Inferno guide - from completing your first inferno stage to beating DLC stage on inferno lv90 (early)

[minjiachen]

Edit: added a section on post final quest grinding.

I've just completed all of the quests so I thought I could share my experience with Inferno mode so other people don't have to go through the same mistakes as I did and waste tens of millions on re-spec your suits. I play on Switch so unfortunately I can't post this in Guide section.

There's going to be spoilers on new expansion mods / abilities and enemy stats at late / end inferno levels. So turn back now if you do not wish to see them.

1. Inferno mode overview & tips on (end game) team comp

First thing first: the balancing is AWFUL. Interactions seem to be based entirely around crossing certain "stat thresholds". Until your ATK/DEF/MOB is ~1000 higher than that of the enemies, you'll basically deal no damage / gets 1 or 2 shot by everything / never going to dodge.

2. Invest all upgrade points into a single stat

That's right. A "well rounded" suit doesn't exist in high inferno levels, until you grinded to maybe around lv900. However, if you invest all of your upgrade points onto a single stat, you can pump it to around 8000 at ~lv400. Combined with some of the best mods from inferno mode, it lets you push your stat to 9000+. That's exactly what you need to beat the final stage on inferno lv90 for the final quests.

If you invest in two stats, then that will just give you a unit that excels in nothing. For reference, at max level (lv999) you can push one stat to 9999 and another to ~8900/9000. So with some OPs you can get two stats at 9999. I.e. a god unit that can solo everything given enough time.

3. Team composition

Plan out your team FIRST before you start grinding. For my strategy you'll need:

2 WS (I used P2K but that doesn't really matter as long as ship has 2 team slots) invest in mobility only, then attack after maxing MOB. Both of these improves your link attack damage.

2 Master units that invests in mobility only.

4 tanks with all points invested in defence (units with built in health regen is preferable but not needed).

12 attackers with all points invested in attack. All of the mods should be + hit chance.

Additionally, you want a balanced mix of active skills on your team. You want Lock-on EX, damage burst gamma 3, double repair EX. Auto-resurrect, vantage, high speed beta, MP up EX and double boost 3 are nice to have's.

The plan is simple: your ship will spam link attacks to clear out grunts. Nothing can hit your ship given the high mobility. Tanks are there to support defend everyone else in the team. The two master units are boss killers: they can safely initiate attacks without risk of dying, then your attackers sweep in to deal damage to bosses.

4. BOSSES

Those are by far the biggest discriminator between HELL and INFERNO (besides the stat changes). In late inferno levels, they are the only real threat, with an obscene amount of health pool (40-80k), halves link attack damages, ignores all active skills (such as damage burst or lock-on) and sometimes got boss only mods/abilities like +40% hit/avo on Knight Superior Dragon (KSD) or -40% damage taken (Hashmal). As such, link attacks are often ineffective against them when their health pool start to exceed 200k. This is why you need the attackers on your team.



Ok that was a long overview. Now I'll go over the steps I took to power my team to take down the final quests.

5. Getting started on Inferno mode.

You'll first notice even on Inf lv1 opponents will have 900-3000 ATK/DEF/MOB. Ignore the stages with 3k stats mobs. Focus on the easier 900 stats ones first. I would highly recommend Gekko stage 1 as a starting point. Simple spam link attacks to your heart's content. After you got some confidence, feel free to try a few different stages (G-UNIT stage 3 is another easy one).

Your first priority is to unlock inferno lv100 to maximise your EXP gain. During this process you'll naturally level your team considerably.

6. Complete as many expansion quests as you can.

They all reward OPs, some of which give amazing stat bonuses, which you'll need later on for the final quest.

7. Grinding & final prep before DLC stage 5

This is the most boring part. Waltz stage 2 is an amazing early grinding stage because lots of high stat enemies but no bosses even on INF lv100. Trailblazer stage 1 is another sweet early grind spot.

Once you are more powerful I would recommend Destiny Stage 1. Lots of exp & great ability drops (friendship which gives +30% support attack /support counter damage, and EX instinct which gives +15% hit / avo which you absolutely need for the final boss). Note that if you are only interested in EX instinct then stargazer stage 2 is a much faster grind spot for it.

