Earth Defense Force 2025 Faq/Walkthrough by Khoiman Note from the author: This is the second Faq/Walkthrough I have written and the first Faq/Walkthrough had no one critique it or otherwise have people pointing out flaws in my writing skills (not that I'm complaining mind you). Standard copyright rules apply (although I don't know them) and I expect to be notified when my work is used. *****If you have any complains or you would like to contribute information to this FAQ/walkthrough just email me at Khoidoan1@hotmail.com with a subject line such as "EDF 2025 walkthrough"**** PLEASE TELL ME HOW TO IMPROVE MY GAMEFAQ. EDF 2025 IS A LARGE GAME. Earth Defense Force 2025 is a third person shooter whose difficulty is more or less based on what class you are playing and what weapons you've managed to get. This guide will discuss what weapons/class you should use on a level on the NORMAL difficulty. On easy, you can use an assault rifle on every level except the ones that involve an atmospheric target (i.e mission 32) and when the assault rifle doesn't work you can just use a rocket launcher or sniper rifle. It is not recommended to fully complete a run on easy as that prevents you from getting good weapons and might bore the average player. On Hard and above, the enemies just get more Hp and do more damage (and shoot more). It might seem like a copout to not cover harder difficulty levels but the reality is that the same tactics for Normal would apply just with the upgraded version of the weapon you would have used on Normal. In addition, the game expects you to be picking up armor pickups or repeating levels for these pickups as this is the only way you will get the Hp you need to actually survive a hit on the harder difficulty levels. This essentially means that picking up the game out of the box and starting the Thirty Second level on say, hardest and inferno, when you are already having trouble with the game (hence the reason why you looked up this FAQ/Walkthrough) would just result in more frustration for you. I am writing this guide assuming that you are not a veteran of any of the EDF games (though you can be a veteran of the EDF tactics game) and am assuming that you're having choosing a good equipment setup for a mission and not a problem that can't be fixed with an FAQ/Walkthrough (i.e Firing rockets at close range) because I can't offer any tips aside from "Don't do that". While the Harder levels of EDF 2025 is locked off from the average player due to poor weapons and one-hit kills, victory on normal difficulty requires some skill and good weapon choices and so it's necessary to note that some dexterity is required in order to survive some of EDF 2025 harder missions. Unlike say, a strategy game, there is no set move or weapon loadout that will beat a mission guaranteed. It also doesn't help that EDF 2025 requires you to call in your own vehicles which can only be done by a single character class so unlike EDF 2017, you can't win a mission using an on map vehicle. Last but not least, this guide will assume you are playing by yourself. The instructions in this guide assume you get lucky with weapon pickups and get the weapons you'll need later on and also assumes that you are playing single player. YOU CAN play with two players (the game is more fun and easier that way) but writing a guide for two player gameplay would mean snubbing people playing single player, who are arguably the people who need a walkthrough in the first place. Now these disclaimers aside, let's kill some bugs shall we? Index: Use the code to find the section you wish to find using the Ctrl+F search function. The code is in brackets. Section 1 Character Classes and controls (ASD1) Ranger (IOP9) Wing Diver (TYUI) Air Raider (RTFY) Section 2 Gameplay Mechanics (BTIO) Getting Bitten (YUIL) Getting webbed (QRKY) *Spoilers are in the sections below Section 3 The Missions (9TCF) Section 4 Advanced tips and tricks (TR45) Dash Canceling (TU98) Section 5 the enemies (ROEP) ****Section 1 Character classes and controls**** (ASD1) *For some reason, EDF 2025 does not come with a manual. This is bad because some things like vehicles are not well explained. That said controls for soldiers classes can be edited in the options menu.* **The manual is not in the game it can be found online at http://www.d3p.us/Manuals/EDF2025_XBOX_manual_final.pdf courtesy of D3 publisher and GameFAQ member AliensRfriendly for starting a topic mentioning it** When you begin Earth Defense Force 2025, you'll find yourself given the choice of picking 4 distinct classes with fairly obvious weaknesses. You have the Ranger, Wing Diver, Air raider and the fencer. There is no right or wrong choice but keep in mind that weapon and armor unlocks only count for the class you're playing as thus you won't get fencer equipment when playing as the Ranger or anyone other than the Fencer. Narrative wise it doesn't even make sense for the player to be a Fencer for the first few levels but oh well. The Classes: *note that there are many kinds of special weapons for each class. Don't be surprised if you find a brandname that doesn't show up in this walkthrough. These weapons I've managed to find within 10 hours of gameplay. YES you can play for more than 10 hours and not find every weapon in the game. Don't be discouraged, there's plenty of ways to get loads of weapons really fast. Ranger (IOP9)- The standard infantry guy this series is known for. The only guy to have a relatively straight forward rocket launcher. His trees of weapons include: Assault Rifles, Shotguns, sniper rifles, Rocket launchers, Missile launchers, grenades and special weapons. Controls: Pressing left trigger while moving straight ahead or standing still will result in a jump. Pressing left trigger while moving in any direction aside from straight forward will result in the person rolling. Right trigger fires the gun, Right bumper switches weapons. The X button is used to reload. Left stick to move and right stick to aim. Cons (in general): This class is the same as the EDF 2017 character. The EDF series at one point had pale wing (same as wing diver) in its second game (the UK edition Global Defense force) and so the origins of unique characters begins there. EDF 2017 drew criticism for not having unique character classes like the pale wing in it. The remake/redux version of EDF 2017 on the PS Vita allows you to play pale wing... BUT IT REQUIRES you to beat the game as the ranger. Of course EDF games have gotten longer since then (Insect Armageddon is an exception to the norm) with this game being bigger than any of the previous games. But this just exacerbates the problems, if you have already played the previous games, you'll be bored senseless playing this class. This class is the most generic of all classes and you should pick this only if you're new to the game, having a lot of trouble with a mission or you find the other classes unwieldy. This class adds nothing new to the table, having many weapons that were in previous games. Not to say that it's wrong to keep an iconic character in the roster (it's perfectly fine to do so), but wouldn't you want to play a character who has variance and uniqueness (especially if you're a veteran of a previous game)? *thanks to gamefaq member geelw for mentioning which games in the series included different classes. I originally wrote that EDF 2017 japan had pale wing... I was wrong!* Pros: Has the highest amount of BOOM in his arsenal. The only straight forward rocket launcher and grenade launchers and most if not all his missile launchers are self-lock on (meaning you can use them without assistance from another player). In addition, the ranger can be the pilot of a vehicle (although he cannot call in vehicles to assist him. The rangers assault rifle has no peer in terms of reliability and versatility. The ranger gets the job done one generic step at a time! Notable Weapons within their classes: Rifles: Shoots enemies with bullets. *AF Series- The AF series composes the majority of the Ranger's assault rifles. The higher the number after the letters AF, the better the assault rifle is in general. Suffixes may be added after the AF## such as ST and RAR with RAR denoting rapid sustained fire and ST denoting higher firepower but lower ammo capacity. AF## RA rifles have rapid fire and high accuracy. *fusion blaster- Does a lot of damage and has large clip... but the catch is you generally can't reload it. Shotguns: Shoots enemies with pellets *Buffalo Series- These series of weapons have high firepower but low ammo capacity. Being shotguns they're also short ranged. *Sparrow Series- Rapid fire shotguns with shorter range and lower damage than buffalo series Sniper Rifles: Shoots bullets at long range... expecting anything different? *MMF series- The MMF series of sniper rifles has a higher rate of fire than other sniper rifles. Generally does lower damage per shot to compensate *Lysander Series- This series does a lot of damage and generally has a low rate of fire. Generally has great zoom capability. Rocket Launchers: Shoots rockets straight at the enemy *Stingray series- Straight forward rocket launchers. High range *Volcano Series- Fires multiple rockets at once. Rockets are spread out however. Missile Launchers: Fires homing missiles. Requires lock-on to fire. Some may require laser sight. *Air Tortoise series- Fires incredibly slow missiles that have excellent homing capability and massive damage and blast radius. Usually do so much damage that you can kill yourself with it. Be careful! They are much faster than their GDF and EDF 2017 counterparts. *Emerald Series- Fires homing missiles that are fast, tend to turn well but do average damage. *ME_ series- These are quick fire and forget missiles that have now been slighting nerfed in that you do require a lock-on (i.e no firing missiles with back turned from monster or well out of visual range) but they lock- on quick and do a lot of damage. Grenades: Throw or launch grenades... you know those compact balls that explode? Can either be thrown by hand or launched from gun. Hand thrown grenades tend to be stronger but awkward to use. *MG series: These grenades need to be thrown by hand. Hold down the fire button to increase strength of throw. Takes a lot of skill to use properly since these tend to explode on impact, which means rapidly tapping the fire button because you're panicking usually equals self-suicide *UM series: Grenades that are launched using a grenade launcher. Tends to fire multiple grenades quickly or at once. Special Weapons: Weapons that tend to be fairly useless but can be cool to use. *Acid Shot series: Shoots the acid that the alien ants shoot. Does fairly mediocre damage and is usually useless. Later versions do quite the damage. *Flamethrower: SPEWS FLAMES. BURN EVERYTHING! Usually useless. Later versions have higher capacity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- Wing Diver (TYUI): Gets to fly and have a fairly impressive arsenal. Also female and the only class to be female. They have built-in energy generator and battery and use their energy to fly and reload the majority of their weapons. They get Short range, Mid-RG lasers, Mid-Rg Electroshock, Particle Cannons, Sniper Weapons, Ranged Attacks, Homing Weapons and special weapons (not the same as the rangers). Controls: Same as Ranger but jumping will activate the jet pack. They also cannot roll. Cons (in general): This class requires you to be very very VERY careful. You've got to keep your distance from the enemy, watch your ammo and watch your energy. Running out of ammo usually means emptying your energy reserves to reload, which translates to not having energy to retreat from a bug rush and subsequently getting pummelled by the aliens. This class has the lowest health and lowest health growth rate of all classes. You do not want to get HIT while playing this class. Which sucks because there's plenty of enemies that can close the distance and shoot you very quickly in this game. This class was also available in the previous GDF (uk edition of EDF 2) called pale wing in this game (this gets a shout-out in mission 38 and 39) meaning that in the unlikely chance you've played that game to the finish, you've probably seen and experienced all that class had to offer. Of course GDF graphics were PS2 graphics so it's not like you've seen all there is to offer with the wing diver. Pros: YOU GET TO FLY! Energy is only drained when the weapon runs out of ammunition meaning that if you pay attention, you can fly away and then reload your gun. While enemies are capable of shooting a large volume of acid and webs at you, being able to fly makes dodging the large volume of fire relatively trivial. Even drone gunships have trouble hitting targets in the air. This class is also the most mobile and so there's nothing stopping a wing diver player from simply hovering 500 meters away from the enemy while constantly bombarding them with plasma launcher fire. Notable weapons Short-Range: Rapid fire lasers or sweeping beams. They tend to have high capacity and require a small sum of energy to reload. *Rapier Series- Rapid fire energy machine gun. Its short range makes it seem as if it's a shotgun but we all know shotguns don't make laser light shows. *Laser Lance series- Totally worthless. Fires a pin prick laser that is slow to fire but does high damage. Mid-Rg Lasers: Yes I know they meant Mid-range lasers but these are mostly useless though to be fair I find its hard to get pickups for these weapons. *LARG-V series- WORTHLESS, fires lasers in a V pattern... because you like to shoot targets that are on the periphery of your screen and not the ones charging straight at you! Mid-Rg Electroshock: Electricity weapons arc to the target and can hit multiple targets. *Idunn Series- Straight forward rapid lightning bolt shooters. Consumes a lot of energy to reload. *Grom Series- Extremely powerful. Does as much damage as a high end rocket launcher but is rapid fire and pierces targets. Has a high energy cost to reload but it takes more time than other weapons to reload so energy is not drained quickly. *Particle Cannons: Assault Rifles that have no ammo capacity and drain Jet pack energy every time they're fired. Drain is small but damage is pathetic. *Ixion series- Shoots energy balls at the enemy. Low damage, high rate of fire. Later versions shoot multiple balls at once. Sniper Weapons: Long range weapons that either shoot lasers or lightning. Lightning sniper weapons may claim to have a high accuracy but they tend to swerve because they're electricity. Just like other weapons in the electroshock tree, electric weapons can arc to hit multiple targets *Thunder sniper series- Fires lightning at long range. Though one wonders why it's called thunder sniper when its not making noise but rather electricity. *LRSL series- Crappy sustained laser beam weapons. Have poor range for a sniper rifle and drains energy faster than their stats would indicate. Ranged Weapons: When the wing diver wants things blown up! *Plasma Launcher series- Fires balls of explosive energy. Homing Weapons: It's like the ranger missile weapon tree, only most of these weapons are low damage. At least you don't have to worry to much about reloading. *Mirage series: Mirage shoots homing beams of light. Later versions become capable of locking on to multiple targets. Special Weapons: Most of these are just funky weapons with odd effects. Most of them are coincidentally quite useless. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Air Raider (RTFY): The Air raider gets access to vehicle drops, remote bomb launcher and the ever deadly laser guidance kit. They have health equal to a ranger but not as much health growth as the ranger. They can also call in off map support to pummel an area in submission. Unique to this class is the credits mechanic of gameplay. This is an invisible number that is never really seen at anytime. Essentially, Air raider's vehicle drops and off map support attacks require credits to reload and thus don't reload until its credit requirements are met (meaning that support attacks cannot be reloaded normally). This is to prevent spamming or otherwise mass use of overpowered attacks. To gain credits, the Air raider (or his team) has to kill enemies. The air raider has access to Guidance equipment, Calling for support, support equipment, limpet guns, stationary weapons, special weapons. Controls: Same as Ranger. But listed below are controls for helicopter, tanks and other vehicles. There are also relisted in the sections that explain what the vehicles are. REMEMBER back button is used to get in your vehicle. Helicopter Controls: Left trigger to power rotor and increase altitude. Right trigger to fire machine guns (or laser guns) and Right bumper to fire missiles. The left control stick controls the orientation of the helicopter (i.e leaning forward, leaning backward, level to ground etc). Right control stick controls the helicopters facing and allows it turn in the direction the Right control stick is tilted. For helicopters it's hard to control the speed and there's no indicator at all. Try to be patient and avoid holding the left trigger for too long or else you'll end up flying to high and thus unable to strafe ground targets. Tank\ground vehicle Controls: Pressing the right trigger fires the cannon. Pressing right bumper will fire the secondary weapon (if any). The left stick controls the chassis of the tank\vehicle (i.e the treads) and all movement is relative to the direction of the treads (No halo style driving here). The right stick controls the orientation of the turret. Controls like these, while awkward, give you the tank driver more control and the ability to strafe targets but it comes with the responsible of remembering what direction the treads are facing. Power suit (also proteus) Controls: Pressing A will result in the mech jumping in the direction the legs were oriented. The right stick controls the movement of the legs while the right stick controls the orientation of the torso. Again, this is to allow strafing of enemy targets (though with the slow speed of the mechs, I highly doubt anyone will do that. Right trigger fires primary weapons, secondary weapons are fired by pressing right bumper. Cons (in general): The Air raider can be one of the wimpiest classes to play as. The only methods they have to attack that doesn't suck up credits are deployables (turrets, attack drones), and his rather wimpy limpet bomb launcher. This naturally means that the Air Raider can only blow himself up when he gets bitten to free himself (see section 2 on gameplay mechanics for more information on bites and getting bitten). In a bit of common sense, the laser guide kit is not useful in single player unless it's the laser guide kit for an off map support attack. If you thought playing the wing diver was tough on conservation just wait till you play this class. Accidentally wasted that tank you just called in? DEAD! Didn't bring the appropriate vehicle for the job? DEAD! Mission takes place in a position that prevents off-map support (i.e a tunnel or a scripted event prevents reinforcement)? DEAD (unless you are really good with limpet guns)! Vehicle guns cannot be reloaded so once your tank is out of rounds you'll just have to ditch it and call in another one. The limpet gun is terrible at actually killing things and its unknown if this class is capable of going to the toilet without third party assistance. Needless to say, its hard to survive and thus improve this character without a second player. Pros: This class is the only one that can make use of the Fencer's ridiculously overpowered missile arsenal. The big giant war machines of the Alien's won't look so deadly when you're personally guiding in laser guided leviathan class missiles on to them. The leviathan class missile is strong enough to completely destroy everything on the normal difficulty (the standard version does 4000 damage!). There is no boss (except the final due to scripting), no creature, no fool capable of withstanding a successful leviathan class missile hit (aside from shield bearers, but that's only if you hit the shield... and even then the SPLASH radius of the leviathan missile sometimes goes through the shield!). In addition, there's nothing cooler than being the driver of building-sized tanks (called the titan) that can have its turrets operated by other players and fires a massive round that decimates the enemy. Giant building-sized tank not good enough for you? How about an EVEN BIGGER GIANT MECH that has side turrets that can be operated by other players, over 20k in Hp and can fire missiles out of its stomach!? The Air Raider can also heal others and can even call in an ambulance to act as an APC and as mobile healing center (medical supplies are limited though). Remember that Rangers can also ride as pilot in vehicles that Air Raiders call down. Nothing says EDF than a multi-tank assault on alien nests. Notable Weapons Guidance Equipment: This is the stuff you use to help other players fire their lock-on missiles. The players must be within a certain radius of you to be able to lock on. This lists as the guidance equipment range. *Laser Guide kit - This guidance system has near infinite range and can call in missile attacks at ridiculous range and precision. I am going to assume you're playing on single player though and as such this weapon is useless. Laser guide kits for off map support come with the off map support and thus its pointless to use this. Keep in mind that just because a missile has locked on to the laser point doesn't mean you should turn off the laser. Missiles and airstrikes will require sustained laser designation until the missile/airstrike hits. *Guide Beacon gun - Shoots a beacon that does the same thing the Laser guide kit does. But it usually requires you to be very accurate or otherwise close. Use the laser guide kit instead if you are playing co-op. Calling for Support: Calls in artillery, aircraft and missiles to strike a location. This varies wildly and there's no brand names here. Just remember that some are called in via grenade while others are called in using laser guide kits provided with the support. Support Equipment: Stuff that is used for healing people but is limited and can't be reloaded. No brand names here (worth mentioning anyway) and you really shouldn't need these unless your buddies suck at this game. In single player these are doubly useless because you're going to need weapons to kill enemies and healing doesn't help kill enemies. Limpet guns: Shoots bombs that are detonated using the Left bumper/zoom button. The number one reason why playing Air raider will usually result in you blowing yourself up because you got bitten. Also note that detonating any amount of bombs will result in the gun reloading so try to shoot as many bombs as possible before detonating. Also do note that these bombs tend to have infinite range. There does appear to be some inaccuracy at a long range however. *Limpet Gun Series- HORRIBLE GUN that does terrible damage and poor capacity. Later versions do more damage but simply not enough to remain competitive for the difficulty it is found on. *Limpet Splendor series- Excellent (by comparison) guns that shoot bombs that detonate into shrapnel. Perhaps the only limpet gun that won't kill you when you get bitten by an Ant. *Limpet Sniper series- Excellent range and firepower. Comes with a large blast radius. Perfect for killing the bugs or planning that really elaborate suicide/accident case when the bugs inevitably grab you. Stationary Weapons: Traps, bombs and drones? Okay seriously, rolling bomb drones are not stationary! That mishap in translation aside, the stationary weapons are the unique stuff for the Air raider. You'll find turrets, mines and explosive suicide drones here. *-er suffix series- Automated drones that head in the direction you throw them and explode on detection of an enemy. Tends to be useless half the time. Has names like roller and patroller. *Y series- Land mines that explode when the enemy comes near. Comes in anti-aircraft mines and anti-alien versions. *ZE Series- Turrets that shoot things but usually shoots the air and makes the user angry with frustration. Has high reload times and limited ammo. Deploy using the fire button (right trigger) and then activate using the zoom button (left bumper). Special Weapons: Unique toys