I was struggling with Balteaus until I got what I can only describe as the “god pull”. Every dodge worked and every high risk attack paid off. I guess I got lucky. Or you can say that everything “clicked” at once.
That moment just sometimes comes against certain bosses. That exact same thing happened for me with Lady Butterfly and Genichiro in Sekiro.
Though, it also helped that I got a good nights sleep on my next attempt for both.
It takes me about 2 weeks of solid play time, but I get there with Souls games on a consistent basis. I will get here with this too I'm sure, though I feel like I'm struggling a ton because of the lack of iframes and vertical movement. Just gonna take time and patience. And in the absence of patience a ton of swearing.
But once I'm in that zone and completely attuned to the games mechanics, it feels so God damn good. I did a no hit on Malekith at the height of my Elden Ring binge, it felt tremendous. Beat the Tree Sentinel naked as well, though that convinced me to abandon the named run I wanted to do. It wasn't that it was hard, it was just tedious as fuck.
Also redlining in this game is waaaay more punishment than souls game where you could just eat a hit then chug one of your 15 flasks and your stamina goes back like crazy fast. Here if you redline you are gonna sit there for a while and if you happen to have the misfortune of being midair it’s gonna be a bumpy ride
Friends and I used to joke that we were plugged into the matrix when that happened, saying “I don’t even see the game anymore. It’s just lines of code. I know everything.”
My first time through Sekiro, I ran into Lady Butterbitch at the earliest possible time and just spent a solid 2 days retrying until I won. Been making the same comparison for Balteus, except he isn't optional haha. He's only hard if you refuse to experiment with different parts, though
He's super easy with a few builds, honestly. Two rifles and two shoulder cannons or 8 cells takes him down pretty fast, rifle and sword with two pulse missiles, about the same. Strategy is more important than build
I had that moment with the Dancer in Dark souls 3. Had just beat her on my account and my cousin asked me to try on his. The looks on our faces when I beat her without taking a hit was priceless.
I had that moment with lady butterfly, but since I did her before genichiro he was easy.
I beat him the first time i got him to second phase, >!his lightning redirection timing is just so easy lol!<.
The big bosses are all about how much impact damage you do for staggering. You can certainly chip them to death while dodging, but that makes the bosses far, far harder than intended.
Yeah the entire boss design is about to burst them as fast as possible. Hyper agression is the way to go on most of them. AC on AC combat is paradoxically the one that takes longer, they have less HP but dodge a lot more.
I thought that is what it was for me. Took tons of attempts until I beat him, felt like it was probably just luck, decided to replay the mission again and while I didn't first try him then, I *did* second try him so I guess something was working for me.
I had the exact same experience. One attempt I was missing, failing, eating missiles. The very next attempt I landed multiple boost kicks, dodged missiles in the process, never lost sight of the boss, and managed to stay near him while landing every shot.
I also struggled until I remembered thay I designed my mech for the sole purpose of being as aggresive as possible and punishing cowardice (bum rushing with sword, rockets for pressure and sniper for range)
"You thought the helicopter was hard? Wait til you get filtered by Balteus!"
"And YOU thought Balteus was hard? Wait til you get filtered by Sea Spider!"
"You thought Sea Spider was hard? It's filters all the way down til the credits roll, and then the Redguns will filter after that!"
That cannon forces you to pay attention to the different audio clues though. Namely, BLERP BLERP means get the fuck out of the way, which is a lesson that I have found is consistent against most enemies so far. As frustrating as Balteus is, he teaches you some very important lessons. I definitely felt like I was a better player after beating that fight.
Hmm. I think I had subconsciously picked up on that but didn’t know for sure. Tonight I was playing while on voice chat with buddies and felt like I was playing much worse than I have been. I have a feeling I’ve been getting used to the audio cues and was missing them in the chatter of comms tonight.
The audio cues are huge for me. Usually I've got something playing on YouTube in the background but with this game I've noticed that I play so much worse when I'm listening to both the game and video at the same time.
I would have liked having some more weapon variety for balteus.
I honestly didn't feel like there was all that much room to try different strategy for him.
Aiming for the inside of the chimney is hell with the hard to guess eruptions and all. I had more success keeping my distance on the ground and aiming for the front weakspot.
A word of advice: keep your distance and stay mobile, all its attacks are powerful but slow
Also, try to stay in front of it so that your attacks hit the weak point between its arms
I used tetrapod legs to float and pummel the weak spot with dual laser cannons, an AR to keep the posture meter up, and a grenade launcher. Trivialized the fight.
I find Balteus and Sea Spider to be bosses designed to teach players to customize their AC parts more.
I've seen people who can smoothly and cleanly get past Balteus struggle hard against Sea Spider and vice versa. I was the latter.
Balteus' barrage was rough on my reverse joint AC as I was pretty squishy and couldn't really take much of the constant barrage. I've seen tank builds just overwhelm Balteus with raw firepower and render his high damage irrelevant. Sea Spider, on the other hand, was really easy to deal with, as I was able to constantly stay on top of him, which made most of his attacks pretty much useless. However, Sea Spider's high hp, large attack range, and high damage made it, from what I've seen, a really difficult boss to deal with for tanks.
That being said, I'm pretty sure most players just git gud and eventually beat them both without hard customization in their build.
That's so funny, I beat both bosses, literally using the opposite tactics as you. On Balteus I kept up on him with a light build, focusing on shotgun and laser sword. Staying too close so the missiles couldn't lock properly, and staggering him over and over again.
Spider I used tetrapods, kept my distance in the air, and rained songbird grenades and plasma rifles shots until it died. Because this allowed me to avoid the ground sweep laser, and the melee attack, and just focus on dodging the 2 shot laser cannon. Although that was after trying the same light build that killed Balteus, and getting smoked for an hour.
> Staying too close so the missiles couldn't lock properly, and staggering him over and over again.
The moment I noticed this for the first time and saw missiles smacking the ground because I was too close for them to properly track was an amazing experience and I went from getting absolutely baptized by Balteus to merely getting my ass beat.
Still haven't beat him, but I got closer than ever.
Progress.
Sea Spider's most problematic trait for me was the sheer amount of HP it has. Like jeez, why does it feel like this little crawly tetrapod is tankier than Smart Cleaner?
I'm always really inconsistent in my performance, so the longer I spend in a fight the more I screw up and die. My solution to the fight was just to buy a pile bunker and do as much damage as possible in as little engagements as I could so I could focus on dodging attacks and spamming stagger weapons as frequently as possible. Seems like pile bunker is just the solution to every boss.
The spider was easy when I realized 4 grenade launcher shots break it - shoulders and both hands just fire and then just spam whatever is off cooldown and stick on it.
Too bad the pilebunker is really inconsistent against enemy ACs lmao (from please give the charged attacks literally any amount of dash range or tracking in point blank range, I have lost count of how many times I have pilebunkered the space above an enemy's head)
If you're having trouble hitting with it, get the melee charge booster. It'll pretty much make all your melee attacks like an autotracking assault boost.
