Best way to grind arena?

[Luzilyo]

Currently I think the best way to do arena is to just play through everything on tourist for the first time, just go through to the end, so that everything is unlocked, but never fight more waves than you need to. On this "first" arena playthrough (assuming you already have all the imprints you want) fight everything with whatever skill is hardest for you to level up.

For me, that is acrobatics so that is what this description will be focused on. Try to get through as many waves as possible without ever actually using any weapons or fists. Grab your starter gear and always only throw the weapons, never use them to shoot or hit unless you absolutely have to. For me, there are a few enemies which I just can't beat with simply throwing weapons, but the vast majority is beatable in this way on tourist. Additionally, I don't think you can kill cultists in the mansion either if you're just throwing weapons around. For them you'd need to either actually use any weapon or your fists, or you stock up on throwables and use those (don't forget to equip new ones between waves if you need it). The purpose of doing it this way is that you can get through pretty easily so it's not that hard to win even if you are using mostly or exclusively whatever skill you're worst at. Thanks to the decent new wave bonus that you'll always get after every wave, it is also rather quick to level that one up.

Then, once you have all gear unlocked, the skill you used should already be either maxed out or close to being maxed out, so there will not me much further training needed, if any. So then you can start focusing to unlock and play on madness and use whatever skill you want. Gives a decent boost to some stats - endurance/dexterity for me since I chose Acrobatics for the first playthrough - and also, if you don't purchase any gear and only check out the chef after every time you return home, you might get an opportunity to already buy some nice weapons that you can then start to use immediately once you start doing your madness runs.

I'd also recommend that you use hirelings on your tourist runs because, while it may cost some money to hire them and then reviving can also be quite expensive if you don't want to wait and don't want to spend money on cloning tanks either, their kills count towards your xp and will increase whatever skill you were using most, so it does help a lot with leveling up.

Do you think this is a decent way of doing it or are there any suggestions for improving this plan?

[Wiawyr]

If you're trying to just level acrobatics while playing like that, having hirelings would make it about ten times faster and easier. You get xp for their kills, but the xp goes into whatever category you've been using instead of what the hirelings were using. Also, the top difficulty is Madness.

[Luzilyo]

Oh, didn't know about the hirelings, that's pretty nice. Yeah, kinda messed up with the naming there, gonna fix that real quick.

[Dasrian]

first:Complete story mode
Then: Play arena

many people have problems with arena cause they dont touch story mode, that is like the most important tutorial, i completed story mode first, then i played arena, and i could end all missions in tough, yes, even hard sell.

i think tourist isnt worth it, the amount of money and exp is so low, is better to train in story mode

[ham sandwich]

start on normal difficulty. if you suck at that, use tourist. easy.

[Luzilyo]

Originally posted by erasedcards:

start on normal difficulty. if you suck at that, use tourist. easy.

Why though? Tourist seems to still be quicker for unlocking everything and getting the most annoying skill (acrobatics for me) leveled up early on. The real money and xp will only come in when doing many waves on madness anyway. I don't see how normal would be very useful, except maybe to new players who don't care much about grinding anything and only want to get through it in a somewhat challenging but not too difficult way.
Edited the topic to clear up any possible misconceptions. Wasn't asking about very first playthrough, only about best options for grinding and getting all skills in the least annoying way.

[SauloTheMan]

Originally posted by Luzilyo:

Originally posted by erasedcards:

start on normal difficulty. if you suck at that, use tourist. easy.

Why though? Tourist seems to still be quicker for unlocking everything and getting the most annoying skill (acrobatics for me) leveled up early on. The real money and xp will only come in when doing many waves on madness anyway. I don't see how normal would be very useful, except maybe to new players who don't care much about grinding anything and only want to get through it in a somewhat challenging but not too difficult way.
Edited the topic to clear up any possible misconceptions. Wasn't asking about very first playthrough, only about best options for grinding and getting all skills in the least annoying way.

You have a point, personally when I replay arena mode I play everything on tough so I can unlock madness difficulty at once, it doesn't matter if I'll have way better gear after going through everything in tourist mode, I'd rather do a whole area one time with tough and then have madness difficulty available so I can save on time and effort

[tv]

Nothing fixes the grind on new imprints. There isn't a reason to do more than three honestly.

[Wiawyr]

After testing out several ideas, Nexus Core is actually the best mission for grinding either cash or xp. No other mission has medical cabinets after every room - anywhere else and a missing corpus is gone until you quit the mission. A full cycle through its repeating stages will provide you with six health cabinets, enough to keep yourself and your favorite hireling in top form.

[SauloTheMan]

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

After testing out several ideas, Nexus Core is actually the best mission for grinding either cash or xp. No other mission has medical cabinets after every room - anywhere else and a missing corpus is gone until you quit the mission. A full cycle through its repeating stages will provide you with six health cabinets, enough to keep yourself and your favorite hireling in top form.

