Hi all,
Im Dewpa an EDF fan since i first played EDF 2017 on Xbox 360. Ive put in a few hundred hours into EDF5 on PS4 and i wanted to create a short guide to help you get the most out of your EDF experience.
Not everything in the game makes total sense or is explained properly so i hope this can help some new recruits and veterans from the older games.

Let me know if something is missing or i messed something up, most of this is written from memory as i havent progressed that far in the PC version yet :)
Oh and of course there are some of my opinions in the guide, take that for what it is, im not pretending to be the best of the best here ;).

First version uploaded 14/7
19/07: Added Air raider section and started farming section. Minor adjustments to the general tips. Added RudolphRandolphRübenrunklers Youtube to links section.
More to come.

/Dewpa

Here i will go over some of the core gameplay mechanics in EDF 5.

The progression is partly shared between online and offline (2 player splitscreen uses offline progression), weapons and armor earned follows your character between the modes, but your mission progress does not. This means you might be at mission 25 in offline, but can only create a lobby for mission 1 in online mode. You can however join another players lobby even if you havent unlocked that mission.

Switched from singleplayer to multi, started up a game on your own and got your ass handed too you? Its quite common... The game does a really bad job to explain it but theres a difficulty multiplier in place for Multiplayer and it gives you the 4 player multiplier if you play solo online.
Below multipliers is in comparison to singleplayer:
For 1 or 4 players: 2.4x enemy damage and 2.64x enemy health.
For 2 or 3 players: 2.0x enemy damage and health.


EDF5 have 5 Difficulties, Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest and Inferno. Hardest and inferno is locked untill you complete the final mission on easy, normal or hard (either online of offline). This as they require quite a lot of armor and high level weapons. The difference between hard and hardest or hard and Inferno is MUCH bigger than the difference between the lower difficulties. You are expected to grind up your armor and weapons to be able to handle these difficulties. They dont just raise monster HP and damage, they add new enemy spawns and enemy types in most missions.
I would recommend starting on normal if youre new, hard is very playable from the start though, so if you want a greater challenge, go for it.

Armor is your HP in the game, all missions in online mode will have an armor limit and weapon lvl limit. If your armor is higher than the limit it will automatically be brought down to the limit. Weapons with a higher lvl than the missions limit cant be equipped. Offline mode has no limits and players who have reached 70% online progression can create lobbies without limits.

You get new weapons and armor by picking up boxes during missions. Apart from the healing boxes you have red Armor boxes and Green weapon boxes. Do note that you only get the boxes you or someone else in your team picks up. Any boxes on the ground when the mission finishes are lost.
When you pick these up you will gain weapons and armor after finishing the mission. Failing the mission lets you keep some of the boxes, based on difficulty, 100% on easy, 75% on normal, 50% on hard, 25% on hardest, 0% on inferno (these are from memory so they might be slightly different). In the post mission screen you will see that the boxes are spread out between all the classes, with the majority going to the class you currently play. This helps when you want to try another class later in the game.
Armor boxes increases you Armor (HP), but its not a 1 box = 1 more armor, instead it depends on the class:

• Fencer: 0.8 per box
  
• Ranger and Air raider: 0.64 per box
  
• Wing diver: 0.4 per box.

So 10 armor boxes will give the fencer 8 more armor/HP but only 4 for the wingdiver.

Weaponboxes on the other hand gives you 1 weapon per box. What weapons that can drop during a specific mission is based on the mission itself and the difficulty, see the Links section for a specific list. Important to know is that you can get the same weapon several times which leads us to:

All weapons you pick up will have a star rating, this represent the weapons current "level". Weapons max out on a bit different star ratings. You see the max star rating for the weapon in the top right corner in the upgrade screen. Each individual stat also has a star rating, a filled star means that stat has reached its maximum, which might be lower than the overall weapon max rating.
When you pick up a duplicate weapon you MAY get an upgrade. This is completely random and will be shown with an UP marking on the end mission screen:






As you can see i got 3 upgrades here, but i also got 3 duplicate weapons that arent fully upgraded (empty star to the right) with no upgrade.
In the next screen you will see the stat increase:





In the top right corner you see the maximum overall rating for the weapon (7). Below you see the individual stat increases, some have a filled star, like Reload time at 5. This mean the reload speed has reached its maximum.

