Battle Garegga/Strategy

The ultimate goal of this page is to serve as a reference for scoring and survival routes through the game. However, given the many random factors throughout the game it is often the case that the player will either need multiple plans for different sections or a solid enough grasp on the game mechanics to be able to adapt to untimely mistakes or bad luck. For this reason, the routes given will be somewhat vague, more a general guideline rather than a set of detailed instructions. We will supplement this with a breakdown of the various game mechanics presented in an "FAQ" style format in order to help give the reader the tools to adapt to the many challenges of the game.

In general, the game gives you a lot of flexibility in how you can approach its mechanics, so please consider much of the following as advice rather than ironclad "laws".

Switching Autofire Rates
Autofire is probably the single most important factor that governs rank since it affects both frame rank (which ticks rank up over time) and shots fired. With that said, 10 Hz is generally recommended for survival play since it doesn't affect frame rank and is a modest DPS increase over the default 8.6 Hz. However, ships without piercing shots may feel a lack of power compared to the stronger ships such as Wild Snail or Miyamoto when firing at 10 Hz so it may be worth shifting up to 12 Hz for a more comfortable playthrough. Of course, the longer you can stay at 10 Hz the lower rank will be, but you will certainly want to gear shift up by Stage 5 because Mad Ball mk. 2's destructible bullets are frightening. (They are too numerous to counter without a penetrating shot at 10 Hz regardless of rank.)

Once you get to stage 6 it is safe to shift to a higher autofire rate as needed, whether that be at the wall, Junky Monkey, or later. 15 Hz yields the highest DPS so this is a good autofire rate to end at. Once again, the longer you can hold out before shifting up the lower rank will be at endgame. However, this won't make a huge difference so if you feel you need the extra firepower there is no need to hold back. By the time you reach Black Heart mk. 2 there is no reason to delay increasing autofire any further because you are at the end of the game.

Besides rank, increasing autofire also increases your score potential since it makes killing enemies easier and yields more tick points per second. Because of this, if playing for score it is almost always worth playing at a higher autofire rate. Be careful though, if you can't maintain that score pace than you may not get enough extends to keep rank under control. Like many things in this game, it is probably worth experimenting for yourself to get a feel for what works.

Powering up
It is easy to look at the +1 frame rank increase from powering up the main shot with a small shot power up and conclude that it is not worth it. In addition, the immediate rank penalty from powering up with a small shot power up is always larger than from a large shot power up, and this difference increases at higher shot levels since more small shot power ups are required. However, the +1 frame rank increase roughly equates to picking up an extra small weapon fragment every 34 seconds or so, or ~0.4% over 15 minutes of play time. Not a huge amount, but it can build up in excess. Other considerations when powering up:


 * Most main shots are lackluster at levels 1&2, and you can get to level 3 with only 3 small shot power ups.
 * No ship has a noteworthy break point where powering up the main shot will increases rank significantly more before going from level 4→5, so you can always quickly power up to level 4 without worry. Grasshopper is an exception since it gains a penetrating bullet at level 4, but it really needs that extra power so the rank increase is worth it. In addition, Silver Sword, Grasshopper, Gain, and Chitta take no penalty going to level 5 and Flying Baron probably doesn't mind the penalty since it needs the extra power.
 * If you plan on playing at >10 Hz autofire, you can increase the autofire rate after powering up your main shot with small shot power ups to "negate" the frame rank increase from the shot levels.
 * Small shot power ups are far more common than large shot power ups, spawning at a rate of 10:1. If knocked down to shot level 3 in a later stage, there is a 70% chance that the 4 small shot power ups you need to get back to level 4 will drop before the next large shot power up.

A quick note on special shot level: Since you lose special shot upon death, it is generally only worth it if you plan on not dying for an extended period (such as during Stage 6). However, special shot level also has some niche utility in that it powers you back down to shot level 5, meaning you won't have to worry about picking up the large shot power up released upon dying to power back up. A good example of a spot where this is useful is if planning a suicide to harvest medals from the Stage 6 gunblimps, since you will want to focus on the medals upon respawn. Of course, if you can go out of your way to pick up the large shot power up released after dying with special shot, you will get the 5,000 bonus points for doing so.

