Wing Diver

The Wing Diver is the light soldier class in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. Like their predecessor the Pale Wing, they are equipped with a jetpack, enabling rapid movement.

Overview
The Wing Divers are a special hand-picked EDF force formed to deal with future threats after the 2017 war. They use advanced technology derived from that used by the Ravagers in the first invasion, based around a plasma generator, something or other called the "Aurora Sphere," and a psionic link that enables weapons to be operated via the user's mind. For whatever reason, only women's minds are compatible with this technology, and so the entire Wing Diver force is female.

The plasma generator allows the use of a jetpack, as well as powerful energy weapons which would normally be impossible to reload in the field. The generator's output is represented in-game with an energy meter.

The Wing Diver is at her best at close to medium range and in tunnel levels, and is not a particularly good long-range combatant: while she can hold her own, she is certainly no match for a Ranger or Fencer. She excels at "kiting" enemies; keeping enough distance to prevent them from attacking, while wearing them down with her own attacks.

Her backpack and shoulder pads give her a slightly larger hitbox than the Ranger and Air Raider, which equates to a tendency to take somewhat more damage. She also has no ground evasion moves of any kind, and is actually the most ungainly character when on terra firma, with nothing but a basic jump.

Like the Ranger, a Wing Diver can equip two weapons. Wing Divers have the lowest starting health of any class at just 150, and the slowest armor growth at 0.23 HP per armor item picked up. In EDF 4.1, she has a slightly lower armor growth rate at 0.212 HP per armor item pickup. They also have the lowest armor limits in online play. Like the Fencer, the Wing Diver is not able to occupy the driver's position of any vehicle except Walking Fortress Balam in EDF 4.1.

Plasma Generator
The Plasma Generator is the central concept of the Wing Diver, providing power for her jetpack and most of her weapons. The generator is represented by a meter above the equipped weapon which automatically replenishes itself any time that it is not being drained. Activating her jetpack's thrusters will drain the energy bar, with taking off costing more than continued flight.

As the meter depletes, it will eventually turn yellow and a slow warning tone will sound. If the energy bar is completely depleted, a faster beeping alarm will start to sound, the bar will turn red, and the jetpack will change shape and open a vent to cool down the generator. It is then impossible to do anything that requires energy until the bar has completely refilled; the Wing Diver cannot fly, and weapon reloads will be paused.

The Plasma Generator can be augmented with the Air Raider's Plasma Charger, Plasma Streamer and Plasma Battery Gun devices. While these appear to grant an absolutely pathetic boost, the stated figure is the amount per frame rather than per second, and so the boost is applied 60 times per second. The default recharge rate of a Wing Diver's energy meter is 0.1% per frame (6% per second), meaning just the 0.05 recovery of the basic Plasma Charger increases her recharge rate by 50%.

It should be noted that NPC Wing Divers each have a simulated energy level of their own (and make appropriate warning sounds, which can be worrying if the player character is also a Wing Diver) and so also benefit from Plasma-type assist devices.

Flight
Obviously the Wing Diver's main ability is her jetpack, allowing her to move faster and avoid enemy attacks. This is a delicate balancing operation since she also needs her energy to attack in return.

It is best to move with a series of short bursts from the jetpack rather than constant thrust, since this will save energy. Where possible, it is a good idea to land somewhere out-of-reach to recharge before engaging in combat. Since the class is fragile and not very agile on the ground, the Wing Diver's best strategies revolve around hit-and-run attacks where she can withdraw to recharge her Plasma Generator after dealing some damage. Her worst foes are those with a lot of HP who can attack her at long range and behind cover, such as artillery Hectors and Deroys.

The exception to this is tunnel levels, where she is often fine keeping both feet planted on the ground since her powerful Mid-Range Electroshock weapons can shut down the entire space in front of her and her reloading mechanics mean she can keep up a constant rate of fire with stunlock-producing weapons.

Her ability to fly allows access to vantage points that would otherwise require the use of a helicopter, including places like the tops of Transport Ships. She can actually fly inside the bay doors of a Transport or Quadruped Fortress, though their cores are inactive when the doors are closed.

