Today is my 1-year anniversary of playing MPQ, having just received my purple Dino yesterday. During that time, I have played 100% free-to-play and have achieved:
-50 roster slots
-X-Force (270), Fury (202, 13 covers), 4Thor (200, 10 covers), Invisible Woman (70, 13 covers)
-13 level 166 3’s, 16 more that are cover-maxed (7 above level 100)
I thought I’d share the journey of how it was possible, and help out newer players along the way.
The Early Game
Max Your Current Tier- The first strategy question that came up for me in the Prologue, as it does for many, was do I max out my 1* heroes, or do I just focus on 2*’s? I soon realized that I was getting more bang for my buck by leveling the 1*’s, even though I knew they would eventually become obsolete. (I still carry IM, MStorm, and Juggs) The maxed 1*’s made it easier to compete for 2* covers (back when they weren’t handed out like candy). Don’t skip the 1*, 2*, or 3* tier.
This Is A Competition- I soon learned I wasn’t competing against the game, I was competing against other players. My primary goal became, how can I play better than other people with a similar roster? This is a principle I still use. It led to many of my maxims in this game, such as…
Use What You Have- Because I didn’t fully finish the Prologue before dabbling in events, my first two maxed 2*’s were Captain America and Daken. I know, awesome, right? But I learned to play with them, and they carried me very far. Their weird synergy allowed me to play forever without using health packs, because Daken tanked purple/black/green and Cap, well, gave moral support. Maximizing and completely relying on Daken’s healing allowed me to push longer in PVP’s and clear more nodes in PVE’s than other people with similar rosters.
The Fastest Way To Progress Is PVP- I also noticed early that PVP’s handed out 9 3* covers a week, while PVE was around 3. I had to figure out how to win in PVP to progress the fastest. Yes, focusing a 2* roster on PVE is the safe and steady way, but I didn’t have patience for that. I think it’s ridonkulous to hold back your roster to try to manipulate scaling in PVE. Max everyone, win in PVP, get more covers.
Take Every Advantage- When I was stuck at maxed 2*’s, I knew there were TONS of other players in the same boat. How could I rank higher than them? I looked for every little edge. I pushed late at night west coast time because I knew east coast players would be asleep and I’d get attacked less. I also joined brackets late at night, because it was more likely foreign players were in those brackets, and hopefully not be able to be efficient at event end times. Other people waste time complaining when a gameplay change is made. I spend my time trying to figure out how to best take advantage of the new rules. It’s all about beating other players.
Defense Matters- I also performed well because I didn’t take a lot of damage in the first place. I initially came to this game because I loved earlier Puzzle Quest games. In those, you didn’t beat the boss unless you made sure he never used his abilities. That means being good at manipulating the board to make sure he never took his colors. I still do this constantly, to make sure the AI never uses it’s big abilities.
How I Transitioned To 3’s*
Milk The Current Best Strategies- I came up too late for Thorverine, but was still around before the true healing change. So I got really, really good at utilizing OBW + 2* Thor. Steal AP, heal, make sure the comp doesn’t use any abilities. Eventually you have enough for Thor to kill them. Rinse and repeat. This is how I first broken 800 in PVP and eventually started winning 3* covers. Yes it eventually became unusable, but fine, move on to the next best thing available to you.
Maximize Tokens- Lots of people complain and hate tokens. That’s rubbish. Plenty of my covers came from tokens. 12 of my 13 IW covers are from tokens. My X-Force was 3/3/3 at the time of the buff because of tokens. Get every token you can. You essentially trade in 7 Heroic tokens for 1 3* cover. Collect 100 standards and get 1 or 2 3*’s. If you can’t win a 3* cover, at least get the tokens.
Level Your 3’s*- My first two 3*’s that I could max higher than a 2* were Hulk and Punisher. Not top tier, but ok heroes at the time. Taking them to level 100 when 2*’s were at 85 was a HUGE advantage. I could only do slightly better, right? But slightly better than ALL THE OTHER 2* PLAYERS meant I could do tons better in the rankings. I’ll say again, I’m against all hero gimping.
Buck Conventional Wisdom- I knew conventional wisdom was to spend HP only on slots. And I did that a good amount of the time. But I realized everyone else was doing that too, and that meant I’d only progress as fast as tokens would allow me. They were a good base, but I needed maxed 3*’s to advance. Once Punisher and Hulk were better than my 2*’s, I decided to do every single thing possible to get more covers for them. I didn’t have enough HP to buy covers, but I realized the best use of HP at this point wasn’t to buy more roster slots, but to save some to use for shields. I waited for PVP’s that rewarded Hulk/Punisher, saved up some HP by not buying roster slots (throwing away a lone Hood yellow cover in the process), and won more covers for Hulk and Pun ASAP. That let me level them more, which let me win more covers. I had my first two maxed 3*’s at about exactly the 4 month mark of being in the game.
Max Rolls Max- My transition goal was to get two maxed 3*’s. And it worked. Punisher and poorly spec’ed Hulk allowed me to win other covers. Seriously, all that matters is the first two. It doesn’t matter if they’re not great. They’re still better than your 2*’s.
Keep Milking The Current Best Strategies- I never had a maxed CMags before his nerf, but even with 4 covers in red and blue, I was still able to milk him with Patch. When Sentry came along, milked him till his nerf. (The only cover I ever bought was Sentry yellow to take him from 153 to 166) X-Force is the new best strategy? Fine, I wasted tons of HP to get him as 1300 progression rewards. Now working on my 4* Thor to pair with X-Force.
So Now…
Now I get bored every so often. I play much more casually, and there’s been like four PVP’s in a row where I don’t need any rewards, so I play Marvel Contest of Champions instead. But I also still look for unconventional strategies. My go to in PVE is still Daken/Psy/Falcon, as it’s sustainable because Daken tanks 3 colors, and it’s super fast. I use Rags/MoStorm/Loki on super hard nodes for their endless turn. I still have fun, even though tons of people only want to complain about game changes. I’ve seen lots of changes. You can let them stifle you, or you can adapt and take advantage.
Feel free to ask me anything and I’ll try to monitor this thread. But know that it’s possible to play this game completely F2P, and while it’s definitely slower now, the 3* transition is still definitely possible.
