Soldier

Knack: Offense
Type: Special
Focus: Skill Attacks

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Soldier is one of the four Knacks given by FactoryAI after unlocking the Knack customisation option. It is a Special type Knack, focused on enhancing Skill Attacks to maximise targetted power and utilise EN to its fullest.

## Obtaining

The Soldier Knack blueprint is given alongside three others when first unlocking the Knack customisation option after finishing the Terrarium.

## Skill Draw Modifiers

Soldier modifies the draw rates of most skills to a large degree. It focuses on getting a full set of Skill Attacks and enhancing the damage they deal, with some improvments to the availability of EN to take advantage of these. Conversely, it reduces the availability of items, healing, and defenses, and all Normal Attack skills.

## Strategy

The Soldier Knack massively enhances the availability of Skill Attacks, making it incredibly easy to take out problematic enemies quickly and safely, including large, mobile, and disruptive threats. However, it relies heavily on spending EN to perform, making it extremely expensive against larger groups of small enemies, and will need to be thoughtful on the amount of EN used in any situation.

With Bullseye, high-defense enemies become trivial, including Guardians, Scarecrows, and Rafflesia, or it can be used to get EXP off Beetles. With mobility and ranged skills such as Rush, Shot, and Lance, ranged and mobile enemies become easy to take down, including Shooters, Wild and Nonstop Alarms, Rats, Jelly, Ghosts, and Gators, while gaining extra MODs off Boxes and avoiding damage from Acidpillars and Rollers. With the selection of high damage options, enemies can be dealt with quickly, mitigating the healing effects of Mechanics, avoiding potential status inflictions from Sheep, and safely take out Rollers, Varmints, Titans, Cows, and Rafflesia. However, it is often too expensive and not worthwhile to spend these skills to fight small and weaker enemies, such as Bits and Airstrikers, and extreme caution must be taken to avoid engaging Puppets as they can shut down the entire strategy with the Silence status. The knack is generally best at fighting robot enemies, due to the higher availability of batteries, while organic enemies provide little benefit.

Any one enemy can usually be tackled with extreme ease, and while some skills allow targetting many enemies at once it can often become expensive to do this regularly. This creates a need to balance between the use of Skill Attacks and Normal Attacks on the situation, and try to maintain a healthy supply of batteries. It is therefore advisable to have some cheaper options available, such as Dash, Strike, and Bullseye to conserve energy. Furthermore, items are extremely valuable, if an item can be used to avoid spending EN it can open up the use of Skill Attacks later in the expedition, so consider taking full advantage of Grenades, Smoke Bombs, Chaos Potions, Snooze Sprayers, and other status items.

It is rarely worthwhile to equip the robot with a Skill Attack in a Custom Part slot, as you will almost certainly find similar options during the expedition. Depending on how long the expedition is, it might be useful to pair with other Knacks or utilise Extra Skill Draw to increase the chances of finding effective passive skills, as there will be a limit to the usefulness of repeated Skill Attack draws.

### Notable Synergies

#### Medic

One of the major weaknesses is a lack of survivability if a situation does go badly or when fighting many enemies at once. Medic can cover this by providing strong healing items, and even enable further Skill Attacks through the high availability of Bio Gel.

### Energizer

The largest limitation is the amount of EN available. Energizer helps reduce EN costs and easily obtain more batteries, avoiding the risks with Leaky Batteries and allowing more versatile use of Skill Attacks.

### Carrier

With a large increase to available items, Carrier indirectly provides more EN through frequent Battery and Bio Gel drops, and more inventory space to store supplies, while giving more alternative options to deal with rooms that your current Skill Attacks won't cover.