that are usually worthless. Candidates include the decoy launcher (one of which was a preorder bonus) and stupid deployables that do practically nothing aside from making the bugs hesitate a moment before killing you. *Bunker series- Generates a forcefield wall that stop the bugs until its eventually overrun and you get the mission failed screen and a magnificent view of your ragdolled corpse. Don't use these because bugs just love swarming AROUND you and you don't want to give them more incentive to do that... do you? Can be useful on missions that involve only elite enemies. *Wire series- Shoots out razor wires that do little damage to aliens passing through it. Don't you just love this kind of weapon. It's like that weapon slot you just dedicated to this was used so superbly and efficiently! Though that's just the original normal or easy difficulty versions. The variants fire webs that hit like a truck and can cause entire formations of gunships to come crashing down. The trick is that the gun fire out long ranged web lines (like the spider enemies do) and if you decide to roll, the webs roll with you. Thus if you roll repeatedly after firing, you can raise the damage done substantially. While these series of guns is more likely to kill thieves than catch them like flies, it doesn't change the fact that these are deceptively powerful. The only downside tends to be a one shot ammo clip and high reload times. *Decoy Launcher - Fires out a human like decoy. Great novelty... at least until you find out that the balloon can take a very small amount of abuse before popping. Still somewhat useful against the robots but generally useless due to high reload times. Later variants can take more abuse and last longer. You can totally make enemies shot each other with this, though I'm not sure if enemies even take friendly fire damage. Vehicles: OH YEAH! Here comes the good stuff for the Air raider. Comes in subcategories Tank, Ground Vehicles, Helicopters and Power suits. Just remember that you need to press the back button to enter vehicles. Do note however that the titan, brute and proteus series have their call-in half reloaded, as in you cannot start a mission by calling them in immediately. I assume this is to prevent cheese and I-win strategies. All other vehicles types regardless of power are full-reloaded at the start of a mission. So you can drive around in a lv~90 gigantus, but the game says screw you if you want a lv~12 titan at the start of a mission... huh? Remember that all vehicle call-ins are only reloaded when enemies are killed. Tanks- Metal Boxes that shoot cannons at things to make them dead or deader. *Gigantus Series- your standard main battle tank. Rather poor ammo capacity but credit cost is also low. *Titan Series- The giant tank that will end all wars. Main gun tends to do damage in the thousands. Becareful not to engage targets too close unless you want to blow up the titan tank with its own weapons. Has side turrets for other players to take advantage of. Ground Vehicles: Utility vehicles for when the situation calls for something unique *Caravan Series- APC that contains a medical center to heal people. Does not revive the dead. Later versions have more medical supplies to do more healing. *Self propelled Rocket series- Mobile missile launcher that fires homing missiles that can hit 10 targets at a time. Tends to have only 50 missiles in stock and so tends to run out of ammunition. Later versions get more firepower. *SDL series- The EDF series iconic hover bike... except its got wheels this time. It's the ralph wiggam of this series. Unless you like being in auto related accidents and explosions because you're piece of crap SDL just wrapped itself around a tree again don't use these. Marginally useful for getting across the battlefield. Has a transport seat for another player. Helicopters: Those flying machines that those youngsters use. Piloting a helicopter is often difficult. You can have quite the laugh trying to figure out the sober helicopter pilots from the drunk helicopter pilots in EDF 2025. That said, helicopters have excellent mobility and firepower. Left trigger is to lift the helicopter and right trigger and right bumper are to fire primary and secondary weapons respectively. The left analog stick controls the orientation of the helicopter while the right stick controls the direction of the helicopter. *Bazelart series- The stand machine gun and missile helicopter. Later versions get better machine guns and better missiles *Nereid Series- Now I'm not sure about you, but it took me 10 hours just to get one of these things. A lv 36 model to be exact. The good news about these copters is that they're fast, easy to manuever, have low lift-off times and have auto-targeting guns in addition to explosive weapons. The downside is that the autoguns have low ammo and the explosives are not auto-targeting and tend to be dumbfire. They've got more health than Bazelart series so that's a plus. *Brute Series- A helicopter that is meant for teamplay. Features guns mounted on the sides that other players can man. Unlike the proteus (see below) this is mostly useless unless you have friends. Since unlike the proteus, the brute doesn't have that much health and thus turret hopping isn't very effective. Power Suits: The giant mechs that stomps things. Tends to be awkward to control. Pay careful attention to the direction of the legs and the direction of the torso. The left stick controls the legs while the right stick controls the torso. Pressing A will result in a jump. Some suits can also use their jetpack to glide for a short period of time *Vegalta series- Carries a multitude of weapons. The preorder gold vegalta comes with flame throwers, how COOL is that? *Proteus series- the giant mech that requires 4 players to fully utilize. The pilot steers the mech while the other players operate the guns on it. Has massive amounts of Hp and impressive firepower. Still useful even without friends since you can always get out of the drivers seat and run over to the turrets. The extremely high Hp will ensure the proteus can survive a ridiculous amount of time even with a crew of one. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Fencer: The fencer is a power suit soldier with big guns and heavy armor. The Fencer wields two guns at a time (meaning they carry 2 sets of 2 weapons) with the majority of his guns having secondary options such as boost dash, boost jump and zoom scope. They are the brute force class in this game and the majority of their weapons have poor range capabilities. Unique to the Fencer are series of artilery weapons as well as recoil, which causes your cursor to fly around the screen. The fencer can carry CC strikers, CC piercers, Shields, Automatic Artillery, Artillery and missile launchers Controls: Left trigger and right trigger to fire/use the weapon assigned to the left and right hand respectively. Left bumper and right bumper to use the secondary function of the left and right hand respectively. Y button to swap weapon sets and A button to do a light hop. X to reload weapon and left stick to move and right stick to aim. Cons (in general): This class is the slowest of all classes. Without the use of the secondary function of most weapons a fencer pilot will have a hell of a time getting to the battlefield. Their slow speed can be mitigated by using the secondary function of certain weapons but this essentially means that as a fencer pilot you are taking guns simply because you need them to make the class playable. A lot of Fencer weapons are practically useless either because their ammo capacity is low, their reload times are high, they cause involuntary movement, they have high recoil, they're too short range or just plain worthless (or a combination of the aforementioned). The fencer has entire weapons trees that are worthless in single player and are generally worthless period. To add insult to injury, most fencer missile launcher requires a air raider to make them work. Pros: That said this CLASS IS AWESOME! There are several weapons that the fencer can get that are easily found and well more than make up for the weapons that are useless. Light mortar series can annihilate everything period and dual wielding Gatling guns are great for crowd control. The fencer gets access to the mighty hammer and force blade. The hammer can smash entire swarms of enemies and force blade can shoot down gunships and does the same job as the hammer (although not with as much wide spread damage). The leviathan missile can one shot the toughest enemies in the game (provided player two is using the laser guide kit) and javelin series of weapons can beat inferno level enemies single handedly. The fencer is a class that requires the player to carefully consider your loadout and to pick weapons that best fit situation. Weapons can be awkward to use but its pays off very well to learn how to use them. Also note the Dash Cancel exploit. Notable Weapons CC strikers: Close range crowd control weapons. DEADLY but some can be worthless. Keep in mind these are for swarm type enemies. Using these on the more elite enemies will probably get you killed. Secondary functions of these weapons is a speed boosting dash in any direction you choose. *Vibro hammer series- excellent anti-ground melee weapons. When fully charged, the hammer slams the ground and creates a forward shockwave that decimates everything in its path. Pierces enemies *Force blade series- Sword that when charged lets out of wave of energy that damages anything caught in it. Acts a powerful anti-air weapon and also a good anti-ground weapon. *Roller series- Useless. Same as hammer but you move with the shockwave. This means you can get yourself locked in a wave of enemies and then subsequently get killed because this weapon series sucks. CC piercers: Close range weapons that shoot out piercing pressure shots. Mostly useless as their range is lower than CC strikers. Does more damage than the CC strikers and fire more often. Use these if you want to kill elite enemies at close range. Secondary function is the same as CC strikers. *Spear series- Shoots a tiny spear that does massive damage at very close range. Not too useful but can be deadly if used right. Flash spears can attack continuously while blast spears do more damage but have finite combos *Jack Hammer- A fist that pounds your enemies at close range. Rapid fire, high damage. *Driver series- The same as jack hammer. Shields: All these are mostly useless without extensive practice. Essentially they are shields that are carried in one hand and can be used to block attacks (usually ineffectually) or reflect them. Reflecting or blocking drains ammo (reflect drains 20 ammo or so, block drains based on damage absorbed). The speed boost dash offered by the CC weapons allows you to dodge attacks so why would you want to take damage? This class is not much stronger than other classes in terms of Hp. 250hp for a fencer is the same as 250 hp for a wing diver. All it takes is more armor pickup and you can have a class that move faster than a fencer but doesn't need a stupid shield to defend itself from attacks. That said, the shield can be useful but only if you want to dedicate time to learning enemy patterns and using the reflect function of the shield. Some attacks from elite enemies hit near instantaneously though and of course being swarmed by bugs provides few opportunities for survival, so being mobile is still a better defense than relying on a shield. If you want to impress friends, there's no better way than reflecting a large plasma blast right into the enemy's face. And if you want to be laughed out of the room, simply fail to reflect the plasma blast. Of course there's the dash cancel exploit you can abuse using shields. Automatic Artillery- Rapid fire weapons that are meant to hit enemies from 100m or farther. Don't get too excited, they're no where near as long ranged as the ranger's rocket launchers. Secondary function is a boosted jump allowing you to get to high ground and jump over obstacles. * Hand Gatling series- Oh yeah baby these are the rapid fire killing machines you've dreamed of dual wielding. They do more damage than the ranger's assault rifles and have higher capacity (and his assault rifles are the best in its field) but have high reload times (usually 4 or more seconds). They cause low enough recoil that two Gatling guns can be fired at the same time and you can still aim. Short delay before firing. * Cannon series- Shoots powerful rounds that do high damage. Have range of over 200m but a small ammo capacity (less than 20 shots on average) and the same reload time as hand gatlings. Essentially this class's sniper type weapon. Out classed by the cannon non-automatic artillery series, but remember that this series still allows you to boost jump *Flame revolver series- USELESS. Firing one gun will cause enough recoil that you can barely aim. Firing two at once will quickly result in you looking at the sky hoping that some higher being will give you a better weapon. Poor range, CRAP damage, and long delay times before firing makes this weapon useless incarnate. Why do video games have such terrible flame throwers? Artillery: These are big guns that leave entire crowds dead at long range. Useful for taking out elites and useful for crowd control. They do not however have useful secondary functions. Some might have zoom though. *Cannon series- Piercing sniper weapons. Massive damage. Essentially the same as the Automatic artillery cannon series but does not provide boost jumping. Most come with zoom function. *Javelin series- Shoots javelins at high volumes and high rate of fire. Tends to reload quickly. Early versions have drawbacks but later versions such as the javelin storm can utterly destroy everything! Fires at awkward angles that simulate a parabolic arc. This can be abused by looking at the ground to cause the javelins to shoot straight forward. *Mortar Series- Fires long range mortars that explode and do high damage. Use these to take out elite enemies from afar. Light versions have high capacity and rate of fire. Heavy versions have less capacity and rate of fire but do more damage. Most come with zoom function. Missile Launchers: Fire long range missiles... if you're lucky enough to get a missile launcher that doesn't need a guide kit. Only the ones with laser guide kits are worth using. The others tend to do too little damage and have too high a reload time to be useful. *Leviathan Series- Massive damage. Long lock-on time and massive blast radius. The air raider using the laser guide kit had better not be screwing around when one of these are the air! *Arm Hound series- Above average lock on time (0.5 seconds on average when good missile launchers have 0.1) great homing capability and low damage. Reload time is usually a deal breaker. Missiles do have blast radius. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- ****Section 2 game mechanics**** (BTIO) *This section explains basic ideas on how to play the game. This a boring section and you can probably learn how to play the game faster by simply playing it* Before you begin gameplay, pick a storage device and do the obvious stuff you need to do so that the game will auto-save in the slot you picked. This should include signing in to an xbox live account (online or offline it does not matter) as well as picking a name for your save slot. Saving is automatically done and there is no possible chance to turn off auto- save. The game saves after every mission completed or failed or when you return to the title screen. Take a look at the equipment menu and from there you can pick your class and what weapons (or vehicles if you choose air raider) they'll have access to. When you look at a weapon you'll see that it has ROF meaning rate of fire, a capacity (denoting the amount of times you can fire it) and the damage it does. Other effects might be listed but they are labeled appropriately. Here are some of the things you might see on a weapon description: Homing capability: The ability of the missile to lock on to the target. The closer to S it is the more homing it is and the better it turns. Blast radius: Denotes that the damage does damage to all things within the radius of the explosion. Higher is good but too high means you're probably going to kill yourself with this weapon. Reload time: The time it takes to reload weapons. Guns tend not to run on magic Energy Cost: Applies only to wing divers and it denotes the cost of energy it takes for them to reload the gun. Keep in mind that the entire clip is discarded when reloading so reloading one bullet out of 20 costs the same amount as reloading 20 bullets of 20. The rate of energy drain is determined by charge time Charge time: Reload time but for wing divers. I bet humanity must be unified at this point because they have free energy and a common enemy. No wonder the cities look so utopian! Duration: Some items only last a short amount of time. Healing stations and deployables have a set amount of time they can last. Range: The minimum range at which the gun can fire and hit things at. Anything over 1000m tends to have infinite range for as far as gameplay goes. 700m is enough to hit atmospheric targets from far away Durability: Vehicles and deployables can be blown up. Durability denotes the amount of damage they can take. Essentially it's the same as the health that you would have but the object's health instead Lock-on: The amount of targets that the missile launcher can lock on to. Keep in mind that its one missile per target so you can't fire 6 missiles at the same target unless the missile launcher specifically states that is the case. Lock-on time: the time it takes for them missile launcher to realize it can shoot things. You generally cannot fire a missile launcher without a target. *These are just some of the things you will see in the weapon description. There are more but most of them are fairly self-explanatory* Pick a loadout and get ready to fight some aliens and hopefully win. Remember to read the description of the weapon carefully in order to determine if it's useful. Feel free to experiment as failing a mission has no penalties associated with aside from forcing you to play that level again successfully in order to progress. As soon as you start the game you'll notice your health bar, your weapon and its ammunition and the radar. Health: The amount of Hp you have. If it goes to zero you are downed and require rescue from another human player. Since I am assuming you are playing single player, its game over if your health drops to zero at any point. Note that there is no damage reduction so the damage listed by the gun you equipped will go 100% to you (assuming you don't have some effect that reduces damage active... but those are generally useless) so be careful with weapons like the Air tortoise or the mortar because they do so much damage that they will kill you in one hit with your low starting Hp. Radar: Red dots are enemies, blue dots are friendly soldiers, white dots are stupid civilians and green dots are pick ups. Yellow dots denote empty vehicles. Green circles with letters denote other human players (A is for air raider, F is for fencer, R is for ranger, W is for wing diver). The radar detects things within 100m so if your target is within the radar you're probably going to get shot at by it. *these are the elements of the screen you should be aware of. There's no explanation about ammo because if you don't know what ammunition is then clearly this guide will not help you* Go out and start killing the aliens. There are several attacks to look out for. Alien explosive attacks will send you flying. Alien machine gun attacks will slow you down and do heavy damage. Web attacks from basic spiders will hurt you and slow you down. Alien ants can shoot acid at you (they will not do this on the first stage) that hurts you. There are two special instances that can occur that may confuse new players. *Getting bitten* (YUIL) Ants can grab players with their mighty jaws and beat you up severely. After a while the ant will throw you but on high difficulties you'll probably be dead before that happens. To escape from the ant grab attack you need to fire a weapon and kill the ant. Just keep hammering the weapon fire buttons (OR HOLD THEM DOWN) and the weapon you have chosen to use will fire and hit the ant in the face. Rapid fire close range weapons like the assault rifle are ideal for killing the ant quickly and escaping with minimum damage. Weapons like the rocket launcher that do splash damage are not ideal for rescuing yourself from an ant grab because you will kill yourself and confuse the forensics team as to whether or not your death was an accident or intentional suicide. Spare the forensics team the trouble and use a non-explosive weapon (air raiders can use splendor series weapons) to save yourself. The ant can randomly decide to go into a frenzy and start slamming you into objects or shaking you violently doing massive damage in the process. In addition you can't fire your weapons while this happening. Note that damaging the ant will prevent it from shaking you violently and thus repeatedly damaging the ant can prevent the ant from doing damage to you. *Getting dragged and webbed* (QRKY) The advanced spiders, the Retarius come pre-spawned on maps and have setup a web nest between buildings. The buildings are indestructible but the webs are destroyed with enough firepower. Ideally you should kill the Retarius before you break the web otherwise the Retarius can become harder to kill since it will fall to the ground (being low to ground makes them harder to spot). The Retarius constantly shoots out web lines that are the same as the basic spider but different in that if it hits the web line will start flashing red and you will be dragged towards the Retarius. Killing the Retarius is the only way to stop the dragging and this effect can easily kill you because you lose the ability to move freely. Needless to say, you can get caught in the web nest that the Retarius sits on. The only way to escape is to destroy the net. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- The above two mechanics are the only non-self explanatory concepts in the game. Here the other concepts that can easily be figured out in gameplay but are worth mentioning. Buildings: They are annoying and give the bugs plenty of hiding space and can block deployment of the larger vehicles. All buildings have a set amount of explosive damage they can take before they collapse. Unlike previous games, buildings now take more than a single rocket to blow up. Civilians: Annoying little people that get in the way and are invulnerable and disappear after a short while. It is recommended to avoid stampedes of civilians as their stupid invulnerable bodies often get in the way of explosives causing friendly fire incidents. Upgrading your character: Armor pickups (the red boxes) increase the max Hp of your character. The green boxes are weapon pickups which give you weapons based on the level and difficulty you are on. Higher levels and higher difficulties give you better weapons overall. Try to end missions after you have picked up all upgrading powerups. Note that you must finish a mission to get the upgrades so dying will result in the loss of all accumulated upgrades. Upgrades are applied after a mission meaning you get the weapons and armor boost after a successful mission. Upgrades only apply to the class you are using thus rangers cannot get weapons or armor for other classes. EDF soldiers: These guys will help you kill the bugs and are generally equipped with assault rifles. They are weak but much more durable then they were in previous games. Also unlike in EDF 2017, EDF soldiers do not die instantly when friendly fires occurs, instead it takes sustained or very high damage friendly fire to kill them. Most of them are rangers but some can be wing divers and fencers. Some of them may feature red triangles over their head. Approaching the soldiers with the red triangles will result in the red triangle disappearing the soldier and his team following you for the rest of the mission. This is both a blessing and a curse as the EDF soldiers are good decoys but they also tend to get in the
way randomly and thus cause friendly fire incidents. I will refer to EDF 
soldiers who can join up with you as 'capturable'

