'The Ascent' Walkthrough: How to Defeat the Siege Mech Boss
The siege mech is a recurring boss that you will face throughout "The Ascent." Your first encounter with one of these industrial behemoths is likely to be in the "Trading Places" mission, where it will arrive with a great deal of fanfare and proceed to wipe the floor with you if you are not careful.
Indeed, they can be quite tough if you are playing without friends. As such, we have prepared a quick guide to help you best these military-grade androids.
The Siege Mech Walkthrough: Preparations
The siege mechs are armed to the teeth with missiles and miniguns, so you will need to be wearing the appropriate apparel.
Depending on what gear you have already found, your choices here could be quite limited but, if possible, we would recommend equipping the PF-30 Jackhammer hat, the F-30 Hellfire work jacket, and the E-40 Redrunner compression pants. Do not worry if you have not gotten these armor pieces yet, as the siege mech is manageable without them and you can basically wear anything with good physical or fire-resistance stats.
When it comes to your own firepower, you are best off using explosive ordinance that can tear through the robot's armor. We found that a well upgraded RPG23 launcher made incredibly short work of the boss, to the point that the fight ended up being rather underwhelming.
If you do not currently have a launcher in your arsenal, then you can buy one from the gun merchant in Cluster 13, so just hitch a taxi ride over there. Otherwise, an energy weapon like the E77 Superior will do just fine against the siege mech.
Finally, if you are really struggling to get past the boss, it might be worth investing in some better augmentations as well. A vitasigns booster will increase your max HP, so that you can sustain more damage, and the biometric timestamp will give you the ability to perform a quick heal in the midst of combat. Both of these upgrades can be purchased from a grafter.
The Siege Mech Walkthrough: Fight Strategies
The siege mech's overwhelming size belies its impressive movement speed so, in the words of its codex entry, "don't count on them being slow."
Trying to keep a distance from the robot will simply result in it charging after you to close the gap or firing a barrage of missiles at your location. Instead, we found that the most effective strategy here was to circle-strafe around the boss while attacking its rear, much like you would in Dark Souls.
The siege mech is also quite easy to stagger, so make sure you are always aiming high (by holding down the left trigger on your Xbox controller) as doing so will interrupt its attacks. As far as we can tell, the boss' humanoid minions will keep spawning until it is defeated, so we would recommend concentrating your fire on the mech unless absolutely necessary.
The Ascent is out now for PC and Xbox consoles. It is also featured as part of the Xbox Game Pass Service.
