Armored Core 6: Beginner tips and tricks for AC6

If you’re a beginner to the Armored Core series like I was, or you’re a returning veteran who wants to brush up on your knowledge, then this is the place for you. AC6 has just launched, and luckily for you, I’ve already spent over 40 hours reviewing it. Here are all the tips and tricks you should know before you start and during your first few hours of play.

Stagger, stagger, stagger

Like Sekiro, Armored Core 6 has a posture system. It’s known as ACS, an attitude control system. Overload your enemy’s ACS through repeated attacks. Once depleted, they’ll stagger and be left vulnerable to what AC6 calls direct hits. These do massive damage.

A weapon’s impact damage is what determines its anti-ACS effectiveness, not its raw attack damage. Explosive impact weapons like missiles and grenade launchers do the most ACS damage, followed by melee, kinetic, and finally, energy weapons. Mix and match your four weapons to get both high-impact and high-direct attack damage off.

Kill, kill, kill

Armored Core 6 is unlike most other games on the market because you get expensed for the ammo you use on missions. So, with that in mind, you may be tempted to avoid enemies and just go straight for the bosses to ensure your reward at the end of the level is higher. Don’t. You need the practice, believe me.

Fight everything, at least for the first chapter, just until you’ve got the basics down. Some missions reward you bonus cash for killing more enemies, so always go after them in those, but also look out for tough opponents hidden away. Beating them nets you combat logs, which get exchanged for cool new parts.

Play the training and arena modes

Even if you’re a veteran and you think you know it all, spend some time completing the training missions and the arena battles. They teach you valuable tips specific to Armored Core 6 and also give you money, parts, AC designs, and visual collectibles. You can use the arena battles to test out new AC builds you’re experimenting with or just to get some extra cash for that cool new weapon or part you wanted.

The arena mode also gives you access to valuable OST chips. You use these to add permanent upgrades to your AC, such as increased damage with energy weapons, more damage resistance yourself, new abilities such as a vicious kick and swapping out your heavy shoulder weapons for extra handheld ones.

Buy the boost kick OS upgrade ASAP

Completing arena fights will earn you OST chips. These let you tune the operating system of your AC and unlock new features. The most essential of these is the dash kick. While in your assault boost, hit R3, and you’ll launch a vicious kick that can knock smaller enemies to pieces.

It’s great for launching a surprise attack on an unaware enemy or to get some ACS damage in while you’re closing the gap on a nimble foe. Best of all, it doesn’t use any ammo, so it’s completely free.

Don’t save your money

You’ll soon learn that when you die, you can reassemble your AC and restart from a checkpoint. What you can’t do is buy new parts. So if you really need some plasma missiles to take down a nimble foe and you’ve not bought them, you’ll need to quit the mission, buy and equip the part, and then start over from scratch.

Save yourself time and tears by buying a variety of new weapons and parts as soon as you can afford them. Most missions should award you enough cash to buy at least one new thing, so do! Don’t be like me and fight BALTEUS, the chapter one boss, only to realize you need to quit and buy a load of energy weapons. That mistake set me back a good hour.

Experiment with different builds

Armored Core 6 is all about experimentation. You’ve got to iterate on your AC as there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. This isn’t Elden Ring: you aren’t perfecting one build. Get used to regularly swapping out parts and weapons to try new setups. On my first playthrough, I went for tetrapod legs and then some nimble tank tracks. I had a favorite set of weapons, sure, but I’d swap them out when the situation called for it.

Different missions and bosses will require different builds. If you’re fighting underground, vertical missiles are no good. If the boss is weak to energy weapons, ditch the linear rifles and grab a pulse cannon. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

Save your AC designs

You should be experimenting with your AC design a lot, but there will still be that ol’ reliable build you keep going back to. For me, that was a linear rifle, the JVLN ALPHA grenade launcher, and dual vertical plasma missiles. This setup gave me a great mix of energy, kinetic, and explosive damage, so I could break through pulse shields and stagger enemies before unleashing devastating direct hit damage.

You can save and name your builds and ACs, meaning you can quickly swap between your favorite presets whenever you need to restart a checkpoint. This isn’t essential, but it will save you a lot of time if you’ve got a few standard ACs you find yourself swapping between often. I’d commonly swap out the hand weapons for dual plasma rifles to go for a full energy build, so that was another saved preset for me.