You'll need around 8000 def / mob on your tank / master unit. You'll get another 1200 stats from mods alone. Slap on + hit chance mods on all your attackers. Final boss has +40% hit / avo ability, which means you need to stack your bonuses a lot higher than that to land hits reliably. You'll get 48% from mods, 15% from your ship captain's aoe buff ability, and another 15% from ability EX instinct (dropped on SEED destiny stage 9). Just be prepared to save-reload until your hits land.

Put Super Pilot on ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE that isn't your ship captain / crew. After all of this grinding, all your pilots should have a respectable amount of kills by now. And if I'm honest, the attackers didn't turn out nearly as useful as I hoped. Most of the damage still comes from Super Pilot. 8k attacks hardly makes a dent on the bosses on the final stage even with all the damage abilities in the world. However they will be a lot more useful at higher levels when your attack gets closer to max out.

8. The final challenge - DLC stage 5 on INF lv90

After all the prep you've done, this is now just a matter of patience.

Just camp at the starting area and slowly murder all of the grunts using link attacks until they stop spawning. The high threat targets are those with piercing attacks which will deal ~10-20k damage to your tanks. Next highest threats are those with MAP weapons (halphas bose Halberd & Meteors). While their MAP weapon does like 20k damage, you can wipe them out before they can attack anything other than your ship by timing the spawns appropriately.

The 4 KSDs are actually tougher than the final boss himself due to they ignore your active skills. However you can safely ignore them until the very end because they always warp into melee range and use Golden Strike (so they will never actually use the piercing weapon).

Once you've slowly cleared out everything, kill the last KSD and spawn the final boss (still KSD but with 800k health and +40% hit/avo). However the final boss does not actually negate active skills so you can kill him with triple damage buffs and link attacks, plus lots of support attack spam. However prioritise killing the other 4 reinforcement KSDs. Not only you need to kill them first for the quest completion, but also they might use their piercing weapon in support attacks, which is very dangerous for our tanks.

The final boss drops "Golden dragon's guidance" which gives allies within 10 tiles +30% hit/avo.

The 3 final quests reward 3 OPs that each gives one of the KSD's mech abilities (Knight of Light, Golden Guardragon, Dimensional Transcendence).

9. more grind for the sake of grind

I will suggest 2 different farming strategies here. This is because I can't decide on which is the most efficient one overall (most exp per kill vs much higher farming efficient so possibly higher exp per minute). As a side note you only need enough EN to last your MS for one turn. Just put Spirit of Algus Knight on your ship captain for full regen effect.

MS based grinding

Farm dlc final stage on Inf 100. If you grind to around lv500 then your attackers can guarantee 2-shot mobs on the final stage (so you can do support attacks with 2 a. Accuracy is now also no longer a problem thanks to Golden dragon's guidance.

Pros:
- Lots of exp
Cons:
- bosses aka. damage sponges and enemies with MAP weapons are just super annoying.
- inconvenient for short range units
- slow compared to link attack spam

WS link attack based grinding

Farm base game hidden stage on Inf 100 and just spam ship link attacks.

Pros:
- Fast & easy. There's basically no threats here whatsoever. Just 1 KSD who basically does nothing. Not MAP weapons. Piercing weapons are not a big deal here.
Cons:
- Enemies here are ~1000 points of stats lower than dlc final stage so worth less exp
- A lot of exp gets wasted on your ship

[TouyaShiro]

The only criticism I have with this guide is that it doesn't really tell us any good ways to level up, just in case I want to do things my own way. From what I can see, though, the suggestion is simply to focus on unlocking the level threshold first?

[✨Nutkun7993✨]

Originally posted by TouyaShiro:

The only criticism I have with this guide is that it doesn't really tell us any good ways to level up, just in case I want to do things my own way. From what I can see, though, the suggestion is simply to focus on unlocking the level threshold first?

From the guide. You basically increase Inferno level first so enemy will come with full upgraded stats and at their best, and so their best exp given.

And that's where my criticism come. This entirely guide basically tell you to grind "kill" count rather than "exp" to later abuse Super Pilot ability, by investing in just one stats for accuracy and evasion, and heavily rely on damage that come from Super Pilot. That's probably why he feels disappointed in Attacker because even Defender kill counts (from abuse a lot of Link-up attack obviously, and I can even tell they have nearly the same kill count due to link-up for entire life) basically does nearly the same as Attacker due to that ineffective stat investment, and ineffective OP part and ability lineup. Basically I would call this guide a "rush" one rather than a complete guide on how to actual tackle the inferno stage.