The enemies also appear quickly and rush to you so you can kill them faster

In many arenas it's either sluggish enemy waves or way too many enemies per wave

[Mr Duck]

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

After testing out several ideas, Nexus Core is actually the best mission for grinding either cash or xp. No other mission has medical cabinets after every room - anywhere else and a missing corpus is gone until you quit the mission. A full cycle through its repeating stages will provide you with six health cabinets, enough to keep yourself and your favorite hireling in top form.

Just wait till few expendable-baton-glassy-bois entrap you in some corner and get rid of few corpuses.

[Luzilyo]

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

After testing out several ideas, Nexus Core is actually the best mission for grinding either cash or xp. No other mission has medical cabinets after every room - anywhere else and a missing corpus is gone until you quit the mission. A full cycle through its repeating stages will provide you with six health cabinets, enough to keep yourself and your favorite hireling in top form.

Wait you can actually order hirelings to heal up? How do you do that? I've tried many times to send them to one of the medical cabinets with ctrl + click but whenever I sent a dude there, he just ran towards it and then, sometimes he stood there, not doing much at all, other times, he waited for like maybe half a second and then came back to me without healing himself at all.

[Wiawyr]

Originally posted by Luzilyo:

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

A full cycle through its repeating stages will provide you with six health cabinets, enough to keep yourself and your favorite hireling in top form.

Wait you can actually order hirelings to heal up? How do you do that? I've tried many times to send them to one of the medical cabinets with ctrl + click but whenever I sent a dude there, he just ran towards it and then, sometimes he stood there, not doing much at all, other times, he waited for like maybe half a second and then came back to me without healing himself at all.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2628999552
Look under Hireling Orders.

Originally posted by SauloTheMan:

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

After testing out several ideas, Nexus Core is actually the best mission for grinding either cash or xp.

The enemies also appear quickly and rush to you so you can kill them faster

In many arenas it's either sluggish enemy waves or way too many enemies per wave

This is what ruins Murder Room, Slaughter Time, Hard Sell, Foundry, Haunting of Nevada House, Pit Stop, and Fast Track for grinding. You spend a lot of time either waiting on the last enemy from a group to die so the next group will spawn, or looking around the map for them. Nexus Core is just constantly replenishing enemies, with a minimum of four alive at once, and I love it.

Originally posted by Mr Duck:

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

No other mission has medical cabinets after every room - anywhere else and a missing corpus is gone until you quit the mission. A full cycle through its repeating stages will provide you with six health cabinets, enough to keep yourself and your favorite hireling in top form.

Just wait till few expendable-baton-glassy-bois entrap you in some corner and get rid of few corpuses.

I don't understand, are you saying I haven't run into a specific group of enemies on Nexus Core?

[Mr Duck]

Originally posted by Wiawyr:

Originally posted by Luzilyo:

Wait you can actually order hirelings to heal up? How do you do that? I've tried many times to send them to one of the medical cabinets with ctrl + click but whenever I sent a dude there, he just ran towards it and then, sometimes he stood there, not doing much at all, other times, he waited for like maybe half a second and then came back to me without healing himself at all.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2628999552
Look under Hireling Orders.

Originally posted by SauloTheMan:

The enemies also appear quickly and rush to you so you can kill them faster

In many arenas it's either sluggish enemy waves or way too many enemies per wave

This is what ruins Murder Room, Slaughter Time, Hard Sell, Foundry, Haunting of Nevada House, Pit Stop, and Fast Track for grinding. You spend a lot of time either waiting on the last enemy from a group to die so the next group will spawn, or looking around the map for them. Nexus Core is just constantly replenishing enemies, with a minimum of four alive at once, and I love it.

Originally posted by Mr Duck:

Just wait till few expendable-baton-glassy-bois entrap you in some corner and get rid of few corpuses.

I don't understand, are you saying I haven't run into a specific group of enemies on Nexus Core?

I was writing about nexus l33t agents with extended batons. They attack very fast and few of them in the matter of seconds can take your corpuses.

[distonv]

Does anyone know what withheld from next wave means when I finished a Wave in arena mode?

[Luzilyo]

Originally posted by »The Sheriff»:

Does anyone know what withheld from next wave means when I finished a Wave in arena mode?

It means exactly what it says. When you finish a wave, you get a certain amount of money, but some of it will be withheld until you finish the next wave. So for example, lets say you do the first wave and get 500, then it will maybe take 250 away from your payout and withhold them for next wave, meaning your final payout on wave 1 will be 250 lower, but when you finish wave 2 you will get an additional 250. For a more in-depth explanation of the meaning of the word "withhold", check out the words definition on Google, or Wikipedia, or something.