You can learn what you need to increase your combat power and improve in Roboquest from the details in our guide.
How to Increase your Combat Power
Some Tips on how to increase your Combat Power to get better times and more consistent Runs. This includes some Tips on Setup, general Gameplay and Bosses.
Mostly for Intermediate and advanced Players but also useful for Beginners.
Tips for your Setup
First things first before you get into the Gameplay. If you haven’t done it already, go into the options and change sprinting to auto. Believe me there is basically never a reason why you would not want to sprint and not having to hold down a button all the time makes playing so much nicer.
Second since the game encourages regular weapon switching, make sure if you’re comfortable with changing weapons through the mouse wheel. For me, since my mousewheel input sometimes won’t register I rebinded the weapon switch button to “1” and unbinded the weapon slot one key.
Lastly one optional thing I personally started doing before getting into a play session is turning off the windows mouse acceleration. For this go into your search bar, type in “mouse”, go to “mouse settings”, “additional mouse settings” and in the pointer options untick the box “Enhance pointer precision“. It makes aiming a lot more consistent and you can keep the “additional mouse settings” window open in the background and turn it back on when you’re done. Again not required or even necessary, but it at least has a (perceived) positive impact on my aim.
Gadgets and How to use them Effectively
With that out of the way here are some general tips I can recommend to you for both more speed and consistency. Basically all tips require access to all gadget but the most important are: 1. the Jetpack, 2. the Grappling Hook and 3. the Hero Cape (and the Pogo stick for a more consistent Iris fight).
General Techniques and good to know things:
The Jetpack: Use it as much as possible to keep in the air and keep moving. Makes it easier to dodge most attacks while being able to stay at maximum combat power.
The hero cape: slamming down with the hero cape stuns most enemies. Good for both groups of fodder enemies since the AOE is decently big, as well as stunning elites and for a repeated source of smaller damage if in a pinch.
The Grappling Hook: (To me) the most useful gadget in the entire game. It is useful for gaining height before an encounter or in the middle of an encounter or just for getting out of danger quickly during for example certain boss attacks, such as the multiple Laser Beam attack in Iris I. But more importantly an enemy that is hooked to is stunned for a short period of time. And most importantly while you are in the process of hooking somewhere you are completely invulnerable. Both useful as a get out of jail free card by hooking directly through an attack and if you pick ruins you can grapple hook through the optional path lasers without taking any damage if you aim correctly.
General Combat Tactics and Prioritization
Combats tactics:
First and most importantly it is always advised to seek the high ground when possible, since the normal route often forces you into choke points in which you either have to charge out and potentially take damage or repeatedly peek the same corner which is both slow and still pretty dangerous. It allows you to both take cover from attacks, engage/be engaged by only a limit amount of enemies at a time and it’s the most consisted way to break line of sight for the lock on of both the elite snipers and sniper pods. This is especially useful during first encounters on haven city and district 13 (see images), where you can grapple up on a platform on the right and give yourself more room to maneuver and to dance around the mini bosses on haven city by jetpacking from roof to roof.
Second use the jetpack as much as possible. Once you are at a high ground position keep in the air with your jetpack by tapping it so you stay at roughly the same level and either move to a high ground ledge or grapple to it once you’re about to run out/have run out.
For more speed as well as picking up power cells and healing use the hero cape on a regular basis. Both for disposing small groups of fodder enemies, destroying ground turrets and mine enemies and as a way to stun elites or get some additional damage in. Can also be used to change vertical position quickly to dodge attacks.
Third: If you round a corner and you get the sniper lock on sound, use the grappling hook to hook onto it. It stuns the sniper enemy, giving you time to “safely” destroy it or if you can’t kill the elite in time, to at least reset the lock on timer and seek cover.
