Perhaps you are new to the game and want to figure out what origins are best to play. Perhaps you are a moderate player who is trying to learn something new about an origin you love. Perhaps you are a person with good memory and you want to shout at me over a certain event that happened around a year-and-a-half ago. Besides that last one, I am willing to help!

Okay, this is something of mine that is long overdue. I am going to sit here and spend a couple of days writing this and then take my leave, better explanation in my review for the game.

If you think that my opinion of this game is invalid, I have 556 hours in this game and have completed every origin character as well as get 100 imprints in the last 2 years. Believe me, I know what I am doing.

Because I am a human and I have a way of thinking, I have a biased opinion on how everything works. If you have a different opinion on an origin and you do not agree with me, T̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶g̶o̶ ̶F̶u̶ That is absolutely fine. Leave your opinions in the comments of this post! I care about what you think and maybe, JUST MAYBE, you can convince me to edit a part of this document that you want to know.

On to the Origins!

This guy is most likely to be the origin that you started your first imprint with. There is no shame in that! This guy is good at everything! However, there lies the problem with this origin. He's just "good" at everything and doesn't excel at anything. This guy is "The jack of all trades" personified.

The way that I use this origin is Bladeslinger, he uses a gun but has a sword in his back pocket in case things get rough. This is one of the two origins that I definitely would recommend hirelings for. If we want to get specific, the gun is the best non-recoil shotgun you can find. The blade is a singular energy blade or any medium-lower size weapon you can get your hands on.

You want to have high armor, as the Endurance stat should be your second highest stat besides Tactics. Strength should be your lowest stat.

This origin is very beginner friendly and has a high skill ceiling for any hardcore players out there.
【Ａ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

This gun-nut Is all about pistols. Hand Cannons, Revolvers, single barrel shotguns (for some reason), any one handed gun you can get your hand on, He's an expert at it! The Agent used to be a
【Ｃ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】
due to the only special thing this guy had going for him was being able to be sneaky during infiltration missions. This was too niche because the only infiltration missions were Fast Track and Nexus core facility. The ability to stun lock enemies with pistols was a much needed upgrade and I have to thank the devs for adding this change.

The playstyle for this masked major traitor is to go lone-wolf on the infiltration stages. On all other stages, fellow hirelings are optional but not required. The specific gun combination is to dual-wield two fast firing pistols and keep a dual-wield accurate and precise pair of pistols in your back pocket just in case. You usually don't want to get more heavy weapons unless you are getting a sniper. That 20% non-auto rate of fire positive helps with that a lot.

Because you have a downside of 35% less encumbrance than usual, you are not going to have very heavy armor. Find the most expensive armor that has the least encumbrance so you don't run into the problem with sacrificing movement speed for suitability. Even so, your Dexterity and Tactics should be the highest stat with Strength being your lowest. Something tells me you aren't using melee weapons with this character.

This character requires more focus and is not as beginner friendly but still is a fun character to play as if you know what you are doing.

*Edit for TioRoast and Roku.
Many people including these two have said that agent could be high A tier because of the extra mag that I somehow glossed over during the writing of the original. After playing with this origin again just for this, I can see what they are taking about. This origin is being moved up a tier
【A　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

For some reason and I MEAN for some reason, the devs decided to add an unarmed damage bonus to the character that didn't need it. This guy is an acrobat, meaning the throwing weapons that you use are going to be absolutely busted. A combination of Catch-thrown-weapon and Lawnmower, one of which you can only get as this character, will make this character and the things that they throw fly through a group of enemies, killing them instantly. Though for this to work, you need to have a slashing weapon.

The play-style for this guy is to go throw a couple of weapons you find on the ground but then switch to your fists if someone were to get too close. Yep, that's it. I really tried finding a more creative way of playing this, but he just gets out-shined by the Massive and the Offering, why would you want to play this guy if there are obviously better options?
"Oh well the experiment has qualities of both, showing that it can handle basically having two skill focuses"
If that was the case, the noob would have been much higher on the list than it's place in A tier. If you want variety, just play noob. He is 100x better than what you can pull off with anything that this origin gives you. Oh right, I'm doing a guide.

