Earth Defense Force 4.1 Wingdiver The Shooter is a spin off game from the EDF series. This one is an action shoot 'em up/bullet hell arcade style. There's 50 achievements to unlock. None can be missed but 5 of them require a full game playthrough of each difficulty in one playing session. For example: All 6 Easy missions in a row without retreating, though death is allowed. The game has 6 missions with 5 difficulties for each (Easy, Normal, Hard, Hardest, Inferno). There's an additional 6th Hell difficulty that is unlocked once you've cleared mission 6 on Inferno difficulty. These will be found in the new "Extra Mission Select" option in the main menu.


There is a free DLC that adds Training Mode, which is a series of short challenge missions that reward additional weapons. These DLC weapons can contribute to the weapon gathering achievements to unlock them earlier, but they are not required.


The game uses Energy to manage your attacks and dodge ability. Energy restores when not being used, and if your overheat (0% energy left) you will move slowly until your energy recharges fully. Try to avoid overheating. Most weapons will consume energy to use. The Particle Cannons do not use energy. Dodging grants you invulnerability, so you can use it to phase through enemy projectiles. A dodge costs around 35% energy to use.


There's 3 item boxes found in missions. Health, Armor and Weapon. Health comes in small and large sizes and heals you for an amount that varies on the difficulty. Armor boxes permanently increase your maximum health. If you grab an armor box and die, your maximum health will still be increased. Weapon boxes give you new weapons to use. You must complete the mission to keep the weapons you found. Death will make you lose any weapon boxes you found during that mission. For more details about weapons, see the Weapon Location/List section of this guide.


Attacking enemies builds your combo. You can lose your combo if you don't attack for a few seconds or if you get hit. Combo is used for two achievements at 1,000 and 2,000 combo. Otherwise combo is just for points for highscores, should you care about ranking. If you don't care about ranking, then points are meaningless.


Begin the game by playing on Easy to get a feel for the controls, learn boss attacks, find basic weapons and slowly increase your maximum health. Higher difficulties have faster, more damaging enemy projectiles and more numerous projectiles. You can grind for armor by playing on Easy with strong weapons. The more enemies you kill, the more armor you will find. Mission 5 seemed to reward the most armor boxes overall.


In terms of game progression I did all 6 missions on Easy, Normal, Hard without much issue. I retried my way through Hardest to get to Mission 6 to complete it successfully with around 450-500 armor, then did the same thing for Inferno at 550-600 armor. It would have been much easier to grind more Easy missions for armor before attempting Hardest/Inferno though.

Mission 6 is generally the easiest boss stage because there's lots of opportunities to spawn health boxes via the laser plates, and the enemy projectile patterns are easier to dodge overall. Clearing Mission 6 on hardest will get you the Cyclone Laser, which is excellent at melting bosses. Beating Mission 6 on Inferno will get you the ARC-LAZR and possibly XSX Plasma Launcher, which are great for killing bosses/nuking swarms for Inferno. I then went back to clear all the Inferno missions properly before grinding lots of armor boxes to prep for Hell difficulty. I cleared all of Hell difficulty successfully around 1150-1250 armor, but I would recommend getting more than that to play it safe.


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Editor's Notes
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To do:
Check over for typos.
Add in all training mission info/DLC weapons (once I complete them for myself)

Missions are divided into 3 sections. Each section has a checkpoint. The first section has the "Shoot up time!" minigame where you need to kill a certain amount of enemies in the time limit to get up to 3 rewards. The second section usually faces off against a lot of enemies. The third section is the boss battle if it didn't begin during the second section already. Each boss has 3 phases. Mission 6 is an exception with a more drawn out fight.


Mission 1: Urgent Dispatch. Grey ants and brown spiders in the city. Ants spit orange globs and spiders shoot large and small webs. Large webs deal damage over time. Large webs will vanish if the spider is killed. Boss is a large Retarius spider. Try to avoid the sticky webs it shoots, and if you get grabbed you can dash to minimize the damage you'll take. In the third phase it'll try to focus it's web shots on you, so you can lure it's aim to the sides to give yourself more room to move around.


Mission 2: Subway Breakthrough. Underground tunnels with grey ants, red ants and brown spiders. Red ants don't attack and just serve as meat shields for other units. Boss is a large grey ant queen. Many ants will spawn during her fight, but they are limited in number. The ant minions can drop some health boxes.


Mission 3: The Hum of Ruin. City level again with grey ants, brown spiders and flying hornets. Hornets shoot a spread of stinger needles. Boss is two large brown spiders. During phase 3 of the boss fight each spider is 50% of the health bar, so focus on one spider to eliminate it from the fight to make things easier.


Mission 4: To Find a Giant. Mountainous area with hornets, grey ants and red ants. Boss is Erginus, a large lizard creature with electrical attacks. A group of hornets will arrive after phase 1 and 2 of Erginus, giving you a chance to find some health boxes from them. Erginus fires many small electrical orbs. Large orbs will break into homing lasers that will attempt to circle to you multiple times. Erginus can use a lightning breath attack as well.