****Section 3 the missions**** (9TCF)

*In this section I will discuss the weapons that should be brought to 
tackle the level and what types of enemies you will be fighting (and how 
many waves of them there are) Note: when I write to use assault rifles I 
mean any rapid fire crowd control weapon. When I say missile launcher I 
mean any homing weapon. Lastly when I say rocket launcher I mean any heavy 
damage weapon like cannons, mortars etc.*

*IN ADDITION SPOILERS AHOY!*

Mission 1: Black ants have flooded the streets. These Ants don't use their 
acid attack and focus only on melee. Kill them using whatever weapons you 
want. You will fight 3 waves of black ants. Bring an assault rifle or 
explosive weapon and use whatever class you feel like. This mission is 
easy because the ants don't use range attacks and mostly focus on 
civilians. Its possible to beat this mission on harder difficulties using 
weak equipment in order to get powerful weapons early. A squad of EDF 
soldiers are present on the map but they will not fall under your command. 

Mission 2: You start with a wave of black ants and two capturable EDF 
squads right in front of you. These black ants will shoot acid at you (and 
from now on they will do so as their main attack) so be careful not to get 
too heavily splashed. Another wave of black ants will pop up after you're 
done killing the initial wave. Kill the second wave and the mission is 
over.

Mission 3: Once again a wave of black ants is right in front of you. This 
time only one squad of EDF soldiers is present to help you and the squad 
is not initially capturable (they can be captured after the first wave of 
ants is killed). After you've killed this wave of black ants, another wave 
will appear in another location. After killing this wave however, two 
separate waves of black ants will appear. Wing divers will assist you for 
this dual wave of ants. You will fight 4 waves of ants in total this 
mission. Assault rifles and explosives are recommended.