In underground levels especially, there is an odd phenomenon which appears to be similar to wallrunning in Doom, where if a Wing Diver is flying in contact with the ceiling, she will move faster than she would normally.

Particle Cannons and Grenades / Orbs
These groups of weapons are initially very hard to use while not on the ground; Particle Cannons seem impossible to aim, while the grenade line seems to to rotate entirely of its own accord.

With both weapons this is because the direction the Wing Diver is currently moving in is "inherited" by them. Particle Cannons will only fire at the crosshair if the Wing Diver is hovering; if she is moving down, the aim point will be offset down, left, and the gun will fire to the left. It is best to more or less ignore the crosshair with these weapons when flying, and use the Wing Diver's motion as a guide to where shots are going to end up. The system is essentially "incredibly disproportionate inheritance of momentum." Plasma Launchers do the same thing, though not to nearly the same degree.

Grenades base their throw direction on the vertical direction the Wing Diver is currently travelling in; basically, the direction they are thrown in is the normal ground grenade arc, but with the "ground" line as the Wing Diver's current direction of motion. This odd throwing system is also used for the Special orb weapons.

It is worth noting for these weapons that the two trailing translucent "pigtails" on the Wing Diver's helmet react to her motion in the air and can actually serve as a guideline for what these weapons are going to do when fired.

Weapon reloading
The Wing Diver's other unique ability is to reload weapons that are not currently selected. Almost all of her weapons have a set energy cost and reload time, and will deplete the energy bar by the set amount during that period. If no reload period is stated, the drain is instantaneous. Some weapons drain more than 100% of the energy bar; for these weapons, at least one emergency reload will be triggered, and the reload will continue afterwards.

This means that a Wing Diver can benefit from equipping two of the same weapon since one will reload while the other is being used, allowing for constant fire. This is especially useful when the Wing Diver will be facing mostly the same type of enemy and wishes to constantly use one particular weapon.

This ability can be both a blessing and a curse, however, since there is no way to not reload a weapon once its ammunition is fully depleted; poor planning or failing to watch a weapon's ammunition counter (or using certain weapons at all) can leave the Wing Diver stranded among enemies while she waits for her generator to cool down.

One oddity of this system is what happens when the Wing Diver gets into the gunner's seat of a vehicle: while her energy bar regenerates as normal, getting into a vehicle is supposed to pause reloads in progress. However, for a Wing Diver it does not account for her unique reloading mechanics and so only pauses the reloading of the selected weapon; the one that is not selected will reload normally. This is very important if the Wing Diver is trying to sit out Gungnir's reload in a vehicle; it will not reload at all if it is the selected weapon when she gets in.

The exception to the reloading mechanics is any weapon with "MX" in the name. These weapons have an internal plasma reactor (which begs the question of why this is not done for plasma weapons used by other classes) and reload over time, whether selected or not, without consuming any energy. In general the time is extremely long; for example, an average Rapier takes 0.5 seconds to charge, while the MX Rapier takes 20.

EDF 4.1
The Wing Diver only has fairly minor changes in 4.1, with the largest being her ability to recover from knockdowns by engaging her jetpack. It should be noted that this offers no invincible frames and so care must be taken when she recovers, since she may otherwise immediately be hit again.

The Wing Diver also gains a new weapon type, the rebounding Spark Lance, and new voice samples for chat commands, though she still does not have as full a set as the other classes.

All of the Wing Diver's Rapier-type weapons now deal about 1.5 times as much damage as they did in EDF 2025. There is also a minor nerf to her electroshock weapons; previously these would sometimes score multi-stage hits like the flamethrowers of other classes, which could result in them dealing massively more damage than their stats would suggest; this has been reduced to a single-stage hit. Since most of these weapons are powerful anyway, this is not that big a deal.

NPC Wing Divers are more common and can carry more powerful weapons than before, right up to MONSTER sniper rifles.

The most minor of all changes is that it no longer says "Wing Energy" next to the energy meter.