Mission 5: The Creature's Nest. Inside the hornet's nest with hornets, grey ants, brown spiders and egg sacs. Egg sacs will explode when destroyed, sending out green globs. Boss is a mutant hornet queen. The queen uses many green globs, hornet stingers and pink lasers. She also has a group of hornets to harass you with their stingers.


Mission 6: Star Cluster. Sky battle against flying drones and two Motherships. Drones shoot out small purple projectiles. The first Mothership has two rings of laser plates. Each ring shoots out purple lasers in a different pattern. The second Mothership starts with the Genocide Gun, which has a barrage of projectiles and a spread of pink lasers. Next comes the laser plates and large gun batteries. The gun batteries shoot out green homing lasers. The four branching arms of the gun battery send out a spread of green orbs. During the final two gun batteries you can destroy the laser plates to find health boxes to heal up before the final fight. Final fight is the Mothership core with drones coming to assist. The core shoots out lots of small electrical orbs and lighting bolts.


Extra Mission Select/Hell difficulty changes the enemies and attack patterns. Grey ants are now gold ants that shoot green globs, pink lasers and webs. Brown spiders are silver spiders with pink or green projectiles. Hornets are red hornets with lightning bolts or lightning ball attacks. Drones are red drones with numerous pink lasers. Expect the screen to be filled with projectiles as well as tougher enemies. Bosses gain additional attacks and their projectiles may be completely different from their normal counterpart. The true bullet hell begins here.

I recorded what weapons I found per mission, per difficulty. Most weapons seem to have multiple places they can be found. It is possible I may have missed possible drop locations, but you can find all the possible weapons listed here for 100%.


Easy Difficulty
Mission 1: E1 Plasma Launcher, LAZR-197, Rapier Thrust, Proto Thunder Sniper
Mission 2: E1 Plasma Launcher, LAZR-197, Mirage Zero, Proto Thunder Sniper
Mission 3: Dual Plasma Launcher, E1 Plasma Launcher, LAZR-197, Mirage Zero
Mission 4: LAZR-197, Mirage Zero, Proto Thunder Sniper
Mission 5: E1 Plasma Launcher, Mirage Zero, Proto Thunder Sniper
Mission 6: E1 Plasma Launcher, Geist, Mirage Zero, Proto Thunder Sniper

Normal Difficulty
Mission 1: Mirage Zero, Rapier Thrust, Thunder Sniper A
Mission 2: Dual Plasma Launcher, Ixion 2-Way, Mirage Zero, Rapier Thrust, Thunder Sniper A
Mission 3: Dual Plasma Launcher, LARG-V, LAZR-197, Thunder Sniper B
Mission 4: M2 Rapier, LARG-V, Thunder Sniper B
Mission 5: D Plasma Launcher, E1 Plasma Launcher, Mirage 5-Way
Mission 6: Ixion Wide, LAZR-199, Mirage 5-Way, Proto Thunder Sniper

Hard Difficulty
Mission 1: LARG-V, LAZR-197, LAZR-199
Mission 2: LAZR-197, LAZR-200, Thunder Sniper C
Mission 3: E1 Plasma Launcher, 3x Plasma Launcher, Rapid Mirage
Mission 4: Rapid Mirage, Thunder Bow 15, Thunder Bow 20
Mission 5: D2 Plasma Launcher, Mirage 5-Way B, Plasma Whip, Thunder Bow 20
Mission 6: D2 Plasma Launcher, Ixion 3-Way, Mirage 5-Way B, Mirage 5-Way S

Hardest Difficulty
Mission 1: LARG-W3, Mirage 5-Way B, 2x Plasma Launcher
Mission 2: Ixion 3-Way, LARG-W3, LAZR-201, Plasma Launcher R
Mission 3: LAZR-201, Mirage Rumble, Proto Thunder Sniper
Mission 4: D2 Plasma Launcher, Mirage Rumble, Plasma Whip S
Mission 5: Ixion 5-Way, Plasma Whip S, Thunder Sniper 40
Mission 6: Cyclone Laser, Ixion 5-Way, Rapier Thrust, Thunder Sniper 40, 2x Plasma Launcher S

Inferno Difficulty
Mission 1: Ixion Mark III, MX Rapier, Rapier G Thrust, Thunder Sniper 40
Mission 2: E1 Plasma Launcher, Geist D, Ixion Mark III, Rapier G Thrust
Mission 3: Ixion Mark III, Fenrir, Thunder Bow 30
Mission 4: Fenrir, Plasma Sweeper, Thunder Bow 30
Mission 5: Ixion 4-Way, LAZR-201, LAZR-300, Plasma Sweeper
Mission 6: ARC-LAZR, LAZR-300, Plasma Sweeper, Rapier Thrust, XSX Plasma Launcher

Hell Difficulty
Mission 1: Ixion 2-Way, Ixion 5-Way, Ixion 6-Way
Mission 2: LAZR-197, Master Rapier, MIrage Zero, Proto Thunder Sniper
Mission 3: Fenrir, RZR Plasma Launcher
Mission 4: Ixion 2-Way, Ixion 5-Way, Ixion Mark III, Thunder Bow XD
Mission 5: Fenrir 3-Way, MX Rapier, M2 Rapier, M3 Rapier Thrust
Mission 6: Ixion 9-Way, SIG-LAZR, 3x Plasma Launcher


Here's a table of all the weapons as they appear in game in the weapon select screen.