By entirely neglect Pilot stat due to the fact that you no longer have as much as freedom to invest to like with the MS because MS gains upgrade points and you can use them at will, in contrast to pilot which now rely purely on leveling up even with BP. This is a weakness of his strategy that's why he avoid talking about pilot stat for the entire guide. Which conclude that he doesn't have the best way to grind exp himself. By rely point so on MS build that will give him the fastest route to beat the final level. This also an answer to why his attacker does crap damage. Even with all damage buff in the world, you won't do damage if your "base damage" is none to exist which is your pilot stat and weapon power (which can be boosted with OP part but he already wasted all the slot for stats boosting and accuracy). Further proof that he's indeed neglect pilot completely.

Though for sake of benefit of the doubt. By investing in one single stat, you can reach 9000ish (MS only) very fast. With team composition and a very careful micromanagment you will manage to fight on the hardest stage in the game. It's like play MMORPG on the hardest boss battle, but instead of control one role one character, you take control of entire team. And by doing this you can get the nice reward from quest quicker in theory. Though this entire guide would be ineffective entirely if you have no access to Super Pilot ability because the reason I said above.

In the end of day, this is just "one way" of playing it. I have been playing with the build that this guide claim to be "none existence" and still complete stage for nice goodie just fine. In my game when I'm level 500ish my exp pace is actually faster due to how I invest stats in two of them (Stat for weapon of your choice and Reaction) which is enough to tackle a stage that way stronger than mine, and still manage to do 100% to hit and 30% or lower to not be hit. I end up gain EXP so much it's capping the MVP bonus and everyone gain like 5-6 levels for the exact same pace I used to play on Extra/Hell, which mean it gonna be easier for me from now on.

[きょすけ]

Originally posted by ✨Nutkun7993✨:

Though for sake of benefit of the doubt. By investing in one single stat, you can reach 9000ish (MS only) very fast. With team composition and a very careful micromanagment you will manage to fight on the hardest stage in the game. It's like play MMORPG on the hardest boss battle, but instead of control one role one character, you take control of entire team. And by doing this you can get the nice reward from quest quicker in theory. Though this entire guide would be ineffective entirely if you have no access to Super Pilot ability because the reason I said above.

Welp I would argue the "you can reach 9000ish very fast" thing, as its directly proportional to how well you are tackling inferno levels and with the right setup.

Honestly I would use super pilot solely to level up lv 1 units, as they wouldn't receive otherwise any exp at all with a high level pilot, even if against inferno level 1 units (since your pilot would surpass the enemy stats way too much).

I really like the idea of building a new character to take inferno on with those new sets of stat enhancement abilities, too bad most of them are locked behind high inferno levels...

Another fun fact: I'm trying to bulk-level up my warship team, and I'm finding leveling up units through raids/link up attack way more inefficient than letting them kill enemies on their own, compared to pre-inferno difficulties, not sure if the exp scaling through these got reduced on inferno.

[TouyaShiro]

Originally posted by きょすけ:

Another fun fact: I'm trying to bulk-level up my warship team, and I'm finding leveling up units through raids/link up attack way more inefficient than letting them kill enemies on their own, compared to pre-inferno difficulties, not sure if the exp scaling through these got reduced on inferno.

I think they actually did, specifically so players could not abuse Link-Up to cheese it by level OR damage. In other words, you really need to rely on your team.

[きょすけ]

Definitely. XD

[minjiachen]

Originally posted by TouyaShiro:

The only criticism I have with this guide is that it doesn't really tell us any good ways to level up, just in case I want to do things my own way. From what I can see, though, the suggestion is simply to focus on unlocking the level threshold first?

I assumed people are already familiar with warship link attack grinding strategies so I don't need to go into charisma and observer etc.

I did discuss which stages I found effective for level grinding in section 7 (appropriately titled "grinding"). It didn't get the proper header formatting before so that might be why people missed the section

[TouyaShiro]

Isn't Warship Link-Up nerfed for EXP in Inferno, too? That is why I am having trouble taking that seriously.