Weapon Classes
For the most part, the Wing Diver's arsenal consists of the same weapons used by the Pale Wing since Global Defence Force, including the 13 added in the Japan-only PSP version. These are reworked, however, with many having different stats and effects. The five Reflectron Lasers and the Idunn-E Custom 2 are the only weapons in 2025 not used by the Pale Wing (though the Power Stringer is rather different from its previous Pulsar Shot incarnation), with this increased by the three Spark Lances in 4.1.

There are 176 Wing Diver weapons in 2025 and 179 in 4.1.

Short-Range
Short-range weapons are mostly designed to resemble ancient arms rather like the Fencer's CC Striker weapons, but are not melee-based; instead, they are energy cannons which fire powerful beams a very limited distance. They can be thought of as analogous to powerful magnum revolvers and machine pistols.

The Lance is the Wing Diver's signature weapon and comes in a variety of subtypes. Standard Lances are magazine-fed weapons that fire a single accurate, high-powered, short-ranged bolt with a fairly low rate of fire, well-suited to hit-and-run attacks against enemies with moderate health, but very bad against foes with strong close-range attacks like Deroys and near-useless against aerial foes. The Lances with WAY in the title, along with the Sacred Lance and Luonnotar, fire a spread of shots; they are shorter-ranged, but more suited to attacking groups of weak enemies since their damage is divided among multiple projectiles.

The Plasma Ram and Demonic Lance form a subset by themselves, both being very accurate and incredibly powerful Lances with one-shot capacities. The Demonic Lance in particular boasts amazing damage, able to destroy a Blue Hector in two shots on Inferno.

The Spark Lance is exclusive to EDF 4.1, with the first one only available as DLC. These are very powerful WAY-type Lances that fire shots that reflect off surfaces and can damage multiple enemies, increasing their short-range damage far above what is stated on their item description.

The Rapier has even shorter range than the Lance, and fires a very rapid spread of beams across an arc. "Thrust" Rapiers have a narrower angle than normal ones, for more focused damage. Both fire 6-15 shots sixty times per second and thus throw out an enormous amount of damage in a short space of time, and are very good for attacking tough, immobile targets like Tunnel Exits. Most have very short charge times, and all have large capacities of 400-800 shots, allowing them to be used for some time without needing to be reloaded. Because of their wide range of fire, standard Rapiers are best used in the air, since otherwise they will shoot almost half their beams into the ground.

Plasma Whips are a variant of the Rapier with even lower accuracy (L, the absolute worst in the game, translating to a 180-degree arc of fire) and massive energy consumption, with the 120% requiring an emergency reload. The consumption translates to a gigantic capacity of 2,500 for the Plasma Whip and 2,000 for the Plasma Whip S, however. Their per-beam damage is lower than Rapiers, though they have 20 beams at a time and more than double the range to compensate somewhat. While their damage per second is slightly lower than similar-level Rapiers, the per-capacity damage of the level 55 Plasma Whip S is actually comparable to the same figure for the level 72 Master Rapier.

Mid-Range Lasers
The weapons in this class vary from perfect-accuracy continuous beam laserguns to weapons where serious questions must be asked as to what they are even for, specifically the Cyclone Laser.

The LAZR series are continuous-beam 60-shot-per-second laser rifles with fairly short range but power output similar to the Ranger's assault rifles. While they have fairly high energy costs, none has a capacity lower than one thousand, which means they do not need to be reloaded often and are a good backup weapon if the Wing Diver's other weapon is something prone to causing emergency reloads.

The LARG series are variants on the LAZR, but fire multiple beams at once; the LARG-V in a V-shape that is hard to aim because it does not fire directly forwards, while the LARG-W3 is a three-way gun adding a central one. Since the left and right beams fire at a wide angle, both are hard to use. The Laser Chainsaw, sadly not using its full Japanese name Laser Chainsaw Massacre, was the Pale Wing's clear bonus for beating every mission on Normal in previous games. It is more or less a vertical, long-range Rapier, with more than double the firepower of an equivalent-level LAZR.

The Cyclone Laser also uses the chainsaw model, and was previously the Pale Wing's rather dubious reward for clearing all missions on Hardest. It fires horizontal beams in the eight compass directions centred on the base of the chainsaw blade; these are quite low powered, and it is very difficult to find any actual use for the device, particularly since its reload cost is 180%. It is more or less a joke weapon; even the description says the only Wing Diver who ever used it killed herself and her entire unit in the process.

