Errors in Leveling and Later Steps

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ Tips and Guides
1

Hey guys, moderate time lurker here, first time posting.

As I’ve gotten more comfortable with the game, I think I’m about a month in now if the handy daily reward thread is accurate, I’ve started to look back at my 1* characters.

Like many before me, I didn’t understand the whole power cap system, and thus have a 4/4/5 IM35 and a 4/4/5 Modern Storm. As the Recruit tokens are coming in, I’m starting to hesitate on selling them with the thought of rebuilding these characters.

There’s a couple of problems with this, none of which are overly complicated. First, my IM35 is level 30, my Storm 28. There’s a sizeable chunk of ISO already in them that I’d only partially recover, not to mention the detriment from not selling the cover to put them back together. Second, I rarely find myself using either of these characters, and I’m not convinced that their optimization would change this fact.

So here I am asking for some opinions on what’s the best step to take, I think I have a few options, but the most obvious would be:

  1. Ignore them, and keep selling covers.
  2. Sell them, and rebuild them.

Opening it more generally, I’d like to ask about other people’s experiences with errors in cover allocation, and what their decisions were, as I’m sure I’m not alone in doing something like this.

2

Since they’re 1s I wouldn’t bother… yes, they’re suboptimal, but you should still be able to get through Prologue with them, at least to the point where you start transitioning to 2s.

Just be happy you learned this before you messed up any 2*s (I hope), unlike many people on the forums.

3

I’m through the Prologue (well, mostly, 14/15 Missions and 51/60 Rewards in Dark Avengers) and yes, I popped on to this forum before any other characters suffered the same fate.

In plenty of cases that was probably due to cover availability, but it certainly caused me to be more careful.

I’m fairly far into 2* heroes, this was mainly from an optimization point of view. I was curious whether people were fervent with their cover allocation or if many are simply left behind until much, much later.

4

You’ll get plenty of the covers. So, save that for a rainy day, when all your 3 star characters are maxed out, and you are just not sure how to spend the 500k of iso you’ve banked.

5

I’d agree with everyone else – if you’re through the Prologue, you’ll soon be outgrowing your 1* characters, especially Iron Man. Modern Storm you might use a little while longer until you get classic Storm and original Black Widow to a decent level, but 4/4/5 is still very usable for her, even if it is suboptimal. I would just ignore them and sell off the extra covers you get. You can always rebuild them later if it really bothers you.

My experience was similar to yours; I had a 4/5 Venom waiting for a 5th black when I realized I really wanted a 5/4. Luckily mine was only level 13 so I just started a new one (also this was before cover slots got more expensive, so I had one to spare) and built him to 5/4. I kept the old one around for a while as bait for classic Storm, and then sold him after they changed her yellow power to be much less effective.

Was it worth it? Not really. I redid him as 5/4 to play the Spider-Man/Venom Devour combo, but I only ever did the combo once, and that was just to test it out, before they changed the Devour power to no longer eat the whole team. That’s the other danger of releveling: you don’t know if they’ll change the powers in a way that makes you wish you had your old one back.

6

Modern Storm is powerful enough that she’s still good regardless of how you allocated the covers. I ended up 4/5/4 before I realized there was a power cap and she was still on my battling team even after I finished the Prologue. It’s true that Hailstorm doesn’t work well with her green skill, but, over the course of a match, it’s at least as good at doing damage than any of Iron Man Model 35’s skills. (Thor’s and Wolverine’s skills will eventually become better than Hailstorm, but until you actually have someone that’s more powerful than a L50 Modern Storm, take advantage of the Storm that you did build.)

IM 35 just kind of sucks, though. He’s a fine placeholder until you level up someone better, but there’s no real reason to go back and optimize him.

7

dont put any more iso than you need to progress in the story in 1*s. they’re not very good. some of good abilities, but the level cap makes them worthless.

if you want to play the game efficiently, without wasting ISO here’s what you should do

  1. progress the story as fast as possible to get the free 2*s that are good: storm, daken, wolverine, and thor. wolverine/daken will let you beat most of the story with little cooldown since they heal themselves pretty good.

  2. don’t invest too heavily into 2s. Get a core team of 3 that you use for tournaments and save the ISO for 3s.

  3. build a 3* team with your team of 2*s

your 1* problem is not huge. after 6 weeks or so you probably won’t even be using 2s let alone 1s. I sold all of my 1*/2s already … so basically just don’t invest more heavily into them than you need to because 3s take a LOOOOOOOOT of ISO.

8

As I note, I don’t agree with this recommendation. If an event comes where the usuable characters are limited, you can be left out in the cold with no one useful, you are left without any backup in the case of running out of healing packs, and honestly, playing with the same team constantly gets a bit stale. But I suppose it depends on how fast you want to progress. I’m a fan of getting a variety of 2*s to the level 50 level, though. Not super invested, but leveled enough to be useful, especially if they are buffed.

9

I don’t plan on flat out removing many characters unless I’m desperate for cover space (Sorry Bagman) so although getting rid of them was an option, it wasn’t one I was very happy with doing.

I’m definitely in the 2* phase right now. I have some 3* covers but not many, I haven’t been able to level many up so I’ve been relying (perhaps too much, according to some suggestions in here) on my 2* team.

