Interesting or important details for some missions.
Mission 31
Queen Ant acid attacks will destroy eggs and aggro other Queens. A single Queen Ant can even aggro all others.
Also beware that all remaining eggs will hatch once all Queen Ants are dead. Gold eggs remaining at this time it's a really bad idea...
Mission 106
SA2, P1 and P2 - pylons and shield anchor inside the near most shield bearer
SA3 and P3 - pylon and shield anchor inside the right shield bearer, where the Golden Queen Ant is parading
SA5 and P4 - pylon and shield anchor inside the left shield bearer, where the Silver King is parading
Spawners data (thanks for jp wiki for info):
| anchor | Normal time | When the third spawner is destroyed | When the 6th spawner is destroyed | ||||
| enemies | number | interval | enemies | number | enemies | number | |
| SA1 | black ants | Five | about 35 seconds | (none) | (none) | ||
| SA2 | android | 6 | about 40 seconds | (none) | (none) | ||
| Naker | 8 | ||||||
| SA3 | high mobility android | 2 | about 85 seconds | Large android (machine gun) | 2 | android | 40 |
| SA4 | grenadier | 3 | about 85 seconds | big grenadier | 2 | big grenadier | 5 |
| SA5 | Naker | 2 | about 90 seconds | Large android (launcher) | 2 | android | 40 |
| P1 | spider | 3 | about 85 seconds | gold ant | 12 | gold ant | 16 |
| P2 | spider | 3 | about 85 seconds | silver spider | 6 | silver spider | 8 |
| P3 | type 3 drone | 2 | about 110 seconds | (none) | Cyclops | 1 | |
| grenadier | 2 | super android | 2 | ||||
| P4 | type 3 drone | 2 | about 115 seconds | (none) | Cyclops | 1 | |
| Naker | 3 | super android | 2 | ||||
It's obvious the least problematic spawners are the 2 first Shielded Anchors as they don't spawn special enemies at any time. Sadly Nakers are terrible, so SA2 should be destroyed when possible.
However the 3 most important spawners to destroy first are SA3, SA5 and P1, as you avoid the crappy Large Androids and Gold Ants which are always very problematic.
Ideally, the next 3 spawners to destroy should be P3, P4 and SA4, which will avoid spawning of Cyclops, Super Androids and Big Grenadiers. You already avoided 80 Androids and Gold Ants from the destruction of the first 3 spawners.
Nakers are spawned by SA2, SA5 and P4. Nasty crappy bastards. 😋😂
Golden Queen Ant has approximately 241.5k armor.
Silver King has approximately 197k armor.
Wing Diver's level 95 Phalanx ZT has at full stars a theoretical 196.5k damage per clip under ideal distance conditions, remember it has damage falloff. But level 86 Rapier Nova has at full stars a theoretical staggering 781.5k damage per clip, with a very short range but no damage falloff, with a slightly higher energy consumption but near instant recharge.
Mission 123
This is a tricky cave mission with a really unusual aspect.
At some points, in particular achieving the last major destruction of the hive you can't progress if there are too many enemies still alive on the map. So once the Nakers spawn, you'll have to destroy most of them, before being able to destroy the hive again.
Probably the idea was to block you from destroying the hive in a snap and then deal with the enemies hidden in one of the tunnels (surviving in the top one obviously is a lot easier, but remember that androids will spawn earlier on this tunnel).
Remember all you have to control NPCs is the Ooohhh! command. And they're sitting ducks at that period.
On the 2 special spawns:
- the Androids of the first special spawn will come up inside a tunnel on your right (from the start position) and they will be spread along it. They will drop to the cave bottom if you're there.
- the Nakers that will be the second and last special spawn will come up at the top of the path on the front up cave, following the other tunnel path that has 2 ends. These will all drop quickly to the cave floor and stay there, just coming up a little on the path available, but seldom. There are 2 nasty red Nakers in this group. They can easily get stuck on the hive, and show up at nasty times...