The Reflectron Laser is new for ''2025. ''It is similar in stats to the LAZR, but fires lasers that bounce off surfaces and enemies until they reach their maximum range, potentially damaging multiple enemies at once, with the qualifier of also potentially damaging the Wing Diver. Unlike the Idunn, the Reflectron Laser does not randomize its shots, and so its beam will always bounce at the same angles with constant fire rather than the beam disintegrating and flowing around unpredictably. The first version, the basic Reflectron Laser, is a DLC weapon, but the others unlock normally even if the player does not have the DLC. Unlike the LAZR series version, the Reflectron - V Laser is actually useful due to the reflection effect and a narrower firing angle, while the Reflectron Multi-Laser fires a vertical spread like the Laser Chainsaw.

Mid-Range Electroshock
These are effectively the submachine guns and shotguns of the Wing Diver's arsenal. Being based on electricity they can arc off surfaces (note we said "based on" electricity) and thus are able to affect a much wider area than similar weapons used by other characters. All of these weapons will reflect back at the Wing Diver at point-blank range; if caught by a Crimson Ant it is still possible to escape, however, by aiming at the ground under the Ant rather than the Ant itself.

The Idunn series are short-ranged, powerful guns that fire a stream of electricity at an increasingly high rate with higher-ranked models. Their continuous beam will break apart as it strikes obstructions and ricochet around, dealing tremendous damage in any kind of confined space and stunlocking multiple enemies.

The Thunder Bow is a slow-firing shotgun-like weapon, firing a broad cone of 10-30 electrical beams that will "crawl" along surfaces they encounter and pass through enemies until they reach their maximum range, dealing damage all the way. Thunder Bows have decently large magazines and good rate of fire on them, but will eat up energy on a reload. Due to their high damage and cone-like shots they are proficient at damaging groups and focusing damage on single targets, but caution must be maintained as a sudden reload could drain the wing diver's energy.

The Eclat series are very similar to the Thunder Bows but somewhat of an inversion in its performance, firing the same 10-30 beams in a much wider radius with longer range, doing comparatively lower damage and only have a one-shot magazine. Energy consumption is very small and has good reload rate resulting in a very economical secondary weapon. Due to having such a large shot radius, the Eclat can do consistent damage to extremely wide groups of both ground-based, and airborne enemies while still using small amounts of energy. Despite its S-rank accuracy, all the shots only hit if fired from very long range or point-blank.

The Grom is a magazine-fed weapon that fires single arcing blasts, and starts out as more or less a joke weapon with the second-worst accuracy rating in the entire game; the accuracy rating of J translates to not so much a cone as a hemisphere of fire. Amusingly this is an improvement over its original Global Defence Force incarnation where the accuracy rating was Z and its fire arc was a full 360 degrees. The Grom-SS, however, is a surprisingly serviceable weapon on Hard difficulty thanks to high damage per shot and a long charge time that offsets the high energy cost. Unfortunately the series only has two weapons, with the highest being level 38, so it quickly becomes irrelevant at higher difficulties.

Particle Cannons
These are mostly rapid-fire energy weapons, equivalent to assault rifles or light machine guns. With the exception of the Ixion MX, they are directly coupled to the Wing Diver's Plasma Generator and do not have a magazine, instead drawing a fixed percentage for every shot. They are thus difficult to use while flying, especially those with higher energy consumption like the middle two Dynastrikes. They are also difficult to use while flying for another reason, which is detailed in the "Key Mechanics" section.

The Ixion is the Wing Diver's most basic Particle Cannon and the first model is part of her default equipment. In general they are fast-firing weapons with decent per-shot damage which fire a single blue energy bolt per shot. The exception to "fast-firing" is the level 3 Ixion MX, which fires at a fifth of the speed of the others in 2025 and a quarter of the speed in 4.1, with the upshot being that its energy consumption is zero.