Endurance is going to be the best stat you have, this is to maximize the amount of athletics and force that the experiment can deal. Dexterity and Strength are equal as important depending on what kind of damage you want to be doing. Tactics is not as needed and the other two origins. With all of this endurance, Your armor can be super heavy without penalizing your movement speed.

I really tried finding a better use for this Origin but I just couldn't. He is too generic by a origin's standards and can't compete with anything that even what the other origins in his imprint list have.
【Ｃ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

The Ronin Mercenary is the sword-fighter that made the most sense skill-wise before Cereber was cast into the roster. This guy is a sword-fighter so that already gives him an edge, though his special abilities revolve around having and gaining extra money during missions. For a price depending on the size of the enemy, you can bribe an enemy you could have performed a take-down on to make them fight for your side. You also gain extra money at the end of a mission to perform these bribes a lot easier. A massive hindrance to the mercenary is that fellow hirelings max is always 5 levels below your level. This is regardless of how many upgrades you give to the kitchen and it creates a situation where you don't want to have hirelings. and you shouldn't! these bribes are the best that can be done for this class.

The play-style for this character is to be the tankiest one in the group (if you have one). Use the big weapons and crush everyone you come into contact with. your sidearm should be a large size weapon and a shield or dual wield medium size weapons in case you get surrounded.

The Origin heavily revolves around being a high armor knight. Dexterity should be your lowest stat. This is followed up by Tactics and Endurance being even. Finally you want strength to be your highest stat, you need to swing that sword a lot.

This origin is the baseline sword-fighter and it does a very good job at showing how a melee build should be ran
【Ｂ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

The Patient is one of the origins that are rather forgettable. The upside is a reoccurring upside that all Unarmed specialists have and the ghost pal is far too weak in the mid->late game to have an impact. This just makes the patient a weaker massive. If these upsides were reworked to be a little better like making the ghost pal get stronger over time or having there be more of them. I wish I could say more about this Origin dang it.

The play-style revolves around being heavily armored and having nothing but your punches in your back pocket when things happen. This whole origin is about you not needing anything more than your punches to win. Jelinator made a whole imprint based on buying nothing from q-bert, do you wanna guess what Origin he picked?

Strength and Endurance should be the highest start you have. Followed by Dexterity. Tactics should be the lowest stat. This range of skills is to make sure that your punches do the most amount of damage when it is possible to hit the enemy.

The patient is an unarmed specialist with a niche that can't hold it's own and an upside that too many origins have anyway. This can definitely contend for the Worst Origin in the game.
【Ｃ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

Alright! Now let's get into the good stuff!
The Disquieted is the best sword-fighter in the game. Him upsides and downsides show this very clearly. He does extra damage with melee weapons and does less damage with ranged weapons. This guy's gimmicks are also very good. When you get skilled enough with the origin, you can treat any melee weapon as an improvised weapon and jam it into someone's skull, performing a take-down. This is HUGE for the enemies like golems and half-mags who have a very high health pool and can't be taken down easily with normal means. The teleport is also nice because it means you can use melee weapons to travel farther, faster.

We have all seen those movies where an eldritch horror slashes up a bunch of high-schoolers on their camping trip in the woods. The play-style is that you take the role of that slasher. find some armor that has bonuses to acrobatics (and just take high armor if there is no good options) and use medium or small melee weapons to go absolutely ham on the rest of those grunters who think they can be better than you.

Strength and Tactics should be the highest, rightfully so for the best melee damage. This is followed by endurance and then dexterity. Your movement buff from your special will be all the extra speed you need to slice everyone.

The Disquieted is a brilliant Sword-fighter that can kill anyone and anything with ease using the right materials.
【Ａ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

The Better Experiment.