Mission 128
The rightmost and farthest pylon, up in the hills, only spawns enemies with the destruction of another spawner. If it's the last to be destroyed, it will never spawn any enemies once the others are gone. This way you can walk around in peace picking crates.
Mission 131
On Inferno, the NPC Nyxes have an whopping 14.4k armor. The Railguns have an astonishing 19.2k. No wonder the mission is dreadful, with this kind of help... Oh boy...
In the third and last phase when the 4 shielded anchors are on the ground, you'll get special spawns once you destroy one of them. Destroying the first will yield 3 special enemies, the second 2 and the third one. Destroying anchors before they reach the ground will not add them, so if you destroy 3 before they fall there will be no special spawns (nasty, precision job). Which enemies are spawned depends on which shielded anchor is destroyed. Considering viewing from the start position you'll have:
- leftmost anchor: Imperial Drone Type 2
- second from the left: High-grade Drone Type 3
- second from right: High-grade red naker
- rightmost anchor: Red Drone Type 1
It will depend on your perspective, but red Nakers are always troublesome, so the last shielded anchor to destroy should be the second from right to avoid that they spawn.
Imperial Drones are usually the easiest to avoid and destroy, Red Type 1s are a PITA to kill with most loadouts. The new laser Type 3 Drones can do massive damage if they hit you or NPCs.
Inferno information. The 3 waves of the mission are dreadful (I'm considering androids and bees one). The first focuses on ground enemies, with some airborne ones, the second on ground and immediately airborne ones, and the third on possibly unlimited airborne mobs and some ground ones. And always giant enemies present on each wave, which your NPCs always have trouble dealing with.
There's a lot of luck involved in this mission, and all will depend on how long the NPC vehicles and squads survive.
On the first wave, you're in trouble if:
- the queens advance directly to the vehicles and trash them
- how long the Blue Kraken survives and what it will damage
Yes, all other things are nasty but these are your biggest problems and they can be out of your reach with Ranger and Air Raider.
On the second wave, you're in trouble if:
- the nearest androids land too much on top of the vehicles as they will trash them in a snap, and no they don't always land in the same area, it may be over them or more to the right or back; the other 2 groups can still trash you vehicles in a snap
- if you're near the vehicles when the bees arrive, they will trash the vehicles
- the queen bee is 99% of the time your problem, neither the NPC squads nor vehicles will do much about it, unless the 4 Nyxes still alive, and even then...
On the third wave, the best you can do is try to eliminate one of the pylons as it drops or once it's dropped. It's possible to destroy more than 1, but it's EXTREMELY hard and lucky-prone, as there's almost 0 margin for error. Haze will be your biggest problem.
There may be a failure in the synchronization of the spawn of Haze from the remaining pylons in the last. If this happens it's hell, because it will be very hard to achieve a point where the NPCs will respawn since it will be difficult not to have aggroed enemies on the map. When this happens you're in even more trouble than you were already in.
Surviving once all NPCs are gone is VERY hard.
There are 3 NPC squads, of the WDs and Fencers only the captains have respawn trait. The whole Ranger squad has respawn ability. Of course, this if you had captured any of them.
Mission 135
On Inferno, the NPC Titan has 129.7.k armor, the small Varia tank 49.2k, and the 2 awesomely helpful pink blasts Proteus a reasonable 421.4k armor. Thank you Sandlot.
Mission 144
On Inferno, the Blue Barga has an awesomely mind boggling 3.3 million armor. No wonder this mission is nirvana for lengthy weapons farming. Just compare these numbers with other missions NPC vehicles.
Air Raider's DLC 2 level 110 Armamento Barga stops at 1.3 million armor.
Mission 145
On Inferno, the 2 Armamento Bargas have an eye watering 556.7k armor... Still lower than the Air Raider level 87 WarBarga which has 625k. No wonder the Amazing Bargas are creamed in a snap...
Thank you Sandlot, sometimes you really nail it to make the game so fun...
Mission 147
On this mission, no class can hit the boss all the time. That was clearly intentional. Obviously, since the boss is at the same heights on all difficulties, this is harder on lower difficulties because long-range weapons of lower levels usually have a lot less range.