Mission 4: The new enemy Retarius is introduced. These bastards reside in 
a web that gives them a high vantage point over the battle field. Getting 
caught in the web hurts you and the Retarius will shoot webs that upon 
hitting you will flash red and begin dragging you into the web. Destroying 
the web is the only method to escape and killing the Retarius is the only 
way to get lose of the red flashing webs. There are seven Retarius's in 
this level. Kill them all and the mission is over. Assault Rifles and 
explosives are recommended. There are EDF soldiers present but most of 
them are useless against the Retarius. Note if camera effects is enabled, 
the camera will zoom in on the first Retarius and totally screw you over 
if you are aiming or trying to do something

Mission 5: Seven Retarius's with black ants guarding 4 of them. Kill them 
all. Assault rifle and explosive weapons recommended. You start with a 
capturable EDF squad in front of you and several other EDF soldiers are 
trapped in the Retarius webs and can be rescued before they die.
Mission 6: Narrow linear hallways with bugs swarming in them. You will 
encounter spiders on this mission, they shoot webs and do not bite. The 
webs do much higher damage than acid does. Spiders travese only by jumping, 
they cannot walk. Assault rifle and explosive weapons recommended. Air 
raiders cannot call for support and missile launchers are worthless here 
due to low ceiling. 3 waves of sequential ants (fighting to a cavern like 
room) followed by a sudden dual wave composed of basic spiders. The dual 
wave will come from  two directions with each wave coming from a separate 
entrance to the cavern. Thus the spiders are not as well coordinated in 
attacking as they otherwise would be.

Mission 7: Air raiders get introduced as EDF NPCs according to the 
description. Also that's a bald face lie since there are no Air raiders in 
this mission. All EDF soldiers are rangers in this mission. Fight and kill 
two waves of spiders. Assault rifle and explosives are blah blah blah

Mission 8: Four waves of spiders. One regular wave followed by dual wave 
followed by a regular wave. Kill all waves to end the level. You really 
shouldn't have gotten this far without a weapon plan for crowd control 
already. If for some reason you haven't figured out that assault rifle 
like weapons + explosive weapons for taking out buildings and tight 
clusters are good then I'm saying it one last time!

Mission 9 : Retarius and Black ant combo. However half way through the 
mission, spiders will being to rise from the eastern sea. Avoid killing 
enemies why they are in the sea since that prevents you from getting items. 
After the first wave of spiders a second dual wave consisting of spiders 
and ants coming from eastern sea will arrive. Bring a long-range homing 
weapon since Retarius's are far away and obscured by trees. Bringing a 
crowd control weapon goes without saying.

Mission 10: A Black ant wave starts right in front of you. After that wave 
is inevitably annihilated you have 2 sequential waves of black ants to 
deal with. After that the mothership shows up with its genocide gun 
(that's what its called in-game) and shoots off a round and fly saucers 
called 'carriers' will come in and start dropping off bugs. The carrier 
and mothership are invulnerable don't bother trying to kill them. Kill all 
the bugs and gunships will show up. Gunships are flying attack drones that 
fire a series of red pew pew beams that hurt you if you are caught in it. 
They're fairly accurate and tend to do quite some damage. Be sure to 
roll/boost in order to dodge their attacks. Missile launchers are good but 
assault rifles work on the gunships too because they like to fly close 
before they attack. The fencer's force blades make a mockery of the 
gunships. Kill all enemies and the mission is over. Missile launchers and 
assault rifles are recommended.

Mission 11: You fight three waves of gunships sequentially. Woot. Bring a 
missile launcher and an assault rifle. 

Mission 12: You fight 3 waves of sequential and progressively larger black 
ant waves. The black ants are para dropped by carriers that appear to be 
indestructible and fly across the battlefield. This leaves the ants 
scattered and dispersed. However the third wave is much larger and 
involves more carriers and the carriers intersect each other. Bring a 
crowd control weapon.

Mission 13: You fight 3 carriers dropping black ants. This is the first 
time you fight carriers properly and so I give a full description of the 
carriers. Carriers are slow moving mobile spawn points, dropping bugs and 
sometimes elite enemies. They have a small but decent amount of health and 
they can be harmed by shooting them in the pink glowing spot when the 
hatch is open. Firing directly at the spawn hole is unadvised as you might 
kill the spawning ants and not the carrier. Unlike previous series, the 
carrier will violently explode when killed (and not power down before 
exploding) and this explosion will be quite bright. The explosion does not 
kill and the falling carrier does not appear to hurt anyone or anything. 
Pay careful attention to the sound of the carrier dropping its payload 
(*my sincere condolences if you're a deaf gamer*). Kill the three carriers 
and any remaining ants and the mission is over. Assault rifles and high 
powered long range weapons are recommended.

Mission 14: A wave of hectors and gunships. Hectors are giant robots that 
carry either cannons or machine guns. The machine guns will fire a large 
spray of bullets that can lock you in place at close ranges and does 
massive damage. The cannons will fire red explosive balls that will send 
you flying in the air if you are caught in the blast. They go down with 
extended fire and explode violently on death. The explosion does no damage 
and the Hector cannot step on you. Hectors always drop powerups on death. 
You can tell if you are within range of a Hector if the red dot 
corresponding to the Hector is not on the outskirts of the radar. After 
the first wave of hectors and gunships are eliminated, a second wave of 
hectors will appear. Air strikes will be called in on the second wave. 
After the second wave is gone the mission is a success. High range and 
high powered weapons are recommended for the Hectors and assault rifles 
for the gunships.

Mission 15: You will fight spawn holes in this mission. Spawn holes are 
the same as carriers, they have no weapons and they exist only to spawn 
infinite hoards of enemies. The key difference however, is that spawn 
holes are close to the ground (do not spawn elite enemies) and are always 
vulnerable. Spawn holes are weaker than carriers because they do not have 
the advantage of being out of reach of short range weapons. You can kill a 
spawn hole with any weapon that does damage. You will fight 4 spawn holes 
sequentially in this mission, the last one spawns spiders instead of black 
ants. An assault rifle is recommended for this mission.

Mission 16: You fight the quadped siege fortress in this mission. The 
Quadped mech will be auto killed in this mission so you don't need to kill 
it yourself. The quadped siege fortress will start dropping Hectors 
shortly after the mission starts. Avoid being underneath the quadped 
fortress as its steps will damage you. After the deployment of hectors, 
the quadped fortress was start deplyoing drones. After that wave of drones 
are killed, the quadped will deploy a second wave a short while later. 
After that wave is dead, the quadped fortress will later start dropping 
hectors. Then the quadped will start dropping drones shortly before the 
quadped fortress is destroyed by a scripted air strike. Be careful though 
as the guns on the quadped fortress will activate at this point and start 
shooting lasers at everything. After the quadped is destroyed and all 
remaining enemies are dead the mission is over. Pick an assault rifle and 
a long range high damage weapon for this mission.

Mission 17: You start with two carriers deploying spiders. After the 
carriers are dispatched (destroyed) another two carriers will appear at a 
low attitude in the canyon and start dropping spiders. Destroying these 
and any remaining spiders will end the mission. Use an assault rifle and a 
high powered long range weapon like a rocket launcher.

Mission 18: A new enemy the artillery Hector will be introduced. You will 
fight this enemy exclusively for this mission. They're the same as 
regularly hectors but they carry purple plasma long range artilery round 
and fire at you from far away. They have no minimum range and have an easy 
time hitting you at close range because of the explosive nature of their 
artillery. Fight fire with fire and hit them with long range high powered 
weapons. Avoid attacking them with close range weapons. There are two 
waves of artillery Hectors in this mission. The artillery hectors will 
come from the sea in this mission and it's not particularly productive to 
wait for the artillery Hectors to reach land. Use a rocket launcher for 
this mission.

Mission 19: The new enemy shield bearer is introduced and NPC fencers will 
be introduced. They're not very deadly, and it only works if Hectors are 
hiding under the shield. To destroy them, go under their shield and blow 
them up. Keep in mind they have a mobile mode and a deployed mode. The 
deployed mode has a bigger shield then the mobile mode. Attacking a 
deployed shield bearer will result in the shield bearer going into mobile 
mode and the shield receding somewhat. This means that if you are shooting 
a deployed shield bearer at the right distance, you can end up hurting 
yourself when the shield recedes. There are two shield bearers on this 
mission at the start. Go under the shields and destroy them. The second 
one has Hectors hiding underneath the shield. Be careful however as an 
airstrike will be called in on the second shield bearer and this can kill 
you if you're caught in it. After the first two are destroyed, a third 
shield bearer will appear and it will be protected by two artillery 
hectors. Another airstrike will be pointlessly called on this third shield 
bearer so be aware of that. Kill them all and the mission is over. Use an 
assault rifle and high power weapon for this mission.

Mission 20: Two shield bearers guarded by black ant will be present at the 
start of this mission. In addition there are three ant holes present on 
the map. Despite the idiot scientists proposal that fencers are good at 
taking out shield bearers any class will work just as long as you have a 
good close range weapon. Elite ants will show up in this mission. They are 
the same as black ants but they are red and do more damage and use only 
bite attacks. Kill the shield bearers, the three ant holes and any 
remaining ants and them mission is over.

Mission 21: A tunnel mission so no support for Air raiders. Inside the 
first tunnel are flame thrower EDf soldiers and a bunch of ants. After 
that head into the first cavern where there are spiders waiting to be 
killed. After you killed the spiders there will be one dual wave of black 
ants and spiders sitting around in a separate cavern area. After those two 
waves are dead, a wave of red ants will appear in a cavern deep in the 
tunnels. A fencer unit will appear to help you with the wave of red ants 
but they are hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered. Kill the red ant wave 
and the mission is over.

Mission 22: Another tunnel mission so no support for Air raiders (i.e no 
tanks and airstrikes for you!). You start this mission at the bottom of a 
ditch and Black ants will start pouring in through the ground above. After 
a short while, spiders will then enter the fray. Kill all insects to end 
the mission. Crowd control weapons like assault rifles are recommended. 
Some of the insects may refuse to go into the ditch but you can climb out 
of the ditch using a path near the edges of the ditch to go find and kill 
them.

Mission 23: You start this mission surrounded by Hectors. Some of them 
wield artillery. Kill them all to end the mission. Use a high power long 
range weapon

Mission 24: The mission starts with drones and a mothership in the air 
with four carriers in front of you.  One carrier will drop spiders the 
rest drop ants. After a while into the mission the mothership floating 
above you will start bombarding the area with lasers and plasma. 

Mission 25: A spawn hole is guarded by spiders and several Retarius's. The 
spawn hole will pump out spiders. Destroy the spawn hole and all other 
enemies and the mission is over. Pick a long range weapon and an assault 
rifle.

Mission 26: A swarm of red ants will advance towards you as this mission 
starts. Once the red ants are dead a second swarm of red ants will pop up 
coming to you from over a hill. After that there is a triple wave of red 
ant trying to swarm you from three different directions. After this wave 
has been dealt with the mission is over. Any crowd control weapon will do.
Mission 27: Elite gunships, the red gunships appear in this mission. You 
will be fighting only red gunships and there will only be five of them. 
Red gunships are extraordinarily resilient.  They also do a lot of damage 
and move quite fast. Use a high powered long range weapon or a really 
powerful assault rifle if you are a wing diver or if the red gunships 
manage to close the distance.

Mission 28: This is an excellent mission for farming upgrades. The mission 
will start with a large wave of Hectors approaching. There will be a lot 
of capturable EDF squads here to help you so be sure to capture them so 
they can act as decoys for enemy fire. The EDF squads are quite well armed 
so they can handle the enemy if you use support them. Airstrikes will be 
called on the Hector wave and several Hectors will die from the air raid. 
After the first wave of Hectors is dead, four hectors will spawn and head 
towards you. There will be no airstrikes on this group of hectors. After 
they are dead a LARGE swarm of black and red ants will charge towards the 
center of the battlefield. After a short while, a LARGE swarm of drones 
will show up. Be sure to near other EDF soldiers at this point as the 
drones will kill you if you don't have decoys. Air support will redraw at 
this point so Air raiders are out of luck if they need vehicles or 
airstrikes. Four artillery Hectors will pop up and start bombarding the 
field. On the other side of the field four regular hectors will show up 
but these will get hit by an airstrike and take some damage. For those 
playing air raiders, air support will be re-established a few minutes 
after it was removed so don't worry if you can't call in a titan tank 
you'll be able to if you survive a few more minutes. Kill all enemies 
including the shield bearer (who is really pointless in this mission) to 
complete the mission. Be sure to pick up the ridiculous amount of power 
ups available in this level. A powerful long range weapon like the javelin 
storm is recommended for this mission and a short range crowd control 
weapon like the Grom SS is also recommended.

Mission 29: Tunnel mission, so no air support for air raiders. First wave 
is black ants. Second wave is also black ants. Third wave is black ants 
and the fourth wave is spiders! Fifth wave is black and red ants. Hurray! 
Crowd control weapons recommended and killing everything completes the 
mission. 

Mission 30: Tunnel mission. You start surrounded by black ants and spiders. 
Kill them all and the mission is over. The ants and spiders have multiple 
corridors to get to you so try and get to a corner and fight them from 
there. Close range weapons HEAVILY recommended

Mission 31: Tunnel mission and your first fight with Queen ants. Queen 
ants are Giant black ants. They don't appear to bite and they spit 'metric 
craptons' (tm) of acid. Head down the tunnel and rally with the capturable 
EDF squad. There is a wave of black ants. After that wave is dead further 
down the tunnel is a second wave of black ants and a few spiders in this 
wave. After the spiders and the ants are dead move down the tunnel and 
kill another wave of ants. After those ants are dead head down the tunnel 
and fight spiders. After fighting the spiders you will be informed the 
queen has been found and you should head down the tunnel and fight black 
ants on your way to the queen's den and the EDF squad waiting outside. 
After meeting up with the EDF squad, go and fight the Queen. The Queen 
spits a metric crapton of acid so shoot through the entrance to the 
queen's lair and don't walk in unless you like dying. In fact its not rare 
for the entrance to the queen's lair to be completely saturated with acid. 
Be extra careful as there are TWO queens present. Crowd control weapons 
are recommended and a rocket launcher for long range crowd control + queen 
killing. 

