A3: Still Alive - Tips and Tricks for Fighting and Winning in the ‘Dark Presence’ Battle Royale Mode
A3: Still Alive is the latest MMORPG by Netmarble that, while offering similar exploration and questing mechanics than other games in the genre, also has an exciting battle royale mode called “Dark Presence”. Check out our beginner’s guide for the battle royale in A3 if you want to learn more about the basic premise and elements.
This time around, we’ll be giving you several awesome tips and tricks that you can use to win more fights, and possibly entire matches, in the battle royale mode in A3: Still Alive.
Adjust Your Graphics to the Highest Settings
We’ve mentioned this several times in other articles, but having a good performance in PvP matches will be pivotal for your success. This is because, if you have slowdowns or stutters, you might have trouble keeping up with what’s happening on your screen. At one moment, the enemy’s in one place, and after the lag spike settles, they’re in another. Dropping frames is one of the most common ways to lose a fight. And this is without mentioning that lag can also affect your inputs, making you miss valuable opportunities to score some skills, avoid attacks, or steal some items from your enemies.
To avoid all of this, your best bet would be to play with the maximum graphical settings in order to get those coveted 60 FPS. And not only that, but playing with the highest resolutions and textures will also let you spot enemies running around and items lying on the ground from much farther, giving you an advantage over the other players.
Unfortunately, you need a powerful phone if you want to run A3 with the best settings, which can set you back a lot of money. Alternatively, if you have a decent gaming rig, you could install A3: Still Alive on PC with BlueStacks and use your superior hardware to achieve performance far beyond what your phone could ever manage.
Take a look at our installation guide for A3 to find a step-by-step guide on how to set up this game on your PC with BlueStacks. It’s very easy and takes only a few minutes—and it’s completely free, too!
Click on Enemies to Target Them
While your character automatically locks onto and targets the closest enemy in combat, you might need to prioritize other opponents, such as when you’re fighting against other players and you have many NPC enemies in the way; since your character will automatically target the latter, you might have a hard time attacking the players.
A good way to circumvent this is by clicking on the enemy. Just clicking on them once will make your character lock onto them, ignoring all other enemies that may be in the way, and allowing you to aim much better when fighting in those 1v1s. In fact, not targeting your opponent is a surefire indicator that they’ll outmatch you, or even escape from what would be an easy kill.
Do yourself a favor and make a habit out targeting your enemies before engaging.
Focus the Entirety of the 1st Sector to Farming
When it comes to the A3 battle royale mode, combat is inevitable. However, you should focus the first few minutes of every match to farming the regular enemies that are standing around the map. These are easily defeated, and drop valuable weapon enhancement stones, which are necessary for increasing your weapon level and unlocking better skills. Additionally, by destroying the special Chest enemies that can appear sometimes, you can also score rare pieces of gear that can give you an edge in any fight.
If you don’t spend enough time farming at the start, you’ll quickly be overwhelmed in Sector 2 and 3 by stronger players who have better gear, items, and stronger skills. In this sense, winning fights against enemies depends on striking a proper balance between farming and moving. Specifically, you need to farm for just enough time so that you can make it to the next sector without dying to the Death God when the safe zone shrinks.
Vision is Key
When you first enter the match, you’ll notice that you can barely see a few feet ahead of you. This is normal, and though quite disruptive, your enemies suffer from the same limitations. For this reason, it’s important to expand your vision as soon as possible, which you can do by defeating the Surveillant enemies that spawn a few times every match. These monsters are big, bloated abominations that look quite different than the rest so you definitely won’t miss them.
Once defeated, the Surveillant will drop a lantern that permanently expands your vision when you pick it up. However, be careful when fighting Surveillants as these monsters show up on the minimap when they spawn. Additionally, anyone can see in the map when players are engaging these enemies, which makes the spawn points prime locations for ambushes.
As a general rule of thumb, it’s better to hang back when the Surveillants spawn and watch from a distance to see if there are any players nearby. Once the coast is clear, you must get in, kill the enemy and pick up the lantern, and get out quickly before other players gank you.
Watch Your Minimap and Threat Indicators
Despite your vision being quite limited, you always have your minimap to help you get around. This is a really important tool since it shows the spawn locations of Surveillants, Torches, and other points of interest. Moreover, you need to check the minimap when the current sector is closing in order to know where the access point to the next sector is.
Similarly, while you can’t see very far at the beginning, you can always know when enemies are nearby thanks to the threat indicators, which are represented as a footstep icon in the direction of nearby enemies. The more lines on this icon, the closer the enemy. You must always be vigilant of these indicators in order to avoid ambushes in crucial moments, such as when you’re busy fighting against a Surveillant or a Treasure Chest.
Powering up and picking up good pieces of gear are always important since, no matter what you do, you’ll always have to fight, at the very least, a 1v1 battle in the final sector of the match to determine who’s the victor. Luckily, with the A3 battle royale tips and tricks we shared in this article, you’re ready to take on the world.
Do you have any other pointers you’d like to share? Leave us a comment in the section below and help your fellow gamers out!
