ARES: THE IRON VANGUARD Starter Suit Choice Guide

When starting in ARES: THE IRON VANGUARD, select your initial class suit based on your tolerance for damage and your spending strategy. Pick Warlord if you want high defense and low resource usage during early questing, or pick Hunter if you want fast ranged clearing speed and plan to actively manage dodging. Regardless of which class you start with, concentrate your limited early upgrade materials entirely into that single suit to reach early combat power thresholds faster.

Starter Class Comparison

The initial choice serves as your primary combat anchor. While the game features real-time suit switching, early-game upgrade resources are scarce, making single-suit focus essential.

Choosing the Warlord

The Warlord offers a defensive melee playstyle. Its innate durability reduces reliance on health recovery items while pushing through main story quests.

• Crowd Control: Heavy melee attacks stagger groups of enemies, controlling mob swarms during solo missions.
• Safety Margin: Higher defensive baseline stats absorb hits when learning boss attack patterns or suit-switching timing.
• Resource Efficiency: Requires fewer healing consumables, preserving early currencies for long-term progression.

Choosing the Hunter

The Hunter emphasizes speed and ranged damage to clear open-world mobs quickly.

• Farming Speed: Ranged skills reduce transit time between enemies, accelerating daily quest progression.
• Skill Requirement: Lower base defenses require active positioning and movement control to avoid taking damage from swarms.
• Gear Scaling: Higher spending or gear investment offsets the class's natural squishiness, maximizing overall damage output.

Early Upgrade Strategy and Next Actions

1. Commit to One Anchor Suit: Choose Warlord or Hunter as your main investment target. Avoid dividing early suit upgrade materials across multiple roles.
2. Push Main Story Quests: Progress through story milestones to unlock secondary suit slots and unlock additional game modes like Mech deployment and hoverboard travel.
3. Transition to Suit Switching: Once secondary slots unlock, use your primary invested suit for tough content while building secondary suits to cover elemental weaknesses in higher-level dungeons.