Target Prioritization:
- Very important especially on Guardian IV. Both for the health and the XP you should target the jet rover first (if you can) [the one one the rail], since it’s on a short timer. Next target all lock on enemies. As mentioned before use the high ground or the grappling hook to stop them from finishing their lock on. Third if any shield generating enemies are there, they should be focused third of if they shield the sniper enemy even before them. If you are forced to rush through multiple enemies to get to the shield generator, hook onto it, and after it’s destroyed go back to cover or high ground. After that you can do the normal route of elite enemies with priority for the teleporting melee elite, then the pyro drone then turrets and normal grunts and the fodder last, which you can also just destroy with stomps.
Boss Tips
Stage 2 Bosses
Billy Boom:
- By far the easiest boss: use the slide and chain slide to avoid all attacks except for the mortar which you can just jump over or if you have the jetpack fly over. (Also don’t forget to pull the lever unless you want an achievement and your run to end on the second stage)
Diggy Mole:
- 2nd easiest boss: Don’t go into any of the corners of the arena or the center and slide/chain slide to avoid almost all attacks. For the Shockwave attack just jump over it.
Dr. Turret:
- Easy but annoying if you ♥♥♥♥ up your timing. He is the most important stage 2 boss to keep moving due to attacks like the flame thrower. Use sliding and jumping to dodge the flame thrower and just sliding for the mortar. For the triple laser finger attack just jump over it with and when he starts the spinning laser attack stay away from the starting point to know if he spins clockwise or counter clockwise.
Optional Bosses:
El Moustiko:
- Can be a bit annoying but pretty easy. Keep tracking him, and if you have multi target attack such the tesla rifle of the elementalists chain lightning. Plus you can stomp him when he’s drinking in the center of the arena. His clones are usually not that big of a threat and are easy to dispatch but waste time to kill so try to focus on the original as much as possible.
Duke Nuker:
- Can be problematic. Make use of all ability that allow you to move quickly either vertically like the jetpack, grappling hook, pogo stick etc. or horizontally such as the grappling hook or the slide to avoid the 2 most dangerous attacks of the triple stun mortar shot thingy and the punch. Generally try to stay at a distance as best as possible.
Energy Center Bosses:
Sir Catercoaster:
- To me by far the easiest of the mid to late game bosses. Stay on the rail to avoid the turrets tracking. Don’t get too close behind it and switch rails to keep line of sight. You can also use stomp when it’s not charging for some additional damage.
Judgeball:
- Can be annoying but still decently easy. Most attacks can again be dodged by sliding and having situational awareness to not slide into a mine. For the “all out offensive” stay in the vicinity of where the lasers are, only moving slightly to the left or right to dodge the mortars and jump of the Shockwaves .
- Tip: if it uses the ground laser and the shield generator, destroy the shield generator beacons on the ground but not the magnet ones to extend the ground laser time and get more “safe” shots in.
District 13 Bosses: (Both bosses are on a soft timer, so I hope you have a decent setup until here)
Beetle Royale:
- Make a lot of use of sliding to avoid both the spinning attacks as well as the destruction of the ground tiles, and try to delay changing to a lower platform as long as possible, since once you fall down one you can’t go back up.
Uncle Jim:
- If you have the grappling hook, get to one of the higher platforms in the arena to shoot down from for maximum cover. If not you can either try to get up quickly or do the fight normally by using the center pillar as cover. Dodging his attacks can be tricky and some attacks force you to take cover (like the laser beam). The trick is for every other attack to either peak out for the platform/pillar and shot and take cover when needed or to Jetpack around as much as possible. If you feel greedy you can also get some hero cape stomps in.
Boss Tips: Iris
Iris I:
- Pretty straight forward. Stay as far back to decrease the risk of running into the mines she drops, dodge the laser beams and the ground explosions by sliding or grappling to the side and for the laser wall crouch to charge the Pogo stick and before the first grid hits you jump up and use the Jetpack to stay in the air. You can either slightly increase your airtime by using the grappling hook or you can stomp, charge the Pogo stick and give the Jetpack a bit of time to recharge and repeat the process.
Iris II:
- Ground Electrocution: Jump and use the Jetpack to stay in the air
- Spinning Laser attack: Get close to her, charge up a Pogo stick jump (or just double jump) and hover very close to her above her to dodge all 3 lasers with ease.