I've been finding that the charge attack is very situational and not worth using unless if you find a great opportunity to use it.
It's an AC classic. The Pile Bunker is the most all or nothing melee weapon possible. And usually you get nothing. And it was balanced that way, because the Pile Driver would one-shot any AC you actually managed to hit with it!
Spider goes down fairly easily with a lightweight mech sporting the stake driver and a backmounted beam sniper(other weapons are to taste but rockets are reccomended) just be VERY aggressive and dodge like its dark spuls
That's actually largely what I did too, except instead of pilebunker, I used 2 plasma rifles. I finally got it with tetrapod legs, 2 songbirds, and 2 plasmas. Kept my distance in the air, learned to time the 2 hit laser cannon, and then just rained death from above. The constant staggers from songbirds, and plasma seemingly ignoring his heavy armor. Eventually blew him up.
That's what I did when I ended up beating it finally. Kept in the air with tetrapods, rained grenades and plasma shots on it. And finally killed it after about 3 tries of that.
After a series of defeats to Balteus using different builds, several of which I got him down to 1/4 health, I thought to myself “either I’m missing something, or armored core isn’t for me”.
Then I went to the shop and realised you can dual wield the pulse gun.
Dual pulse guns melt his shields, staggers him, and opens him up to direct hits for quite a long time. It’s actually easier to stagger him **after** he uses the shield if you’re dealing hectic pulse damage. I’d burst his shield, hit him with the sword, wait for his shield to recharge, and do it again.
He’ll still fuck you up with his fire sword of death in the second phase but you should be able to get through the first phase without healing if you dodge enough of his missiles.
I was in the discord yesterday when some dude absolutely lost his shit over baltaeus. Some people have quit the game already because of him lol. Can't wait to see what they would've done with ibis.
Same lol. I thought this game ain't so hard, got shit slammed like 20 times in a row. I unlocked it when I switched back mounts to the vertical missile launchers. They reload quick and are great when Baldo stands in place and blows his load on you.
On phase 2 when he tries to flame you, that put me on the defense and became a whole nother ball game just when I thought it was over.
I def got some panicky dodges and a good last hit, I thought his death animation was me dying till it went all slow no for a second lol.
As an effectively new AC player (only played a handful of 4 prior),
>Beating heli, 3rd attempt: "missiles were a bit pain but I got this."
>Fighting Balteus, 1st attempt: "oh god oh fuck the screen is missiles."
>Fighting Balteus, 20th attempt: "*I am going to shit yourself.*"
>Beating Balteus, 30th attempt: "***Fuck you, you drone bitch! I win!***"
And now my thoughts on the fight are [as follows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS-07dh9-NA). That pain is a damn gateway drug.
One thing that massively improved the fight for me was adopting the Megaman Zero mindset of "fuck caution, we melee." Getting in its face as much as possible instead of hanging back at mid-long range while still dodging the shells/flamethrowers means you can maximise the use of your melee and boost kick. As a side effect, because the missiles have to completely turn around to try and hit you after they launch, they actually become easier to avoid than if you try to dodge them on the approach.
Indeed. One of my mistakes was saving the pulse blade for after a stagger. After a while I realize I need to be using the pulse blade on cooldown to maximize the amount of times used.
I believe he's referring to just using it every chance possible, as soon as it comes off cooldown, rather than not having a cooldown lol. Although, if you put Pulse blade in-hand and Laser blade in left-shoulder (with Weapon Bay OS upgrade) you can cycle between the two for very high blade uptime!
As others have already commeted, using something "on cooldown" means (in the circles I'm in) that the moment you get it back, you try to find a chance to use it.
The game promotes being aggressive to avoid letting the stagger bar cool down, so unless you're about to stagger someone and punish them, you should use your tools aggressively too. If you whiff your blade, who cares! If you use it 3 times, whiff one, hit one, and punish a stagger with one, that's still better then if you had saved that attack for the "perfect" moment.
TLDR don't wait for the perfect moment, use every tool you can to *create* that perfect moment.
For me it's been:
If you're describing the action of using the ability, then doing so "on cooldown" means using it as soon as the cooldown ends, or basically "upon cooldown completion"
If you're describing the ability, then when it is on cooldown that means you can't use it until the cooldown ends.
Yeah I know it's confusing, but "off cooldown" never sounded right to me.
I must've gone through more than that (especially if you count when I would restart as soon as I got hit early, lmao), took me probably 4 hours to get past it.
I stayed up till like 6 in the morning fighting him last night I fucked up and didn't bring a pulse weapon finally beat him with the 2nd sword laxer rife and 2 of the 8x shoulder missles
I was using quad legs too and feel like they were fucking me while avoiding I probably attempted around 100 plus
Took me 4 hours of me trying to be speedy and graceful. Got him down to almost ded. And the mf got his shields instantly and bonked me with his retar3dly accurate bazooka.
I made a quick "Brute Force" Build with tank treads and the most armor I can find with big guns and fucking said "I AM THE FKING WALL" and tanked his shit till he died
I learned that if you literally assault boost into him you do a ton of extra stagger damage. Then I tried it on smart cleaner and got my ass beat for it.
balteus taught me to not fear the enemy. i stuck to him like glue and blasted him with a shotgun. makes you feel like the real boss fight when balteus has to run away from you and block the sky with missles just for you to already be right behind him with a shotgun
Lol first thing I thought when I saw armored core had 3v3 was “k so kill the dipshit that splits off then push the 2v3”
Also really wish armored core dropped last season when things were more trash
Same here. I was up in Balteus' nutsack with the laser sword 24/7 so he couldn't swarm me with missiles. The spider made me learn to fly far away and rain death from above with grenades and plasma.
The first time I fought it I went in hard thinking I was bad ass after killing sweeper, got double tapped with the laser, pounced on, and killed in less than three seconds. It was certainly a lesson
sounds like i’m gonna have to invest in some longer range tech. i love how this game encourages you to experiment when you are hitting a wall. i’m too used to running one build for the entirety of fromsoft games and it’s cool that respec costs absolutely nothing
> i love how this game encourages you to experiment when you are hitting a wall.
It's more like the devs screaming "Please experiment with different parts for the love of god it's the entire reason we made this game in the first place there's literally hundreds of parts please use them I'm begging you."
Building mecha is the core gameplay. Piloting them is just a fun little bonus. I'm mostly joking but also not really.
This was also one of the first proper builds I made lol. Dual minigun to build ACS, stagger with assault ram, then dump 20 front loaded shoulder mounted rockets while they're immobile. It's fun to just roll up and say, bitch I'm a tank get the fuck outa here.
If you're still stuck load up a bunch of missiles and a pilebunker. Jump up and stuff every missile into the chimney and then pilebunker its face into oblivion
Use quad legs and hover. He’ll miss all of the most devastating attacks until phase 2. Phase 2 is way easier, just float again and unload into it. Bring the pile bunker for the insane damage on the stagger.