Medals
Chaining medals is generally self-explanatory, but there are some subtleties to it. An obvious way to collect medals is to try and line up your ship below the medal in order to catch them. This works, but can be risky as it may increase the likelihood of an aimed bullet intersecting with the path of a falling medal. You can reduce the chances of enemy fire forcing a broken medal chain by playing a little more aggressively, either by moving upscreen to catch a medal earlier or moving outside of the medal's path to misdirect enemy fire away from it.

However, a dropped medal chain is inevitable. Nominally this costs you 129,500 points as you rebuild the chain, but this number is misleading because you will also miss out on full points from any medal caches hidden in destructible scenery while rebuilding the chain. Often times in a survival run this can lead you having one less extend to work with throughout the game, making the game more difficult (although not impossible) to clear. Ultimately, you have a few choices with how to proceed if your chain is broken:


 * 1) Rebuild the chain to salvage what points you can
 * 2) Proceed without medal chaining for the rest of the run
 * 3) Restart

It is worth noting that not only is it possible to clear the game despite dropping one or more medal chains, it is possible to clear the game without picking up a single medal. However, in both cases you need to be able and willing to exercise a flexible game plan. Your choice may also depend on when you drop the chain. For instance, if you drop a medal in late stage 2 or early stage 3 you can still get full points (or close) from many of the caches in Stage 4 and the flying platforms in Stage 5. However, it may be too difficult to rebuild a chain in Stage 6 unless you have practiced a lot.

If you find yourself rebuilding a medal chain, make sure not to uncover any medal caches until you reach 500-point medals, since 100-400 point medals can increase rank by a fair amount if collected in large quantities.

Collecting Excess Items
That sound effect that plays whenever you pick up an excess power up which sounds like nails on a chalkboard is the game's way of gently suggesting that picking up excess items is a bad idea. Indeed, these will increase rank more than normal but this is generally a small amount of rank increase unless you collect an excessive amount. The problem is that the paltry amount of bonus points awarded is just not worth it. The 5,000 bonus points gained from collecting a large shot power up at max is probably the exception since these power ups are uncommon and the rank increase is equivalent to using an special weapon.

How to Use Options
Spread The default spread formation is a very good all-purpose formation, and every ship appreciates the wider coverage it provides. However, it is not the most efficient formation and option shots will often be wasted in this formation as they shoot towards nothing. Because its horizontal coverage doesn't extend across the entire screen, you may be overwhelmed by some of the busier sections of the game if you stick solely to the spread formation.

Tail Making your options shoot backwards seems strange at first, but the tail formation has some useful (if niche) applications. It is a fundamental Gain technique to use tail options to divert the swords from targets that award more points when destroyed with a non-penetrating shot. In addition, many ships can use tail options to easily dismantle the stage 3 boss Earth Crisis.

Front The front formation is great if you want to quickly stack damage on a specific target or avoid damaging another target. It is also useful for tick point milking.

Rotate The rotate formation is generally not useful since most of the time the options will fire at nothing.

Trace Trace options are probably the most difficult formation to get a handle on, but they can be a very powerful tool since they allow you to fire at odd angles to snipe targets that would otherwise require awkward positioning or be impossible to hit without dying. As an example of the utility of trace options, whereas you would have to strafe back and forth across the screen with the spread formation to weather a wave of popcorn enemies you could instead use trace options to fire diagonally across the screen while covering the other half of the screen with your main shot. The latter is a little more technical to set up but probably more efficient at destroying enemies and safer as a result.

When you activate the trace formation your options will freeze in place until you move, potentially aiming at very strange angles if you mashed through the other formations. When you do move, your options will not instantly aim away from your movement direction but rather individually rotate around your ship until they are aiming at the correct angle. This delay can take some getting used to when first practicing with the formation. However, this also allows a skilled player to make very minute adjustments to the options' firing angle when in a safe spot.

Wide Wide options are easy to dismiss since they divert firepower from a ship's main shot. However, they make controlling the upper third of the screen very easy when playing in the center third. This is very good during popcorn rushes. Accordingly, wide options are worth activating in Stage 2 for the section with the large tank and Stage 3 anytime between the rail and the midboss, and will make these sections safer and easier to full clear for score.