[minjiachen]

Originally posted by ✨Nutkun7993✨:

Originally posted by TouyaShiro:

The only criticism I have with this guide is that it doesn't really tell us any good ways to level up, just in case I want to do things my own way. From what I can see, though, the suggestion is simply to focus on unlocking the level threshold first?

From the guide. You basically increase Inferno level first so enemy will come with full upgraded stats and at their best, and so their best exp given.

And that's where my criticism come. This entirely guide basically tell you to grind "kill" count rather than "exp" to later abuse Super Pilot ability, by investing in just one stats for accuracy and evasion, and heavily rely on damage that come from Super Pilot. That's probably why he feels disappointed in Attacker because even Defender kill counts (from abuse a lot of Link-up attack obviously, and I can even tell they have nearly the same kill count due to link-up for entire life) basically does nearly the same as Attacker due to that ineffective stat investment, and ineffective OP part and ability lineup. Basically I would call this guide a "rush" one rather than a complete guide on how to actual tackle the inferno stage.

By entirely neglect Pilot stat due to the fact that you no longer have as much as freedom to invest to like with the MS because MS gains upgrade points and you can use them at will, in contrast to pilot which now rely purely on leveling up even with BP. This is a weakness of his strategy that's why he avoid talking about pilot stat for the entire guide. Which conclude that he doesn't have the best way to grind exp himself. By rely point so on MS build that will give him the fastest route to beat the final level. This also an answer to why his attacker does crap damage. Even with all damage buff in the world, you won't do damage if your "base damage" is none to exist which is your pilot stat and weapon power (which can be boosted with OP part but he already wasted all the slot for stats boosting and accuracy). Further proof that he's indeed neglect pilot completely.

Though for sake of benefit of the doubt. By investing in one single stat, you can reach 9000ish (MS only) very fast. With team composition and a very careful micromanagment you will manage to fight on the hardest stage in the game. It's like play MMORPG on the hardest boss battle, but instead of control one role one character, you take control of entire team. And by doing this you can get the nice reward from quest quicker in theory. Though this entire guide would be ineffective entirely if you have no access to Super Pilot ability because the reason I said above.

In the end of day, this is just "one way" of playing it. I have been playing with the build that this guide claim to be "none existence" and still complete stage for nice goodie just fine. In my game when I'm level 500ish my exp pace is actually faster due to how I invest stats in two of them (Stat for weapon of your choice and Reaction) which is enough to tackle a stage that way stronger than mine, and still manage to do 100% to hit and 30% or lower to not be hit. I end up gain EXP so much it's capping the MVP bonus and everyone gain like 5-6 levels for the exact same pace I used to play on Extra/Hell, which mean it gonna be easier for me from now on.

It's a two fold story in a way.

The first reason why my attackers end up being underwhelming is due to I sacrificed 1200 points of attack in favour of hit chance mods (so I have a reasonable shot at landing hits on enemies who gets 40% evasion mod). I tried to "rush" the final quests so I wanted to do it with the absolute minimal grinding. Had I been more patient and waited until around lv500 where I can get 9999 attack naturally then the attackers would do a far better job.

Specifically I've tested this scenario out. At 9999 attack and 6500 melee, (and without Super Pilot), my ms does around 60k on Inf100 on the final stage, and around 100k against most other Inf 100 stages. Which means with Super Pilot it's enough to 1 shot most grunts (minus the MAs) on the final stage, and easily 1 round bosses despite their 800k health pool.

At lv500 if you invest in 2 stats, you can't get past 6k in each even with stats mods. And that means ~2000 damage to enemies per hit without mods on the final stage.

I didn't discuss pilot stats because I thought there's just nothing to talk about besides "use BP on stats you need". Only argument here is should you forgo all pilot abilities in favour of a full stats stacking build, which basically gives +1800 on all your pilot stats. But from my experience that didn't really change anything and I still end up prefer the usual "good" abilities.

It would be one hell of a boring guide if I simply said "haha game is too easy go grind to lv999 and just do whatever to crush the final bosses"

[minjiachen]

Originally posted by TouyaShiro:

Isn't Warship Link-Up nerfed for EXP in Inferno, too? That is why I am having trouble taking that seriously.