I am not kidding. When I think of an Acrobat focused character, I think of someone that can zoom around the map and throw a bunch of crap, get things done spik and span without even needing to catch a break. The Offering is the embodiment of this description. This Origin comes with a unique set of abilities. You can summon ghost pals out of the corpses of your fallen enemies (suck on that, patient). You have the lawnmower skill already unlocked at the very beginning. Once you get the lawnmower skill, you can throw ALL weapons and have them pierce through enemies. You also regain corpus whenever you perform a take-down on an enemy. This makes stages like nexus core facility, fast track, and the industry so much easier.

The play-style revolves around throwing things (Duh) while hoping around the map like the lunatic you say you are. Level up acrobatics in the beginning because it is just that easy to get it now, and lawnmow the mid->late game with all of the buffs you have.

Even though you look scrawny, there is no armor penalty for this origin, meaning you can have heavy armor as long as Endurance/Dexterity are your highest stats. This is followed by Tactics and then Strength, Those thrown weapons aren't going to go far if you don't have a lot of dexterity to back it up.

The offering meets expectations of what an acrobatic master gives to the table. A truly great origin to fill this spot.
【Ａ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

Even though that this origin is in beta, we still can make a good theory of how this Origin will turn out in the main game. This swordsman... wait, we have another one? My goodness OK. This swordsman has one of the most unique gimmicks out there. For the entire run, you will have 1 corpus block. This means you are going to be this glass cannon of an Origin. You, as this glass cannon sword-fighter, will not be engaging with many enemies to preserve your own health. Luckily, you don't need to! Every time you would gain a corpus, you instead get the ability to spawn a hireling with your exact stats and armor. These guys will happily rush into the fray and fight for you! The max amount of clones you can have at full upgrades are 3, and you can use this in conjunction with the hirelings to have 8 AIs on your side at all times. You heard me right, 8!

The play-style you should use is as a general character. Have all your hirelings be sword-fighters as well, and watch as both the clones and your hirelings slice everything they come across. bonus points if all of your hirelings and you all have the same weapon. You are going to be using melee weapons, which one? Go ahead and pick yourself. It's not like you are going to be the one fighting!

You should not think in stats compared to you, but compared to the clones you spawn. The highest stat should be Tactics, followed by strength/dexterity, followed by endurance.

When Cereber was first announced, I didn't know how they were going to add summoned units like they did to the game. They ended up turning great and this is one of the best origins in the game. Also, if you have active clones that are in the battle when you die, you will instantly swap to one of these clones, giving you basically unlimited health even more than the massive if you are good enough. I forgor about this because I am too used to estimating, didn't realize this would be something in the main game. Still, even in S tier, there are two other origins that I feel has them beat.
【S　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

The final A tier Origin. This guy is the exact OPPOSITE to cereber. This guy is a one man army. With each core upgrade not including acrobatics adding a corpus to your health. Although ranged attacks are not very good either due to less accuracy and less non-auto firing rate. This guy also comes with a 50% dizzy resistance. This makes the massive

a better patient.

But with the amount of muscle you are carrying around, you are sluggish as hell and you couldn't be bothered to move faster. The massive is great but not overpowered. This makes him a very good origin.

If you are not running around as a tank with maxed armor and 10 corpus bars, what are you doing at massive? You can go solo and BE the final boos that Nevada was waiting for! you can also be the guardian figure to a bunch of gumbie grunts and no one is going to give a crap! don't act like you need a shield, BE the shield!

Edit #1: I also forgot that the massive gets a different charge when you get "melee charge up" and "punch - charge up." This charge makes you dash forward, stunning all grunts that get in your way. This is not an integral part of the origin so the ranking stays the same.

There is only two skills you can get as Massive and I think that strength should take priority over endurance. Force WILL be your highest set skill, don't try and hide it.

The massive is the final boss, with 10 corpus blocks and the pain tolerance of a raging bull. This Origin is one of the best origins in the game.