Worth noting here is that several weapon have some appalling stats before they are upgraded. One of the Fencer shotguns starts with an accuracy of J (Highest is S+ followed by A+) making it pretty much unusable, having a spread of almost your full screen. But an upgrade or two later the accuracy is at c+ and its a great weapon. So dont write off weapons because they have a bad stat when you get them, it may be worth to revisit them after upgrades.

Some things that might be good to know:

• All weapons except lasers have travel time. This means you sometimes have to lead your target to hit. The stat Shot speed shows you how fast the projectiles will travel. Some weapon also have damage drop off, noted in stats as xx~xx on the damage stat.
  
• Hitboxes are quite tight, your projectile have to hit properly. For example its very possible to for example have a rocket miss because it went between the enemies legs. Jumping/flying up and shooting slightly downward can help with this.
  
• Explosions can ragdoll you and your teammates, sending you flying, sometimes halfway across the map. Friendly explosives will only ragdoll you on Hardest and Inferno difficulties, but your own explosives can always ragdoll you.
  
• Friendly fire is always on. The difficulty dictates how much damage it does with Easy at 10%, Normal at 25%, hard at 50%, Hardest at 75% and Inferno at 100%.
  
• When using explosive weapons against a horde of enemies, try not to hit the closest enemy. Ideally you want the explosion to happen in the middle of the horde to inflict maximum damage. Again Jumping up and shooting downwards can help with this.
  
• Enough damage will make the enemy flinch. This will interrupt what theyre currently doing playing a flinching animation before they can resume shooting/biting/whatever. This can allow you to fight enemies like the frogs or cosmonauts in close combat without taking any damage. A shotgun or a fast CC weapon like the fencer jackhammer can keep the enemy flinching over and over again.

You will be joined by AI soldiers and vehicles in many of the missions. Thankfully the AI now packs a punch and isnt made of wet cardboard like in 4.1. Some of the vehicles does quite a bit of damage and the AI is a great distraction keeping you from getting swamped.

All AI vehicles and some AI rangers/fencers/WDs are autonomous, moving along a set patch attacking anything the come across. Others are "recruitable", these always have a red arrow above their head, see the image on the left. Simply walk up to them and they will join you, following you around as best they can. Some autonomous units may become recruitable if their leader dies.

If youre getting close to the end of the mission, leave a few enemies alive and go around collect boxes, as i previously wrote you will only get the boxes your team actually picks up, anything left on the ground is lost. If youre unsure if youre reaching the end of the mission and youre playing in a team, watch out for someone saying "Collect items", this is the common signal to start collecting boxes and leave the remaining enemies alone.

Pressing left CTRL will bring up a quickchat wheel with some useful messages. move the cursor over the one you want to use and press the left mouse button. These will be spoken and shown as text. You can set the phrases you want in the settings menu. Oh and its pretty much OBLIGATORY to shout EDF! after a major fight and at the end of every mission ;)

You load into a mission and realize your weapons doesnt have enough range for that teleportation ship unless you climb a mountain? Mission is full of flying drones and you have a grenade launcher? Just retreat or ask the host to retreat to change loadout. Some missions can drag out forever if you have the wrong gear. Part of the game is finding the gear that works in a specific mission.

If your teammember is downed you can revive them by walking up to them and press E (enter vehicle key) this will remove HALF your current health and give it to them. It will always remove half your current health, even if that is more than the team members maximum. You need to have atleast 25% health left to revive.

The red marked ground means theres an airstrike or other attack incoming, usually called in by an Air raider in your team. Some missions have NPC controlled airstrikes, these still hurt.

The basic soldier class. May not have many fancy tricks but a versatile arsenal with some good QOL things makes it a great starting point for new players as well as a powerful tool for veterans.
The ranger is the only class that can sprint. If you hold down shift the ranger lowers his weapon and focuses on running much faster than normal. He can also dodgeroll (space + left/right key) and jump (space without using left or right). When sprinting the ranger has a wider collection radius that really helps with collecting all the boxes. The ranger can also call in some vehicles.