The Ixion WAY series, including the Ixion Wide, Ixion Mark X and Luxard, are variants of the basic Ixion that fire between 2 and 9 shots at once. Their energy consumption is higher than the normal Ixions and their per-shot damage lower. The 2WAY and Wide fire their two shots in a V shape, making them a little tricky to use since they do not fire straight forwards, while all others fire all their shots in a horizontal line. While the level 45 6WAY-S looks like a bizarre downgrade looking at just its stats, it has the advantage that its line of shots is much narrower than the normal 6WAY, allowing it to deal more focused damage.

The Dynastrike series are similar to the WAY series but fire their shots in a rough circle rather than a line, and therefore are more like long-ranged shotguns. The first two models are hampered by low rates of fire while the middle two have ridiculous energy consumption for automatic weapons, with the final Dynastrike α taking a hit to projectile count to get a respectable rate of fire with power consumption on the level of an Ixion Wide.

The Power Stinger is an intriguing weapon; the first two handle like basic Ixions, while the last fires a ragged spread of projectiles in a flattened ellipse, a sort of halfway point between an Ixion WAY and a Dynastrike, and has the rate of fire of an early Dynastrike. Their wonderful gimmick, however, is that their projectiles explode; the splash is small (too small to destroy buildings), but the effect is like a tiny rapid-fire Plasma Launcher, and they are very good at stunlocking enemies.

Sniper Weapons
These are the Wing Diver's longest-ranged weapons, and with the exception of the totally useless Thunder Sniper MX (40 seconds for one shot?) are coupled to the Plasma Generator. They tend to focused on accurate repeated low-power hits rather than instantaneous firepower, though the MONSTER series buck this trend by doing enormous damage at the cost of equally enormous reload times.

The Wing Diver's basic sniper rifle is the Thunder Sniper, a long-ranged but fairly weak weapon firing multiple arcs of electricity at near-hitscan speed that behave like shots from a Thunder Bow. As the series goes on, progressive models fire a greater number of arcs at once, until things get a little strange at the end.

The Thunder Sniper 15 is an early oddity, jumping from three arcs to 15 with a serious downgrade in per-arc firepower but a slight upgrade in per-shot power, but the same accuracy. Given the next model has exactly the same per-shot power, only three arcs and lower energy consumption, it does not seem like EDF's engineers really knew what they were going for with the 15.

The Thunder Sniper R is the next exception to the rules; it is very low-powered and only fires one arc, but has a very high rate of fire and minuscule energy consumption

Later comes the Thunder Sniper D which is actually more efficient than the model after it in terms of damage versus energy use, and then along comes the really weird Thunder Sniper 40. As might be surmised, this has 40 arcs instead of the 6 from the previous model, but drops its accuracy from S+ to B-, making it more like a long-ranged shotgun than a sniper rifle, and leading to the oddity of a sniper rifle that is most useful underground where its 40 arcs will bounce around tunnels out to its maximum range, easily dealing with most normal enemies along the way. This is then followed by the aforementioned useless Thunder Sniper MX, which has exactly the same stats but replaces a consumption rate of 35 energy per shot with an utterly impractical charge-up time of 40 seconds on a weapon with a magazine size of 1.

For reasons best known to itself, 4.1 increases the scope zoom of the 40 and MX models from x4 to x8, despite there being no real way to use them at very long range.

Raijin is a one-off weapon that uses a recolored Thunder Sniper model but is certainly not a Thunder Sniper, firing a single shot which is enormously powerful for a level 30 weapon, with a slow rate of fire and 70% energy consumption. Notably, it is the most powerful Wing Diver sniper rifle which does not either have dubious accuracy or cause an instant emergency reload.

The LRSL series are the complete opposite, and are more like a sniper version of the LAZR series. They are medium-range weapons which fire a 60-shot-per-second laser beam with very low energy consumption and damage that soon stacks up over time, and most have excellent accuracy, with only the LRSL-35 and LRSL-S not meriting an S of some kind for it.