*From this point on the GAME GETS MUCH HARDER. BE SURE TO GET GOOD WEAPONS 
AND DON'T BE AFRAID TO REPEAT MISSIONS TO GET MORE WEAPONS AND ARMOR*

Mission 32: The mission starts with a mothership arming its genocide gun 
as well as several hectors with shield bearers being present (there is 
also a regular hector and black ant team sitting around near the edge of 
the map. The genocide gun is a big giant independence day like gun that 
shoots a laser that streaks across the battlefield leaving destruction and 
crapped pants in its wake. A long ranged weapon will easily take care of 
this menace. The mothership will start bombarding the area for a short 
while after its genocide gun is destroyed after which it will leave. If 
you do damage to the mothership by shooting the red flashing spot at its 
bottom the mothership will leave earlier. Otherwise just ignore the 
mothership, opting instead to shoot the genocide gun until it is destroyed 
and then going after the hectors and shield bearers. After a few of the 
hector and shield bearer squads are eliminated drones will arrive. Kill 
all remaining enemies and the mission is over. A long range high powered 
weapon like a rocket launcher is recommended and a powerful close range 
weapon to deal with hectors under shields.

Mission 33: Retarius, spiders and spider spawn holes. You've dealt with 
this before. Use a long range weapon and a good crowd control weapon.

Mission 34: Five carriers and six hectors (some have artillery) and drones 
are present on this map. Aside from the carriers there are no 
reinforcements on this map. This is a standard move out and kill 
everything on the map mission. No real strategy here. One of the carriers 
drop red ants the rest drops spiders. Remember that the Hectors and drones 
do not get replaced here so focus on killing them so they won't bother you 
ever again. Use an assault rifle and a rocket launcher for this mission. 

Mission 35: This mission starts with red ants and black ants and gunships 
coming straight at you. After this wave is killed. Another wave consisting 
mostly of black ants and red ants will show up but this wave also contains 
a queen ant and a few red gunships. Defeat this wave and this mission is 
over. Use a rocket launcher and an assault rifle. Note that most of the 
environment is pre-destroyed so there's few things to hide behind and 
plenty of space for the aliens to swarm you. If you are a wing diver you 
find high ground to jump to when things get out of hand but other classes 
will have to rely on their arsenal and durability to get out alive.

Mission 36: Two carriers, a mothership and several gunships and hectors 
will be present at the start of the missions. The carriers drop hectors! 
Blow up the mothership and the level is over but of course this means 
killing the genocide gun when its deployed and then hitting the flashing 
area on the bottom of the mothership until its blown up. The mothership is 
surprising weak but remember that few guns can hit high enough to kill the 
mothership. Bring a rocket launcher or something even better.

MIssion 37: There are several spawn holes, spider and black and red ants. 
Destroy everything. There are six spawn holes in total. The spawn holes 
are evenly split between the insects encountered so far. (i.e 2 holes 
spawn black ants, 2 holes spawn red ants and 2 holes spawn spiders). 
Standard search and kill. Use a crowd control weapon and explosives to get 
rid of annoying barriers. Wing divers can use the cranes present on the 
map to get potshots at the spawn holes. Other classes will have to deal 
the annoying cargo containers on the map blocking their shots.

Mission 38: 3 spawn holes and roughly six hectors will be present. with 
two spawn holes spawning spiders and the other spawning black ants. Kill 
the holes and the insects and the mission is over. Cake walk. Do what you 
did last mission.

Mission 39: A large swarm of black ants will be present on the map. After 
killing them, Hornets will show up. Hornets are flying bugs that attack by 
shooting their stingers. They're essentially the same as gunships but more 
annoying. You will fight two dual waves of hornets after the initial swarm 
of black ants are dead. Kill all the insects and the mission is over. 
Bring a good assault rifle and missile launcher.

Mission 40: There are five spawn holes and a modest amount of hornets and 
spiders present on the map. Standard search and kill. Some of the spawn 
holes spawn spiders others spawn hornets. Kill them all and the mission is 
won. Arm yourself with an assault rifle and explosives.

Mission 41: Two carriers that drop black ants are present. After these are 
destroyed a new type of saucer called earth eaters will show up and block 
the sky. Pay attention to the red flashing earth eaters as these deploy 
some form of new gunship. These new gunships will shoot lasers at you with 
high accuracy and no real opportunity to dodge. You can blow up the red 
earth eaters but it doesn't really do much. After the gun ships are down 
the blue earth eaters will pop out beam guns and shoot straight towards 
the ground. A short while after, giant ufo carriers called void ships will 
appear and start releasing bugs (ants and hornets). Do not attempt to 
destroy the carriers and simply avoid the blue plate guns. Kill the bugs 
and after all bugs are dead the mission is over.

Mission 42: Mission starts with regular gunships coming straight at you. 
After the drones are dead, the earth eater saucers will once again black 
out the sky. Once again the red earth eaters will deploy new gunships. 
Just kill all enemies aside from the red earth eaters to beat the mission.

Mission 43: The mission will start with the earth eater saucers dropping 4 
Deroy walkers. Deroy walkers are heavily armed with lasers and their legs 
are essentially turrets which fire at people approaching the walker. 
Lasers are hard to dodge and Deroy walkers thus should be engaged from far 
away. Fire at its center mass to kill a Deroy walker. After the 4 Deroy 
walkers are killed a fifth walker will be deployed. Kill that walker and 
the mission is over. Use of rocket launcher is heavily recommended.

Mission 44: You start with a new advanced carrier called the void ship 
popping up right in front of you. A capturable EDF squad is present and 
are straight ahead. The Void ship will open up and drop out black ants. 
Treat Void Ships the same way you'd treat carriers. Just remember that 
Void Ships have a larger weak point that is easier to shoot at from an 
angle but has higher health to take abuse. After you have killed the first 
void ship. Two more will warp in. After a short while these void ships 
will start dropping spiders. Destroy them the same way you did the last 
one. The new void ships will show up with one dropping red ants and the 
rest dropping spiders. Once again, kill these the same way you'd deal with 
carriers. Pay attention for the wub wub noise the void ship makes when it 
deploys units.

Mission 45: You start with two void ships already present with one right 
next to you. These void ships will drop blue coloured hectors essentially 
hectors which have slightly more Hp and carry different load out. Blue 
Hecotors appear to carry a special blue plasma cannon that appears to be a 
compromise between the heavy cannon and machine gun of the regular hector. 
It essentially fires large glowing blue balls at you that do a decent 
amount of damage but don't explode (and thus don't send you flying). This 
weapon is much weaker than the machinegun of the Hector (since it doesn't 
lock you in place with ridiculous DPS) but harder to dodge. After you've 
dealt with the new blue hectors and the void ships two new blue hectors 
will pop up near the edge of the map carrying a different shield loadout. 
This loadout includes a shield and the heavy cannon of a regular hector. 
The game suggests that you use help and engage them from the side but that 
doesn't really work because the other EDF soldiers are idiots and hectors 
tend to target you and thus face you anyway. Instead just shoot their 
heavy cannon arm until the hector explodes. Large enough explosives such 
as the heavy Mortar tends to leak through the shield anyway. After the two 
shield hectors are dead the mission is over. Use a very good rocket 
launcher for this mission.

Mission 46: This mission starts with 4 shield bearers guarded by insects. 
The shield bearers to the immediate right are guarded by spiders. The 
shield bearers directly ahead are guarded by red and black ants. Kill all 
enemies. The shield bearers will constantly be moving so be careful not to 
accidentally kill yourself by shooting the outer edges of the shield. The 
red ants and some spiders may leave cover of the shield to go attack you 
personally. After the first three shield bearers and their guardian bugs 
are dead. One more shield bearer guarded by black ants will appear and 
next the shield bearer on a nearby hill is a swarm of hornets. The swarm 
of hornets will do nothing until you approach them or kill one of them. 
The enemy has no spawn points this mission so take it easy and you should 
be fine. Take an assault rifle and a rocket launcher for this mission.

Mission 47: There will be a series of retarius nests and spiders and ants 
guarding these nests. In the center (or roughly the center) there is a 
large cluster of retarius nests positioned by the hills and are guarded by 
spiders and hornets. Part-way through the mission, the eater saucers will 
show up and black out the sky again but they don't do anything this time 
(the blue saucers may fire their guns but once again its at the ground and 
rarely in a threatening position). Kill all enemies to win. Bring a long 
range weapon and an assault rifle

Mission 48: The quadped fortress will be present on the map and will drop 
red ants and gunships. This is essentially the same as the last time you 
fought the quadped fortress except it will not be blown up at the end of 
the mission but are still expected to ignore it. The quadped fortress will 
drop red ants and then gunships sequentially. Just stay away from the 
quadped fortress and kill the ants and gunships from far way. Bring and 
assault rifle and a rocket launcher (or missile launcher). Eventually the 
quadped fortress will leave the map and command will inform you that 
civilians have been evacuated.

MIssion 49: you start in a canyon with a pair blue hectors (with shields) 
approaching you with one pair coming from the right and one pair coming 
from the left. There is quite a few ants present (but most of them are 
scattered) and an artillery hector backing up each pair of blue hectors. 
Fight the blue hectors by either leaving the canyon or shooting their 
exposed arms and legs with explosives until they die. You probably want to 
break the enemies to the right of you before turning around and killing 
the enemies on the left side of your starting point. Aside from that, 
there's no real strategy here other than kill things and kill them fast. 
Bring an assault rifle and rocket launcher.

Mission 50: There will be six spawn holes in this mission. There will two 
spawn holes spawning hornets, two spawn hole spawning spiders, and two 
spawn hole spawning red ants. Search and destroy. Leveling the city makes 
it much easier to get to the holes. Use an assault rifle and a rocket 
launcher.

Mission 51: Lots of regular gunships + red elite gunships and the new 
gunships that shoot lasers. Not much to say here other than just use an 
assault rifle to get low hanging gunships and a rocket launcher to kill 
those red gunships that take a lot of bullets to kill. Half-way through 
the mission the earth eater saucers will black out the sky which you 
should then just promptly ignore.

Mission 52: You will fight 3 humongous waves of spiders sequentially. The 
waves are triggered when half of the spiders of current wave is dead. 
Bring a really good crowd control weapon. After the second wave the earth 
eater saucers will come in and do the same thing they've been doing every 
other mission so far, look menacing and do nothing. You're response should 
be the same given in the previous missions, utter apathy to the presence 
of the earth eaters.

Mission 53: Oh great another blatant advertisement for air raiders and of 
course there are no Air raider NPCs on the map. Even NPCs don't want to 
Air raiders. After laughing at the mission description, you should see a 
void ship with a gunship guard right in front of you. This void ship drops 
black ants. After a short while a second and third void ship will appear 
with the third voidship being very close in proximity with your starting 
location. The Third voidship drops spiders while the second drops red ants. 
A short while after the second and third voidship appears, three MORE void 
ships will show up and these will start dropping the new gunships (the one 
that have continuous laser beams). Standard kill everything on the map but 
you generally want to be quick about it. Use a rocket launcher and an 
assault rifle or missile launcher

Mission 54: Introducing everyone's most hated enemy the king spider. It's 
the same as a regular spider but much much larger and shoots more webs 
that do high damage. The good news is that he's easy to snipe the bad news 
is the king spider is a mobile artillery platform that can shoot you from 
far away too. You start fighting a dual wave consisting of two waves of 
spiders led by a king spider. After that dual wave has been significantly 
trimmed down, a third wave consisting of spiders and a king spider will 
appear. Kill this wave and a dual wave of basic spiders will pop up, one 
far away while the other right next to the wave you just killed. 

Mission 55: You start with the earth eater saucers in the sky pumping out 
new gunships. You can blow up the earth eater saucers but this is 
essentially another survival mission. After a while the earth eater 
saucers will teleport out and get replaced by more earth eater saucers. 
The earth eater saucers will occasionally drop Deroy walkers as well as 
fire upon you using the turrets mounted on them. Some of the red earth 
eater saucers have open bellies. These ones do not drop reinforcements but 
instead serve as a powerhub for surrounding turrets. Blowing these up will 
clear the sky of earth eater saucers. Regardless, after a few minutes into 
the mission, HQ will call the battle off and the mission will be complete. 
Just try to survive until that happens and be sure to take occasional 
potshots at the earth eater saucers to suppress the turrets they've got 
firing at you. Rocket launcher and missile launcher are reccomended.

Mission 56: Breather mission. You start with 3 carriers dropping black 
ants. The last carriers are guarded by hectors but the hectors are in 
guard mode so they don't do anything until you approach them or shoot them 
which is hilarious because they're artillery hectors and so if they were 
active the mission would be much more frustrating. This is an easy mission 
and you shouldn't have too much trouble. Bring an assault rifle and a 
rocket launcher.