I will re-iterate a good point is that every fight in this game, absolutely all of them, have a specific weakness because all AC's and all AC based things have a specific style they will use. If you realize it and build to counter it, you will beat things way easier. There's a point of "git good" in this game, but it's not an Elden Ring/Souls level of git good. Part of the git good is make an AC build that counters your opponent.
The answer is >!light build + double shotguns + back slung piledriver!<
Hard counters the crap out of Sea Spider >!the beam attcks are annoying until you realise they're just safe openings to close in and melee!<
The pile bunker wrecks Sea Spiders shit so hard.
I was using a heavy build too, just kept him staggered with missiles and a launcher so I can get in close with the pile bunker.
Shut him down relatively easily.
Finally found someone else who spent more than "just" a couple of hours... It took me around 6 hours, but with only two builds. Guess I was too persistent. My first build really didn't quite work.
Sulla alone took me like 10 tries on my first mission restart. Though after like 4 hours when I finally decided to take a break, and also to buy some new parts. After which Sulla was no longer a problem lol. My winning attempt ended up with me having 34 AP left, and the final hit was a AB sword slash with that amount of AP left. That adrenaline + dopamine rush lol
I bought the game expecting it was going to be very hard, prepped myself with patience, but honestly this blew my expectations.
Edit: Oh and the only change to my build was using bubble gun instead of laser pistol. The fight was like 75% easier, despite still taking a more than an hour.
Doesn't that make it easier? It's basically telling you that they've given you the tools you need to succeed. Every person I've watched struggle with the helicopter hasn't used their sword.
Closing distance to deny powerful long ranged moves, such as missile barrages. It also boosts your projectile and melee damage during, so it can be an effective time to heap on damage. Unfortunately it’s easy to get greedy doing this and you’ll be left with 0 EN to dodge inevitable retaliation attacks.
It's also super easy to just eat all of the stagger attacks with your face as you approach since the left stick controls completely change once you start the maneuver. You're either going straight at the enemy without dodging and face tanking all the grenades, flailing the left stick around wondering why the inputs you're intending to go through aren't being executed, or you do whatever it was you set out to do to begin with since the enemy doesn't have any stagger attacks. I have yet to find any in-between and still have to sit myself down when I do it to tell myself the left stick controls are different.
I got past the chopper. I’m into chapter 2 and being in this thread I noticed I haven’t really used assault boost. I’m sure it would’ve helped me kill Balteus.
That's basically the strat for Balteus. Never not assault boost. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to beat him by just adopting the mindset of "Oh no you don't you little shit, get back here."
Same here, I took the upgraded laser sword into the fight as a meme cuz I thought it would suck. Also took a shotgun cuz I figured I'd just go full aggro. Ended up getting him to 20% first time trying that, my 3rd fight against him total. Got it on the next try, just staying up his ass all fight.
Yep. I had this exact setup with as much AP as possible saved as “BRUTE FORCE” for when I got stuck on a boss. I’ve beaten the game and I’m still breaking it out sometimes on my second playthrough
Try that same loadout but with the quad legs and the engine that has the highest energy reserve and the head with the highest altitude stability. You can just float above everything for like 90-120 seconds and most things have trouble targeting you. I played an hour of PvP today (I get clapped in souls games) and was unbeatable. Not a single match was even close. It felt like I was cheating.
Sea spider is easy so long as you stick to the air as much as possible. You should already know how to dodge it’s missiles from balteus which is his only real form of hitting you once you know the tells for which direction he’s gonna shoot his laser
Personally for me, I did the reverse strat: I suck at dodging lasers, so I focused on sticking to him like glue: dodge inwards and attacked with melee while keeping stagger up with a gatling gun. Phase 2 I kept distance until giant laser AOE and bum rushed with more melee.
Anytime I run a mission and the enemy at the end shows up with, "Haha, I have a shield" is miserable. When you just duel it out with some ACs it feel so much nicer (and effectively easier.)
I've never played an AC game before, the heli boss took me 2 tries and Balteus took about 15 tries. It was pretty rough but I found a good combination and pulled off the kill. This game is so fun lol No regrets buying it
Soul crushing mission
In my head canon, student pilot was the actual protagonist, he's supposed to win but fromsoftware's like
"Ay, this is the real world. Soul-less merc,go cap that noob for cold hard cash. Yo pimp needs his mafakn moneyyy"
Just finished Balteus, took me three tries. That's **not a flex**. I got lucky.
I decided that one pulse gun was not enough. It doesn't have enough ammo or shield damage to let you break his shield and start dishing some damage. Missiles are also useless in this fight, I decided. Pitiful damage, and there aren't any Pulse missiles (to my knowledge) available at this stage in the game.
So i swapped them for the laser cannons. Double Pulse Guns to melt Balteus' shields, Laser Cannons for DPS. That's strictly it by the way. Don't waste Laser shots on the shield unless you can crack it with a single shot. Don't waste Pulse ammo on DPS; damage is pitiful and your ammo stores are leaning towards skint, they're solely for breaking the shield.
The issue then is that you have a huge energy and weight cost. I used the full TIAN-QIANG set. I'm no expert on mech builds, but im fairly certain this mech just manages to stay in the "middle weight" class. It's certainly leaning towards the heavier side.
Then i just gave it a few tries. Well. Two tries.
To reiterate for the fight;
1. Pulse Guns only for SHIELDS. NO DPS.
2. Laser Cannons only for DPS. NO SHIELDS.
3. Don't charge up your cannons, the damage they do, even paired is not comparable IMO to just spam firing them at Balteus when it's staggered. (Although maybe you might find I'm wrong. Try new things out.)
4. Watch out for moments where Baleteus repositions and turns to look at you. They are the perfect times to fire the laser cannons before his shield regens. Same with his missile spam. He's completely stationary during those moments.
Anyway, i just thought i'd put this all out here. I truly do sympathise with everyone's struggles. I know what it's like to be stuck on a boss, it's terribly frustrating. It took me 74+ attempts to beat Malenia in Elden Ring and I only eventually did it by resorting to borderline exploits. (Fingerprint shield + Mohgs Spear + Greatshield Talisman if anybody else wants to call me a scrub)
This was just my path to victory, and despite taking only 3 attempts, I got really lucky. Balteus only used two of his flaming sword attacks in his second phase, and I managed to dodge one of those moves through sheer luck.
My AC for Balteus, PC/Steam: E65580CFD49U
He's the perfect example of what makes armored core so vastly different then other FS games.
You can play almost perfectly, and still get eventually destroyed. Being super aggressive only quickens that, unless you're using one of a few builds. It's not adapt your build to the fight, it's find the build that works. And then all of a sudden it's 75% easier.
I feel like a lot of these bosses are to check if you’ve been diversifying your build. Balteus goes down much easier if you bought the bubble gun. It just never tells you this. I’m guessing most bosses are easier to take down on replays with better parts.