【Ａ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

Here we are. the two best origins in the game. Let's start off with the Tinkerer.
This guys rate of power is exponential, where you basically become a god after beating the house-on-Nevada-hill Helicopter mission. This is where that power comes true. Many beginners don't seem to realize how powerful sticking ANY modification onto ANY gun can be. You know the dissonance weapons inside of the chef's black market? you know how expensive they are? you know that you can do the same with the tinkerer for 10x less AND get better results? Yep, there is literally nothing that can hold you down while you are playing this origin. Just shoot at the ground, they'll die eventually!

The play-style? buy as many deagles as possible and wait until you can stick the "dissonant cannon battery" ammo type on it. Then shoot everything in sight and send it all to the other place, that easy!

Tactics is everything with this Origin, You are the Gun-nut. Make sure that all those gun starts are completely maxed out. Dexterity will help out with that as well. You should invest at least a little into strength so you can hold the massive concoctions you are about to make. You can leave endurance, there is nothing that is going to reach you in the mid->late game.

How else can I explain it? This guy has access to everything and makes fighting just feel like cutting cheese with a blowtorch! This is the best origin in the game, hands down.
【S　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

The only origin that I think can even think could contend with the tinkerer and it's level of status. The Magiturge is a wizard, and his gimmick is that he has an entire pocket dimension where he can make spells and test out magical properties. These magical items are not just up for grabs, they are basically required! The Magiturge has 70% less weight to him, those magical robes that are sold are some of the only things that he can carry! They do help with the casting of tomes though. As this is the only other origin that doesn't have any skill focuses or skill downsides. This frees up room for any possible play-style that you can come across. I will explain and rank the most common play-styles

play-style #1: Go by the book
This play-style revolves around the using of tomes. This Acrobatic wizard is also quite fine at throwing explosive "canisters" at enemies making the disappear into a million pieces. Their dexterity and endurance are their highest stats, followed by tactics, and then strength. This is an OK play-style as it allows many more objects to be thrown at those pesky enemies.
【Ａ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

play-style #2: Way of the four elements
This play-style revolves around the use of a combination of the wizard staff and the gem rings to burn, shock, or freeze enemies form a close range. this play-style has very glaring downsides though. You will take more physical damage due to the rings which is about 90% of the enemies in this game, but also you are sacrificing the only long range source of damage that you have to be more effective at close range. You need hireling for this to work, but when you do, the rewards will be astronomical. Strength and Dexterity are their highest stats, followed by endurance, and then Tactics
【Ａ　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

play-style #3: Wand of the war mage
This play-style revolves around the endless combinations of things you can do with the wands. There are way too many combinations for me too list here, so I will give a tutorial on how to create the perfect wand that you want.

First let's start off simple, plastic wands are the only type of wands that have auto fire to them. Bonemeat wands have the ability to heat-seek onto a target that is higher or lower than where you shot, this stat is called "Gravity". Wood wands give an extra piece of ammo per shot right off the bat. You do not need to concern yourself with the steel wand.

If you want a wand that shoots a lot of projectiles at the same time, go for wood modifications
If you want a wand that is fast and has splash damage, go for steel modifications
If you want a wand that is slow but increases the amount of times it can be fired per second, go for plastic modifications
If you want a wand that locks onto targets on a horizontal axis, go for bonemeat modifications

The Gem type also dictates what kind of damage you will be doing with the wand!
Jolt is no element, bog-standard yet very reliable.
Kinetic is for when you just want to throw everyone around and not kill them (Why)
Cryo is for when you want to freeze the enemy
Thaumergy is for when you want just a LITTLE heat-seek in your want without the bonemeat mods
Caustic is for when golems are becoming armored and your fireball wand isn't doing enough DOTs
Fire: Use fireball and only fireball
Toxic for when you want to cosplay as a necromancer
Static for when you want to use a lightning bolt but that isn't allowed

Holly crap is there a lot to this play-style. with the amount of customization to the wands and the ability to have infinite ammo if you are good enough at killing, makes this play-style in specific, the best was to play magiturge.
【S　ｔｉｅｒ　Ｏｒｉｇｉｎ】

*First edit to Tier list



*Second edit to Tier list



I am going to be taking a break from this game for a long time. I wanted to get this out to express my feelings towards what the devs have coming. Who knows? Maybe the Workshop is only a year away and this break will be short lived and I can eat my own words. I am off to college in the next year and I certainly won't have enough time for this rambling I have done in this weekend. So I have to say it. thank you madness community. this has been my favorite game for a long time now. I will respond to any questions about me or this guide in the comments. for now, this is my parting gift. Goodbye.

