Tips for a Newbie?

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I’ve only been playing for a month or so and been for the most part lurking and reading in this forum.

I’ve tried to take a stab at PvP and I’m clearly outclassed there and it is a bit depressing to be chewed up and spit out regularly icon_e_biggrin.gif
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I do like the PvE stuff as it is still new to me but there’s plenty of missions that tell me it is “Impossible” and I’d say it is accurate in its statement.

Some stuff I’ve picked up so far seems to be:
Try to play in the PvP just to get the first token and hope for something good.
Use HP for roster slots.
Use Boosts
You can skip opponents…not that that really helps me when they all looks bigger than me.
Play…play some more…

I seem to be kind of stuck where I can beat some of the missions but go through the heals quickly so I wind up waiting for more heals. I’m assuming it is due to a poor team, etc. which is fine but how did you go about building your team? It seems to be a Catch-22 for me.

Are you supposed to try to build multiple teams to play with? Or focus on one? How do you focus on one unless you have the covers for it?

Any guidance would be appreciated on how to best go about building a roster that I can at least make an appearance with to play. Any tips or pointers would be most welcome.

2

As one who has posted many times bemoaning health packs your best bet is to rank spidey and obw and use thier healing on a level in the prolog you can beat fairly regularly.

A good basic team is im40, thor and spidey or mbw or storm for stunning.

Just my take. I am not far ahead of you. But I am now up to 40 health packs because I just take the time to heal using spidey.

3

Well, I would say go with Thor/Wolverine/someone (OBW perhaps?) but now the former two will be nerfed soon, so I would not recommend spending any Iso until all the forecasted nerfs have come into effect.

4

I guess the part that I’m stuck on is its a Catch-22. I sort of need to get the covers to get some of the recommended teams but not sure the best way to go about getting those covers. The only method I’m employing right now is trying to get a token and hoping for something good.

Are there better ways of increasing my chances of getting Thor, IM40 or any other covers? If there isn’t, is the general rule of thumb to just level and play whatever you’re dealt until the next cover appears?

5

Your last sentence pretty much sums it up. If you don’t have enough covers for Thor/Wolvie, use Iso to level up some 1s (IM35, for example) or even two stars if you have them. You will eventually be able to get I believe 3 Thor and 3 Wolvie covers from the prologue. And always try to compete in tournaments a little; at least go for the 100 progression reward, and if you can go higher, great. Then at the end, play a little more to try to get Recruit tokens from placement, and if you can get top 175 in order to get a 2 cover, that’s even better. Your tokens will eventually start pulling some better covers too. Basically, it is a slow process of building up the covers. I was very impatient to get to high-level 2*s too, and it has taken a while for me to even get Lvl 40 Thor and OBW, and I still don’t have any Feral Claws covers icon_e_sad.gif

In conclusion, just keep working at it- you’ll get there eventually.

6

Right now all you really need is Wolverine + whoever. If you don’t have Wolverine, Thor will do. If you have neither, I guess you can start building Ares to prepare for the inevitable nerf on the two aforementioned characters.

7

Long time lurker, first time poster.

@Mischief,

Dirigible is pretty much on target with his response. I’ll expand upon his post a bit further with my own personal experiences, as I do not own any meaningful quantities of any 3* covers as yet (I have enough to get myself into trouble, but not be dangerous in significant manner).

First and foremost, unless you plan on pouring cash into the game, silver (standard) tokens are your absolute best friends in this game. At first, they will be your primary source of progression in the game and then later become a complement to tournament 2* cover prizes.

As you mentioned, you will hit a wall fairly quickly in progression on the Prologue. When that happens, work the SHIELD training for basic 1* covers and grab the low hanging fruit from tourneys. Work the Lightning Rounds (every 2h Tuesdays and Wednesdays) for the 25 point ISO and 50 point silver token prizes. Bow out as soon as you hit 50 points.

