My Comprehensive Guide to Advena (The Starter Class)

[Brioche]

Creatures not out of this world designed to adapt and kill

This guide will be about pure Advena. (no zooids from other classes.)

Class Philosophy - Versitility, Adaptability, Power

Available Zooids

Structure - Zenoplate - Has 30% more health than a standard structure zooid. No special abilities

Movement - Radial - Can move equally well in any direction, albeit slower than other movement zooids.

Weapon - Spike - Can damage without activation, velocity determines how powerful a spike is. Activation makes spikes jut forwards rapidly approximately the distance of 3 zooids from where it is connected. This speed of spikes allows them much more damage than they'd do otherwise.

Utility - Squirter - Releases poison causing damage over a short period of time to any zooids caught in the cloud. Prolonged exposure allows more damage to zooids until they're outside the poison cloud. Once they're out of the poison, they'll take 2-3 additional points of damage until the poison wears off.

Advena is the only class in the game that is of a hybrid type. It has a melee weapon with decent range, combined with a ranged poison weapon which can be used to deter attackers or apply large amounts of damage to larger foes, catching more zooids in the poison.

Playstyle

Advena's playstyle functions off a degree of efficiency. Being able to do damage just by moving into things with spikes allows Advena to be less disadvantaged when low on energy and being able to reserve energy for boosting and poison. This class is based around the utilities its Spike weapon grants to it. Spikes have many uses one doesn't immediately realise. 2 spikes aiming at the same place are able to one-shot an exposed head, spikes block spiked rocks and can push them out the way, spikes can block certain attacks like Claws and Flaks. The spike is as much a defencive shield as it is an offencive weapon.

Having equal movement in every direction from their Radial movment zooids, allows Advena to be built more flexibly. With Advena, you can put a movement zooid wherever you want, and as long as it's balanced by more movement on the other side, you will have reliable movement. This allows more place for weapons. You don't have to have jets all over your back like Saenus Beefuorus and Buginis do. This allows more space for rear poison to deter chasing syphos.

Advena can be played effectively in multiple ways. Offencive spiked dervish, defencive tank, melee assassin, ranged poison baiter, all are possible. You can spec into poison to allow a large amount of defencive coverage, putting attackers on the clock before their weapons break. Higher health structural zooids delay your opponent into getting at your core. Spikes can offer defence from ambush attempts from enemies, however they can also be an extremely potent offencive weapon. Whilst Advena is slower than other classes, using lots of movers and relatively few weapons allows for effective movement in any direction beating the agility of faster foes. Put simply, the versatility of Advena allows it to combat any other foe if speced up in the appropriate way.

Advena is powerful. If you like a class which can be changed up and able to adapt to all your different foes, this is the class for you. However Advena is almost like playing on easy mode due to these issues. You have no hard counters against you, and only one real check.

Advena's Matchups

Matchups will be ranked from 0-10. The higher the number, the harder that battle is overall for Advena. I will describe these fights from the point of view of Advena, discussing what Advena needs to do in order to beat a similarly skilled player of another class with equal resources.

Saenus Beefuorus - 3/10

Advena counters Beeforus’s claws with spikes, being able to do damage at a further distance. In a head to head engagement, all Advena has to do is keep the claws away from areas without spikes in order to keep Beefuorus’s damage in check. In short order you'll pummel your way through the spikes. Beefuorus is harder to deal with if it’s behind you because of superior speed and ability to negate poison damage through armour ability for a short while. Beefuorus has high DPS and can likely chow through your structures to get the kill on you, so poison won't serve as much of a deterrent. It can however be used offencively to soften up your enemy to allow spikes to more easily destroy structures and the weapons connected to them. Instead of going fully into poison, movement pieces can help spin your spikes around faster to the enemy, or just having more spikes can work too. Defencive Advena is very hard for Beefuorous to infiltrate due to spikes always trumping claws head on. Having defencive coverage will make any Beefuorus think twice before charging you.