Here's a list of the achievements. Spoiler tags to match steam's hidden achievements. Most achievements will be gained through playing the game normally.

Weapons from the free DLC do count towards 100% weapon achievements so you don't actually need 100% from the base game. Consider them a bonus.

For the achievements that require you to clear all 6 missions on one difficulty, you must do so in one playing session. So play Mission 1 until you beat it and then 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 on the same difficulty. Never retreat during this process. It's okay if you die and retry. If you close the game at any point you'll have to restart your progress from Mission 1 again.

For 1,000 and 2,000 combo, use a multihit weapon like the Cyclone Laser. Don't get hit while building your combo and you should hit 2,000 pretty easily.


Weapon Hobbyist
Obtain 10% of all weapons.


Weapon Collector
Obtain 50% of all weapons.


Weapon Enthusiast
Obtain 80% of all weapons.


Weapon Master
Obtain 100% of all weapons.


Getting Tough
Obtain 150 Armor.


How Can You Still Fly?!
Obtain 200 Armor.


Combo Creator
Get a 1,000 combo.


Combo Expert
Get a 2,000 combo.


Training Wings - Easy
Clear Mission 1 on Easy Difficulty.


Through the Dark - Easy
Clear Mission 2 on Easy Difficulty.


They Can Fly?! - Easy
Clean Mission 3 on Easy Difficulty.


Search and Destroy - Easy
Clear Mission 4 on Easy Difficulty.


Clear the Skies - Easy
Clear Mission 5 on Easy Difficulty.


For Humanity - Easy
Clear Mission 6 on Easy Difficulty.


Just Getting Started
Clear all 6 missions on Easy Difficulty.


Training Wings - Normal
Clear Mission 1 on Normal Difficulty.


Through the Dark - Normal
Clear Mission 2 on Normal Difficulty.


They Can Fly?! - Normal
Clean Mission 3 on Normal Difficulty.


Search and Destroy - Normal
Clear Mission 4 on Normal Difficulty.


Clear the Skies - Normal
Clear Mission 5 on Normal Difficulty.


For Humanity - Normal
Clear Mission 6 on Normal Difficulty.


Normal? No Problem!
Clear all 6 missions on Normal Difficulty.


Training Wings - Hard
Clear Mission 1 on Hard Difficulty.


Through the Dark - Hard
Clear Mission 2 on Hard Difficulty.


They Can Fly?! - Hard
Clean Mission 3 on Hard Difficulty.


Search and Destroy - Hard
Clear Mission 4 on Hard Difficulty.


Clear the Skies - Hard
Clear Mission 5 on Hard Difficulty.


For Humanity - Hard
Clear Mission 6 on Hard Difficulty.


Hero of Hard Mode
Clear all 6 missions on Hard Difficulty.


Training Wings - Hardest
Clear Mission 1 on Hardest Difficulty.


Through the Dark - Hardest
Clear Mission 2 on Hardest Difficulty.


They Can Fly?! - Hardest
Clean Mission 3 on Hardest Difficulty.


Search and Destroy - Hardest
Clear Mission 4 on Hardest Difficulty.


Clear the Skies - Hardest
Clear Mission 5 on Hardest Difficulty.


For Humanity - Hardest
Clear Mission 6 on Hardest Difficulty.


What Do You Mean It Gets Harder?!
Clear all 6 missions on Hardest Difficulty.


Training Wings - Inferno
Clear Mission 1 on Inferno Difficulty.


Through the Dark - Inferno
Clear Mission 2 on Inferno Difficulty.


They Can Fly?! - Inferno
Clean Mission 3 on Inferno Difficulty.


Search and Destroy - Inferno
Clear Mission 4 on Inferno Difficulty.


Clear the Skies - Inferno
Clear Mission 5 on Inferno Difficulty.


For Humanity - Inferno
Clear Mission 6 on Inferno Difficulty.


Aerial Ace
Clear all 6 missions on Inferno Difficulty.


Extra Mission 1
Clear Extra Mission 1.


Extra Mission 2
Clear Extra Mission 2.


Extra Mission 3
Clear Extra Mission 3.


Extra Mission 4
Clear Extra Mission 4.


Extra Mission 5
Clear Extra Mission 5.


Extra Mission 6
Clear Extra Mission 6.


Seen It All
Clear all 6 Extra Missions.

There's a free DLC in the steam store for this game that adds in Training Mode missions. These are a series of short challenge task missions that reward you with new weapons. These new weapons can help you achieve the 100% weapon achievement, though they are not required for it. Some of the training missions can be tricky to do all the tasks. You don't need to do all 3 tasks in one go.

<awaiting 100% weapons found before I do the training missions, more info to come!>