Getting back to stupid energy drain and big numbers, the Monster series, as well as having a gloriously silly name, are the Wing Diver's most powerful sniper rifles. While they pretend to have a manageable energy cost, what they hide is a sixty shots per second fire rate, making it practically impossible to fire one without depleting the entire energy bar: on the PC version, it is possible to get around this using a macro to release fire as quickly as the engine allows. The series ends with the Wing Diver's ultimate weapon, Gungnir, a ridiculously powerful weapon with an even more ridiculous energy consumption of 720%, requiring seven full emergency reloads (around 58 seconds) before the Wing Diver is able to fly again. All are single-target weapons with no penetration or splash.

Ranged Attacks
These are mostly Plasma Launchers of various sorts which are coupled to the Plasma Generator like the Particle Cannons and Sniper Weapons, equivalent to grenade and rocket launchers. There are also a series of plasma hand grenades; most of these do not use energy at all, and instead reload over time.

The E-Series Plasma Launchers (including the RSR and RZR) are the most basic type, and include one of the Wing Diver's default weapons, the E1. They are general-use explosive weapons about halfway between a grenade launcher and a rocket launcher, with fairly low per-shot damage, fair to good splash damage, and reasonable energy consumption.

Within the series, the EX Plasma Launchers stand out for their flat trajectory, enormous splash damage and preposterous muzzle velocity; the two weapons will hit their target almost the instant they are fired, and while the EX3 claims to have a wide area of effect, the shots travel so fast they have no time to spread out and it is rare for all three to not hit the same target. This is balanced by the highest energy consumption of any weapon in the E-Series, but they are very useful as substitutes for high-damage sniper rifles, though still not a patch on those the Ranger and Fencer have access to in terms of firepower. The final RZR Plasma Launcher is more like an EX than the rest of the E series, though it lacks the high muzzle velocity; more favorably, it also lacks the high energy consumption.

The Blast Launcher is a level 15 one-off and actually more powerful per shot than E-Series launchers up to level 50, with a similar flat trajectory, a 20-metre blast radius and high damage. It is, however, inaccurate, and more importantly has a 120% energy cost, requiring an emergency reload every time it is fired. It can be used as a stand-in for a MONSTER sniper rifle, since it has the advantage of being an area effect weapon rather than only hitting a single target.

The Dual Plasma Launcher series, which includes the 3x Plasma Launcher, both 2x Plasma Launchers and the XSX Plasma Launcher, are spread variants. Technically the EX3 is also part of this group, but it doesn't exactly work out that way in practice. They are very similar to the E-Series in terms of how the projectiles behave, though their firepower and blast radius per-projectile is lower. All but the last have a very low energy cost; the XSX decides it wants to be a real gun and so its damage, blast radius and energy consumption all ramp up enormously.

The D-Series Plasma Launchers, including Plasmafall, fire heavy, powerful shots with a very large splash radius in a parabolic arc that makes them most suited to firing downwards from the air. Most fire slow-moving projectiles, with only the final Plasmafall Σ's being the exception; this version also gains a huge increase in damage, splash and energy cost, and fires six projectiles at once.

The M-Series Plasma Launchers, including the Plasma Shot, fire multiple small, low-power projectiles with low splash; since the first two have a blast radius less than 3 metres, they cannot even destroy buildings. The Plasma Shot works like a normal shotgun and is beset by absolutely pitiful damage with all 10 shots only dealing 70, while the other two fire their projectiles in a straight horizontal line on a flat trajectory. The final M30 is an excellent weapon on Hardest difficulty; the long row makes it an effective anti-aircraft weapon despite its low rate of fire, and it is also a source of comical levels of collateral damage when fired at basically anything. The Plasma Grenades are an oddity, and very difficult to use because almost all of them travel incredibly slowly. Not as in "slow for a gun," more "walking speed."

They can be very damaging if an enemy can be persuaded to hang around long enough to be hit by them, and have the benefit that only the Plasma Grenade Σ actually uses energy (though it goes to the other extreme of using all of it), but their timed reload means they can only be used sporadically. The only two that seem to bother obeying any of the bylaws of gravity are the Rapid Grenade and Plasma Grenade C, while the powerful, high-splash Blast Grenade's gimmick is that it moves even slower than the others, as does its reload.