• Assault Rifles
  
• Shotguns
  
• Sniper Rifles
  
• Rocket Launchers
  
• Missile Launchers
  
• Grenades and Grenade launchers
  
• Special weapons
  
• Support Equipment

Shotguns got a really nice buff compared to 4.1! Shotguns now penetrate, allowing you to hit several enemies with the same pellet. Many shotguns also have decent range and with their insane close combat damage i often prefer to bring a shotgun instead of an AR and bring explosives or long range snipers. Most weapons are pretty straight forward and does what you think it will do, with the exception of Special Weapons. Here you have things like Flamers/acid guns, healing guns, mines and bombs. Some of the healing guns (called reversers) are really great on higher difficulties, theres several different versions, some only heals other, some has a healing explosion etc. Mines/bombs are mostly a waste of a slot but Acid guns/Flamers can be great in the right situations (Take the lvl 0 burner for a spin and let me know how you did ;) ).

The ranger has several different types of support equipment. Theres a few vehicles like tanks, helicopters and bikes, these must be "earned" in mission by killing enemies (your whole teams kills counts) and when the meter is filled you can call it in.
The rest of the equipment are different buffs:

Armor/Protectors: Doesnt help with damage taken but instead gives you a buff to walking/running speed, acceleration, turning speed, speed reduction when hit, ability to destroy minor object by running through them and immunity to knockdown. Theres several types which usually focuses on a few of the above. Do note that 100% is the base, anything below that is a reduction, like the Under assist which gives you higher sprint speed but halves the acceleration and reduces the turning speed to 25% of normal. Speed reduction on impact is the exception, it starts on 0%, when you get hit by an enemy while moving you are slowed down, this stat reduces the speed penalty.

Lock on/radar systems
These are for your missile launchers, they improve lock on speed, increases lock on range and the Multiple Lock on devices allows you to lock on several times to one target. For example if you use this with the MLRA, which can have 30 missiles, you could lock all 30 of those on to one target instead of 30 different targets. This can help you do a lot of damage very quickly to bosses and larger enemies.

Relief Support Equipment
When you pick up an healing item you also heal any NPC soldiers currently attached to you. This increases the amount of HP they heal. Usually not worth using the slot for this.

Probe
These increases the collection radius and makes it permanent, not just while running. Nice QOL thing and very useful for farming.

The Fencer is the heavy weapons guy in EDF. Using an armored military exoskeleton this guy can carry 4 weapons and is the only class that can equip the same weapon in multiple slots. Its a bit more complex than the ranger for example, but in return it has a very high skill ceiling and with the higher level support equipment it can become a very mobile class (in my opinion, on par with the wing diver).
It can be played in several different ways, long range heavy weapons platform, Close combat brawler, Mid range AOE etc, and thanks to the 4 weapon loadout you can have 2 different sets.

• CC Strikers
  Close combat weapons such as Hammers, swords and axes with some very special ones as well. All of these can be charged up by holding the firing button to increase the damage, range, AOE etc. Usually theres 2 or 3 levels, regular attack, high voltage and fully charged with the regular attack just swinging the weapons and the other two levels can have additional hits, larger aoe or in the case of the Vibro roller, it will perform a charge straight ahead doing AOE damage along the way.
  These weapons are harder to use in general but when played properly they can be very strong.
  
  
• CC Piercers
  Close combat weapons that "shoots" out from the weapon giving them a range of ~40 - ~100m. The Spears are piercing and can hit multiple enemies but have a swing animation playing before firing. The Jackhammers and Spine drivers doesnt pierce but in return they fire immediately. The jackhammer firing very quickly with lower damage while the spinedriver does more damage but fires slower. These are usually my go-to weapons for CC on the fencer, im partial to the Jackhammers paired with a shotgun.
  
  
• Shields
  What it sounds like, Shields are held up infront of you and blocks damage in a certain arc untill its HP is depleted, the shield will regenerate over time. Some shields have low HP but the ability to reflect incoming projectiles with a well timed activation. You can fire most weapons (in the other slot) while having the shield raised but raising the shield will slow your walking and turning speed.
  
  
• Autocannons
  Gatling guns, shotguns, lower caliber cannons and heavy flamers. Gatling guns and flamers have a spin-up time before they start firing and will slow your walking speed while firing. Some also have very heavy recoil. Shotguns are what it sounds like. Worth noting here is that some have an appaling accuracy when you first get them and needs to be upgraded before being properly usable, see Weapon mechanics. The lower caliber cannons are also what it sounds like, firing a solid projectile in full auto. Damage is often a bit on the low side.
  