It is worth noting that when setting up for wide, you must pick up a small shot power up that drops immediately after an option or large shot power up to ensure that an option spawns before a sixth small shot power up. Otherwise, you will have to suicide to generate an option outside the item drop order.

Homing Homing options are very powerful and make many sections of the game easier. However, they are not omnipotent. You have very limited control over what they target, and they will not switch targets until their current target dies or goes offscreen. Against bosses with multiple targets homing options are unreliable. In addition, if you are trying to dismantle or destroy enemies in a certain order than homing options are actively detrimental.

Homing options are good against the following bosses:
 * Mad Ball (both versions) inner ring
 * Nose Laughin mk. 2 (until the tail turret is destroyed, afterwards they are a liability)
 * The Stage 6 turret wall
 * Junky Monkey, (except the final phase if playing for score)

Search Search options essentially function as a less effective homing formation. They can be useful if activated but are rarely worth setting up intentionally.

Shadow Activating shadow options is never recommended because of the steep cost of breaking a medal chain.

Changing Formations A neat quirk of options is that they will continue firing while changing formations if you have the shot button held down. During these transitions they can fire at odd angles and snipe enemies you would be otherwise unable to hit! For a chuckle, set an autofire rate on an option button, hold it down, and watch in awe as your options flail about while shooting erratically.

Extra Lives
The amount that rank decreases depends on how many extra lives you have when you die, with the important numbers being a decrease of ~5.8% with one extra life and ~4.8% with two extra lives. Each successive extra life you have will get you ~1% less rank decrease upon death, so there is some incentive to not hoard lives as the rank decrease from each death will be more effective if you die regularly rather than all at once.

It is often recommended to stick to 1-2 lives when controlling rank, but whether this matters depends on your goals and the context of the run. The 1% difference from accidentally extending to three lives probably doesn't matter too much in a survival context as long as you don't let rank build up too much in the early game. By late game the lives are far more valuable than ~1-2% here or there. However, repeatedly building up to three or four lives can compound the relative difference and once you start hitting the ~5-7% realm this becomes truly noticeable at endgame and is best avoided.

Some other considerations for how many extra lives to stock:
 * How comfortable are you with the game? Be prepared to play long sections with one less life than you are trying to have in reserve after a mistake or untimely death.
 * Rank cannot drop below 0%, so if you are at <5% you likely won't get the full rank decrease from dying.
 * Some of the rank loss is immediately offset by powering back up. Each option adds ~0.5%, so playing with two options will lower your net rank drop by 1% and playing with four options will lower your net rank drop by 2%.

Sealing Bullets
In Battle Garegga, it is possible to prevent most enemies from firing at the player by engaging them from point-blank range. However, this has the cost of increasing rank. Every bullet sealed will increase rank by an amount equivalent to picking up one small shot power up or small weapon fragment. While individually this is a very small amount, it is deceptive because few enemies shoot only one bullet at a time. Thus, sealing bullets too aggressively can make a big difference over time.

With that said, bullet sealing remains a very powerful tool that the player should be aware of. There are many places throughout the game where sealing the right enemies can improve safety and reliability. Good examples include the large tank that ambushes the player in Stage 2 (and its brother in Stage 4), the Stage 3 midboss (if the center turret has not been destroyed), and the Stage 3 boss Earth Crisis if dismantling the boss for points. Overall, as with many things in the game, sealing bullets is fine in moderation and can make the game easier.

A noteworthy exception to the above are the spinning turrets on the giant "Slayer" planes in Stages 3 & 5. Don't seal these. They shoot dozens of bullets per second, and can catapult you well towards max rank if you point-blank them for longer than a split-second.

Ship Variants
As a refresher, the different ship variants are activated by selecting a ship with the following buttons:

In general, these differences are subtle but they can be noticeable. Speed is useful throughout the game for item collection and the smaller hitbox is self-explanatory. However, this does not necessarily mean that the ABC variants are objectively the best and it is possible to see success with any variant. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference.

Some good considerations when choosing a ship variant:


 * Can you handle the extra speed? Slower ships usually benefit more than faster ships.
 * A smaller hitbox makes dodging bullets slightly easier but collecting medals slightly harder.
 * Some ship colors just look cooler.