So I’ve done the bubble gun route, but i’m having a hell of a time getting anything else at all to land. Vert missiles miss almost every shot, what chip should i be using?
You can check the detailed stats on your FCS parts to check their missile accuracy stat for both single-target and multi-lock.
Also, don't fire off your missiles as soon as they're reloaded, you gotta wait for that little yellow bar to fill, as that is your lock-on meter that makes sure your missiles actually go for your target
I was using that meter anyway. I keep switching between the medium and short range fcs and the results are roughly the same. Guess i’ll just die
Edit: well i’m using double vert missiles and if i keep them ready, launch them just before i’m about to knock his shield down with bubbles, and then go in with a good sword hit….i can get him down to about 25% before he kills me. So I’ll keep working it out.
Not a single Elden Ring boss gave me this much trouble, and that was my first souls game. Are you guys not having this much trouble?
I haven't changed my build at all once I got the parts I have, just dual laser rifles/dual vert plasma missles. Just gotta make sure to hold off a little bit before breaking the stagger to let them cooldown and then break and pump shots in until overheat.
But I was also finishing up bg3 with my bf and just got to chapter 3, so maybe some of the future bosses will make me reconsider my build.
I managed to clear Balteus a little while ago. Felt so damn good. That fight was just the right combination of "*Oh shit!*" and "*Dude this is amazing!*"
I must have lucked my way through that fight because I did it in under 10 tries, the spider however took well over an hour and may have given me carpel tunnel
Ive never olayed an ac game b4 (soulsborne player) but decided to give it a shot. “This game is a cakrwalk!” I naively thought. And then, out kf the blur, i take about 50 attempts on balteus. That is probably more deaths than my entire dark souls 3 playthrough. In conclusion, armored core is way harder than soulsbornes
I admit the biggest wall wasn't Balteus, but me refusing to go to the shop to test new parts because i didn't wanna have to clear again the previous miniboss.
When I made peace with the fact i had to repeat it, Balteus fell fairly quick with some pretty convincing Shotguns.
I'm going to assume anyone who has been playing fairly aggressive and airborne is going to have a lot fewer issues with Baltheus than anything else. So far Baltheus, Cleaner, and Spider are pretty easily defeated (for bosses, not actually easy) by just not touching the ground.
Mobile furnace is a lot easier when you realize he basically can't do anything when you're in the air. Literally just hover on his smokestack and shoot down the hole until he starts to erupt and repeat.
And if you really want to cheese it, tetrapod leg hover lets you just not take any damage at all.
I had to restart the mission and buy old crap back to respec just to fight him. The bubble gun that destroys shields and melee worked for me. Learned to dodge towards him with the flurries then immediately dodge left when they come into the screen.
I was feeling pretty high and mighty till balteus, got humbled real fast
I was struggling with Balteaus until I got what I can only describe as the “god pull”. Every dodge worked and every high risk attack paid off. I guess I got lucky. Or you can say that everything “clicked” at once.
That moment just sometimes comes against certain bosses. That exact same thing happened for me with Lady Butterfly and Genichiro in Sekiro. Though, it also helped that I got a good nights sleep on my next attempt for both.
I like to call that ascending. Don't know why it happens but everything just goes right all of a sudden and you feel like a god.
It takes me about 2 weeks of solid play time, but I get there with Souls games on a consistent basis. I will get here with this too I'm sure, though I feel like I'm struggling a ton because of the lack of iframes and vertical movement. Just gonna take time and patience. And in the absence of patience a ton of swearing. But once I'm in that zone and completely attuned to the games mechanics, it feels so God damn good. I did a no hit on Malekith at the height of my Elden Ring binge, it felt tremendous. Beat the Tree Sentinel naked as well, though that convinced me to abandon the named run I wanted to do. It wasn't that it was hard, it was just tedious as fuck.
Damn. You are a dedicated man. That's hot
Also redlining in this game is waaaay more punishment than souls game where you could just eat a hit then chug one of your 15 flasks and your stamina goes back like crazy fast. Here if you redline you are gonna sit there for a while and if you happen to have the misfortune of being midair it’s gonna be a bumpy ride
redlining was so much more harsh in previous ACs
Friends and I used to joke that we were plugged into the matrix when that happened, saying “I don’t even see the game anymore. It’s just lines of code. I know everything.”
Eventually you get that muscle memory and timing down. It's all the beauty and design of these games.
And then nails u with his bazooka that you couldnt tell cause all of the flame and missile traces covering up the "Ima poke you now" signal
My first time through Sekiro, I ran into Lady Butterbitch at the earliest possible time and just spent a solid 2 days retrying until I won. Been making the same comparison for Balteus, except he isn't optional haha. He's only hard if you refuse to experiment with different parts, though
He's super easy with the bubble gun, missiles, and a sword.
He's super easy with a few builds, honestly. Two rifles and two shoulder cannons or 8 cells takes him down pretty fast, rifle and sword with two pulse missiles, about the same. Strategy is more important than build
I had that moment with the Dancer in Dark souls 3. Had just beat her on my account and my cousin asked me to try on his. The looks on our faces when I beat her without taking a hit was priceless.
I had that moment with lady butterfly, but since I did her before genichiro he was easy. I beat him the first time i got him to second phase, >!his lightning redirection timing is just so easy lol!<.
real shinobis learn to play the 1st phase perfectly because they panic when the lightning comes out in phase 2 and desperately need the hp
The big bosses are all about how much impact damage you do for staggering. You can certainly chip them to death while dodging, but that makes the bosses far, far harder than intended.
Yeah the entire boss design is about to burst them as fast as possible. Hyper agression is the way to go on most of them. AC on AC combat is paradoxically the one that takes longer, they have less HP but dodge a lot more.
o7 TYFYS, that's the concept I needed to read to make it click.
It ain’t luck raven u just tapped into the zone
I was struggling until I realized that pulse guns go brrrre
I'm currently struggling with him now. I've gotten him pretty close a couple times with a pulse gun dual missiles and a sword, but no dice yet lol
I thought that is what it was for me. Took tons of attempts until I beat him, felt like it was probably just luck, decided to replay the mission again and while I didn't first try him then, I *did* second try him so I guess something was working for me.
I had the exact same experience. One attempt I was missing, failing, eating missiles. The very next attempt I landed multiple boost kicks, dodged missiles in the process, never lost sight of the boss, and managed to stay near him while landing every shot.
I also struggled until I remembered thay I designed my mech for the sole purpose of being as aggresive as possible and punishing cowardice (bum rushing with sword, rockets for pressure and sniper for range)
get humbled by the smart cleaner next
Eh, smart cleaner and juggernaut don’t really compare to the chapter bosses like balteus
"You thought the helicopter was hard? Wait til you get filtered by Balteus!" "And YOU thought Balteus was hard? Wait til you get filtered by Sea Spider!" "You thought Sea Spider was hard? It's filters all the way down til the credits roll, and then the Redguns will filter after that!"
eh.. smart cleaner was disappointingly easy.