  
• Cannons
  The heavy cannons and mortars. The heavy cannons are all extremely accurate, long range guns, with the exception of the Cannister/cannon shot which is a heavy shotgun. The cannons are split between the NC cannons and the 30/35mm cannons. The NC cannons fire immediately upon pressing the button and has a faster firing rate and lower damage (about 2 shots per second) compared to the 30mm which has a firing and recoil animation and fires about one shot every 3 seconds with really high damage. These guns are for long range, single target damage. The mortars fires explosive shells for AOE damage. The dispersal mortar shoots several smaller shells that can cover a large area or fired closer to the target for crazy single target damage.
  
  
• Missile Launchers
  Lock-on seeking missile launchers, most multi-target. The leviathan requires an air raider laser to lock-on and has a 17 second lock-on time (fully upgraded) but in return has insane damage. Some other needs air raider laser as well. The blood storm launchers are usually a great choice, it fires missiles that separates into several smaller missiles just before hitting the target.

The fencer plays differently than the other classes and it has several things you need to know to get the most out of the fencer.

• Inertia/turning speed
  The heavier weapons and shields will affect your turning speed and add inertia(only the shields state the amount in the stats). Think like supercrazy high mouse smoothing. Movement will start slow and build momentum and will take time to stop after you stop moving the mouse. This and the firing animation of some weapons can make the aiming quite difficult, but keep at it and you will get used to it. The CC and autocannon weapons have some inertia, but its very little compared to the cannons/mortars. There is support equipment that helps with this and recoil. See the video for examples with two "light" and two "heavy" weapons.
  
  
• Dash and jump
  The main mobility tool for the fencer. First of all these abilities comes equipped on WEAPONS with CC weapons providing dash and autocannons, some mortars and missile launchers providing jump. There are boosters in the support equipment that allows you to do several jumps/dashes in a row. Without them you have a cooldown between each use. You need to have the weapon in hand to be able to use the ability. The currently equipped left hand weapons ability will be on left shift and right hand on space. The dash makes you charge forward a shorter distance while the jump makes you jump. Standing still and jumping makes you jump straight up but MUCH higher.
  
  
  
  
  
• Dashjump!
  If you have one weapon with dash and one with jump you can dashjump. Dash and then directly jump while still in the dash and be amazed at your newfound mobility. With the support equipment boosters you can do several of these in a row (you dont have to land between them), flying all over the map like some heavily armed and armored angel of death. Mastering this lets you bounce around the battlefield, avoiding damage and spreading death like the plague. See the dash, jump and dashjump in the video to the left.
  
  
• Firing animations
  Some weapons have a firing animation, mostly for the fencer but there are some for the ranger and wingdiver as well. The fencer 30mm Gallic heavy cannon for example will have a 1 second wind-up animation before firing and then a ~3 second recoil and resetting animation. During this time youre completely stationary (but can still aim) which can mean death if done at the wrong time. You can interrupt the recoil animation after about 1.5 sec with another action, firing the other gun or jumping/dashing. You can however not walk or change weapons untill the full animation plays out. This is not noted in the weapons stats (miniguns and flamers have spinup time but that doesnt lock you in an animation). A ranger example is the DNG grenade which have you do a little sprint forward and then throw the grenade when releasing the fire button.

• Enhanced boosters
  Boosters that adds consecutive dashes/jumps. The Multi charger variant adds both.
  
• Enhanced Shields
  Improve shields by increasing durability/HP, amount of dmg blocked, blocking arc and reduced knockback when hit
  
• Enhanced Cannons
  Recoil reduction plain and simple. The highest one (lvl 76) totally removes recoil.
  