The Wide Grenade is a Plasma Grenade variant with similar very slow movement speed and a small blast radius, but each grenade splits apart into 20 or 40 plasma balls as it is thrown. This does at least make it easier to persuade an enemy to actually be hit by them, and since they use no energy they are actually quite powerful against static targets like non-aggro'd enemy groups and Tunnel Exits.

Homing Weapons
The Wing Diver's homing weapons are for the most part focused on consistent, low-damage shots at a large number of targets. Aside from the very powerful Psiblade, they tend to focus on rate of fire, with per-shot damage far lower than the homing weapons of other classes. As they are once again coupled to the Plasma Generator and are rapid-fire weapons, some care must be taken when using them while flying; they are at their strongest with the support of an Air Raider with a Plasma assist device.

Like all guided weapons, they use a red bounding box that is of a specific size depending on the weapon, and must be locked on before firing by placing a target in the bounding box until it is properly acquired. The crosshair will change shape to show this has happened and the beeping lock-on tone will end with a cheerful ping. It is not particularly clear what method the game engine uses to determine what enemies to lock on to, but the player has little control over what things it chooses. Locking on does not require line of sight to the target; anything within the bounding box and within range will be targeted. If the weapons are used to lock on to an Air Raider's Guide Kit or Guide Beacon, multi-target weapons can all be locked on to a single target, allowing them to deal enormous damage.

The Mirage series are weak but fast-firing homing weapons firing 1-15 energy "spears" per shot that curve to track their targets. The spears have a good lock-on range, near-instanteous lock speed and strong tracking performance. They are more limited by projectile duration than range, with some variants having projectiles that only last two seconds. The Mirage Zero, Mirage Rumble and the weapons with 5-Way in the name have a 5 metre blast radius, while all other variants deal impact damage only. The Rapid Mirage is an oddity in having the worst homing performance of any Wing Diver weapon but only 1.1% energy consumption and a fast rate of fire. This weapon will not hit even when locked on unless it is aimed fairly close to the target, working more like an assault rifle with a small degree of auto-aim.

The Geist series fire 1-3 large glowing red projectiles that move extremely slowly, making the weapon a sort of anti-aircraft Air Tortoise. Homing performance is good, energy cost is low, and the projectiles will stick around for up to 43 seconds, and they deal substantial damage with massive splash when they actually get to their targets.

Ghost Chaser is a one-off weapon and essentially a short-ranged super Geist; the projectiles are slightly weaker than the top-level Geist and have a blast radius of just 5 metres, but since there are 30 of them it is much better at dealing with large groups. Unfortunately it lacks Geist's incredibly long projectile duration, and so while the weapon will lock-on at 600m, the projectiles will all disappear after travelling only 200m. This often results in players concluding the weapon does not do anything.

It should be also be noted that Ghost Chaser's projectiles are launched at a random angle before they start seeking, and since "down" is one of the options, it should only be fired in the air.

As mentioned, the Psiblade is the exception to the rules of Wing Diver homing weapons, firing a single large red energy bolt with excellent homing, high damage and a large blast radius. Psiblades are slow-firing, the slowest Wing Diver weapons to lock on (though this is only because all the others take a maximum of a tenth of a second) and tear 40% off the energy bar with each shot, meaning it is unwise to fire more than one shot at a time in the air. It is also the only Wing Diver homing weapon that actually looks like a gun.

Fenrir is a continuation of the Rapid Mirage, with a similar rate of fire, only slightly increased energy consumption, a 5-metre blast radius and significantly improved damage. The first version handles almost exactly like the Rapid Mirage (in that its accuracy is awful) while the Fenrir 3-Way has vastly improved accuracy and gains two additional lock-ons as well.

Special Weapons
A variety of weird, spooky orbs with various damage-over-time effects; all orbs fire constantly for about 30 seconds. They are difficult to use and some are too gimmicky for their own good, but others can be incredibly powerful if employed correctly, shutting down tunnels even more effectively than ZE-Guns or dealing ridiculous damage to large enemies.

All of these weapons have charge times of one minute, except the Thunder Orb which takes 80 seconds. Most have modest energy consumption with their charge time so long the drain is barely even noticeable, though this shoots up to 240% for the Thunder Orb and 200% for Final Days. Due to the charge time, though, even these two only result in a roughly 50% decrease to the speed at which the Wing Diver gains energy.

