An Overview Of The Achievement, And Arena Mode As A Whole
"Foolishness" is an achievement that requires you to reach wave 75 in Arena Mode.
This can be achieved in any of the eight arena stages, and you can bring your main guns from the main game. To access arena, you just need to sleep in the second bed in the Hospital once you unlock it via "random event" (just play/sleep until it triggers something, it's usually a clear audio cue)
Some things about Arena that you should know
Every 5th wave, it's a Elite Wave. Those waves are the most dangerous and can end your run if you're unlucky and not careful/prepared.
Every 10th wave, it's a Boss Wave. Those aren't actually that bad, and you can breeze them pretty easly since there's usually one or two enemies.
It's important to note that the game will autosave once you beat a Boss Wave. For example, if you beat wave 10 (which is a Boss wave), and you quit or die, next time you restart the arena you'll be in wave 11, instead of restarting at wave 1.
So you don't need to reach wave 75 in just one setting.
Which Arena Is The Best One For This?
I suggest to do the Sewer Arena.
Not only because it's already available, but because the narrow spaces helps a lot with crowd control. You'll be mostly in the tunnels, only moving into the open areas during the Elite Waves, and in some cases even Boss Waves.
The only two annoying enemies from this Arena are the Zombie Shotgunners and the Fire mages, expeccialy the Elite versions, those are extremely dangerous since they can wipe out your health bar in seconds.
The rest of the enemy roaster are Acid Dragons, Horned Zombie, Wraith, Exploders (And his small explosive minions).
What about the other arenas?
I don't really recommend them.
They are either too open (Ruins and Cemetery), too big (Street and Factory) or have more tougher enemies (Spaceship and Ruins, again)
What You'll Need And What Can Be Handy (and Also Stuff That I'm Not Sure If It's Good Or Bad)
It's important to note that in Arena Mode is far more important having survivability than offensive firepower, especcialy considering that some Elites can literraly oneshot if you are not careful.
Things that you'll need
-Both the two pills that reduce the damage taken (20%+30%)
I can't stress enough how much important those two pills are. You are getting a small debuff that can arrange from mildly annoying to stuff that literraly does nothing for a 50% damage reduction. And the reason why the debuffs are so inconsequential is because both pills brings you only 15% Toxicity! It's insane!
You can get these from the Topaz minigame. Note that while you can get them fairly easly (i remember that you can get them on overworld chests), you'll need to grind a little bit to unlock the second pill slot.
-An Automatic weapon with Lifesteal.
This can be either the AK, Demorifle, Suppressed SMG, Minigun or even a Semiautomatic weapon with the "automatic" modifier (but it need a good rate of fire, and preferebly one that uses light ammo).
Either way, it's vital. The lifesteal it's extremely useful.
-The "Hold Tier 2 weapons" ability
This is tied to the previous requirement. Sure, you can find a Automatic Weapon during Arena, but it's rare and not really convenient. Having Tier 2 unlocked opens more choices.
-The "pass through" Dash ability.
This can save your run in situations where you're swarmed or where you need to reposition fast.
Combine this things and you'll get a pretty sturdy build that can deal with most of the waves, and most importantly can for the most part prevent OHKs. Just be careful with the Elites waves, since they can outdamage your healing pretty easily.
Things that are not necessary but can help you
-Doing this in NG+. Preferably, Chapter 2 NG+.
While this is not necessary, it's certainly handy for two reasons:
1-You'll have tons of upgrades by that point, most likely having reached Level 7-8 with the coin upgrades and beat a lot of the Topaz Minigame.
2-Weapons will get damage buffs that can arrange from x3 to x4, depending of which chapter you are in the main game. NG+ Chapter 2 gives you access to buffed Tier 1 and Tier 2 weapons.
You can go the extra mile and reach Chapter 3, so that all weapons get buffed.
But i would argue that you can just be in Chapter 3, without doing NG+, and be fine as long you follow the requirements.
-Having the "Hold 2 weapons" powerup
It's a good powerup, if you want a explosive weapon as a secondary. But you can always find weapons in the Arena, and you'll pretty much use your Automatic gun with Lifesteal 90% of the time.
The ???This is the part of the guide where i'm not 100% sure if those items can be good or detrimental. But i think they are worth mention it.
-Nightmare Reaper at Low HP
You'd think that having NR at low HP is overpowered...but it really isn't. Because you need to survive to make use of it, which is a 50/50. And even then, it strips you of your lifesteal weapon, which it's more harm than good in some scenarios.
It's still a really powerful power up, the altfire can do a lot of damage, but i don't really recommend it. (You can disable the powerup via options)
-Coins pills (5%\15%)
This actually need some testing, because i'm not sure if the green coins counts with the power up. But even if it works, and more coins are nice, just the 15% variant is a 25% increase in toxicity by itself. Which could bring more nastier debuffs.
-Elite Pill
Why would you do this?
Ending Section
I hope this little guide helps you with the achievement and with the Arena grind.
Thankfully, because of the Elites HP rebalance in patch 2.22, the Arena it's not as tedious as before but it can be quite a slog to go through.
Good luck!
I'll keep updated the guide in case of changes, different strategies, and fixing some typos (sorry)
Changelog
1.0 - guide released
1.1 - Removed the "-30% Enemy sense" in the ??? section. It's worthless in Arena, since all enemies are already in aggro once they spawn. Also modified a bit the first and last section and fixed some typos
1.2- Changed the title, added the layout of the sewers map, added my opinion about the other maps (subject to change)
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2791509804
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