Eventually, you will gain enough 1* covers from silver pulls and ISO from easy sources to push farther on the Prologue. You should be able push all the way to the last chapter of the Prologue with a 50 IM35 + 50 MStorm + 40 MWidow (with maybe the only exception of the Symbiote Showdown fight at the end of Oscorp to open the final Dark Avengers chapter).

Next, look to the major tournaments. As Dirigible noted, the goal here is not to attempt to win, but to score well enough to win 2* covers. With a maxed set of 1* covers, 200th place for the 2* cover of the week should be easy to obtain. The real goal here is to land in the 46th - 75th prize bracket to win 1 of each color of the 2* cover of the week. As each major tourney is played twice consecutively, you can easily win up to 6 of the same character’s covers each week. Consistently placing in this bracket is necessary to build up your 2* arsenal. This prize bracket can usually be reached at about 300-350 points. A couple of notes on staying under the radar… fight a few times early to place on a leaderboard and then wait until the last hour of the tournament. You will get beat up a lot, and this is fine. By pushing in the last hour, everyone who is fighting for the coveted 3* covers will have long passed you by (even the late entrants) and you will be too meaningless to pick on. Next, watch your ranking as you climb up. Do NOT fight any more than you absolutely must to reach the 46 - 75 bracket. Ignore progression prizes, and avoid the lure of the 50 HP prize. The three 2* covers are more important than the hero points. Once you reach about a placing in the 50s, STOP. Do not get greedy and risk the wrath of the people fighting over the 3* covers because you racked up too many tournament points and now look like an easy source of points to them. Again, DO NOT fight ANYONE at this point. SKIP all retaliations opportunities. Do not get into a back-and-forth retaliation war with anyone as you will almost always lose, in both time and points needed for placement. ONLY fight if you fall out of the 46 - 75 bracket, to get back inside of it. If you stay under the radar, most opponents outside of the ones using this same strategy, will leave you alone in the last 30 minutes of the tournament and allow you to walk away with the 2* covers. (Also note that ranking 150th or better in your bracket will also award 50 HP as well, allowing you to eventually by roster slots for all of the 2* covers)

Using this strategy from when I started this game, I have obtained almost a complete set of 2* covers, using only 2* teams. Two weeks ago, I finished off my collection of Original Widow covers, last week, Moonstone, and tomorrow I will collect my last CStorm covers.

I hope this information helps you break out of the 1* stage, as the game is much more interesting at the 2* and beyond levels.

8

Who do you have that has at least 8 covers?

Also, are you mischiefmaker’s child? That’s adorable!

9

Thanks everyone. Especially Lyrian…I appreciate the explanation of a plan that I can try. Most posts say go do something which sounds more like a goal than a plan to me icon_e_smile.gif
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@Kelbris - Not near my computer but I have Wolverine to 85 now and OBW to 85, then IM35, MBW and MStorm to max those are the ones where I have covers and I still feel like I get beat up on a bit, but it sounds like its normal and if I deploy Lyrian’s strategy it might not be too bad.

10

Not sure what kind of newbie has 2 85’s wolv and obw lol.

Seem much more progressed than I!

11

Hey Mischief!

If you have a Wolvie 85 and OBW 85, they should comprise of your core team for tournaments. If your third is a 1* like an MStorm, that team is strong enough to make consider whether the points are worth the hassle. I personally hate fighting OBW, cos if she gets an epsionage off, it means that the fight is always that much longer, and I’ll take some damage. With a team like that, I wouldn’t call your team newbie, probably getting towards mid tier now!

With a wolvie at 85, you should be able to work through the prologue, and rack up the rest of the 2* covers available there, such as Thor and Daken. Throw out feral claws as quickly as possible, and always prioritize wolvie tiles to match, since he’ll heal up the damage, allowing you to keep going longer.

Also, you should only use boosts where its neccessary. I know in our PMs, boosts are a great way to maximize damage as quickly as possible, but if you’re just starting off in a tourney, don’t waste boosts, since the ISO all adds up. Boosts are great towards the end of a tournament, so you can reach the last ranking goal.