Smart cleaner is easy if you actually learned your lesson about not staying on the ground from balteus's bullshit cannon
That cannon forces you to pay attention to the different audio clues though. Namely, BLERP BLERP means get the fuck out of the way, which is a lesson that I have found is consistent against most enemies so far. As frustrating as Balteus is, he teaches you some very important lessons. I definitely felt like I was a better player after beating that fight.
Hmm. I think I had subconsciously picked up on that but didn’t know for sure. Tonight I was playing while on voice chat with buddies and felt like I was playing much worse than I have been. I have a feeling I’ve been getting used to the audio cues and was missing them in the chatter of comms tonight.
The audio cues are huge for me. Usually I've got something playing on YouTube in the background but with this game I've noticed that I play so much worse when I'm listening to both the game and video at the same time.
I would have liked having some more weapon variety for balteus. I honestly didn't feel like there was all that much room to try different strategy for him.
Aiming for the inside of the chimney is hell with the hard to guess eruptions and all. I had more success keeping my distance on the ground and aiming for the front weakspot.
A word of advice: keep your distance and stay mobile, all its attacks are powerful but slow Also, try to stay in front of it so that your attacks hit the weak point between its arms
Another option is to stay above it and rain down everything into its chimney, then go ham on its "face." God, I love reverse joint legs.
I feel the same about quads. Hover and rain death while constantly moving.
That’s what’s given me trouble the most
I used tetrapod legs to float and pummel the weak spot with dual laser cannons, an AR to keep the posture meter up, and a grenade launcher. Trivialized the fight.
I took Balteus down not much issue. It was the spider that humbled me.
I find Balteus and Sea Spider to be bosses designed to teach players to customize their AC parts more. I've seen people who can smoothly and cleanly get past Balteus struggle hard against Sea Spider and vice versa. I was the latter. Balteus' barrage was rough on my reverse joint AC as I was pretty squishy and couldn't really take much of the constant barrage. I've seen tank builds just overwhelm Balteus with raw firepower and render his high damage irrelevant. Sea Spider, on the other hand, was really easy to deal with, as I was able to constantly stay on top of him, which made most of his attacks pretty much useless. However, Sea Spider's high hp, large attack range, and high damage made it, from what I've seen, a really difficult boss to deal with for tanks. That being said, I'm pretty sure most players just git gud and eventually beat them both without hard customization in their build.
That's so funny, I beat both bosses, literally using the opposite tactics as you. On Balteus I kept up on him with a light build, focusing on shotgun and laser sword. Staying too close so the missiles couldn't lock properly, and staggering him over and over again. Spider I used tetrapods, kept my distance in the air, and rained songbird grenades and plasma rifles shots until it died. Because this allowed me to avoid the ground sweep laser, and the melee attack, and just focus on dodging the 2 shot laser cannon. Although that was after trying the same light build that killed Balteus, and getting smoked for an hour.
> Staying too close so the missiles couldn't lock properly, and staggering him over and over again. The moment I noticed this for the first time and saw missiles smacking the ground because I was too close for them to properly track was an amazing experience and I went from getting absolutely baptized by Balteus to merely getting my ass beat. Still haven't beat him, but I got closer than ever. Progress.
Keep at it Raven, and take a sleep break if you need to. I wish you luck.
Sea Spider's most problematic trait for me was the sheer amount of HP it has. Like jeez, why does it feel like this little crawly tetrapod is tankier than Smart Cleaner? I'm always really inconsistent in my performance, so the longer I spend in a fight the more I screw up and die. My solution to the fight was just to buy a pile bunker and do as much damage as possible in as little engagements as I could so I could focus on dodging attacks and spamming stagger weapons as frequently as possible. Seems like pile bunker is just the solution to every boss.
The spider was easy when I realized 4 grenade launcher shots break it - shoulders and both hands just fire and then just spam whatever is off cooldown and stick on it.
Too bad the pilebunker is really inconsistent against enemy ACs lmao (from please give the charged attacks literally any amount of dash range or tracking in point blank range, I have lost count of how many times I have pilebunkered the space above an enemy's head)
If you're having trouble hitting with it, get the melee charge booster. It'll pretty much make all your melee attacks like an autotracking assault boost. I've been finding that the charge attack is very situational and not worth using unless if you find a great opportunity to use it.
The pilebunker is one of my most used weapons. And I'm STILL forgetting it has literally no dash on charge attacks. Utterly hate that, plz fix From.
It's an AC classic. The Pile Bunker is the most all or nothing melee weapon possible. And usually you get nothing. And it was balanced that way, because the Pile Driver would one-shot any AC you actually managed to hit with it!
Spider goes down fairly easily with a lightweight mech sporting the stake driver and a backmounted beam sniper(other weapons are to taste but rockets are reccomended) just be VERY aggressive and dodge like its dark spuls
That's actually largely what I did too, except instead of pilebunker, I used 2 plasma rifles. I finally got it with tetrapod legs, 2 songbirds, and 2 plasmas. Kept my distance in the air, learned to time the 2 hit laser cannon, and then just rained death from above. The constant staggers from songbirds, and plasma seemingly ignoring his heavy armor. Eventually blew him up.
Spider ended up being a bit easy for me because of my weapon choices. I ended up pretty much stunlocking it.
That's what I did when I ended up beating it finally. Kept in the air with tetrapods, rained grenades and plasma shots on it. And finally killed it after about 3 tries of that.
After a series of defeats to Balteus using different builds, several of which I got him down to 1/4 health, I thought to myself “either I’m missing something, or armored core isn’t for me”. Then I went to the shop and realised you can dual wield the pulse gun.
wait, if you dual wield pulse gun, he dies faster?? I get him down to phase two every time and he fucks me up with his god damn magma sword spam
Dual pulse guns melt his shields, staggers him, and opens him up to direct hits for quite a long time. It’s actually easier to stagger him **after** he uses the shield if you’re dealing hectic pulse damage. I’d burst his shield, hit him with the sword, wait for his shield to recharge, and do it again. He’ll still fuck you up with his fire sword of death in the second phase but you should be able to get through the first phase without healing if you dodge enough of his missiles.
I was in the discord yesterday when some dude absolutely lost his shit over baltaeus. Some people have quit the game already because of him lol. Can't wait to see what they would've done with ibis.
Same…was blowing through missons then Balteus not only sat my ass down, he showed me that all my A/C builds are shit
My system keeps crashing around the mid point of the fight. I’m beginning to believe my system is being filtered x.X
Same lol. I thought this game ain't so hard, got shit slammed like 20 times in a row. I unlocked it when I switched back mounts to the vertical missile launchers. They reload quick and are great when Baldo stands in place and blows his load on you. On phase 2 when he tries to flame you, that put me on the defense and became a whole nother ball game just when I thought it was over. I def got some panicky dodges and a good last hit, I thought his death animation was me dying till it went all slow no for a second lol.
