Here's Why:


This is the highest score of all players and of all maps. That is of course, by the time this guide has been written. :-) It was the 2nd of July.

Anyone can do this with enough time on their hands. This guide aims to make that process as efficient as possible.
It will help you make maximum points per escalation round. Some of these tactics I use myself, you can check the leaderboards ingame, you'll see what I mean.

I make an average 40K+ in a 15 round escalation game, no matter the player count.

You will be the top scrorer in every round of escalation you play.

If you do it long ehough, this guide gets your name on top of the leaderboard of one (or more) maps.

However: That's all you're gonna get. No achievement, no extra weapon or any other toy. Not even a cookie.

Here you will learn:

- How to get the most XP in an escalation round
- What's important and what's not (Game mechanics)
- What loadout to use
- What tactics to play

Find the map on Escalation you want to become number one on.

Criteria:

- You must be able to pass all 15 waves on your own. Cover is of importance. Plain sights like those earth-maps are harder.
- Check the leaderboards. There's maps where everyone in the top rankings has over 300'000 Points (as of now). Find one that has small scores. If no one likes the map, fine. Less competition. :-)
- See if you can establish a good round on the map. More on the "round" below.
- Find all the important stuff on the map. Know where the big money boxes appear after the 5th wave.
- Find a room, a cover, something where you can play all 15 waves from on your own. It can be a hallway with barricades on one end or something. You want enemies to enter from just one side.

-Make the map your own. Know where everything is, know all covers, installations and especially money boxes

First point I observed:

Most players don't realize the value of the money (shard) boxes. They walk past by them and never, or rarely, open one up.

Second point I observed:

When players actually do open the boxes, they melee them. It's far more efficient to shoot them over a large distance. You should shoot as many as you can see.

The way to do it:

I make 1000 Points before the first wave. You can see it below in the pictures (section "The described tactics in action"). How do I do it? SHOOT ALL BOXES YOU FIND!

Here's the important part: Kills NEVER give you as much points as consequently shooting all the money boxes spread around the map.

What you do, while all other players hunt the robots, is run around the map and kill money boxes! Your scores will go through the roof.

In an escalation game, press tab. You'll see the scores of everyone. It gives you that nice transparent overlay. You can walk around with that overlay active and shoot stuff.

Now with the overlay active, walk to a box and shoot it. If you shoot a small one, you'll see that your score has raised 100 points.

With the overlay still active, go to a barricade and activate it. You'll see that your score has not raised.

It makes the game easier and helps out your team if you do activate / upgrade the installations. However: From a score point of view, you just need to shoot the boxes.

Personally I think you should not get rewarded for collecting the shards, as this helps only yourself. In my opinion, the points should come when you install / upgrade the installations. Because only then you help the team.

Anyone who played Hitman Contracts knows: First you find a way to meet all the requirements and hit the targets. Then, when you figured it out, you make a speedrun and with the extra time saved you get extra money. If you're fast enough, your result is unbeatable.

Same goes here: The money boxes ALWAYS appear on the same spots! Find an ideal route to get all of them! That does not have to be a real 'route'!

A high spot is MUCH better. You find a rooftop or something, with as much money boxes as possible in sight, and while you get the message "down to the final three foes" you already run to that high spot, ready to shoot the boxes in 360 degrees. You do that every round, because the boxes respawn every round at the same spot, and more boxes appear over increasing waves.

Hiere's a general Overview of what I use, explanation follows below:

You want a quick firing gun with rapid fire and big magazine as your primary. Because you hunt money boxes and not enemies, that is the quickest way to go. Damage is secondary. You want to turn 360 degrees from your high spot and never reload while shooting the boxes.

I use the fully upgraded Neutron Assault Rifleas a Primary.

The secondary weapon has to be your heavy hitter for enemies and bossfights. Altough you hunt the money boxes, you also go for the bosses and big enemies like leapers. They give more points, they're also a medium challenge and fun to kill.

I use the Gascannon as secondary. You move around A LOT to get all boxes, so you always hit groups of smaller opponents around the corner. The gascannon can take out several small enemies at the same time with one shot, and delivers a fair amount of damage against the big ones. The mag is only 4 shots with a total of 16 shots. But that's no problem as you see below.