Also, don’t waste the iso on the 1* if you don’t need to, its better spent on the 2*. In particular is MBW, none of her skills scale up with level. I35, sure, he’s a tank, and his damage scales with his level, although he will be superceded by 2*s later on

Finally, as a newbie tip, did you know you can scoll left and right in the puzzle screen, up top near the battle screen, and check how much AP your enemy has, as well as yourself? Can help in deciding which move to make next, and if you want to risk using a squishy character to do a move when you can see if the enemy has enough AP for a Thunderstrike …

12

Although Lyrian’s advice is spot on for a person who is transitioning from 1*->2*, you already have an 85 widow/wolvie, which means that you already made this transition! This puts you solidly into the beginning of the group of people who have a 2* team and want to make the transition into 3*. I’ve been at this stage of the game for a couple of weeks, so hopefully what worked for me will work well for you as well:

  1. Do NOT pump iso into 1* characters. 1* characters are good for transitioning, but once you already have 2 maxed out 2* characters, 1* characters are now obsolete for the most part. Save your iso for 2* and 3*.

  2. Round out your 2* team. Teams are made up with 3 characters, so you probably want another one to round off your 2* team. Even though a lot of events force you to run a specific character, making having a 3rd guy not as important, since the transition into 3* is going to take a while, you should probably have a 3rd character to help you make the transition regardless. The prime candidates for this slot is Thor and Ares, since their color combinations both pair very well with wolvie and widow. I would say that Ares is safer since Thor will get nerfed, so if you picked up some covers from the hunt, go with that.

  3. Farm 3* covers by placing very highly in PvP tournaments and PvE events, which is very possible with a maxed out 2* team. This is what I’ve been doing for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve amassed my current roster with almost entirely due to my widow/wolvie/thor team. (https://forums.505go.com/discussion/1739 to https://forums.505go.com/discussion/2360 in the span of around 3 weeks). There are a couple of key strategies I’ve been doing to accomplish this for PvP events:

a. Join PvP events somewhere in the middle of the events lifespan. Joining right when the event starts is bad because that’s when all of the extremely active players join, and joining late is bad as well because you might be in brackets with the super pro people who know that they can grind to max at the very last day. What’s worked for me is trying to avoid these two crowds by joining somewhere in the middle of the event (2 to 1 days left in the event) during peak playing hours (~6PST). This in theory would lump you with the more casual players who play the game.

b. Tank early and start late. My general approach to PvP is to grind to 300, then put up a tank team and let people pound on you in order to lower your MMR, and then make a single big push towards the end of the event and shield when you can’t get much higher. Since I have a good stock of HP, I make the push around 9 hours before the event end so that I can 8 hour shield at the end of that run. If you don’t have that HP, I would make the push about 4 hours before the event end to shoot for the 3 hour shield.

c. Boost during the later stages of the tournament. If you do this style of grinding, you should boost whenever you face a semi-difficult team in order to prevent hp loss. With wolvie, I tend to boost +3 all and +3 red anytime I face an opponent that has an 85 character, and I go +3 purple/blue for widow if I’m put against 2 85s. While you stunt your iso growth this way, consider it more as payment to earn those 3* covers.

With this strategy, you should hit top 15 in your tournaments, which should be enough for 2 3* covers. Keep on doing this, and you’ll have a 3* roster in no time.

PvE events are more simple, since you just need to figure out when the events refresh, and grind right before they do. I would say that PvE events are better for making the 1*->2* transition, since most of the prizes are 2* covers, but you can eek out around 3 3* covers and random ones from tokens if you play enough.

13

Don’t waste your ISO leveling 1* characters. Only level them as much as you need to get through your matches. As soon as you get a decent 2*, that should be your focus. Covers are readily available for them, so it should be easy to get the useful ones max level. It’s harder to use this same strategy for 3* characters. I still haven’t gotten max covers for any of those, which is getting old.