the large missile deroy, the small missiles one is just above the WD arms sight.

The most difficult deroys to handle are the 2 missile ones, specially if you're trying to milk the leg parts.

Mission 73 - Light Defenses

From start to right you have a red ants anchor. Back from this one slightly to left a black ants one.

From start, almost front is a spiders anchor, with a black ants one back and left, just out of the shields.

Further back from this one, roughly in the same line as the first it's another spiders anchor. The one more isolated in the back between the back spiders and the back black ants is the bees anchor.

The large anchor is only present in hardest or higher, drops 3 yellow ants and 1 silver spider per spawn.

When there's just 2 anchors remaining a large number of enemies will spawn, so it's not a good idea that the large anchor is one of the last 2.

Mission 70 - Aircrafts

If you hear the initial dialog there's details about a abandoned Railgun. The Railgun is left up, near the fountain. It has 150k armor and 25 shells which will destroy a imperial drone in 2 shots, but it's slow as molasses to use the turret. Any class will be able to use the railgun.

There will be 3 fencers near the railgun, 2 rangers before reaching them if you go left first, near the railway and 2 more further up after the fencers to the right. These besides the 3 rangers plus sarge (on the railway slightly to the left) near the start.

Approaching the sarge will spawn another imperial drone in attack mode, all others are in stand by, although it's usual that if you capture your NPCs they will aggro some of the drones.

Mission 60 - Mountain Investigation 

This mission is daunting if you don't understand its flow.

The first squad of Ranger NPCs can't be captured. The captain of this squad is invincible, only him.

There will be a ton of bees along their path in standby mode. On their way to the top of the mountain, there will be more 6 spawns of bees.

At the same time as the last wave of bees spawns, 2 squads of NPCs will spawn:

- a squad of Rangers on the southwest side of the hive, that will advance to the south of the hive

- a squad of Wing Divers that spawns on the north side of the hive, at te top of the mountain; this squad is outside the map border and really tricky to capture until it starts moving

It's advisable to capture the second Ranger squad and proceed to the top of the mountain near where the WDs are, to avoid the last 3 waves of bees coming from the hive being too spread. This last squad of rangers will be massacred anyway if you don't capture them.

You don't need to kill the Queen Bees of the last wave, just run away and your life will be easy if you still have captured NPCs alive. The mission will end shortly after the Queens appearance.

Missiles and guided weapons are a must here, due to the huge number of enemies.

Wing Diver run:
https://youtu.be/_WoOs62Wmow

Ranger run:
https://youtu.be/-JFFl2VhDJY

Air Raider run:
https://youtu.be/66wi2C7o3mo

Mission 51 - Attacking the Fleet

From start you have in front a red ants transport (transport A). Just to your left it's a bees transport (transport B). Left from B slightly further there will be another bees transport (transport C). And further left, but closer than C will be a red ants transport (transport D). When mission begins all 4 enemy groups are in stand by mode, and will be if they're dropped again.

When you shoot down 2 transports, 2 very important things will happen:

- transports C and D will change what they were dropping. New waves of enemies from transport C will be red ants, the ones from D will be bees. There will be no change to the enemies that were already present from these 2 transports.

- enemies will change to attack mode 

Actually, it's not 2 but 3, Archelus will come too for a stroll 😁

You really don't want tons of bees and Archelus at the same time...

Mission 44 - Culling the Flying-Type

Wave 1 - 60 bees coming from front

Wave 2 - 120 bees coming from left

Wave 3 - 90 bees plus 30 red bees coming from right

Wave 4 - 90 bees plus giant bee coming from front

All positions from start.

If you're good enough with a Wing diver or Fencer you can go for the places where the bee waves will come from, and zip around at a distance the NPC vehicles can hit them, and they will be massacred. Not easy but neat.

Mission 35 - Berth 

This mission has 7 transports. When any 3 are taken down, an Outpost will come. If you're not seeing it, don't worry it will. To avoid damage to you and NPCs it's advisable to be as far back as possible, or behind a mountain.