I’ll post my roster just for the sake of clarification:

Wolverine () 5/3/3, 69
Thor () 3/3/3, 45
Storm () 1/3/3, 38
Black Widow () 3/2/2, 34
Hawkeye () 5/5/3, 30
Iron Man () 4/4/5, 30
Juggernaut () 5/5, 30
Storm () 4/4/5, 28
Venom () 5/5, 25
Hulk () 2/0/0, 25
Black Widow () 5/5, 20
Spider-Man () 0/0/1, 15
Daken () 4/2, 14
Hawkeye () 5/5, 10
Magneto () 2/2/1, 8
Captain America () 1/2/1, 8

Rewards include Bullseye Black/Purple/Purple so I’m not in a rush to free up space.

There was a point where I was trying to raise everyone up to an arbitrary milestone (looks like 30 or 25) but I eventually invested heavily into Wolverine due to a number of factors: I like Wolverine, he had low downtime, I received most of his covers, and he happened to be good.

I capped out Wolverine a while back, and have since been leveling Classic Storm, OBW and Thor. Any suggestions?

10

Nope, sounds good. You’re doing exactly what I’m doing.

Except for removing Bagman, of course. How could you be so cruel? Do you kick hobos too? icon_e_smile.gif

11

Sacrifices must be made for the greater good of my roster.

12

I’m enjoying all this talk of building 2/3star teams as though it doesn’t require you to funnel tons of IRL cash into random packs. Ive never truly seens a bad pay to win system until now. thank you for that MPQ.

13

I haven’t put any money in this game, but thanks for that random complaint.

14

If you start playing the PVP events a lot, the standard packs really start to roll in. Those only give you a ~20% chance of 2 star or higher, but you’ll get the ones you need soon enough. Not to mention the 2 stars available by clearing the missions. Then you can start to get progression awards in PVP events for heroic packs. Of course maxed 3 star teams are currently impossible unless you spend money - but if you keep playing, eventually you’re bound to open a few.

15

Exactly right. I’ve been getting more and more into all the events, and placing modestly (top 50 or so in most) and full clearing all the Hunt missions.

My updated roster:

Wolverine () 69 : 5/3/3
Thor () 53 : 3/3/3
Black Widow () 38 : 3/2/3
Storm () 38 : 1/33
Hawkeye () 35 : 5/5/3
Iron Man () 30 : 4/4/5
Juggernaut () 30 : 5/5
Storm () 28 : 4/4/5
Venom () 25 : 5/5
Hulk () 25 : 2/0/0
Captain America () 24 : 1/5/1
Black Widow (*) 20 : 5/5
Magneto () 20 : 2/2/1
Spiderman () 18 : 1/0/1
Bullseye () 15 : 3/3
Daken () 15 : 4/2
Punisher () 15 : 1/0/0
Hawkeye () 10 : 5/5

My Rewards docked right now include Ragnarok Green, Grey Suit Green, Ares Yellow and OBW Purple.
I have 16k ISO and 50hp.

So in the last 4 days since my last update, I earned I believe 5 (*) covers, as well as probably around a dozen () covers. These events have really done wonders. Need to start earning some hp for more spaces, I wasn’t expecting so many so soon.

I just passed a month progression and haven’t put in any money, nor do I have plans to, so I think it’s going quite well.

16

Thank you for this helpful advice. I’m starting to reach the limit of my 1stars usefulness (hp wise) and There is very little in the way of any real in-game guide to how this game seems to want to operate aside from the constant lackluster 1stars it throws at me and the HP buttons all over everything 2star or higher. Anyone who has tried to explore the limits of luck on the iso cover pack can understand my (and others) reluctance to start ponying over irl for a wish and a dream. I’m not into gambling. I’ll keep tourneying and see how it goes. thank you again.

No prob bob. Thanks for that random ePeening. May it grow long and prosper.

17

So because I’m telling you this statement is false, and then giving proof, I’m flaunting? How else would I have gone about doing that? Or did you just want me to agree with you, even when it’s not true?

18

I was mostly wrong on 2star characters. You can do fine. (albeit at a slower rate than $$$ spending). Apparently I was very correct on overall 3star leveling.
I’m not going to play word semantics with you. This isn’t a debate. Every person in here knows exactly what i am referring to. One person corrected me with useful info, you chose to “prove me wrong”.

And btw, you’re long, highly detailed posted listings of your achievements is the definition of showing off.

Try not to get so worked up guy.

19

3* levelling is fine if you place highly in the tournaments. Granted, you won’t get a 3* villain maxed out anytime soon, but the devs are handing out 3* heros like candy: my hulk is 4/3/4 and punisher is 2/4/5 solely from progression rewards.

20

True. tourneys seem to be the most consistent way to get higher tier characters. Some have been great for that (lighting rounds & Double shot) others not so much (looking at you tank spank Hulk). My main argument is with the non tourney side of things. The iso pack rates on 3*'s pretty slim. nowhere near abysmal mind you. but not candy. I’ve gotten some, but dupes are fleeting. My main contention is with the constant gaming of the system to see any form of value or non grindy progression. It all seems like it needn’t be this way.

btw is there a leveling off point on roster expansion cost? or does it keep increasing? this seems to be something noone tells you until you begin buying spots. figured ill ask while were on the subject.