As with grenades, the throw angle is based on the Wing Diver's current motion if she is in the air, as outlined in the "Key Mechanics" section. The game claims the throw distance can be controlled and to a very small extent it is true that holding the fire button will result in a longer throw, but the orb will still activate after travelling about 10 metres. It is worth noting that the goal is not to hit enemies with the orbs; if an enemy actually touches one, it is destroyed, and if an orb hits an enemy (including a Tunnel Exit) before becoming active it will do nothing.

Pandora orbs tend to fire projectiles in all directions, though Pandora Anti-Air Custom fires upwards and Pandora α is mostly focused downwards. The Anti-Air Custom is buffed in 4.1 with 3 more damage per shot.

The DLC Gleipnir orb is similar to the Pandora anti-air, firing bolts of energy upwards randomised across a hemisphere. The weapon is unique in that these bolts will actually lock on to enemies within 100 metres; it is rather like a deployable short-range Mirage. It will respond to an Air Raider's guide devices, but does not prioritize them like a lock-on weapon normally would, instead just treating them as a regular target. In 4.1 the per-shot damage is halved but the number of projectiles fired is doubled.

Heaven's Gate weapons fire straight shafts of light downwards and deal immense damage over time, and are by far the most focused of the orb weapons. Later versions throw a cluster of 10 orbs instead of just one, and are very powerful against Tunnel Exits and boss enemies.

The Thunder Cluster weapons, including the final Thunder Orb, are effectively an Idunn that fires like a Rapier. The first two fire downwards, while the third throws two orbs that fire in all directions. They have powerful stun effects, but unfortunately these also work on allies.

The Psicluster weapons fire spreads of laser beams in a manner even more similar to a Rapier; the first fires down, while the second fires forwards.

Finally, in more than one sense, Final Days throws ten orbs that fire powerful laser beams directly forwards. The definition of "forwards" is based on the Wing Diver's motion at the time of throwing; if she is on the ground it will be the direction she is facing, while in the air Final Days can be made to fire diagonally up or down. While its stats look puny, they hide that it fires 20 times per second, meaning the weapon deals 360,000 damage during its effect time.

Trivia

 * The Wing Diver was supposed to have an equivalent of the Genocide Gun, an odd hybrid of orb weapon and Plasma Launcher called "Armageddon Cluster" which was the Pale Wing's Inferno clear bonus weapon in previous games. This weapon was scrapped like the Ranger Genocide Gun but is still in the game files and can be accessed with a modded console in 2025 or with mods in the PC version of 4.1, by changing the value for the Wing Diver's equipped weapon to "P_LAUNCHER_ARMAGEDDON." It is a level 100 weapon. A video of it being used can be seen here.
 * "Idunn" is a deliberate mistranslation of the Japanese name, Izuna. The latter refers to fairly obscure Japanese lore related to Mount Iizuna, while Iðunn is a Norse goddess associated with beauty, somewhat more in-keeping with the theme of the Wing Diver's other weapon names. It does mean that the weapon's description, saying it was named after its Japanese designer, does not really make sense anymore.
 * Luonnotar ("female spirit of nature") is an alternative title of Ilmatar, a virgin air-spirit in Finnish mythology.
 * EDF 2025 managed to mistranslate the name of one of the Rapiers, the "Plasma Bloom," as the much more hilarious "Plasma Broom." The obvious error does not seem to have occurred to anyone since the name was changed to "Plasma Sweeper" in 4.1.
 * The Mid-Range Electroshock weapons have a theme of saying where they were designed: the Eclat is French, the Idunn and Thunder Bow are Japanese, and the Grom is Russian.
 * Almost all of the Wing Diver's top-level weapon descriptions note the weapon is either illegal or has killed everyone who has ever tried to use it.
 * 2025 implied there was such a thing as a male Wing Diver in the description of the Cyclone Laser, noting its first use ended with "the death of its user and the decimation of his unit." This is corrected to "her unit" in 4.1.