Mission 57: You start the mission fighting 3 waves of black ants 
sequentially... okay clearly something's up right? You haven't had it this 
easy since the missions in the single digits! Well after you've killed the 
3 waves of sequential black ants, you now have to fight dragons! Dragons 
are dive bomber aerial enemies. They attack by diving at you from the sky 
at about a 45 degree angle while shoot fireballs at you. They then crash 
into the ground before lifting off shortly after. For this reason an 
assault rifle is very good against the dragon whereas missile launchers 
which are good against the new gunships are not as great here. Also 
dragons may occasionally grab you and fly you around in an incredibly 
annoying manner kill them the same way you'd kill a black ant if it 
grabbed you. Two sequential waves of dragons will show up attacking in the 
manner just described. Strafing right while shooting tends to work well 
against the dragons at least until you hit a wall or something. Try not to 
level the city as the buildings do in fact help you against the dragons by 
blocking potential dive bomb routes. If you are a fencer, now is the time 
to break out the javelin weapons (or farm for some if you haven't gotten 
any). Use an assault rifle and a missile launcher but you should probably 
rely on the assault rifle. I seriously don't know why everyone (in-game) 
is so worried about the dragons, these things literally flew into my guns. 
Some of them died in such a way that they literally showered me with 
health pick-ups and armor. Regardless have fun, you're going to be seeing 
a lot of dragons from here on in.

Mission 58: Annoying mission. Swarms of dragons are nested in random areas 
of the map with each spawning when its predecessor is thinned. There's 
about 3 waves of dragons but the annoying part is dragons tend to get 
lodged in between buildings and the paths to travel to the next group is 
unnecessarily long. Couple this with constant whining from the other 
forces and you've got severe gameplay and story segregation (where 
gameplay does not matchup with story). Still dragons are relatively easy 
to take out even especially when they get scattered due to poor path 
finding. Use a missile launcher and an assault rifle but the assault rifle 
should generally be doing the most work. Air support will be lost part-way 
through the mission so air raiders will not get help.

Mission 59: You start overlooking a valley with two capturable EDF squads 
directly in front of you. There's a lot of dragons and about two Deroy 
walkers. The dragons are hilariously easy to take out because they fly 
into your bullets and the Deroy walkers are on guard mode meaning you get 
first shot on them and they aren't bombarding you with artilery. Kill 
everything on the map. At the start of them mission Air Raiders will not 
be able to request support but part way through the mission support will 
be re-established.

Mission 60: A large nest of retarius and spiders is present in the middle 
of the city. There is one spawn hole at the far edge of the spider nest 
that spawns spiders. Kill all the enemies. Half way through the mission 
earth eater saucers will show up but they do nothing. Rocket launcher and 
assault rifle heavily recommended

Mission 61: Approach the Hornet nest and just start killing hornets. The 
nest itself is invincible so there's no reason to destroy it.

Mission 62: Quadped fortress again except this time you are expected to 
destroy it. Walk underneath the fortress and shoot its open hatch when it 
tries to deploy more escorts. Unlike the previous few times where the 
quadped fortress was fought, the quadped will stop when dropping 
reinforcements and thus allow you to shoot into the deployment hatch  
without gettting flung from the shockwaves of the quadped fortress's steps. 
The quadped will start moving after the first few drops of black ants but 
it will stop for much longer periods of time after dropping green hectors 
and gunships. The Green hector is the same as an artilery hector although 
its just as weak so treat it like an artilery hector. At this point the 
Quadped fortress might open its hatch and release no reinforcements 
essentially a big "shoot me" sign. The key to beating this mission easily 
is to wait until after the quadped fortress stops dropping ants as the 
ants will do massive damage to you if you don't kill then and if you're 
spending time to kill them then you aren't able to shoot the quadped. 
Amazing the mission becomes much easier when there's less ants and more 
elite enemies like hectors and gunships flying around since those attack 
less often and aren't in your face like the ants are. Bring a rocket 
launcher and an assault rifle for this mission.  

Mission 63: You start on a mountain top with an EDF squad straight ahead. 
Rally up with the squad and engage the group of black ants. As soon as you 
attack the black ants, Dragons will show up to harass you. Kill the ants 
quickly and then kill the dragons using missile launchers or assault rifle 
fire. After the dragons and ants are dead head down the mountain trail and 
fight a group of red ants. Once again, when you attack the group of red 
ants a swarm of dragons will spawn to harass you. After dealing the red 
ant dragon combo, continue further down the mountain side to fight a group 
of spiders. Just like with the red ants dragons will spawn as soon as you 
attack the group to harass you. After the spider-dragon combo are dead, 
shoot down the mountain and hit the black ant swarm at the base of the 
mountain. This will spawn dragons and the black ants will be hard pressed 
to bother you. Needless to say kill the black ants and the dragons. 
Finally, go bother the spider swarm at the base of the mountain and then 
deal with the resulting dragon harassment swarm. Kill the last of the 
dragons and the spiders and the mission is over. Note that you can attack 
the insect swarms in any order you wish but its follow the mountain trail 
and fight the enemies from the safety of the mountain. Bring an assault 
rifle and a missile launcher.

Mission 64: You start on a skyscraper surrounded by spiders at the base of 
the building and two void ships spawning gunships. Destroy the two void 
ships and two more will spawn with these one spawning new gunships. Red 
gunships will also spawn to try and harass you. Destroy these void ships 
and there will be no more spawners for enemy gunships. Now that the void 
ships are gone focus on killing the gunships. After the gunships are dead, 
shoot down the skyscraper and kill the spiders. Keep in mind that your sky 
scraper is not immune, so don't blow it up unless you like to surrounded 
by spiders. Kill all the spiders and any remaining air units and the 
mission is over. Bring a rocket launcher and an assault rifle (or missile 
launcher, but becareful not to blow up the skyscraper with it!).

Mission 65: You start mission with a carrier in constant motion dropping 
black ants and a larger long legged deroy walker ready to attack you. The 
Deroy walker will generally try to stab you with its legs but it may try 
to hit you with its laser beam. While intimidating, this large deroy 
walker isn't very deadly. Focus on kill the carrier and black ants and 
then repeatedly shoot the center mass of the deroy walker to destroy it. 
Mission over! Bring a rocket launcher and an assault rifle.

Mission 66: Breather mission. You start with a red ant spawn hole guarded 
by red ants right in front of you and a void ship in the distance. Dash 
past the red ants and spawn hole and head for the void ship by the time 
you get underneath the void ship it should start spawning dragons. Kill 
the voidship first then kill the dragons and red ants. Climb up the hill 
and kill the red ant spawn hole and any remaining enemies. Rocket launcher 
and assault rifle recommended.

Mission 67: You fight the ravager battleship called the argo which comes 
in two phases. For phase one the battleship will fly around shoot laser in 
random directions and isn't that much of a threat. After certain amount of 
damage, the battleship will call in new gunship reinforcements and after a 
lot of damage; the battleship will transform into a walker. In walker mode 
the battleship will actually attempt to KILL you and will launch blue 
plasma balls at long range that do massive damage if you get hit. In 
addition it fires close range red energy bursts that will hurt you badly 
if you are in range. Just keep sniping him with a long range powerful 
weapon. When the battleship goes down all that's left is to kill any new 
gunships left over and the mission is over.

Mission 68: The mission starts with black ants and a shield bearer 
approaching you. Capture all the EDF squads that are right in front of you 
and then head towards the first shield bearer. Halfway to the shield 
bearer look to your left and you should see a black ant spawn hole. 
Destroy the spawn hole and then kill the red ants and black ants guarding 
it. Don't worry about the shield bearers because the shield bearer doesn't 
seem to be protecting anyone. Head up the hill (after you've kill the 
ants) and you'll be faced with a shield bearer, spider and black ants. You 
will want to destroy this shield bearer as it covers the spiders and their 
spawn hole. After kill the shield bearer clear area of spiders and destroy 
the spawn hole. Move further down the hill and you'll find a spider spawn 
hole and another shield bearer that's guarding nothing. Ignore the shield 
bearer and focus on the killing the spiders and their spawn hole. There 
will be one more hole left and that one spawns black ants. Simply head 
towards the direction of the black ants and kill you way to the hole and 
then destroy it. Earth eater saucers will black out the sky during this 
mission to the utter apathy of everyone. Kill all insects and remaining 
shield bearers and the mission is over. Assault rifle and rocket launcher 
recommended.

Mission 69: Back to the hornet nest. Shoot at the hornet nest with a long 
range weapon and keep doing it until the hive nest is destroyed. If the 
hornet presence gets too heavy switch to an assault rifle or missile 
launcher and start thinning out the hornet crowds. Once the Hornet nest 
goes all collapsy the mission is over (after a few seconds of dialogue). 
Pick an assault rifle and a rocket launcher (or a missile launcher in 
place of the assault rifle).

Mission 70: Tunnel mission. You start right above a hole with spiders 
filling the hole. Walk to the left and fall onto the ledge and shoot the 
spiders from that ledge (or you can do it from the starting location but 
you risk falling into the heart of the crowd). After the spiders are all 
dead capture the EDF squad that's positioned in a dead end at the bottom 
of the hole (if they're still alive) and then proceed to the next area of 
the tunnel to see a large cavern area filled with spiders and two spider 
kings. After killing occupants of the large cavern, a dual wave of spiders 
will spawn at far ends of the large cavern and proceed to flood in. Kill 
this dual wave of spiders and the mission is over.

Mission 71: Tunnel mission. You start facing a ledge with a large swarm of 
spiders at the bottom. Resist the urge to yell YOLO and jump down and 
instead wait there for the spiders to climb up. Some of the spiders will 
manage to climb and you should greet them the EDF way. After no more 
spiders manage to climb the wall (they tend to jump off instead halfway) 
jump down and kill the remaining spiders. After the spiders are dead, 
Hornets will spawn completely surrounding you but they shouldn't be too 
much of a problem because the tight tunnels reduce their evasive manuevers. 
After the hornets are dead more will spawn and you will be told to head 
deeper into the hive; do so. Following your radar will lead you to a small 
cavern area with a small amount of hornets that you should of course 
slaughter. Head down the tunnel and capture the EDF squad waiting there 
for you and head into the final area where a GIANT hornet called the Death 
queen is waiting for you. The Death queen is the same as any other hornet 
except it shoots massive needles that do pretty nasty damage and send you 
flying. Still poor accuracy though so. Just like in the mission 31, stay 
at the entrance and bombard the queen from there. The death queen can take 
A LOT of abuse so be patient and just like in mission 31 there are two 
queens present though for my play-throughs the second queen hornet will 
dormant until I shot her. Kill the queens and their hornet guards and the 
mission is over.

Mission 72: You start with 3 void ships in the distance that are immune 
and cannot be destroyed (even the mission description says not to bother). 
They will drop Deroy walkers which should be priority of your attention. 
Some of the deroys may spawn outside the mission area too so be aware of 
that. Some time inbetween the wanton slaughter of the deroy's earth eater 
saucers should black out the sky. Notice that there are only three red 
spawn saucers present. These red spawn saucers will drop the long legged 
deroy walkers. Once again, just shoot the center mass until they explode. 
After all deroy walkers are dead, the mission is over. 

Mission 73: A large swarm of dragons will bum rush as soon as the mission 
begins. Show the dragons are a medieval concept by shooting to death, 
preferable with bullets. After that first wave is dead another will spawn. 
A third wave of dragons will spawn after the second has also become a 
medieval concept. After the third wave goes the way of Factor Five (aw man 
I love that company too!) the mission is over. If you don't understand why 
I am making so many jokes its because dragons are annoying enemies and 
they're not very dangerous either. I play fencer normally and use the 
javelin storm. I just hold the triggers while looking at the sky and then 
bodies of dead dragons just pile on the fencer blocking out the screen as 
the radar goes blank. Not very entertaining or fun to fight dragons as a 
fencer.

Mission 74: There are a series of shield generators on the map which are 
guarded by deactivated deroy walkers (they will activate when you get 
close) and black ants. Near the edge of the map there are void ships 
dropping black ants. When the mission starts head straight and meet up and 
capture the EDF squad. Turn left and head towards the deactivated deroy 
walker. Get close and then blow it up with a massive surprise attack. A 
shield bearer should be near by, destroy it. After the deed is done, head 
down towards the docks (towards the void ship) and destroy the void ship 
(it drops black ants... in the sea) and the nearby deactivated Deroy 
walker. There's a shield bearer to the left of the void ship, be sure to 
blow that up too.  Now that the leftmost shield bearer is down the shield 
bearer to your right is now exposed and you should destroy that too. Walk 
past the most recently destroyed shield bearer and head across the docks 
to fight gunships and another shield bearer. Destroy these and turn left 
and head down the docks to get a good shot at the second (and last) void 
ship (which also drops black ants). Now that the void ship is dead there's 
no more enemies who respawn and thus you can kill everyone on the map and 
its trivial to take care of the shield bearers after all the gunships and 
ants are dead. Bring an assault rifle and a rocket launcher.

Mission 75: You start with a swarm of black and red ants bumrushing you at 
the start of this mission. Earth eaters will show up and start blocking 
out the sky (once again, ignore them). Focus on killing the black and red 
ants as well as the hornets that show up later. After a decent amount of 
the red and black ants (and hornets) have been wiped out a dual wave of 
hornets and red ants will spawn. Kill them all and the mission is over.

Mission 76: This mission begins with you starting at the top a mountain 
with few EDF squads scattered around the mountain. A large wave of black 
ants and dragons will assault the EDF squad at the base of the mountain. 
Use this opportunity to kill as many of the black ants or dragons before 
the EDF squad is wiped out (or ideally you can save the EDF squad and 
capture them later). After the ant and dragon swarm is dead its time for 
the spider and dragon swarm with the spiders coming from the steep end of 
the mountain and the dragons coming to flank the EDF squads on the top of 
the mountain. AFTER THAT it's a wave of spiders, ants and dragons with an 
emphasis on dragons! Kill the last wave and them mission is over. An 
assault rifle and a rocket launcher are heavily recommended.

