Combat rating on Advanced Research Complex

[LU-C4]

Okay, so has this mystery ever been solved? I've gone through every corner of the map, gotten every secret, every item, every single demon encounter and yet I was still missing only a tiny bit of progress for the 5th point. So, what does and doesn't factor into the combat rating? I've looked at other threads, but the answers there were inconclusive to say the least. So before I go and try random stuff for hours and replay the whole mission several times over, I'd rather know what random stuff will actually work.

[Crypto Gamer]

I never managed to get max there as well,from what I have told,Letting the summoner summon a few demons help with full stars.
If you kill it too fast or with bfg he won't be able to summon smaller demons which contribute to rating.Or you missed certain secret area spawns.

[Swedish Person#SörtifajdJeanyus]

I would feel fairly confident in saying that you most likely missed some demons somewhere. Just watch a youtube video of the level and play along, that's what I did on my 100% run.

[LU-C4]

Originally posted by TFBSwedishPerson:

I would feel fairly confident in saying that you most likely missed some demons somewhere. Just watch a youtube video of the level and play along, that's what I did on my 100% run.

I managed to do it now (don't know how), but no, I killed all the same demons as before. As I said, I know where the enemy spawns are, including all the lost souls and the cacodemon at the mega health. Post of them don't even increase the combat rating anyway, but I did kill them.

[[RKB]Il Saggio]

There are certain demons that don't contribute to Combat Rating in ARC. I found out that only the big ones count outside the 3 Gore Nest battles, e.g. the Mancubus at start, the HK at Wall of Excellence, the Cyber Mancubus at BFG lab and the Pinkies at corridor. The Cacodemon at Meha Health doesn't count.

I don't know what difficulty level you are playing on, but if you are a perfectionist you will want to risk it on Ultra-Nightmare anyways despite the following tactics being extremely risky there. They bring no risk to any other difficulty levels, not even Nightmare.

1. Take main battles (the 3 Gore Nests) and the mentioned heavy demons slower. Unequip or don't use high damage mods (e.g. mastered Remote Detonation, Siege Mode). You can just straight up not using any weapon mods at all if you want to make sure, though again, it is extremely risky. Limit BFG usage at final Gore Nest to one shot or even better, just don't fire it at all. Kill everything slowly (and painfully lol) with regular weapons.

2. Glory kill as many heavies as you can. Every Glory Kill contributes to Combat Rating in Gore Nest battles and even glory killing said heavies outside main battles. You get more progress for each Glory Kill than from a regular kill with these heavies. First GN: Glory Kill at least one Mancubus and one Hell Knight. Second: Glory kill at least 1 Cyber-Mancubus and 1 Revenant. Third: Glory Kill at least 2 Hell Knight, 2 Cyber-Mancubi and one of the final Barons.

3. Summoners. Let them live. They will swarm you with extra Hell Knights which contribute to Combat Rating upon killingy especially Glory killing.

One final piece of advice: If you are on UN run and the situation gets hairy, immediately discontinue and BFG the crap outta the demons. No sense in throwing away 2h30m of progress only to get the final circle.

Good Luck!