Earth Defense Force 6: 10 Beginner Tips

Gather your weapons, put on your armor and show those bugs that the EDF is still kicking. In Earth Defense Force Six it seems the alien Primers are back once again, and this time they’ve got some new toys courtesy of a bit of time travel shenanigans.

The battlefields are bigger, filled with more hordes of monsters than ever before and if this is your first time experiencing and EDF game it’s going to be a rough ride. You’re thrown in the proverbial deep-end with this franchise and every little helpful hint can go a long way. So to help you send those aliens packing once and for all, here’s some handy beginner tips for Earth Defense Force Six.

You Don’t Need To Play On Hard Right Away

First and foremost, when you start up a campaign in Earth Defense Force, you may feel like sticking it on the hardest difficulty is the best option. It is, but if you’re new you don’t want to do it right away. The game scales its mission difficutly very quickly and if you’re already struggling with your classes loadout, then you’re going to have a miserable time.

Normal, for beginners, is a much better time. It eases you into the game and even though you won’t be getting the big crazy strong guns as fast as you would in Hard, the item retention is much higher. For example, on Normal you lose less items and armor when you fail, whereas on Hard and above you’re lucky if you gain one new gun or armor piece for a game over.

If you switch difficulties mid campaign, you have to start all over again on that new difficulty setting.

Pick A Class And Stick With It

There are four classes in Earth Defense Force Six and when you pick what one you want to play at the beginning, stick with it. The game levels up the class you play as, so if you go Air Raider for 20 missions, then jump to the Ranger, you’ll have nothing in your inventory.

Each class is unique, has their own special weapons and vehicles that are exclusive to them and strengths and weaknesses to playing them in a group or solo. To help you pick a class, here’s a handy outline of each one;

Playing split screen co-op offline allows you to level up two of your classes at once.

It’s Ok To Restart

Normally in most games when you have to restart a mission it’s a big disheartening moment as you lose all your progress and have to reset your loadout. In Earth Defense Force Six, restarting a mission or fully retreating is encouraged.

A big part of the game is getting slammed into the dirt over and over, then having to sit and figure out as a group which loadout and class combination works best for a particular mission. You’re not going to breeze through all of them as bad loadouts or call-ins blocked by some arbitrary mission rule are commonplace. So if you suddenly hit a wall, it’s not you or the game’s fault, it's your team's loadout.

Remember Where Your Favorite Grinding Mission Is

To use our last tip as a springboard, one thing you really need to drill into your head is to remember where your favorite grinding mission is. There’s 147 missions in total and like previous EDF games there’s quite a few that are just padding.

Despite that, there are some very good grinding missions. Everyone has their own personal favorite and it’s up to you to find which one works well for you and is the most enjoyable for farming boxes for better weapons or armor. A general bit of advice is, if there’s a lot of trash mob spawn points in a map full of bottlenecks or easy to create killzones, then it’s good for grinding.

Get Those Boxes

On the subject of boxes, you should always be picking them up whenever you see one. Armor is the red one and it’s more valuable than weapons. Each one increases your health by a small increment depending on how many boxes you got during the mission.

The green weapon boxes will often just rank up your current gun and drip feed new ones that might not be as powerful as what you’re currently using. Whilst that’s handy in the early game, once you hit the endgame late levels you’re going to need as much health as you can get as everything hits like a truck.

Extremely mobile classes like the Wing Diver, Fencer with rocket leaps, and the Ranger with a maxed out sprint Support Item are perfect for box collecting duty.

Use A Controller

If you want to spare your hands and fingers then it’s highly recommended you play Earth Defense Force Six using a controller. Keyboard and mouse is possible, but not recommended as you’ll be spamming a lot of buttons, primarily roll and shoot, a lot.

Using a controller also means you’ll be able to activate your abilities a lot faster. And when you’re being swarmed, being able to pop everything with a quick button push is vital. Also, whilst the aiming on a controller is admittedly a little clunky, you can tweak its sensitivity to your preferred levels.

Don’t Abandon A Vehicle Because It’s Out Of Ammo

One of the best features of EDF games is the vehicles. There’s a ton of them and they range in size from little speedy motorbikes, to medium sized mechs and tanks, large weapons platforms, and even gigantic Pacific Rim style Jaegers that stomp across the battlefield.

Each one fills a role and it’s highly advised that when they run out of ammo, you don’t get out of them right away. Especially if you’re being swarmed. Vehicles not only move faster than you do on foot, but they provide a chunky layer of armor that can keep you alive until you get back to friendly lines or regroup to a safer location. Which is great for Air Raiders as they don’t have any mobility at all.

Fencers can’t use vehicles because of their chunky armor. But they’re walking tanks , so it balances out.

Rotate Around The Map If You Get Overwhelmed

EDF Six likes to throw an ungodly amount of enemies at you. But that’s what makes the franchise great. It’s you against the horde and with plenty of teleport ships, poles and other plot contrivances there’s only going to be more monsters coming until you’re dead.

You’re always going to get overwhelmed at one point and the best you can do is to form a firing line, retreat slowly and try not to get cornered. Ideally you should be splitting up packs if possible and rotating your team slowly around the map. Each mission is in an end arena, you can go anywhere and you definitely should use that freedom to your advantage.

The second you stop moving when facing down a horde, you’re dead.

Turn Off Screen Shake

A simple and quick tip for not only beginners, but anyone playing Earth Defense Force Six, turn off Screen Shake. Whenever artillery lands, big explosions cook off, or something massive hits nearby, your screen is going to shake wildly. It’s a little over the top in EDF Six, and it can cause a lot of issues.

Aside from motion sickness, it tanks your frames, makes it harder to see what’s going on and in certain circumstances will just crash your game. You can find it in the game settings menu. So just set it to off, enjoy a much smoother gaming experience, and thank us later.

Experience With EDF Five Helps, But Isn’t Mandatory

As we out there’s one last tip worth mentioning, but isn’t something you should really go out of your way for. And that is you should have a little experience with Earth Defense Force Five. EDF Six is the back half of the story that unfolded in EDF Five and it’s a bizarre tale that goes to some weird places.

The plot has always been something that’s happening in the background or just over the horizon in these games. But this time around they’re more focused on a pretty interesting narrative. It’ll also help with the strange time travel story beats, and will provide more context to certain missions. For example, at the end of Earth Defense Force Five you killed God.