Mission 77: At the start of the mission you will see the large rectangular 
structure flowing in the air known as the brain. You cannot destroy the 
brain but shooting at it will trigger earth eater saucers to descend to 
cover the brain's retreat. You start overlooking a ditch and in the ditch 
are several artillery hectors (some of them are green hectors and shield 
bearers. There are also some new gunships roaming about. This mission is 
easy as long as you engage the artillery hectors first. Kill all enemies 
and force the brain to retreat and the mission is over. Rocket launcher 
and missile launchers are recommended. You can also use an assault rifle 
but its fairly useless here.

Mission 78: Breather mission. Three void ships are present and they all... 
oh for freaks sake more dragons!? I'm tired of dragons people! Well there 
are some hornets already present on the map to mix things up. Destroy the 
void ships using a long range weapon. Bring a missile launcher and a 
rocket launcher for this mission.

Mission 79: You are surrounded by 4 carriers and 4 void ships that are in 
constant motion. The enemy will constantly be spawning spiders, ants and 
hornets. There is good news though, there is a very set limited amount of 
bugs that can present at any time at which point the carriers and void 
ships  will still open as usual but not deploy any more enemy units. It 
appears to be 4 hornets, 8 spiders and about 12 ants. That said there's a 
lot of carriers and several dedicated to each type. Kill the bugs when 
they get too dangerous (i.e they're in your face) and then take pot shots 
at any carriers which have their hanger bays open and continue to take pot 
shots until the enemy gets too close. I find that the hornets aren't very 
dangerous but the spiders and ants ARE. Once the carriers and voidships 
are down and all insects are dead the mission is a success. Use a rocket 
launcher and an assault rifle for this mission.

Mission 80: MORE FREAKIN DRAGONS!!!! Like every other mission that 
features dragons you start with a swarm of dragons just sitting in the 
middle of the city doing nothing, then you go over and kill them. After 
the dragons are dead a giant dragon and dragon escort will show up and you 
need to kill them too. The giant dragon is essentially a gunship, he will 
not swoop down to dive bomb you and instead just sets the general area on 
fire. One of the soldiers may remark "Check your contract, fighting 
dragons is part of the job". Well considering how ridiculously overused 
the dragons have been so far... one must wonder. Kill the king dragon and 
his dragon escort and the level is over. Rocket launcher and assault rifle 
recommended.

Mission 81: You start the mission being asked to rescue ranger 7 from a 
small horde of ants. A short while later a swarm will appear behind you 
consisting of red ants, black ants and spiders. After this wave is dead, 
they'll say something about the hero of EDF 2017 and then a swarm of 
Hornets backed by red and black ants will pop up. During what can most 
likely be described as the epic fight, earth eater saucers will show up 
and black out the sky. After you've killed that wave you'll be informed 
that it's a trap, and hornets, spiders and red ants will spawn and head 
towards your position. Kill this wave and the mission is over. Bring a 
assault rifle and a rocket launcher.

Mission 82: Two void ships that deploy new gunships and an argos defending 
those void ships. Kill the argos, the void ships using a high power long 
range weapon like a rocket launcher. There's also a green hector buts that 
joke compared to the other things present on this map. Kill all enemies to 
win. A missile launcher to take out the new gunships and a rocket launcher 
to take out the argos is recommended.


Mission 83: Five void ships are present although they don't seem to do 
anything. Running straight at you are several hectors, black ants, new 
gunships, and spiders. At the far end of the map are two blue hectors in 
guard mode and two long leg deroy walkers in deactivated mode; these two 
will only attack you if you attack them first or walk close to them. Kill 
all the enemies that come to you then snipe the rest using a rocket 
launcher. 
Assault rifle and rocket launcher is recommended, although this does make 
fighting the new gunships a little bit harder.

Mission 84: You start the mission behind two large EDF squads immediately 
getting swarmed by spiders and new gunships. Part way through the mission 
the rear guard of the attack force composed of red ants and blue hectors 
will show up. Kill them all using liberal application of rocket launcher 
and missiles. Rocket launchers and missile launchers are recommended 
though this may make fighting the red ants harder (but if the EDF soldiers 
don't die you shouldn't have problems fighting the red ants). After that 
massive wave of enemies are dead, three void ships will materialize and a 
queen hornet will spawn. The middle void ship will spawn spiders while the 
other two will spawn black ants. Defeat this wave and the mission is over. 

Mission 85: The brain ship will be sitting high above the earth eater 
saucers. The key here is to simply blow up one of the red earth eater 
saucers and shoot through the resulting hole to hit the brain. There are 
three phases in this battle, the first phase is the easier where there are 
only new gunships floating around. Just blow a hole through the earth 
eater saucers and hit the brain. After enough damage is done the second 
phase begins and all the earth eater saucers are replaced with tougher 
variants. The second phase is the hardest as there are now Deroy walkers 
being introduced and the cannons on the earth eater saucers will shoot 
twice as often. Think laser light show but the lethal variety. The third 
phase will begin once a few more shots make it through the improved earth 
eater saucer formation. All earth eater saucers will be replaced with 
giant purple plates that shoot lightning and the brain will start spewing 
out dragons to harass you. All the plates can be destroyed but you should 
destroy only the ones that threaten you. Break through the purple plates 
and shoot the brain until its powers off then hide under a bridge or 
something until the mission is complete. Enjoy your ending and I hope you 
had fun playing this game. 

Note: High powered weapons like the leviathan will not allow you to skip 
sections of the boss fight. The boss's health will just reduce to the 
minimum required to reach the next phase and then you will be required to 
hit the brain ship again.


***Section 4 Advanced tips and tricks*** (TR45)

*This section is filled with advice from community and myself. Feel free 
to contribute by emailing me at khoidoan1@hotmail.com with an appropriate 
subject line*

-Advanced gameplay advice
Q: What weapons should I equip?

A: well that depends on the class and the mission objectives. Some 
missions will have you just dealing with waves of enemies and not a single 
spawn point meaning you can choose to have excellent close range weapons 
instead of a long range weapon.

Here's an idea of what you should equip based on the mission and what 
class. Note that brand name of the weapon is listed and not the weapon 
itself since the name just changes to reflect higher level versions.

Ranger- Close combat
AF rifle series preferably RAR suffix
Um grenade launcher series for lobbing grenades down tunnels and killing 
blobs of enemies

Wing Diver- Close combat
Ithion or rapier (or grom) series for close range killing
Eclat series for when you get surrounded

Air Raider- close combat
Splendor series
Splendor series yes that's right its always good to have two of the same 
gun if you are an Air raider
Gigantus series or Velgata series for vehicle support if available. 

Fencer- Close combat
Force blade or hammer series
Force blade or hammer series (alternatively you can choose to have a 
shield)
Hand Gattling series preferably the ones with low delay times
Hand Gattling series

likewise when fighting flyers you should choose to have an assault rifle 
like weapon and missile launcher though the variety of enemies in some 
missions might make choosing not to use the missile launcher a safer 
choice.

Ranger- Anti-air
AF series
Emerald series missile launcher

Wing Diver- Anti-air
Ithion or Grom series
Giest or mirage series

Air Raider- Anti-air
Y-11 anti-aircraft mine series
Splendor series. The splendor series tends to act like flak when detonated 
in the air
Self propelled rocket series for massive sky cleaning if vehicle support 
is available.

Fencer - Anti-air
Force blade series
Force blade series
Javelin series
Javelin series

But what if there are elite enemies like hectors mixed in with the 
gunships? Well clearly you need to make compromises. Picking missile 
launchers and rocket launchers will make it difficult to deal with hectors 
and gunships that get close (and they very much like to get close). An 
assault rifle will do reasonable well against the gunships (except the 
ones that don't get close but there's only one group that really does 
that) and still protect you from black ants, spiders and red ants; the 
most common enemies in the game. Thus you should choose to have a rocket 
launcher and an assault rifle in the situations where you have to deal 
with flying enemies, elite enemies and swarmer enemies. This is the 
average situation

Ranger- Average loadout
Stingray series
AF series

Wing Diver- Average loadout
Grom Series or Rapier series
Plasma launcher series

Air Raider- Average loadout
Limpet sniper series
Splendor series
Any tank or battle vehicle for vehicle.

Fencer- Average loadout
Hammer or force blade or shield
Heavy cannon
Javelin series
Javelin series

*These are just a rough hint on how you should plan and create your 
loadouts for a mission based on what enemies you're going to deal with. 
Never be afraid to experiment and use weapons of series you're not 
familiar with*

Dash Canceling (TU98)
Q:Is there any way to move faster? What is dash cancelling?

A: yes it is quite possible to move faster! The ranger's evasive roll is 
actually faster than running and so running diagonal and rolling is much 
faster than running straight. The Air raider can do the same thing 
although its worth noting that high level vehicles are extremely fast and 
the Wing Diver can fly and so speed is usually not an issue for her. 
However a lot of players think that the Fencer is the slowest class, this 
simply isn't true. The regular speed offered by CC striker and CC piercers 
is more than enough to get the fencer moving faster than the ranger and 
the air raider (if on foot). Of course the problem isn't that the fencer 
is slow but rather that the dash is a short burst speed that leaves the 
fencer vulnerable and has delays between dashes. Dash cancelling is the 
process of removing the delay completely allowing the fencer is dash 
ridiculously fast to the point that he becomes the fastest class in the 
game (still not capable of flight though). To dash cancel, the fencer must 
be equiped with a dash capable weapon (i.e a CC striker or CC piercer) and 
a shield (or the javelin catapult). When dashing, activate the secondary 
function of the shield (of fire the javelin catapult if you have that 
equipped instead) and then press the dash button again. The shield 
deflection action interrupts the cool-down animation of the dash, allowing 
you to speed dash constantly. How useful this is depends on whether your 
using a sheild with a short deflection animation or a shield with long 
deflection animation. Short deflection animations are ideal for dash 
cancelling with the Javelin catapult's firing animation being so short 
that that dash cancelling using the javelin catapult will result in near 
instanteous dashing and since the javelin catapult has hundreds of 
ammunition and only uses 1 ammo per dash cancel, the javelin catapult is 
the best for dash cancelling. 
*thanks to velvetrose1, RycerX and  Xaellox for posting information about 
this on the Gamefaq board. Keep in mind that a lot of people were talking 
about this before I even knew about this so if you feel as if you should 
be credited because you talked it first and I didn't notice, email me with 
evidence and I'll cite you here*

Q:What missions can I farm for ammo and Health?

A: In my personal opinion, mission 1 and mission 28 are high yield but 
easy missions. Other people suggest the DLC missions but quite frankly I 
haven't played those. Mission 1 is easy because the enemy is black ants 
and the black ants can only attempt melee and thus any rapid fire weapon 
with decent damage will eventually kill the swarms of bugs on that mission. 
Mission 28 is high yield in terms of armor and weaponry but is much more 
difficult. That said playing split-screen or co-op makes the level really 
easy as soon as someone manages to kill enough enemies to allow for the 
spawning of a Proteus. Once a Proteus is down, the level is practically 
beaten even on hardest (just remember that the missile launcher is useless 
on harder levels so use the side cannons to deal with the gunships. 

Of course other players have even better ideas, Mission 11 has a squad of 
super powerful EDF soldiers who can survive the gunship swarm even on the 
hardest difficulty (inferno). Thus you can farm this level by simply 
running away as soon as the mission starts and then coming back when the 
number of gunships has decreased significantly. Gamefaq member geelw 
suggests that you immediately turn around when the mission starts and flee 
to the edge of the map (you should see some pylons). " Listen for the 
"Kachunk!" sound followed by one of the troopers still there fighting 
saying something and watch the mothership start to float up" -Geelw
 
For the record the EDF soldiers will say "it's the enemy!" at which point 
there is only a third of gunships left on the map. I would still recommend 
waiting until there is at least 5 or less gunships because a gunship 
strafe can kill you easily at low Hp levels.

Another player RyogAkari suggests the following methods to farm armor and 
weapons.

"Armor Farming: Go to Level 15 on easy. Be sure to have a weapon that can 
instantly kill a spider and has a fast firing rate and a big clip. Clear 
out the ant hills and the spiders surrounding the spider hill. Climb to 
the top of the hill, face your gun up so you don't hit the hill and simply 
wait for the spiders to spawn on top of you killing them off as they come 
into existence. The items should fall on top of you or easily be collected 
by shuffling around. 

Beginners Inferno Weapon Farming: Go to Level 14 on Inferno. Have a long 
range weapon. Stay in the cover of the trees at the start if you are not 
able to take any hits from the flying drones. Shoot them down as best you 
can. Most of the NPC units will take care of these eventually as you take 
care of them. Use your long range weapon to shoot the hectors killing them 
Right to Left. Be sure to only blow up the hectors while they are on the 
ground. Stay up off the beach and the Hectors will only be concerned with 
the NPC characters. When there are only 2 Hector's left on the far left go 
down and hug the beach to the right starting to collect the weapon drops. 
Kill off the remaining hectors and then collect the weapons as fast as 
possible while the new spawn of hectors are out in the water. Climb up off 
the beach on the left hand side of the map far away from the hectors. 
Shoot these ones down going Left to Right. These hectors will again only 
be concerned with the NPCs providing you are far enough away from them. 
Collect the weapons when there are only 2 hectors remaining and then shoot 
down the last two hectors collecting the weapons as you can before the 
level ends.
Note: it might take forever to shoot down the hectors with low level guns 
but the bounty of weapon drops and the level of the weapon drops usually 
makes it worth the wait."

