Whaling Manual

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
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Northernpolarity’s guide (Polarity's Guide on Going From 1* to 3* (Updated: 1/22/15) - MPQ Tips and Guides - 505 Go! Official Forums) had some excellent basic strategies for how to spend money efficiently in this game, but it’s getting very long in the tooth now and doesn’t address many of the current roster-building realities (5*s, vaults, CP, etc).

It seems to me that newer players who find these forums might benefit from a whaling manual that explain how best to spend money in this game. Only one problem: I haven’t actually spent very much money on this game and don’t know the best strategies. My solution is to crowdsource it. I will provide a few spending categories as well as the few tips that I have, and hopefully other vets on the forums can fill in the gaps. (and Mods, I thought I would start this here in general discussion for more eyeballs, and then it can be moved to Tips and Guides when it’s more complete). So here goes.

Vhailorx’s Manual of Whaling - v1.1

General Principals (mostly cribbed from nothernpolarity)

(1) Don’t buy iso, EVER. Iso is a terrible terrible deal. $100 won’t even get you 25% of the cost to raise a 4* to 270. Don’t give demi any indication that this pricing is ok. It’s outrageous and demi needs to get that message clearly.

(2) Roster slots are the best way to spend money. They are as close to a durable good as this game gets. There is no randomness involved, and they never go away, even if you sell a character. This is the gold standard for HP purchases. So if you are going to buy HP, you should probably be using that HP for roster slots.

(3) Shields are also decent, but only once you reach a certain performance threshold. If you aren’t scoring 800+ in PVP, then you probably shouldn’t be spending HP on shields. And even if you ARE scoring 800+, shielding can get pretty expensive if you start going through multiple 3hour-8hour cycles or dip into the 24hour pool. I try to avoid shielding more than once or maybe twice in each PVP even and that is generally HP positive. I won’t spend more than that on shields unless I really want the 1k cover or 1.3k prog CP.

(4) Try to avoid any other HP purchases. Boosts and healthpacks can be useful in the short term, but they generally aren’t worth the premium price tag. use only for emergencies.

(5) Direct cover buys are generally a bad idea. Giving up a guaranteed 4* cover (for a 3* buy) or 6 classic LT pulls (for a 4* buy) is not often a good trade for the player. It might occasionally be justifiable to purchase a 13th cover for an especially high-value character early in your transition to a new tier. Doing so can give you an immediate performance boost that offset the very high resource cost.

Price range specific tips

Not even really a mammal, more of a guppy-- $1-5
If you want to spend a little bit of money on this game, then the right strategy is pretty simple. Buy HP and use that HP to buy roster slots. Roster slots are the closest this game comes to a durable good. There are rarely sales in this price range, and since the bonus HP is proportional, it’s a fairly small amount to miss in absolute terms. So if you really need to make a purhcase in this price range, I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about sales. This is a pretty good starter option for new players with 20 or fewer roster slots, so the spots are individually not too expensive in that range. (watch out though, those bundled roster slots really push players to spend cash or sell covers.) There is really nothing else to say here.

Modest Cetacean, maybe a porpoise-- $10-40
In this price range, I think it’s still a good idea to buy HP to use on roster slots (and maybe shields if you PVP), but VIP is also a potential purchase in this price range. I don’t think the rewards for VIP are a particularly good deal, but it’s also the easiest way to instantaneously purchase an LT if you don’t have any CP lying around. I also had several 4* champs when the system went live, so newer rosters may find the resource mix more valuable. YMMV. But once you start buying $20 packs, it makes more sense to hold out for sales (this can take several months, since there are usually only a handful of sales throughout the year, but it can mean an extra roster slot or so, depending on your roster size, which is a significant enough incentive to wait when possible). You should also make sure you are in alliance so that everyone else can get some CP and you can get some goodwill and maybe even some reciprocal CP.

Beyond this, I really don’t have any idea what the best strategies are, so I am hoping that others can contribute best practices. I will add them into the post when I get a chance.

Something Deadpool might drop on an enemy without losing self-respect, like a narwhal – $50-90

Really, Truly, Moby Dick – $100 to infinity and beyond
Buy clubs. Using out-of-game coordination, players can multiply the cp value of their purchases 20-fold.

Revision 1.1 (6 september 2016): added info on buy clubs sk,eobservations on direct cover buys.

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Placeholder, just in case the original post needs more room.

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I’d add that if you a somewhat regular spender, and as such have a positive HP flow and find yourself with some HP left even after accounting for future roster slots, a good place to spend it is the PVE 80-item vault’s daily deal (100 HP). A daily “Heroic” deal has 7% chance of giving you a 4* and 24% of giving you a 3*. Alternatively, a daily PVE vault deal gives you around 4.9% chance of a 4* and 26% of a 3*, but more importantly, you can see which characters are for grabs and consider your purchase, while the heroic can waste your rare chance of a 4* in yet another Invisible Woman. Moreover, each day you get a token, your next draw’s odds will be slightly improved. This really does add up to a decent percentage in a 7-day event, especially if you are playing and earning tokens. Not to mention the 0.12% chance of a 5* icon_e_wink.gif

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As much as I love getting CP from randoms - join a buy club if you’re going to spend money on the game.

The first rule of buy club is - you don’t talk about buy club? who knows.