It is but I found it still more efficient than leveling my units individually. You also get maxed out ships pretty early which is also nice in crushing everything that isn't the final stage on Inf 90.

Every link attack typically levels my ship 2 or 3 times. By the time my ship hit lv999 my ms are mostly around lv480. After which point I honestly can't say if it's still more efficient to mass clear with link attack or use ms to just 1 shot everything on Inf100

[TouyaShiro]

That is probably because your Warship gets the brunt of the EXP...

[きょすけ]

Originally posted by minjiachen:

It is but I found it still more efficient than leveling my units individually. You also get maxed out ships pretty early which is also nice in crushing everything that isn't the final stage on Inf 90.

Every link attack typically levels my ship 2 or 3 times. By the time my ship hit lv999 my ms are mostly around lv480. After which point I honestly can't say if it's still more efficient to mass clear with link attack or use ms to just 1 shot everything on Inf100

I believe it depends on your priorities.

I'm farming g unit stage 1 inferno 95 through warship link up attacks and leveling the other units that way, but the process is so painfully slow, that it would be way more efficient to just let units kill the enemies through themselves.

[きょすけ]

Originally posted by ✨Nutkun7993✨:

Supposedly at certain point, your exp grinding should be faster when accommodate just enough of BPs and upgrade point to both pilot and MS to invest in what necessary for battle

Speaking of which, I'm still keeping my BP unused because I wanted to avoid any possible exp penalties, but at this point I wonder if I would better benefit from using them ad tackle stronger enemies. Another issue though is that BP are VERY limited, meaning that I should just focus on some of them (I believe melee/ranger and reaction?)

[TouyaShiro]

Nutkun, YOU should make a guide. I would love to see your advice on making pilot and MS stronk a bit more structured than your above post.

[minjiachen]

Originally posted by きょすけ:

Originally posted by ✨Nutkun7993✨:

Supposedly at certain point, your exp grinding should be faster when accommodate just enough of BPs and upgrade point to both pilot and MS to invest in what necessary for battle

Speaking of which, I'm still keeping my BP unused because I wanted to avoid any possible exp penalties, but at this point I wonder if I would better benefit from using them ad tackle stronger enemies. Another issue though is that BP are VERY limited, meaning that I should just focus on some of them (I believe melee/ranger and reaction?)

Re-specing BP is very cheap (only 300k cap) compared to re-specing high level mechs which costs like 7 million each so you should have no problem with allocation.

Prioritise shooting / melee for damage dealers, then awakening if it uses awaken weapons. Awaken weapon is still great if your units are reasonably levelled as it effectively benefits from stat modifiers twice.

While high stats = lower exp, you probably benefit more from taking on harder enemies (given how the total stats of enemies scale way faster than you). At around lv500 with full damage spec, you can 2 shot mobs on the final stage on Inf 100 guaranteed, while fixing your accuracy with top end Inferno abilities / mods. If you aim to farm with ms kills (as opposed to link attacks) then that should be the most optimal spot to stop investing any more points into upgrade.

[きょすけ]

Originally posted by minjiachen:

Re-specing BP is very cheap (only 300k cap) compared to re-specing high level mechs which costs like 7 million each so you should have no problem with allocation.

Prioritise shooting / melee for damage dealers, then awakening if it uses awaken weapons. Awaken weapon is still great if your units are reasonably levelled as it effectively benefits from stat modifiers twice.

While high stats = lower exp, you probably benefit more from taking on harder enemies (given how the total stats of enemies scale way faster than you). At around lv500 with full damage spec, you can 2 shot mobs on the final stage on Inf 100 guaranteed, while fixing your accuracy with top end Inferno abilities / mods. If you aim to farm with ms kills (as opposed to link attacks) then that should be the most optimal spot to stop investing any more points into upgrade.

And what about leveling units from scratch with a high level pilot? Due to the high level pilot stats, the exp a unit gets is a joke pre-inferno, while even the first inferno level doesn't grant anything more than 50 exp (if I'm lucky), which would forces me to tackle higher inferno levels, but a) I WILL miss without any mech points invested into mob, and b) I would do ♥♥♥♥♥♥ damage regardless, unless again I end up using super pilot, which I'm trying to avoid. :/