*** HOWEVER there is a limit to amount of armor pickups one can get in the 
game***

In short gamefaq member sneakysnake, determined that this a hard cap of 
200hp gain in a single mission for Wing Divers. Meaning that fencers can 
get 500hp, while rangers and air raiders can get 400hp in a single mission. 
The amount of AFK (or should that be AFC, away from controller) farming 
that must be done is roughly around 6 hours to reach this limit. After 
which armor drops will not actually have an effect on your character. In 
short, AFK farming is great, but don't do it too long or you'll end up not 
getting the full amount you should have. In addition Sneakysnake has a 
youtube account full of methods to AFK farm. So take a look here 
"https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyb3FdFAN7E2oPHX6bApqzOICQUWMu5SO"

*IN addition, difficulty levels and the level itself determines what level 
of weapons will drop, Thank gamefaq member GuvmentCheese for posting a 
weapon list for each character class, missions and the weapon levels they 
drop at each difficulty*
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzMFU1jQ797wRzItUFZsLTlBSzQ/edit?usp=shar
ing
Do keep in mind that there may be errors in the list but for the most part 
it works and if you do find an error try and tell it to GuvmentCheese.


Q: How can I play the Air raider better?
A: Oh this is tough one. For starters what weapons do you have? Are any of 
them good? And by good I mean can you actually use these weapons to kill 
enemies/support your team (Assuming you have a team)? The problem is Air 
raider is that he's more underequipped than any other class as soon as the 
game starts. The air raider doesn't really get playable until he starts 
getting lvl 30 weapons and vehicles while other classes would get good way 
before that happens. The first problem is just the stupid weak limpet gun, 
until you get the lvl 30 and 40 versions of the limpet gun you're not 
actually carrying a gun that can decimate crowds of enemies. This is also 
the only gun that can kill carriers for the air raider so its even more 
critical that its weak because this means the carriers will drop more bugs 
because of the extra time it takes for an air raider to kill one. Thus the 
first obstacle that must be overcome is "Do I have good weapons?" if the 
answer is no, try farming mission 11 on inferno for weapons until you get 
something you can use. 

The second and final question is "Are you thinking out all your tactical 
options?". The air raider's equipment is meant to boost the firepower and 
ability of other classes but these boosts can easily be applied to the Air 
raider himself and best of all, the vehicles that the Air raider can drive. 
Turrets, as useless as they are, can be planted on the top of tanks and 
other vehicles to provide fire support (but you must careful not to put 
the turret in a position where it will shoot the vehicle you wish to pilot. 
Similarly, Guard posts and power enhancing posts can be put onto the 
vehicle to make them mobile, thereby making your battle tank a mobile buff 
generator!  

A person who wishes to known as Watson has the following tips for playing 
air raider

"- The Air Raider always start each missions with enough credits (how they 
call the air raider assist points to call in stuff) to request any vehicle 
right off the bat other than the Titan, the Protheus and the Bruto. The 
Nereid (helicopter with a autocannon that target anything under it) takes 
time to take off but it's way more effective than the other choppers (just 
fly over the flying guys to hit them, you'll only need another weapon for 
the dropships) 
  
-Air Raiders can find a beacon gun from crates (shoot a sticky beacon at 
something, no need to blind targets with your laser pointer until 
something else do the work for you), allowing you to drop a beacon 
somewhere and then enter a missile-equipped vehicle to unload an entire 
salvo on a single target by yourself. 
  
-The Air Raider's stationary equipment (turrets, mines, healing pylon, 
shield generator) can be set up on any vehicles and it'll stick on them. 
You might wanna try dropping a bunch of rocket turrets on top of your 
weapon-less Armored Healing Caravan and give covering fire while 
passengers recover health. Just remember that setting up many turrets and 
activating them all at the same time often results in turrets overkilling 
already dead bugs (wasting ammo). Also, you can set up turrets on the 
chopper's rotors and on the sidecar-bike "for teh lulz" but the turrets 
often hit and damage/blow up the vehicle they're on if they're in messed-
up spots (turret on a tank's thread=bad idea)."
*** Author's note: and its hilarious that despite repetitive multi-hour 
farming, I have never gotten a nereid helicopter... or rocket turrets... 
See what I mean about the air raider being underequiped? I managed to 
score lvl 50 limpet guns (that still suck) but no good helicopters... 
ARGH!***

****Section 5- The enemies (ROWP) ****
This section details all the enemies in the game. Unfortunately, the only 
strategy for kill all of them is to shoot them with a damage dealing 
weapon until they die. This is merely for completeness sake and in no 
particular order.

Black Ants- These are the iconic black ants that for some reason the first 
to appear in every series. The black ants in mission 1 will attempt to 
bite the player (see bite mechanics), the others will attempt to shoot 
acid from their butts into your face. Do note that ants must curl their 
butts forward to shoot acid, they don't ever walk backwards while 
streaming acid from their butts. They are dangerous in swarms and on 
harder difficulties they appear to move faster and also shoot more acid 
out their butts. Dispatch them with explosives at long range (thin out 
their numbers) and when they get close, hit them with an assault rifle 
like weapon. Do not shout "Die you black bastards" while killing them.

Queen Ant- Large version of black ant. Kill it like the rest. I'm not sure 
why the queen Ant is so large but that's probably because it's been 
munching tanks of ice cream while hearing reports that its children were 
killed again by one or two guys again.

Retarius- The new spider enemy who is a great big jerk. Shoots a strand of 
webs that flash red whenever they hit anyone aside from a vehicle. If the 
webs hit a vehicle, damage ensues but nothing much. If the webs hit a 
person, the flashing red strand will denote that the person has been 
caught and is now being dragged by the retarius. This constantly damages 
the individual in addition to severely restricting their movement. The 
only way to survive is to the kill retarius. Wing divers should be 
especially careful when fighting these enemies and you should also strive 
to kill one from long range, usually with a sniper rifle. The retarius is 
also spawned in a given location and generally does not move, thus you can 
memorize their locations and kill them before they can trip you up. The 
problem however comes with the fact that the retarius is often spawned in 
between buildings and these buildings are invulnerable so be aware of that. 
Note that most retarius come with a web, that you can get stuck in. You 
can destroy the web by shooting it. You should strive to kill the retarius 
before the web however as destroying the web will cause the retarius to 
drop to ground level, where its more dangerous because tree cover and 
buildings now obscure its location. YOU DON'T WANT TO GET HIT BY A 
RETARIUS YOU CAN'T SEE! If you are a wing diver, fly up high and get the 
drop on these jerks. If you are a fencer, use the dash cancel to prevent 
getting hit and kill them with mortars or something. Air raiders can get 
in vehicles and the ranger... is just going to have to deal with it.

Gunships- These guys attack by flying towards you and shooting a series of 
red machine gun like beams at you. They tend to be easy to dodge but the 
real problem is that there are a lot of them and they're a pain to shoot 
down. If they get close use an assault rifle to swat them out. If they're 
far away, you pretty much need a sniper rifle or a missile launcher.

Carriers- Carrier has arrived! Carriers drop troops and make a distinctive 
noise when dropping them. Some carriers may be located really high up in 
the sky, in which case you will need a rocket launcher or sniper rifle or 
the mission will be unwinnable. Simple shoot these guys in the open hanger 
bay and they'll die in no time. Do note that Wing Divers can fly up and 
land on or inside the carrier. There's really no reason to but if you are 
a wing diver you can do quite a bit of damage by jumping into the hanger 
bay and shooting from inside the carrier with an assault rifle. An air 
raider can also shoot splendor bombs into the open hangar bay, and wait 
until the doors are shut before detonating the payload; thus ensuring that 
all the sharpnel hits the carrier's weak point. These two methods are 
perhaps the only methods that damage the carrier while its bay doors are 
closed. Becareful with carriers however, as they can spawn anything from 
lowly bugs to freaking hectors.

Hectors- Hectors come in many shapes and forms. Artillery Hectors have 
large long barrel guns that shoot purple plasma in arc-like trajectories. 
The regular hector has either particle spewing machine gun that can lock 
you in place at close range, or an explosive energy cannon. The blue 
Hectors can have the same armament that a regular hector has in addition 
to having a shield in one of its arms. Last but not least, the green 
hector has a compact plasma artillery cannon but it shoots straight and 
the plasma blast is really fast. There are no right or wrong tactics to 
deal with these guys (well wrong tactics are the ones that get you killed). 
Use long-range high powered guns, and make sure to tactically position 
yourself in such a way that you can take cover from their more vicious 
attacks.

Spawn holes- Holes that spawn any bug type enemy. Blow them up. Unlike 
insect Armageddon you don't need to put bombs on the holes to get rid of 
them. But unlike insect Armageddon, this game is considered a-part of the 
continuity.

Spiders- Everyone hates spiders. Even the spiders hate spiders. The 
spiders tilt their butt up in the air as if to say "look at my butt, its 
bigger than yours" before spraying webs all over the place. These webs are 
highly accurate and very dangerous. Spiders do not walk, for they are 
above that, they merely hop from surface to surface. Spiders can also 
climb wall via hopping, but they rarely do so. They do not catch thieves 
nor catch anything like flies as the alien invasion does involve hornets 
and the spiders wouldn't do anything spidery like you know, eat other 
insects.

King Spider- Giant spider that shoots webs at longer ranges. Also hops 
from place to place... even though square cube law would dictate that 
doing such a thing would result in the spider king's legs breaking off and 
its organs squishing itself into the ground. King Spider shows its disdain 
for the laws of physics. Fortunately the king spider is large and tends to 
found on maps with low buildings. Gravity may be tolerant of king spider 
'deal with it' attitude but your sniper rifle or rocket launcher will not.

Quadped Siege fortress- Boss enemy who can only be killed in certain 
missions. Refer to the mission walkthrough for this guy.

Shield Bearer- This guy has two modes. Deployed and mobile. Mobile has a 
small shield barrier and deployed has a large shield barrier. Sometimes 
explosive damage leaks through the mobile shield form and kills everything 
inside. But its really random and not dependable. Its better to just get 
your hands greasy and run through the shield and kill everything inside. 
Try to hit the shield bearer last however as the shield also protects you 
from the enemies outside the shield (usually). Last but not least, the 
shield bearer changes form when hit to mobile so you can end up in a 
position where you are inside the shield and hit bearer only to hurt 
yourself when the shield recedes and your next rocket shot explodes in 
your face. 

Mothership- Big giant ship that shoots beams everywhere and looks like a 
disco ball. Falls victim to sequel escalation as the mothership is quickly 
killed and forgotten in this game. Just shoot rockets or sniper rifle 
shots at the lowest region of the mothership. It may deploy its genocide 
gun, at which point all you have to do is just shoot the gun until it 
falls off and then shoot into the mothership's glowing spot until it dies. 

Red Ants- Big red ants that attack by biting you. More of a distraction 
than anything. Blow them away with gunfire.

Hornets- Giant flying hornets that shoot spikes similar to the fencer's 
javelins straight at you. They tend to be inaccurate but they're still a 
threat equal to the gunships.

Queen Hornet- Unfortunately the queen hornet doesn't really have much 
going for it. It's a giant hornet that shoots massive spikes that actually 
send you flying when you get hit. The downside is that it's still a hornet 
and tends to miss like the other hornets. 

Dragons- I hate dragons, who doesn't hate dragons? Dragons dive at you 
while spewing fireballs. Once they've reached the ground, they either try 
to bite you or fly up into the air to turn around and dive bomb you again. 
Dragons are annoying in that they combine the annoying hard to hit 
tendencies of the gunship with the annoying swarm like quality of black 
and red ants. Fencers with javelins will have a hilarious time as they can 
just shoot straight up and watch as the dive bombing dragons get spiked 
face first and then die, showing the fencer with powerups. That said, 
dragons do hit hard.

King Dragon- Giant dragon that just sprays an area with fire. Generally 
fought only once. Kill it with long-range weapons.  

New Gunships- They're actually called flying vehicles... yeah I'm not 
calling them that. They fly at you while shooting insta-hit laser beams. 
Very dangerous and since they're highly mobile, you're going to need a 
missile launcher to take them down.

Deroy Walker- Large three legged walker that has a leg made of guns! The 
legs can also be used to try and impale you, you can predict this attack 
whenever you see the Deroy Walker raise up its leg and hesitate for 
several seconds before trying to stab you. The legs constantly shoot hit-
scan lasers and the main hub of the walker will also spew plasma artillery 
at you. Just shoot the center mass of the walker from long range where its 
lasers and impale attack are useless.

Void ship- Void ship is just like the carrier only its cooler. The void 
ship has plates that shift to open its hanger bay. The Void ship is also 
easier to kill because it leaves more openings to its hanger bay than 
carriers do. The void ships do have more health though. Void ships can 
drop anything from insects to walkers.

Plates- Plates generally do nothing. Some of them have guns on them and 
the ones with the guns can be destroyed by hitting the nearby plate with 
the glowing spot. The plate that is literally a gun can be destroyed by 
just shooting it. You really shouldn't be struggling with the plates 
unless you're on a hard difficulty. DO note it is possible for a plate 
with guns to not have a power plate next to it. Just shoot the guns 
themselves and the guns will eventually be destroyed.

Brainship- the leader of the alien invasion... this time around. Just 
floats there omniously while commanding the plates to attack you. Just hit 
the glowing plates to clear the sky and then hit the brainship in its 
glowing spot and it will die inevitably.

Argos Ravager battleship- The Ravager battleship has two modes. A jet and 
a mech mode. Hit the jet mode where it bombards you with plasma and it'll 
transform into the mech mode where it bombards you with lasers at close 
range and plasma from long range. It hits hard but its easy to hit and 
it'll eventually die when its had enough abuse.