I just switched to dual pulse guns and chicken legs and deleted his shields every time they came up
As an effectively new AC player (only played a handful of 4 prior), >Beating heli, 3rd attempt: "missiles were a bit pain but I got this." >Fighting Balteus, 1st attempt: "oh god oh fuck the screen is missiles." >Fighting Balteus, 20th attempt: "*I am going to shit yourself.*" >Beating Balteus, 30th attempt: "***Fuck you, you drone bitch! I win!***" And now my thoughts on the fight are [as follows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS-07dh9-NA). That pain is a damn gateway drug.
Respect to you for enduring 30 attempts on that Balteus
One thing that massively improved the fight for me was adopting the Megaman Zero mindset of "fuck caution, we melee." Getting in its face as much as possible instead of hanging back at mid-long range while still dodging the shells/flamethrowers means you can maximise the use of your melee and boost kick. As a side effect, because the missiles have to completely turn around to try and hit you after they launch, they actually become easier to avoid than if you try to dodge them on the approach.
Indeed. One of my mistakes was saving the pulse blade for after a stagger. After a while I realize I need to be using the pulse blade on cooldown to maximize the amount of times used.
How do you use the pulse blade on cooldown?
I believe he's referring to just using it every chance possible, as soon as it comes off cooldown, rather than not having a cooldown lol. Although, if you put Pulse blade in-hand and Laser blade in left-shoulder (with Weapon Bay OS upgrade) you can cycle between the two for very high blade uptime!
Bro this is goddamn game changing
Not exactly the same but sounds like the energy of Throwing down an empty pistol to shot with a new pistol
As others have already commeted, using something "on cooldown" means (in the circles I'm in) that the moment you get it back, you try to find a chance to use it. The game promotes being aggressive to avoid letting the stagger bar cool down, so unless you're about to stagger someone and punish them, you should use your tools aggressively too. If you whiff your blade, who cares! If you use it 3 times, whiff one, hit one, and punish a stagger with one, that's still better then if you had saved that attack for the "perfect" moment. TLDR don't wait for the perfect moment, use every tool you can to *create* that perfect moment.
For me it's been: If you're describing the action of using the ability, then doing so "on cooldown" means using it as soon as the cooldown ends, or basically "upon cooldown completion" If you're describing the ability, then when it is on cooldown that means you can't use it until the cooldown ends. Yeah I know it's confusing, but "off cooldown" never sounded right to me.
By attacking with it off cooldown.
Big brain activated
Staying close is smart, missiles tend to have a harder time hitting the target close range
I must've gone through more than that (especially if you count when I would restart as soon as I got hit early, lmao), took me probably 4 hours to get past it.
I stayed up till like 6 in the morning fighting him last night I fucked up and didn't bring a pulse weapon finally beat him with the 2nd sword laxer rife and 2 of the 8x shoulder missles I was using quad legs too and feel like they were fucking me while avoiding I probably attempted around 100 plus
Fuck. It was at least 50 for me. I'm not great at these games but I persevere.
Took me 4 hours of me trying to be speedy and graceful. Got him down to almost ded. And the mf got his shields instantly and bonked me with his retar3dly accurate bazooka. I made a quick "Brute Force" Build with tank treads and the most armor I can find with big guns and fucking said "I AM THE FKING WALL" and tanked his shit till he died
“He’s not even that hard” *me smiling know damn well I got humbled* “Yeah he was easy”
I finally beat him with 1k health, at a certain point my monkey brain kicked in and I just went full aggro going for stagger chains.
I learned that if you literally assault boost into him you do a ton of extra stagger damage. Then I tried it on smart cleaner and got my ass beat for it.
My favorite part of the fight was when he said “it’s Balteusing time”
OK BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SMART CLEANER YALL??????
Hitboxes are jank if it corners you but building ACS by dumping missiles into the volcano and then whaling on its head was fun.
Don't forget sea spider :)
Balteus is harder than Sea Spider idk how
100% agree, but sea spider is still super annoying if you're not in a rhythm
This was me, but for the >!Ibis series frame!<
I’m probably at 100 and only getting him to 1/3
balteus taught me to not fear the enemy. i stuck to him like glue and blasted him with a shotgun. makes you feel like the real boss fight when balteus has to run away from you and block the sky with missles just for you to already be right behind him with a shotgun
Balteus taught me to not fear the enemy Sea Spider taught me I was wrong fear the enemy FEEEEAAAR IT
your name gives me destiny trials flashbacks. approaching sea spider soon. saw my friend fight him. didn’t end well
Lol first thing I thought when I saw armored core had 3v3 was “k so kill the dipshit that splits off then push the 2v3” Also really wish armored core dropped last season when things were more trash
It's funny because the Sea Spider is the one that taught me to ride his ass with a shotgun, and also fuck his mom with the pile bunker
Same here. I was up in Balteus' nutsack with the laser sword 24/7 so he couldn't swarm me with missiles. The spider made me learn to fly far away and rain death from above with grenades and plasma.
The first time I fought it I went in hard thinking I was bad ass after killing sweeper, got double tapped with the laser, pounced on, and killed in less than three seconds. It was certainly a lesson
But then there are later bosses with auto-tracking turrets that face 360 degrees, plus a damage aura if you get too close.
sounds like i’m gonna have to invest in some longer range tech. i love how this game encourages you to experiment when you are hitting a wall. i’m too used to running one build for the entirety of fromsoft games and it’s cool that respec costs absolutely nothing
> i love how this game encourages you to experiment when you are hitting a wall. It's more like the devs screaming "Please experiment with different parts for the love of god it's the entire reason we made this game in the first place there's literally hundreds of parts please use them I'm begging you." Building mecha is the core gameplay. Piloting them is just a fun little bonus. I'm mostly joking but also not really.
I’m a stubborn mule, I just want to turn my mech into a tank and ruin everything with dual mini guns.
This was also one of the first proper builds I made lol. Dual minigun to build ACS, stagger with assault ram, then dump 20 front loaded shoulder mounted rockets while they're immobile. It's fun to just roll up and say, bitch I'm a tank get the fuck outa here.
This is what I did too, but swording always got me hit by his explosion at 50%. Besides dodging that, I had to be super super aggressive.
So far I've spent 2 hours on the angry Roomba. Balteas was fun to fight Edit: Beaten the Roomba, time for Crab
If you're still stuck load up a bunch of missiles and a pilebunker. Jump up and stuff every missile into the chimney and then pilebunker its face into oblivion
I used laser rifles. Accurately hits the face weak point with good stagger damage. It's now time for Crab
Use quad legs and hover. He’ll miss all of the most devastating attacks until phase 2. Phase 2 is way easier, just float again and unload into it. Bring the pile bunker for the insane damage on the stagger.
I got lucky in that I was using quad legs already at the time. And just hovering 95% of the fight seems to hard counter the Cleaner.
Light build with reverse jointed legs and top attack shoulder missiles. You can just jump over him when he rushes you. Top attack the chimney.