Ok, yeah. I actually did eat my own words. It has been almost 10 months since I have made any major updates to this guide and the workshop is finally out! I have been experimenting with some of the things that it has to offer and many of the things completely change the game or just outright break it. The workshop is NEM watered down with less of the hassle and I'm all for it!

It's pretty easy to get workshop item into your game. Just subscribe to an item listed in the workshop and let the game download it. After that, you go into the game, click the bottom right cog icon in the main menu, and activate the selected mods you want. Easy as that.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now. I would like to address some things. I have seen some of the comments inside the comment section and have even made edits to the guide for some people! I sincerely appreciate all of your guy's support in helping me figure out facts about the origins that I could have glossed over in the original writing of the guide. Now, with the workshop, pretty much any origin can be S-tier so I would like to address some concerns that have arisen from the comments any why I didn't make any edits because of it.

- Comment: "the experiment origin have 12 unarmed piercing istead 0 and 3 unarmed damage istead 0,5 and 2 unarmed defensive istead 1 (only hands), the playstyle of experiment is trow big weappons and trow fist"

- My response: I am not quite sure what this commenter is asking for. I am guessing that they want me to edit the current play-style of the experiment to "throw big weapons and throw fists when the going gets tough." I already hinted that this was the kind of the play-style along with what I mentioned above.


- Comment: "This ammount of disrespect for patient and labex is disconcerting. Labex is an excellent agile unarmed beast. That +2 to unarmed goes a long way, and having acrobatics as focus means you can either have a stupidly big tacbar thanks to high dex (also zooming around the battlefield and throwing fast as ♥♥♥♥ hands), have a lot of endurance for heavy armor (although massive is better at this aspect) or anything inbetween. He's more about head climbing to get out of corners than throwing dragon slayers across the map, with which offering is better at. Patient is the only other unarmed specialist that a) doesn't have ranged as a weakness/ranged penalties like massive does and b) doesn't move as slow as molasses. He's perfect if you want to go fists+ranged or if you want to stun en masse with a high combo counter, whereas massive can just hold attack to charge and oneshot anything that isn't a golem. The imaginary friend kinda sucks though. Wish it was more than just a flavor ability :/"

- My response: I both agree and disagree with this statement. First, the parts I agree with. I do agree that I made patient seems a lot worse than he actually is. Even with the fact that patient has a niche ability and a weird upside, I do feel like the "this guy is decent because he doesn't have a ranged weakness" is entirely valid. Stunning fist, as well, is an entirely busted ability but I do feel like an entire origin should be a little more unique than the ability to unlock one broken ability that it shares with one other origin. Now, like I said before about LabEx, I would say that this swing and run tactic is good in a way since it allows you to hit hard, fast, and gives you breathing room to escape. The only problem is that Offering exists. and he can do the exact same thing with a much, MUCH harder hitting weapon, and from a distance. Basically, LabEx is semi-optimal simply because you have a better option as soon as you get 1 imprint.






One more thing before I go, I am in no way saying that any of the origins listed are bad, That is just the way that it seems. A 3.5/5 star on average origin like LabEx and Patient are still good. It's just the fact that so many other origins are 4.5-5/5 that they seem like sub optimal or even bad. Like I said in the beginning, your opinions aren't my opinions, feel free to like any origin that you want. If it goes in you favor, don't let this guide stop you.
Happy hunting in arena mode you legends!
- Frost