DLC 1, Mission 17
I'm pretty sure the King Spider numbers on the JP wiki is wrong. If you don't destroy any small hives, on the last wave when you're destroying the huge hive, besides a large number of blue spiders, 12 kings will spawn, 2 for each remaining small hive (100% sure, I've tested it slowly with WD on hardest). I do think the first biggest possible wave of kings is 8, 1 from each small hive and 2 from the huge hive (99.99% sure on this).
It is not unusual that one of the Brown Kings spawns inside a building, and it's hell to finish him.
Between the 2nd and the 3rd major spawn, an intermediary attack from the smaller hives can happen, with the brown spiders and blue spiders that are around them aggroing at you. Air Raider can sometimes make this skip if you're Bulge Z on the main hive, Wing Diver will surely do it if using Heaven's Gate D10 pretty low after the 2nd spawn is finished, because Heaven's Gate can do more damage and for longer than Bulge to the hive.
Interestingly, at least to me, if you force spawns 1 and 2 and don't kill blue and kings from them, you can't make spawn 3 happen until you significantly drop down blues and kings numbers.
Buildings are your friends here, so except for Wing Diver and her farming run, you should avoid destroying most inner buildings while there are Kings and Blue spiders to spawn.
So Ranger, which needs buildings cleared for efficient use of turrets, and Air Raider, which can take down several blocks with Phobos attacks, should try to focus these attacks and leveling on the outside rim of the map, which is always 2 buildings on city maps. Beyond the 2 building lines, the remaining ones are indestructible and some enemies on some missions can get stuck on those.
Blacker E and Varius shells can destroy buildings too obviously.
DLC 2, Mission 20
I can bet that this will be a fans favorite, but to me, this is a deplorably stupid and pointless mission.
Anyway, each Archelus has offline roughly 1.050.000 health.
There are 3 Archelus spawns with 2, 3 and 6 enemies. Each Archelus spawn is connected to the overall damage that Siren gets. It is possible to trigger all Archelus spawns in sequence if you do enough damage to Siren, but dealing with 11 Archelus is impossible except for AR with heli, and even then unreliable.
Obviously, once the 3rd Archelus spawn has happened, Siren should be the first enemy to go. NPCs can trigger Archelus spawns as they will hit Siren too.
Archelus has one attack that does roughly 30k damage at once. I have a video snippet somewhere of DLC 2-11 from EDF 5 on which a Nyx with roughly 70k armor is trashed by these consecutive attacks and I get killed too. With the Nyx and watching in slow motion, it's possible to see how much each attack is doing in damage to it since the Nyx armor is always displayed.
Which attack it is I don't know, but it's a close range movement one.
On this mission, Archelus can shoot multiple explosive boulder attacks sequentially, even the ones that stay on the ground and explode later and the immediately exploding ones mixed. 😐😑🙄
DLC 2, Mission 30
An unusual mission with mostly static enemies. There are a few groups that can be hit without aggroing others:
- the rightmost frog up left from start can be handled alone without aggroing anything
- the 2 frogs just near the previous one can also be handled separately, but be careful not to hit the leftmost one on its left side as it can aggro the rightmost Kruhl; aggroing the Kruhl sometimes happens anyway
- the 2 laser cosmos up front
- the 4 laser cosmos up right
- the left back solo Elder Kruhl, but be careful handling this one before dealing with the pack below because he'll move and likely will aggro all these
- the frog and red Drone front further away and left
You can also shoot the 8 Kruhls in the bottom row of the right back group without aggroing the red Drone and Elder Krull that are on the mountain top. They will be aggroed if you shoot the middle Kruhls or Cosmos. Middle Kruhls and Cosmos will be aggroed if you shoot the Kruhls below them.
Beware using weapons with reflection shots on this mission like Wing Diver's Thunder Crossbows, Lightning Bows, Raijins and Bolt Shooters.
Beware of the radius of explosive weapons.