Hacks - per definition - are disadvantages you accept, in order to get more XP per round. It can go as far as "No Hud" that gives 300% extra XP.

Your hack is called "More Health", which gives a fair 125% more XP. What happens is, that the enemies drop more energon cubes and less ammo.

You don't care about that, because your ability is the "Ammo resupply beacon". You're pretty much self-sustained on the ammo with that.

The trick here is, that you get 125% more XP with no disadvantage.

You go for 3 x Health regeneration. You can use the 3rd slot for any toy you like, but I suggest 3 x Health regeneration. You fight mostly alone, and this one can be the difference between making it through a wave in one shot or not.

You can play really sloppy and get away with it using an active health regeneration.

Often, your co-players leave for some reason. I don't know why. Maybe they get disconnected. I read a lot in the forums about crashing games.

Anyways. When you're alone, you need to use that retreat I talked about. Your safe place.

Now the dumbest thing that can happen to you, especially in the first 8 waves, where you have a lot of weak enemies, is to get crowded. Later on you have less enemies in number, but harder ones.

So you need decoy some of them while hunting.

The way I do it is using the decoy installation (of course) and upgrading all the barricades. For some reason, the NPC's sometimes treat them as enemies. They shoot or melee them. Even if there's a way around barricades to get to you, enemies stop walking and start attacking barricades. Barricades are very cheap to repair, but, depending on the NPC's spawn, keep a good load of them off your back, so you can pick them off one by one and won't get crowded.

Lesser players means more points for you. Since matchmaking is pretty screwed up, you mostly play as 2 players anyways.

The screwed up matchmaking system also forces you to host the session on your own PC. A huge advantage, because if the host leaves, the game-migration mostly screws up, and you can't finish. If you're the host and everybody leaves, the game goes on. For you alone.

You're fine with that. More enemies for you.

I took the liberty and made a few printscreens through the course of one round of escalation, 15 Waves. Description always below the picture. Don't get mixed up. ;-)


Wave one of fifteen. Notice: I have already 1000 Points, but all the kills are still zero. This is because I run around shooting all money boxes.


About 2 Minutes into the game, two teammates have 2 kills each. I have still zero kills, but 5 times more XP.


Wave 3 of 15. I am in third place with kills, but have gained almost exactly as much XP as the other 3 teammates put together.


Wave 6, at this point I have tripled my Score compared to the best co-player.


Done a few kills, exactly as much as another teammate (46). Here you clearly see it. Compare the scores. It's ridiculous.


Wave 10 of 15, leading about 20 kills, triple the points of each of the other teammates.
Notice here on the top right corner. It says "Wrench up / Repair 25 Installations. Now these challenges give you extra extra Gearboxes. YES it is repetitive to install / upgrade all that stuff. But it gives nice extra goods for you if you do it :-)


Here you can see what I said above. Compare it to the last picture. Only 11 more kills, but the Score has doubled.


Killed the boss. Just had to put that in here. ;-)


Final scores:
I have roughly 20% more kills than the second place, but scored over 60% more points than him.
I think that really proves the point. Shoot the damn boxes. :-)

If you go Prime it takes away:

- All your weapons
- All your weapon upgrades
- All your abilities

The time it took me, after going Prime to get back all weapons, upgrades and abilities was..... 3 minutes.

Why?

Well, the gearboxes get transferred over when you go prime.

You just don't open any gearboxes from Level 15 to 25, go Prime, open all your boxes and play like before, fully upgraded.

This one might get patched tough, as there's no point in resetting it all and still have the boxes. It is public knowledge, there's Youtube Vids about that and everything.

I only found that out because I didn't open all the boxes before going prime, thinking " that stuff is gone anyways". This was one of the positive surprises in this otherways sloppy game. :-)

This is my first guide ever. And it only describes how to make the painful process of grinding to Nr. 1 less hurtful. :-)

Hope you liked it anyways.

Leave a like if you managed to read down to here. :-)