Cra’than - 3.5/10

Advena and Cra’than counter each other in different ways which leaves them approximately even against each other. Or it used to, and then Advena's spikes were buffed through the roof. In a direct engagement, Advena wins through allowing the electric to hit one part whilst leaving the other parts unaffected able to dig into Cra’than’s unarmoured squishy body. Spike damage negates Cra’than’s healing, however Advena’s poison is for the most part ineffective against Cra’than. Advena must not be caught off guard as a well targeted leaching could be game over. Advena can deal with electric by dashing with spikes as spikes can do damage without being directly used. Spiked defencive build works well. Leaches take time to activate and their active range is within that of your spikes. Fight Cra'than much the same as you fight Beefuorus, however with Cra'than, it is harder because of Cra'than's ability to sizzle your movement allowing its leachers to connect easier. Poison is even more useless, but spiked builds work very well. Charging into leachers with spikes is okay. You'll take them out before they even take you half way down, and with the sheer damage possible, healing is not going to help Cra'than much. Cra'than can more easily catch you in a disadvantageous position than Beefuorus, and thus I rank him slightly harder.

Buginis - 4.5/10

Out of the other classes, Buginis has the best matchup between a typical Advena. Poison mines are your biggest enemy, however Advena does have precautions it can take against them. Sometimes a fast aggressive playstyle will be highly effective. Buginis has VERY weak structures which can easily be torn apart with your weapons. Buginis does not want to get poisoned. Poison exposes its structural inadequacies. Don't run away from Buginis. Obviously you have to avoid its mines, but don't give it easy Flak shots at your squishy movers or squirters. Brutally dominate it with a spike charge and break its brittle structure apart. Don't even worry about poison, you can heal up off the enemy's remains. Yes you are on the clock, trying to beat the enemy before your spikes are broken by poison, but don't get discouraged from an opportunity to outright dominate it. The hardest Buginis will be the fastest ones. If they can outspeed you and have you crashing into lots of poison mines, then they win. Offence works here. Speed works here. Defencive builds do not. Buginis is perfectly content with waiting for its poison mines to wean down your structure whilst retreating just out of range of your poison. Don't give Buginis an opportunity to set up its tactics on you, and this battle will go more smoothly.

Advena - 5/10

You are both Advena. This means there is no advantage or disadvantage between classes, however observations can be made between each Advena build. Advena's cannot heal intrinsically, nor throw up a shield, so any damage you take can't be mitigated. If you're faster, poison will be great at containing your slower opponent, but do be aware of walls which the more powerful Advena could push you against and spike you to death. Advena vs Advena is a situational battle. It helps knowing where you stand against the other Advena. Are they built for offence or defence? If they're a wall of spikes aimed forwards for offence and you're a smaller more nimble sypho with less spikes, then maybe a stealth approach will work from the back? If they're built defencively, use poison whilst staying away from the spikes like a Buginis player might. It will be harder because Advena's poison is not as high ranged as Buginis's but it could be an option. If they're heavy into poison and have only one or two spikes, use similar techniques to those against Buginis, charge them violently with spikes and overwhelm them, beating the poison clock, however this must be considered by where their core is. If it's further in, then poison might beat your spikes. Concentrating spike damage can help with this however. Speed counters an offencive spiked powerhouse, Defence counters nimble speedsters because of their completely covered defencive coverage, Speedy poison counters slower, heavily spiked builds, and offence counters defencive poison builds. The choice is yours, however you'll never be 100% safe from all the other Advena builds. There will always be another Advena who can beat you in an equally skilled 1v1 with equal resources. If you want, I could discuss the complexities of Advena builds and how they stack up against each other in a future post. I've got a lot to say on that topic.

Conclusion

Advena is powerful, tanky, versatile, and most definitely designed to kill. Being able to fill so many niches with relative ease should be a testament to how good this class is. Lower speed is its only real weakness, however this can be compensated for so Advena has no strong weaknesses. It has very good matchups with other classes, having its hardest matchup being... itself. Like I said before, Advena is easy mode. I love theorising about these matchups, and it makes me desire a 1v1 multiplayer mode where you can have equal resources and fight against other players. Makes me wonder how accurate my theories are. Of course I had to base this off AI enemies, but I can see by my reactions to these species how others would react too. From all the experimenting I've done with different builds, beating the game with all four classes, (Yep, I've done it finally) it gives me a good sense of insight into how each class would face against every other class. In the future, I'm going to do this for Saenus Beefuorus, Buginis, and finally Cra'than, once I've fully learnt their different methods of being played.

Special thanks goes to Patashu for his guide of each class against the final boss, Frakir which allowed me to beat the game with all four classes.