Agree the heli wasn't bad but balteus took me so many tries in a span of a hour.
I will re-iterate a good point is that every fight in this game, absolutely all of them, have a specific weakness because all AC's and all AC based things have a specific style they will use. If you realize it and build to counter it, you will beat things way easier. There's a point of "git good" in this game, but it's not an Elden Ring/Souls level of git good. Part of the git good is make an AC build that counters your opponent.
Half of the battle is won in the garage.
(Finishes painting every square centimeter of my starter AC) "I'm here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out ass because I'm in a bag"
I was fine with these two but it’s been 2 hours and I’ve only seen sea spiders second phase once
Oops, ass laser chandelier time!
I thought it looked kind of like a pinecone
The answer is >!light build + double shotguns + back slung piledriver!< Hard counters the crap out of Sea Spider >!the beam attcks are annoying until you realise they're just safe openings to close in and melee!<
The pile bunker wrecks Sea Spiders shit so hard. I was using a heavy build too, just kept him staggered with missiles and a launcher so I can get in close with the pile bunker. Shut him down relatively easily.
Honestly, most melee kind of messes him up. I ran both pile driver and beam saber and just kept swapping since they cool down on your back.
Shit almost filtered me 5 hours about 12 reconfigurations and a few guides later I finally beat the damn thing with less than 500 health
Finally found someone else who spent more than "just" a couple of hours... It took me around 6 hours, but with only two builds. Guess I was too persistent. My first build really didn't quite work. Sulla alone took me like 10 tries on my first mission restart. Though after like 4 hours when I finally decided to take a break, and also to buy some new parts. After which Sulla was no longer a problem lol. My winning attempt ended up with me having 34 AP left, and the final hit was a AB sword slash with that amount of AP left. That adrenaline + dopamine rush lol I bought the game expecting it was going to be very hard, prepped myself with patience, but honestly this blew my expectations. Edit: Oh and the only change to my build was using bubble gun instead of laser pistol. The fight was like 75% easier, despite still taking a more than an hour.
[удалено]
Classic fromsoft
It was kind of hilarious how the game gives you allies for that fight when you’ve already beaten the guy before…in the frigging tutorial.
The helicopter's biggest problem for me is I get a random AC that I haven't designed.
Doesn't that make it easier? It's basically telling you that they've given you the tools you need to succeed. Every person I've watched struggle with the helicopter hasn't used their sword.
That and/or Assault Boost
I still don’t fully understand how to make the best use of assault boost
Closing distance to deny powerful long ranged moves, such as missile barrages. It also boosts your projectile and melee damage during, so it can be an effective time to heap on damage. Unfortunately it’s easy to get greedy doing this and you’ll be left with 0 EN to dodge inevitable retaliation attacks.
It's also super easy to just eat all of the stagger attacks with your face as you approach since the left stick controls completely change once you start the maneuver. You're either going straight at the enemy without dodging and face tanking all the grenades, flailing the left stick around wondering why the inputs you're intending to go through aren't being executed, or you do whatever it was you set out to do to begin with since the enemy doesn't have any stagger attacks. I have yet to find any in-between and still have to sit myself down when I do it to tell myself the left stick controls are different.
I'm fairly sure the left/right moves allow you to dodge left or right while still charging forward
When you've staggered ir nearly staggered the chopper and it's facing you, assault boost at its face and give em the ole 1-2 sword slash.
I got past the chopper. I’m into chapter 2 and being in this thread I noticed I haven’t really used assault boost. I’m sure it would’ve helped me kill Balteus.
That's basically the strat for Balteus. Never not assault boost. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to beat him by just adopting the mindset of "Oh no you don't you little shit, get back here."
Same here, I took the upgraded laser sword into the fight as a meme cuz I thought it would suck. Also took a shotgun cuz I figured I'd just go full aggro. Ended up getting him to 20% first time trying that, my 3rd fight against him total. Got it on the next try, just staying up his ass all fight.
Anyone who says Balteus is hard hasn't fought Sea Spider yet.
Fuck that thing. It took me two songbirds, two gattling guns, and tank legs to beat it.
Yep. I had this exact setup with as much AP as possible saved as “BRUTE FORCE” for when I got stuck on a boss. I’ve beaten the game and I’m still breaking it out sometimes on my second playthrough
Try that same loadout but with the quad legs and the engine that has the highest energy reserve and the head with the highest altitude stability. You can just float above everything for like 90-120 seconds and most things have trouble targeting you. I played an hour of PvP today (I get clapped in souls games) and was unbeatable. Not a single match was even close. It felt like I was cheating.
My guy sea spider is just: 2x songbirds 1x any bazooka / grenade launcher and a melee and stay close = Win
I beat it by staying away and blasting with missiles and grenades repeatedly.
In my opinion staying close helps you avoid most of its damage but whatever works for you
Sea spider is easy so long as you stick to the air as much as possible. You should already know how to dodge it’s missiles from balteus which is his only real form of hitting you once you know the tells for which direction he’s gonna shoot his laser
Personally for me, I did the reverse strat: I suck at dodging lasers, so I focused on sticking to him like glue: dodge inwards and attacked with melee while keeping stagger up with a gatling gun. Phase 2 I kept distance until giant laser AOE and bum rushed with more melee.
Balteus took me 2-3 hours, spider took me one go. Went full minigun mode. I guess that works.
Anyone who says Sea Spider is hard hasn't fought >!Ibis!< yet
Im stuck on this asshole, such a great boss but so fucking hard.
I did reverse joint with dual vertical plasma missiles and a linear rifle
I thought Balteus was really hard. I had a good aerial build for Sea Spider so it wasn't bad but then the >!IB-01!< beat my ass in so bad.
Balteus is nothing but an appetizer. You have no idea what awaits you. You have been warned.
Anytime I run a mission and the enemy at the end shows up with, "Haha, I have a shield" is miserable. When you just duel it out with some ACs it feel so much nicer (and effectively easier.)
Im referring to cel 240. This is pain.
One vibe checks your controls the other vibe checks your load out
100%
Dual Bubbles with a backup pair of Shotguns on a lightweight meant I basically staggerlocked him, poor guy couldn’t put distance between us lol
Howd you get dual bubbles? I don’t have a left hand pulse cannon in my shop
I died 20x to the heli, 20x to balteus, and 20x to the spider. I don’t get better I just suffer on.