After some time (2-3 minutes) it will drop a large number of drones and 5 red shotgun colonists on the beach.

In Inferno there will be 2 transports with gold ants. The first one on the beach from start and the second one is on the road just close to the same beach. The other 2 transports in exchanged positions for these 2 in the same places drop red ants. The other 3 drop black ants.

There are 2 extra NPC squads besides the 2 of Rangers near start:

- Fencers, in the river going from the beach to the waterfall just after the bridge

- Wing Divers, which will spawn when you go near the red ants transport in the beach and will fly to a point just left of this transport (from the start)

There's a really clever way to use the NPCs in this mission that makes it awesome and easy (original idea leafierlemon):

Wing Diver run:

https://youtu.be/BvZ9oaZj214

Mission 34 - Cave Invasion Final Stage

The 2 spawns of termites can be avoided if you don't touch the lake and always travel on the left side of the large cave.

EDF 5 - General Information and hints

 I'll give here all information I found that is interesting for the game.

- the EDF 5 DLCs are very good (compared to 4.1), and to make things better there's weapons for all classes that can only be obtained in inferno on each of the DLCs. DLC 1 is within reasonable limits of difficulty, DLC 2 is not. However some missions on each DLC can be cheesed or are relatively doable with at least one class

- finishing hard will unlock hardest and inferno on the DLCs too

- killing frogs (oops colonists) and cosmonauts with headshots will provide twice the loot, heavy cosmonauts being the most profitable to do so with 18 crates

- the japanese EDF wiki will always provide good info for the game, but for 5 the most crucial page is:

https://w.atwiki.jp/edf5/pages/373.html

which lists the weapon drop ranges by mission and difficulty. Use Chrome's or Edge's embedded translation if necessary. 

- Air Raider turrets no longer destroy the vehicles they're attached to (finally!!!). And you can attach shields to them too!

- the limit of simultaneous crates on a map (weapon + armor + health) is 128. When the limit is reached enemies that die no longer drop crates until you pick any. There are several missions where this limit will be reached easily and in some pretty fast (38, 40, 80, 94, 98, 108, 109 to quote just a few). Unfortunately on many of these missions in inferno, crate picking while the mission is running is usually difficult, and it's not unusual to have all crates in the zone where the enemies are and will be throughout the mission.

- there's also a overall limit of 1024 crates of armor and weapons that can be picked up in a single mission

- yes vehicle controls are still mostly dreadful. I think they will always be, Sandlot seems to enjoy the way they are. They could at least license the flying controls from AER Memories of the Old which are stellar.

- unlike in previous games colonists and cosmonauts will target you specifically if you hit any of their nearest mates even if they have nearer NPCs than your relative position. This will change if any of the NPCs nearer them will attack them after you did, which is not guaranteed it will happen. In previous games enemies would always attack the nearest NPC or player whatever happened. In heavy messy missions, if you're playing solo split screen with the AR and another class, you can leave the second class inside a exoskeleton and it will be mostly ignored and remain almost unscathed even in the heat of the battle. This is extremely important specially in inferno and requires changes to the way you play from older games.

- due to how fast the Grim Reaper fencers and the WD squads move, unwanted friendly fire and even self killing is sometimes very difficult to avoid. Not capturing NPCs is sometimes essential to avoid bigger problems. Wherever the NPCs are trained it's the worst training place in the universe, they can't seem to teach the basic concept of not getting in front of a firing mate. 😋

- game is much easier in couch co-op with 2 persons, not single gamer "co-op" playing (using 2 classes, 1 at a time by the same person). Unlike playing with 2 online which makes the game a lot harder as enemies will be 2x healthier and do 2x more attack damage, everything is equal in couch co-op, so you have 2 EDF classes doing damage to the same enemies with the same characteristics as playing solo. It was almost the same in 4.1, just different multipliers for difficulty.