• Enhanced Exoskeletons
  Combats the inertia/turning/walking speed debuff from heavy weapons

Air Raider. The big boom boom guy. Bombing runs, gunships and crazy satellite controllers allows the Air raider to rain death on the many enemies of mankind.
This class can be a bit hard to play solo for beginners, but absolutely shines in multiplayer.
Friendly fire is a bigger concern for the Air Raider due to the nature of his weapons, they are clearly marked with red on the ground, but still think about where you put down that bombing run.
To make up for the somewhat lackluster small arms the Air raider also have the possibility to call down vehicles. Some of these are really powerful and needs to be controlled by several people to function at full power. Air raider along with the Ranger can control all vehicles while Fencer and Wingdiver can only take gunner seats in most of them.
The Air raider also have 3 loadout slots + a slot for vehicles.
The special mechanic for the Air raider (besides his loadout) is the points system. To call in artillery, bombing runs, some missiles and some satellites you need a certain amount of points. When you spawn in these are already full and can be activated, but instead of a time to reload you have to get these points by killing enemies. Any kills you or your team get gives you points. This do require some planning when selecting the loadout, always make sure you have an automatically reloading attack, otherwise you can end up without any usable attacks at all.

• Artillery Units
  Call in artillery strikes with marking grenades. Most of these have a large attack area wherein a certain amount of bombs will drop. For example the Large Howitzer have an attack radius of 100m, within 10 bombs will drop with a blast radius of 40 meters. The issue with these are the fact they are thrown as grenades. They are much harder to aim than the conventional airstrikes and tend to have a longer delay before the bombs actually drops. With some practice however they can be very useful.
  
  
• Gunships
  Think AC130 with a selection of weapons circling around the battlefield. You are equipped with a beacon gun. You shoot the beacon at an enemy or the ground, it sticks and guides the attack. The beacon guns range is quite limited for some of the strikes. These autoreload, worth noting is that the reload time in the stats starts after the strike has been completed. Several of these have great single target damage and some can fire several beacons before reloading. Having one of these is usually a good idea if you dont bring a Limpet gun.
  
  
• Bombers
  Call in bombers to lay down a line of bombs. When activating one of these your view change to top down, allowing you to precisely set the airstrike. You have to hold down the attack button then you can move the airstrike around with WASD and change direction with the mouse. Reloads with points however a well placed airstrike might reload itself.
  
  
• Missiles
  A group of missiles that needs to be guided by a laser. The laser needs to be maintained until the missiles hit. Some of these have quite a long "delivery time", taking around 20 seconds to reach the target. Many of them does a lot of damage however.
  
  
• Satellites
  Call in different laser strikes fired from orbit. These can be very effective against all kinds of enemies, including flying types as the lasers hit everything on the way down. All of these are called in by a handheld laser, marking the target. Some needs to continue to be guided throughoout the attack. Spritefall is one of the best weapons in the game and has an announcer that is very... enthusiastic about the weapon :).
  Spritefall covers an area in laser strikes while bulge laser fires one long continuous attack that you steer with the hand held laser.
  
  
• Limpet guns
  The Air raider small arms. These are kind of sticky grenade launchers, the shots attach to an enemy or object and then has to be detonated by clicking the right mouse button. There are sniper, shotgun and flechette versions beyond the normal one.
  
  
• Stationary weapons
  Half of these arent stationary, theyre robots that will either seek out enemies or go in a straight line and then attach to enemies. I recommend trying the roomba of death (robot bomb) as they look quite funny. The stationary placed guns can be a great addition. Some are regular machineguns, some are sniper variants and theres also flame turrets. The flameturrets can be really great for crowd controll as they more or less stunlock anything thats in range of the flames. Oh and these stick to anything, including friendly vehicles, do what you will with that information ;).
  
  
• Support equipment
  Here you have guiding equipment that can be used together with fencer and some ranger weapons. Some fencer weapons needs either the laser kit or a guide beacon. Here you can also find different buff items, placable or shootable that will boost damage, lower damage taken or heal you or your team mates.
  
  
• Special
  Decoys (blowup dolls that will attract enemies), bunkers and placeable cover and the supress gun. The supressgun is essentially a shotgun with very short range (the lvl 78 one has a range of 36m). While they do penetrate, the short range prevents them from being really useful.

• Tanks
  What it sounds like, tanks with penetrating or explosive guns. The Titan variety is a huge tank with really big main canon and two controllable smaller cannons.
  
  
• APCs
  The main vehicle Grape is faster than tanks but has less firepower. Theres also the Caliban support vehicle, more or less an ambulance that heals anyone who sits in it. Finally theres the Naegling, a mobile missile battery which is useful against flying enemies.
  
  
• Helicopters
  Again what it sounds like. A bit different loadouts, some have an automatically tracking autocannon. A bit hard to use at first. Also the only vehicle that has fuel, so it cant stay in the air forever.
  
