Within the first few hours of Armored Core 6 you’ll unlock the ability to tune your AC with OST upgrades. But what should you unlock first? Damage? Healing? Defense? There are a myriad of options to choose from, and while some suit a particular playstyle better than others, there are definite upsides to upgrading a particular few.
Here’s how to upgrade your Armored Core in Armored Core 6 and which upgrades you should consider.
How to get OST Upgrade Chips in Armored Core 6
In Armored Core 6, OST chips are upgrade points earned from arena battles and missions, though the arena is where the lion’s share of chips come from. As you work your way up the ranks and defeat enemy ACs, you’ll earn more chips. Now, the million-dollar question: What do you spend the chips on? Upgrading your AC, of course! Note that as you upgrade your AC, better upgrades will cost more chips.
Don’t neglect your OST tuning as this upgrade path takes you outside of the normal process of delicately balancing your AC for health, mobility, and firepower. Think of it like updating your firmware.
What OST Upgrade should you get first in Armored Core 6?
Best first option: Boost Kick
The very first upgrade you should get is Boost Kick. It’ll only cost you one chip to unlock and it’s by far one of the best abilities in Armored Core 6. Boost Kick adds another attack and a decent amount of damage to your already considerable arsenal.
The best part? It doesn’t require resources to use. This really comes in handy (footy?) further into the game when you find yourself running out of conventional ammo or if your weapons are recharging. Why waste precious bullets and missiles when you can just Spartan kick an enemy AC in the face?
Explosive Weapons — Fuse Control Tuning
Next, you’ll want to focus on explosive damage, which you can do by picking up the Explosive Weapons Fuse Control Tuning option. Missiles are by far one of the best weapons in the game right from the start. Very few enemies have countermeasures or shields to mitigate them so packing extra punch is definitely worth the chips.
At max, you’ll deal out an additional 15 percent damage. Nothing really compares with staggering an enemy and blasting them with 20 or more missiles and watching every single one hit.
Other explosive weapons like bazookas or the devestating Songbird mounted shoulder cannon will of course gain the extra damage, but generally, we recommend sticking with missiles. Single-shot explosive weapons don’t favor the high mobility that the game generally demands.
Kinetic Weapons — Fire Control Tuning
After explosions, sink a few points into upgrading your kinetic weapons with the Kinetic Weapons Fire Control Tuning upgrade. Kinetic weapons include anything that fires bullets.
These will be your primary hand weapons for most of the game as only ACs with shielding are immune to damage. When you find you’re up against an AC and your shots are bouncing right off it’s time to switch to explosive or energy weapons.
Melee Weapons — Drive Control Tuning
Melee weapons, and the plasma sword in particular, are some of the most useful items in the game, and they only get better with the Melee Weapons — Drive Control Tuning upgrade. Feel free to add these upgrades later as right off the bat these weapons are already strong, so you can spend your upgrade chips elsewhere.
The true benefit of a melee weapon is not only being able to slice and dice smaller ACs instead of wasting your ammo but also their powerful lock-on feature. In one-on-one engagements with hostile ACs and bosses, swinging your melee weapon will automatically home you in on the target. This is great for both staggering and putting some serious post-stagger hurt onto your enemies.
ACS — Damage Deflection Control Tuning
Damage deflection does exactly what it sounds like. You’ll take less overall damage, up to 15 percent when fully upgraded. We recommend spending your points on this later and tuning your build for the earlier parts of the game to be a bit beefier.
Aim for around 10,000 AP (health) and you should be able to get through the first few acts without much trouble. For the end game though, you’re going to need every advantage you can get.
Core Expansions: Pulse Armor
There are a few different flavors of expansions for your Core but the one we like best is Pulse Armor. This armor is triggered on your command and generates a temporary bubble of energy around you, protecting you from damage.
The pulse protection upgrade generates a larger shield bubble but is locked to wherever you generate it. The Assault armor kicks in when your health drops below a certain point, acting as a kind of airbag.
We’ve found the Pulse Armor better for navigating certain encounters like boss attack phases when you know that a ton of damage is about to come your way and there’s little you can do to avoid it.
Direct Hit Modifier — Damage Tuning
Staggering is a huge part of how you fight in Armored Core 6. When an enemy is staggered they’re open to direct hits. meaning that not only will every shot connect but each one is by default worth more damage. With these upgrades, you’ll be able to increase the amount of that damage.
We recommend investing in this later as focusing on staggering is something you’ll need to do against some of your tougher enemies. For the earlier parts of the game, you’ll do plenty of damage on your own once you’ve got an enemy staggered.
Repair Kits — Optimization
Optimizing your health kits will make them more efficient, meaning you’ll recover more health from fewer kits. Default kits restore about 4,000 points of damage. You can add an additional 2,000 points to a repair kit after it is fully upgraded.
The only drawback is you’ll have to use your repair kits at lower health to truly take advantage of the upgrade. This runs you the risk of getting blown up as you can’t trigger a repair kit when staggered.
Repair kits are notoriously difficult to come by and can only be found during a mission from a special deployable resupply, which you usually only find before a boss fight. You can make it decently far in the game before you’ll need the extra healing, so feel free to consider this an end-game upgrade.
Energy Weapons — Output Control Tuning
We have mixed feelings about energy weapons. Most are slow firing, don’t do a ton of damage unless charged up, and are hard to make the case for using when you have so many kinetic and explosive weapons that fit the bill quite nicely for a variety of encounters.
Feel free though to bump this up on your list of priority upgrades if energy weapons just feel good to you. There is a benefit to using laser rifles and shotguns for long and short-distance engagements respectively. But you won’t unlock any of this hardware until you’re well into Act Three, making it a tough sell that you should upgrade your energy weapons right away.
Plasma weapons seem to count as energy weapons even though they leave large explosions, but even if you’re loving these early-game weapons they tend to do enough damage so you can delay these upgrades for a while.
Final thoughts on upgrades in AC6
There are other upgrades like being able to exceed your weight limit and discard weapons as you use up their ammo but we haven’t honestly messed around with these. Our focus has been becoming the most well-rounded AC to maximize damage output, mobility, and health.
Note that you can reroll your OST chips at any time so don’t worry about mistakenly upgrading something. It will, however, cost you 50,000+ to reset.