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Agree on buy clubs. If you are spending $100, you should be trying to do it in a buy club where that $100 gets you 140 CP in addition to the 20k HP.

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Yeah, 'cuz screw the guys in your alliance, right? They don’t deserve to your largesse! The leeches!

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As long as everyone goes to join a buy club whenever they make a purchase, I don’t really see an issue with this. If just one or two guys do this and the others stay in the Alliance when making purchases it could be an issue.

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Personally speaking if someone in my alliance left to join a buy club (temporarily) I’d be fine with it. That’s a lot of money to me to spend on a mobile game so I think the Spender has the right to get the most for his money.

People in my alliance choose to spend their money while in it, which is good for us but if they decided to do it in a buyers club I could understand why. Also if they’re dropping $100 on this game regularly then I thank them anyway for making sure I can continue to play a game which I spend money on very rarely.

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Helping your alliance with extra cp is good, however it is a game. So I just split the difference. $50 and below, I stay in my alliance. $100 or above,(meaning multiple stark/lode), I go to buy clubs. Everyone wins.

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It has nothing to do with that. Most people buying starks on a monthly basis do it for the CP, and D3 has created a mechanic where buy clubs can exist and should be utilized to maximize the amount of CP you get for your money. You’d have to spend $2,000 to get the same amount of CP for you and your alliance outside of buy clubs, and that’s just ridiculous.

I also don’t appreciate your conjecture. I’m not currently spending on CP so most of my buys of late go to alliance-mates or random forumites rather than a buy club - but what currently works for me is not best for everyone. I’m very appreciative of the big spenders in my alliance, but am just as happy to have someone leave for a buy club to give them a better shot at improving their roster - we all benefit from that as well.

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In my Alliance we make sure to thank the buyers every time we get something cool from our extra LTs. icon_e_smile.gif

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When I get 7cp from an alliance mate, I’m super appreciative, but even I’m thinking “why didn’t they merc into a buy club and make so much more cp from it?”

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if someone wants to drop $100 bucks into this game why should i get anything? i actively recommend people do buy clubs and think its kind of a shame when they dont.

not that i dont appreciate it, but its like seeing good food go to waste. of course if i were to do it (which i wont) it would only be during a sale as well.

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I’ve gotten well more than 140CP from my alliance since my last purchase. If/when I buy my next Stark, it only feels right to give it back to the other 19 that have been contributing to me. I personally like to reward the loyalty within our group.

Moral of the story, and why I don’t love this thread: I don’t tell people how to spend their money, don’t tell me how to spend mine.

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hp is the best thing to buy - you’re absolutely right. made the mistake of buying iso once and regretted it ever since. with the hp, slots are the most bang and then, like was said earlier, if your roster is high enough, a small number of shields can be an effective hp spend for event progression and placement (in some slices - some slices require way too many shields for placement). the next most productive things are daily deals. if you have all the 2s and 3s done, and have a big pile of hp, there is no reason to not do every 100hp daily deal out there - they all result in champ level and xp. on rare occasions it might make sense to do a 40-pk - like the CW vault that had 41 items. you got one token free and the 40-pk was cheap (less than 4K). that is all I’ve ever used hp on. I take that back, once in a pinch I was out of tacos and health packs and was in the middle of a pvp climb, I spent on packs. was an emergency and I don’t recommend doing it if you can at all avoid it. that night I had pve grind and pvp climb back-to-back, and I had just spent my tacos on packs for a boss event. shouldn’t ever happen again now that OML up and running.

also, regarding the alliance comments. its most advantageous for the alliance if each purchase is maximized to its fullest. maximizing each purchase means clubs. there is nothing selfish about it and no feelings hurt if everyone in the alliance understands the math. of course if you don’t understand the math, you might take offense to it. and if you’re ftp and take offense, get over it.

ps. I don’t think there’s anything in this thread about telling people how to spend their money. I read it as an attempt to help those considering spending who would like advice as to where best to spend and how to get the most out of their money.

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For my part: TXMoose is correct. I am not trying to tell anyone what to do with their money. I thought that people who have decided to spend might appreciate some guidance on how to maximize the value of their purchases.

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Most alliances that have a PVP and a PVE alliance, and allies, will poll the groups to see if there are anyone interested in purchasing and forming a buy group. It stays within the alliance and the spenders in the alliance. If it’s under 20 people, then decide how to fill the rest.

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If it’s an alliance where everyone is regularly spending money and rewarding each other, then go ahead and give back.

For me personally, I rarely ever spend, and even if others in my alliance spend, I will not. So while I highly appreciate CP from my alliance mates, I never expect it, especially 7hp at a time. Unless I can find one of those mystical alliances where someone in there spends huge amounts of money regularly…

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If this is just a “spending” guide, and not specifically a whaling guide, I would suggest that the single token daily deals for PvE event vaults (especially the week-long ones) are a pretty decent way to spend HP. Even more so if you’re playing enough to get a token yourself and in a t50 PvE alliance that will get you another token as well. You’ll be opening 3 per day, and in a 80-item vault, over 7 days that’s 1/4 of the vault opened.

If you’re actually “whaling” a character I think the best time is just after their release, during their release PvP. You buy 40-packs until you have them fairly well-covered. I’ve never actually done this though, so there are much better authorities on the matter.

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KDN is here … What are we buying? Lol