Fires of Rubicon – why are they needed, how to open and pass, how to unlock new opponents

The arena is one of the most important elements Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, without passing, making a rather difficult game impassable. Like multiplayer, this option is not available to players immediately, but only after a certain mission. In this guide, we’ll tell you when the Arena and multiplayer will open, and suggest the optimal mech builds for a comfortable activity.

Let’s make a caveat right away that, as with most From Software projects, the player doesn’t need a specific weapon or play style so much as a general understanding of their mech’s capabilities. The arena is passed even with starting weapons, if you correctly follow the actions of opponents and react to them correctly.

The arena is a regular part of the Armored Core series. These are not real battles, but a simulation of data collected by mechs. As in previous games in the series, the Arena is one of the ways to edit the in-game currency. In the simulation, you fight with various mechs that you encounter as you progress.

In addition, for winning the Arena, the player receives chips – a currency that can be spent on upgrading fur (OS settings). They give various bonuses, which remain with the player even with a complete reassembly of the fur. They are conditionally divided into four categories:

A fairly situational category that many players can safely avoid. For example, if the player buys one of the power-ups, they can kick after the sprint. Another bonus is the ability to aim manually, and the third allows you to change the main weapon and take more weapons on missions.

It would seem that they are quite useful options, but often they are used extremely rarely or are not useful enough to spend chips on them. Basically, you invest in one of the shields, as well as damage and defense boosts.

There are four types of shields:

Pulse Defense and Pulse Armor create “blue” shields that absorb a certain amount of damage. The difference between the skills is that armor creates protection on the mech itself, while protection creates a hemisphere that protects the point.

Combat Armor does not provide a shield, but allows you to create an energy blast that destroys projectiles flying at you and damages nearby enemies. Terminal armor works like pulse armor, but not by pressing a key, but the moment the mech’s health drops to zero. The armor exists for a set amount of time, or until the player is “pierced”. But during this interval, the hero can apply a repair kit and survive.

You can choose armor to suit your playstyle, but impulse armor is considered the most versatile, as it allows you to survive strong enemy attacks while maintaining mobility, and also has several charges, the maximum number of which can be increased for chips. The activation of the armor has an animation where it’s easy to miss a hit.

In addition to armor, the player can invest chips in damage and defense modifications. Damage adjustments allow you to increase the damage of each type of weapon by a percentage: energy, kinetic and explosive, as well as the damage of melee weapons and “direct” damage to enemies stunned by a downed “yellow” shield. Here you can also upgrade the speed of hacking: connect to drones, towers and other animations for data loading.

Security mods are probably the first place you put your chips in. Only here can you increase the Mech’s overall survivability by increasing the amount of health you receive from repair kits. In this case, the number of repair kits cannot be increased. There is also an upgrade here that slightly reduces the damage taken by a percentage.

We recommend that you invest points in the upgrade “Repair Kits: Optimization”, then increase the speed of breaking and pumping in impulse protection, and then improve the damage of the weapon you use most often.

The Arena and the “Nest” (as multiplayer is called in the game) do not open immediately, but after completing certain missions. This was done to get the player used to the game, and to smoothly introduce a new progression system – chips, which we talked about above.

The arena becomes available to the player after completing the missions “Collect battle logs” or “Investigate the second PSVB weapon cache”. Along with the Arena, we also have access to the “OS Settings” tab, where the player has the right to spend the chips earned. You can also ‘replay’ the Arena missions by battling opponents again, but you will not be able to get any chips and the total number of COAMs will be halved.

Multiplayer is probably something that not all “newcomers” to the Armored Core series will discover. The fact is that the “Nest” opens after defeating the “Sea Spider” in the second chapter. This is a rather difficult boss, the feat for beating received by only 35% of players at the time of writing the guide.

After completing a mission, players are taken to the final menu tab where they can compete against other players and try out different mech builds. The “1 on 1” and “3 on 3” modes are available here. Contest rules are highlighted in the screenshot below.

Unfortunately, From Software has not awarded any prizes to the winners. Most likely, it is for this reason that the number of matches in multiplayer can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Although the low percentage of players who completed the second chapter also affects the situation.

First, opponents ranked “E” will be available to the player in the Arena. To “rise” higher and open new enemies, you need to perform plot flights. After certain missions, the “Arena” will be replenished and the player can earn more chips to upgrade his fur.

As for the optimal builds for passing the arena, everything here is individual and depends on your skills. We completed most Arena missions with the Vvc-760PR Plasma Rifle, HI-32:BU-TT/A Pulse Blade, VP-60LCS Laser Cannon on the right shoulder, and the Vvc-703PM Plasma Launcher on the left. The full assembly is shown in the screenshot below.

A common tactic is to maintain a medium range, knock down the enemy’s armor with shots from the shoulder guns and right-hand weapons, then land crushing blows with the impulse blade. On rare occasions, we swapped the plasma rifle for a laser shotgun and switched to melee combat.

Note that neither you nor the enemy have any repair kits, which means there is no way to replenish health either. That’s why most fights last less than a minute. If you have difficulty passing, try to analyze the enemy’s weapons and choose equipment for the distance that is least comfortable for him.