  
• Powered exoskeletons
  Big mechs that stomps around with some major fire power. You control the legs with WASD and can rotate the torso to aim with the mouse. Some can do a boost-jump like the fencer and even fly for a while. The missile pods that lock on have a quirk in that they will travel straight ahead very far before homing in on whatever they locked on to. Make sure to fire into open air.
  
  
• Special
  Here we have the Depth crawler, the only vehicle you can call in underground, a spiderlike tank that can walk on walls and ceilings. Then the Proteus mech. Bigger than the Powered exoskeletons with one driver and three gunners.
  Theres one more thing in this category but i wont spoil that for the new players :)
  
  

Theres several missions that works well for farming, some can be afk farmed, some are for more active farming. This is either done to increase your armor or to get high level weapons.
Some things to know before the missions though:
Theres two caps that can come into play here )numbers are from memory, let me know if i got them wrong).

• Max boxes in level at any one time (128)
  
• Max boxes collected in one mission (1024)

This means that when theres 128 boxes on the current map, no more will spawn until you have picked up some.
The cap on boxes collected means that any boxes picked up after 1024 has already been picked up, they wont count. The boxes still drop but as i said, they wont count.

Do note that the singleplayer and multiplayer have a bit different mission numbering due to the tutorial mission in singleplayer. So below the mission 67 would be 66 online. Ive used the single player numbering below as most farms are done solo.


What i mean with this is missions you farm by playing the mission over and over again, they cant be dragged out forever.

• Mission 67: Extraterrestial raiders (Armor)
  This is the first mission you get to meet the heavy cosmos, they drop a crapload of boxes and this can be used for farming armor. Playing with somewhat high level weapons and the mission on easy in single player, this map can be completed extremely fast. When farming i got it down to ~two minutes per run on fencer/ranger with an average of 34 boxes per run (divided among the classes) for about 800-1000 boxes per hour. Can be done in split screen to get more armor to a second class. To speed it up a bit, leave one heavy alive and kill yourself to restart the map without loosing any boxes and saving some time.
  Loadout for Fencer: Dispersal mortar and jackhammer. Just fly into them and explode them with the mortar.
  Loadout for Ranger. High level AR or shotgun.
  Video of farming
  
  
• Mission 87: Approaching monster balls (Weapons)
  This is a great mission to farm some inferno (or other difficulty) weapons safely. When spawning in, leave the fencers by the bridge and follow the little river beneath it to the right. go all the way untill you end up at a waterfall, there on the right side you will see some rocks with a crevice like this:
  Walk all the way into the crevice and turn around facing outwards. Now just wait untill the fencers have died and the "monster balls" will come for you. They can however not touch you while in the crevice, so its just for you to kill them one by one. Collect the loot between the waves (theres three spawns of balls) and there you go, instant high level weaponry. This can be done with low armor if youre careful when collecting the boxes.
  Loadouts: Anything piercing and fast firing with decent damage. Shotgun (and probe) for Ranger, Rapier/lance for wingdiver. For fencers do not use any weapon that makes you move, as that can push you out of the crevice, i usually just go with a jackhammer and shotgun. Air raider is a bit trickier, Bulge laser and supress gun worked decently decently for me, but you have to be careful. RudolphRandolphRübenrunkler have a good video about it:
  Mission 87
  
  
• More to come
  Ill update with some more missions including AFK ones soon. Thanks to Zeddy for turning me on to mission 67 a year ago

These are based on the japanese version and have had the names translated to english so the names doesnt always match up 100%.
Ranger[docs.google.com]
Wing Diver[docs.google.com]
Air raider[docs.google.com]
Fencer[docs.google.com]

This can show you the HP of individual enemies, what enemies will be in a certain level on a given difficulty and what weapon lvl range that will drop in a mission.
http://leafierlemon.com/edf5/calc.shtml

Great place to hang out, talk with other players or find a group to play with.
EDF Discord[discord.gg]

Pretty much the only EDF youtuber out there. I dont agree with many of his opinions on the game but he has good content about the classes and advanced tips.
KevinEDF

I had initially forgotten about this guy (Thanks for reminding me All talk and no fight). He has videos of every level with every class. Most are without any commentary, but he usually explains what hes doing and loadout in the description
RudolphRandolphRübenrunkler