- Laser Fingers: Jump and Jetpack
- Laser Barrage: Once the attack begins charge a pogo stick jump and right before the first laser grid hits you jump and stay in the air with the Jetpack until her aim catches up and before the next grid hits you, use the hero cape to stomp, forcing her to adjust her aim yet again and repeat until the attack is done. Certainly not 100% foolproof but massively increases consistency.
- Rockets: Slide and keep sliding
Tips on Routing
There are a couple of paths i can recommend. All of them are decently difficult so you can streamline them if you want by skipping the extra and harder areas such as the Crystal Challenges and Fusion Core and just go Energy Center.
- Going Oasis route allowes both for upgrading one of the starting weapons such as buddy bot but also guarantees one legendary item:
Canyons > Oasis > Fields > Doom Gardens > Aqua Station > Fusion Core > Haven City > District XIII > Moon - Going through Quarry and the Pit guarantees getting to open 3 more vaults:
Canyons > Quarry > The Pit > Aqua Station > Fusion Core > Haven City > District XIII > Moon - If you have “♥♥♥♥ it we ball” energy and want to get as high level as possible you can do the Ruins Route, which is Timewise especially tight:
Canyons > Ruins > Scrapyard > Fields > Doom Gardens > Aqua Station > Fusion Core > Haven City > District XIII > Moon
In general I like to go though as many levels as possible to get the largest amount of both XP and stuff + have the highest chance of finding a weapon worth keeping. Fusion Core is pretty difficult but also allows one more vault and gets manageable the more you run through it.
For Fusion Core abuse the Jetpack for more maneuverability and grappling hook for quickly crossing distances, stunning enemies and dodging attacks.
General Build Tips
- A way to mark enemies, either through one of the many class perks or the Bowl item. Marking is at least in my experience a lot more consistent for getting a good stable damage output, compared to crits.
- A way to dump out damage quickly. This can mean a lot of things, but I specifically mean that you should try to build your character around either having big magazines or fast/instant reloads (or both, such as commandos hot potato perk) combined with a high fire rate, because while stuff like Engineers drones can be nice for large parts of a run, they will loose their worth quickly during Iris if you don’t have any good backup weapon.
- If possible make sure that the weapons you end up using have not only useful modifiers (unless you picked up the rubix cube item “jigsaw box”) but have also both an attachment and a good one such as and additional (non melee) attack or one that increases either fire rate or does a series of quick fire shots.
I don’t want to say much on classes since most of it comes down to personal preference and me being just bad with certain classes. Generally I like all classes with ranged secondaries (so everything except Guardian and Recon) for more flexibility and safety but otherwise I usually regularly switch between them.
Also my super subjective weapon tier list. Do with that whatever you want:
Additional Random Stuff
- If you use the grappling hook on the moon right before you drop to Room before Iris (so aimed slightly before the hole) you can use the hero cape to fall faster. Doesn’t safe time for your rank (as far as i’ve seen) since the timer stops once you enter the door after the second arena but it safes IRL time (and makes you feel cool).
- Remember that you can cheese the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of the corrupted vault challenges with the grappling hook to get better times. Also if you are short on time open the door to the corrupted vault from the inside by hand since once you hop on the yellow jump pad the timer will start again even if you haven’t left the vault yet, which is not the case if you walk up to the door and open it yourself.
- If you don’t do it already, never wait to reload and instead change weapons and let the pocket reload do the reloading for you.
- If you use the grappling hook onto an enemy you can grapple into stomp combo them.
- You can bring the shovel as your secondary for the first map do dig up some goodies if you happen to walk by the dig sites and if not you can still exchange it later.
- If you use the Alternative exits remember that both the amount of kills and the time are depended on how far you could have come reaching a openable door so if you use one of the alternative exits remember that the time is always pretty tight.
- Interrupting the overheating animation through using things like the attachment, the primary or secondary skill etc. will reset the animation resulting in a longer overheating time