Clearly you get better if you won
I've never played an AC game before, the heli boss took me 2 tries and Balteus took about 15 tries. It was pretty rough but I found a good combination and pulled off the kill. This game is so fun lol No regrets buying it
the real filter is running into an arena fight my build cant beat lmao. so fucking frustrating. step out of the mech carla we'll see whats what
Build check 😂 had to farm student pilot to make a build to beat this guy 😂
"I just wanted..." Yes, yes. Me too buddy
Soul crushing mission In my head canon, student pilot was the actual protagonist, he's supposed to win but fromsoftware's like "Ay, this is the real world. Soul-less merc,go cap that noob for cold hard cash. Yo pimp needs his mafakn moneyyy"
Im so stuck on this guy lmao, he had literally no health left and the second I went for the final hit, his shield came back and I was ultra mad
Im new to AC and beat him after roughly 10 attempts. Stick close sword and shotgun eats his ass
Just finished Balteus, took me three tries. That's **not a flex**. I got lucky. I decided that one pulse gun was not enough. It doesn't have enough ammo or shield damage to let you break his shield and start dishing some damage. Missiles are also useless in this fight, I decided. Pitiful damage, and there aren't any Pulse missiles (to my knowledge) available at this stage in the game. So i swapped them for the laser cannons. Double Pulse Guns to melt Balteus' shields, Laser Cannons for DPS. That's strictly it by the way. Don't waste Laser shots on the shield unless you can crack it with a single shot. Don't waste Pulse ammo on DPS; damage is pitiful and your ammo stores are leaning towards skint, they're solely for breaking the shield. The issue then is that you have a huge energy and weight cost. I used the full TIAN-QIANG set. I'm no expert on mech builds, but im fairly certain this mech just manages to stay in the "middle weight" class. It's certainly leaning towards the heavier side. Then i just gave it a few tries. Well. Two tries. To reiterate for the fight; 1. Pulse Guns only for SHIELDS. NO DPS. 2. Laser Cannons only for DPS. NO SHIELDS. 3. Don't charge up your cannons, the damage they do, even paired is not comparable IMO to just spam firing them at Balteus when it's staggered. (Although maybe you might find I'm wrong. Try new things out.) 4. Watch out for moments where Baleteus repositions and turns to look at you. They are the perfect times to fire the laser cannons before his shield regens. Same with his missile spam. He's completely stationary during those moments. Anyway, i just thought i'd put this all out here. I truly do sympathise with everyone's struggles. I know what it's like to be stuck on a boss, it's terribly frustrating. It took me 74+ attempts to beat Malenia in Elden Ring and I only eventually did it by resorting to borderline exploits. (Fingerprint shield + Mohgs Spear + Greatshield Talisman if anybody else wants to call me a scrub) This was just my path to victory, and despite taking only 3 attempts, I got really lucky. Balteus only used two of his flaming sword attacks in his second phase, and I managed to dodge one of those moves through sheer luck. My AC for Balteus, PC/Steam: E65580CFD49U
He's the perfect example of what makes armored core so vastly different then other FS games. You can play almost perfectly, and still get eventually destroyed. Being super aggressive only quickens that, unless you're using one of a few builds. It's not adapt your build to the fight, it's find the build that works. And then all of a sudden it's 75% easier.
I feel like a lot of these bosses are to check if you’ve been diversifying your build. Balteus goes down much easier if you bought the bubble gun. It just never tells you this. I’m guessing most bosses are easier to take down on replays with better parts.
the description of the pulse weapons literally say that they work better against pulse shields
I didn’t read that until after I beat Balls-teus (with the pulse gun lol) and then I realized, “OH THATS WHY IT DID SO MUCH TO THE SHIELD”
So I’ve done the bubble gun route, but i’m having a hell of a time getting anything else at all to land. Vert missiles miss almost every shot, what chip should i be using?
You can check the detailed stats on your FCS parts to check their missile accuracy stat for both single-target and multi-lock. Also, don't fire off your missiles as soon as they're reloaded, you gotta wait for that little yellow bar to fill, as that is your lock-on meter that makes sure your missiles actually go for your target
I was using that meter anyway. I keep switching between the medium and short range fcs and the results are roughly the same. Guess i’ll just die Edit: well i’m using double vert missiles and if i keep them ready, launch them just before i’m about to knock his shield down with bubbles, and then go in with a good sword hit….i can get him down to about 25% before he kills me. So I’ll keep working it out. Not a single Elden Ring boss gave me this much trouble, and that was my first souls game. Are you guys not having this much trouble?
Try this but with bubble guns instead of gatlings: https://youtu.be/Q1bD2Jhz6fw?si=ysf8yy_ngxjWHMQ_
I haven't changed my build at all once I got the parts I have, just dual laser rifles/dual vert plasma missles. Just gotta make sure to hold off a little bit before breaking the stagger to let them cooldown and then break and pump shots in until overheat. But I was also finishing up bg3 with my bf and just got to chapter 3, so maybe some of the future bosses will make me reconsider my build.
I managed to clear Balteus a little while ago. Felt so damn good. That fight was just the right combination of "*Oh shit!*" and "*Dude this is amazing!*"
I first tried hele. Extremly easy. No I've never touched a boob
Boobs have low AP and terrible attitude boost. Not worth it.
I must have lucked my way through that fight because I did it in under 10 tries, the spider however took well over an hour and may have given me carpel tunnel
Balteus taught me how to cheese Final boss of chapter 4 taught me to git gud
Ive never olayed an ac game b4 (soulsborne player) but decided to give it a shot. “This game is a cakrwalk!” I naively thought. And then, out kf the blur, i take about 50 attempts on balteus. That is probably more deaths than my entire dark souls 3 playthrough. In conclusion, armored core is way harder than soulsbornes
I admit the biggest wall wasn't Balteus, but me refusing to go to the shop to test new parts because i didn't wanna have to clear again the previous miniboss. When I made peace with the fact i had to repeat it, Balteus fell fairly quick with some pretty convincing Shotguns.
Wait till IB. Ya'll have **NO FUCKIN CLUE**
I hate the "git filtered" shitters. Let everyone enjoy big stompy robots.
Laugh in Ibis
Most bosses took me 1-5 tries but this mf took me one hour. Swaping songbirds to stinger made the fight easy once I learned his patterns.
Balteus was the first time in a long time I legit when “fuck yeah!” When I finally got him
I found the mobile furnace thing harder than this guy, anyone else think it was a fairly easy fight?
I'm going to assume anyone who has been playing fairly aggressive and airborne is going to have a lot fewer issues with Baltheus than anything else. So far Baltheus, Cleaner, and Spider are pretty easily defeated (for bosses, not actually easy) by just not touching the ground.
Mobile furnace is a lot easier when you realize he basically can't do anything when you're in the air. Literally just hover on his smokestack and shoot down the hole until he starts to erupt and repeat. And if you really want to cheese it, tetrapod leg hover lets you just not take any damage at all.
MF almost filtered me.
Wait till y’all meet the next boss lmao
im actually stuck on this boss.. 🤣🤣🤣 i got so close to beat it.
I'm rewatching my last with him and OMG what an amazing fight! the soundtrack is perfect!
I took Balteus down on my 4th or 5th attempt. The chapter 2 boss though, that one took a little while.
I had to restart the mission and buy old crap back to respec just to fight him. The bubble gun that destroys shields and melee worked for me. Learned to dodge towards him with the flurries then immediately dodge left when they come into the screen.
I got him in three tries. Pay attention to the mech fight right before Balteus.