- unlike previous games you can't play split screen and maximize weapon crate pickups for one class. The game will always split them between the 2, usually with a few more for the second player no matter which class picked them up. And a few more for each of the other 2 missing classes.

- WD and fencer can now enter and fully use some vehicles like the AR exoskeletons

- when helping NPCs deal with cosmonauts (or heavy colonists) deliver body shots as they will generally only hit them in that part. At least do shots to the arm that holds the weapon (always the right, it seems there's no left-handed aliens). If you do headshots you're not helping the NPCs at all and doubling the effort.

-the japanese wiki

https://w.atwiki.jp/edf5/

has really good information, and you can use Chrome's or Edge's built-in translators with reasonable results. I do prefer to play the game on my own and make my own strategies to deal with each mission. Sometimes my solution or one very similar is detailed there, sometimes mine is different. However many of the mission strategies, specially for harder levels, I think many times are one shot ways that require either extreme luck or extreme skill or both, so don't really accept them all as being generally good. A few ones I'm curious, I try them and it's not unusual to can't even figure how it could be possible to achieve what they suggest. Well my strategies and suggestions can fall in the same issues too, so... 😂

- some NPC squads will stay down in the map once they're killed, you'll see them kneeled down and their heath bar is black. Once there's no aggroed enemies to player(s) they will respawn although at a low yellow health. One mission extremely easy to see this is mission 81 Reclaiming Base 228: Stage 3,whcih is a scripted mission and that at the end of each wave the downed NPCs from the 3 squads will recover for the next one.

- by mission 87 in inferno you can get all weapons for all classes in the main game except one, the level 95 Phalanx ZT for the WD. All other weapons are level 91 or below.

- contrary to what's said in Reddit and elsewhere KM6 attacks are not failsafe for you and NPCs. Yes you can get killed or least badly damaged with them. Not that difficult to happen. KM& attacks will even do more damage to vehicles / exoskeletons, for instance the Naegling can be destroyed in a single of these attacks. So always consider that when using them over yourself unless you're inside a vehicle with reasonable armor.

- vehicles have no upgrades available except in necessary points to summon. So speed, attack strength, armor is always equal and you'll always have its full power and capabilities available.

- Ranger and Fencer enhancements have no upgrades, when you get them that's it. WD cores have 2 enhancements, max energy and charge speed. The WD has the most dreadful weapon grinding of all classes, as she has weapons with 8 upgradeable stats and all cores have 2 additional ones. 😑😐

- best way to scout missions is to play them with the WD on easy or normal, so you can study movements, spawn positions, how they're grouped, important targets to address, etc. The Mirage 15WR will likely kill almost everything, bring a Rapier for the rest. Most of the missions are equal, just harder versions of spawns in Inferno. However a few have more waves, more spawns or slightly different spawn locations for NPCs or enemies (mission 40 for example). Still these account for just around 10 missions.

- Tempests can't one shot Cosmonauts or heavy colonists. Normal Cosmonauts need 2 Tempests, one to destroy the armor, the next to kill them, but Heavy Cosmonauts need 3 Tempests shots since they have 2 layers of armor.

- in EDF 5, unlike previous games vey few missions have clear breaks between each wave. When a certain threshold of enemies alive is reached the next wave triggers, when the norm previously was that this would only happen when all enemies from one wave were killed. This makes the game harder because it's usually a non stop assault of enemies and few chances to relax or prepare next wave (108 is a example of this)

- queen ants are not stun locked by fire (giant bees neither I think, but not usual to be possible to try). King spiders are. Erginus and Archelus... 😂 King spiders can be thrown around by explosives.

- although other classes besides the AR can use vehicles, only his weapons will rebuild while he's inside them. So take this into account when using vehicles with another class, you'll be at exactly the same point weapons wise as you entered them.

I'll keep adding information I find out, or more usual I remember.