Few tips for MPQ newcomers

h4n1s

Intro:

I used to play MPQ regularly for more than a year and finished in the middle of transition with rather low real $ investment. Back then, there was very few in a game and no , just for the record. I quit because MPQ cost me a lot of time and energy and heavily impacted by private life (not enough time for family and friends) - but the only one to blame was me.

These days, just because of boredom, I reinstalled MPQ on my new tablet and because I failed to load backed up data, I started playing from scratch. I'd like to share with the newcomers some hints and tips, which proved working for me enabling me to reach the stage of 3* transition way much quicker than the first time I played.

I am aware that the meta has now heavily shifted to , respectively land, but that is very long term goal for any newcomer, so veterans, feel free to skip this thread as you might not find it useful.

Essentials:

If you are completely new to this game you certainly need to learn the mechanics. Tutorial missions are trying to explain how it works, but they will certainly not tell you everything. Each character has different set of abilities and each has different use. You can proactively check what sort of enemies and their powers (not speaking of goons) you will stand up against here viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4521

Fact - characters are not perfectly balanced, so even in 1 category you find some that clearly stands out /e.g. Juggernaut/ and some which are rather useless /e.g Yelena/ - check this topic to see how the community ranked them back in Feb 2016 viewtopic.php?f=14&t=40430

You need to understand the difference between ISO , HP and for me new Command points .

ISO - used to level up a character or for buying 1 comic packs. It can be obtained as daily reward, reward for mission completion, by selling unused covers, as vault pulls and by ranking and progressing in events, or by using your credit card. Each character has a certain level cap, based on amount of covers you have available and trained for that particular character. Be very cautious how you use it, because despite that in the beginnings it may seem that ISO is everywhere (since it is very common resource), it's never sufficient. And the higher level with a particular character you want to reach, the costs of doing so grows exponentially. Tip 1: don't level up all characters as soon as you can, focus only on few that you find most useful (my tip for 1 - go only for Juggernaut, Iron Man and Spidey or Black Widow. Leave the rest 1 behind and sell their covers to gain ISO); Tip 2: do NOT spend ISO on 1 comic packs, it's not worth it!

HP - hero points are used for obtaining new packs and vault pulls as well as for buying the slots for new characters. The easiest way to obtain them is by buying them via your credit card, but that may ruin your family budget quite quickly, so instead you may earn them as rewards for prologue and PVE missions or as progression or ranking rewards in PVE and PVP events. The lucky ones may get them also as pull from vault. HP is less common resource. Tip: Do not waste it on anything else but buying slots for new characters. Spending it on comic packs is like spending it on roulette, it's not worth the low odds of getting the cover you need.

Command points - as with others it can be obtained as daily, mission, ranking and progression reward, but as well they can be obtained through alliance membership, provided that some of its members will buy some higher volume of HP or ISO using the real life money. Mostly you can spend them in two ways - either to buy legendary packs (with cover guaranteed) or for buying extra covers (e.g. 20 = 1 chosen cover, provided the player already has at least one of the color). Tip: save the command points for the latter (buying specific covers), because while it may sound attractive to have in such early stage already a hero on your side, you may learn that most of them are rather not worth it low level without sufficient amount of covers. They will just block your roster slot for long time unused.

Boosts are not cheats (like IDDQD, IDKFA, blacksheepwall... ). Boosts are not for cowards. Boosts are essential part of the game, so use them to your advantage. Wisely. Since boosts are limited, I suggest don't use boosts if you want to finish the match quickly. Use the boosts on difficult fights, where the reward is worth it. If you need few points to reach progression award, but that node difficulty scaled above your rosters potential, it is the right time to use a boost. If you need to finish off a mission, which rewards you with cover or HP that would further help you with progression, but you already failed once or twice, go for boosts. Use +1 AP boosts for those colors, which are essential for your characters powers (e.g. blue for stun, if you have black widow in squad - this will help you to stun the enemy team earlier and gain advantage.. etc, you got the point). Use +% match damage boosts for your strongest colors (have you noticed that each character has different color match damage?).

Alliances play a key role in the game. There are thousands of open alliances with free slot. Join one as soon as possible, you can only benefit from it. Firstly you'll be getting extra ISO daily (100 for every player in alliance that played yesterday, if played at least one mission today). Secondly you get extra rewards for alliance placement in PVE and PVP events. The stronger the alliance is, the better it tends to place, therefore the better outcome you'll get. Tip: Some may not like me for what I write now, but in the beginnings do not hesitate to leave one alliance and join another if you realize that the actual one is not granting you the benefit required (if you consistently rank on top spot within your alliance rank, and you see others don't contribute, it is time to seek for a better place to be, life is too short...). If you are daily player, you can also seek for alliance membership on this forum viewforum.php?f=16 . Thirdly alliance members can send you Team ups (if you request them on Team up selection page prior to mission start). This is priceless especially in the beginnings, because strong team up can totally change what seems as a lost fight into easy win.

PVE events - unlike prologue missions, PVE events grants progression points (and you don't lose them as in PVP). Furthermore the nodes grant certain amount of points depending on how many times have you already won the node with refresh timers. The more closer you are to the event end, the higher the progression points awarded by successful completion of the mission are (but so does the difficulty). So if you don't have time to grind MPQ nodes 24 hours a day, plan your participation in these closer to the end time of the mission. This will grant you more progression awards with less effort and thus more effective in game progression. You may not be able to complete all nodes/missions in the PVE events from day one, as the difficulty scales, but participate - don't make the rookie mistake, you don't have to finish all prologue missions before you jump to these events. And the same applies for PVP.

PVP events - in all PVP events (be it season simulator, lighting round or 'standard' PVP), be aware that the amount of points that you gather is not permanent until the event ends. The higher the number of points you collect is, the more likely you are going to get attacked and lose these precious points. There are many strategies for PVP, but I would mention two of them. If you run for progression awards, do so rather in early game stages (just keep in mind there will have to be more fights ahead of you, since the other players on that node may be waiting to progress). I would recommend try to reach at least the 400 pts progression reward (you'll end up with some ISO, HP and heroic token). If you're aiming for placement awards, you might need to plan your time well and grind as much as you can in the last hour of the event, but be ready to take hits (big hits if your roster is weak and you exceed 300 points). Alternatively you can use shields (but they cost HP , so do some maths if they are worth it). Placement awards are good, because placing in top 100 grants you cover, which may be good reason for investing some HP into shields. Lastly I would mention term defense in PvP. Be aware, that the last team you have fought with will be representing you when you get attacked by another player. So try to avoid finishing the last PvP battle with very offensive team with low health or team that requires specific strategy to be effective such as combination of modern magneto with modern storm (because AI doesn't play well with them), instead think of composing annoying teams containing some monsters with high hitpoints and annoying abilities, that the AI plays well (think of Juggernaut as 1 or Ares as ). People tend to skip these opponents in PVP.

SHIELD Simulator (Season) - before the season ends, it is time to check your Season progression. The points in Season are sum of season PVPs and SHIELD Simulator. You want to reach 4000 points progression award (heroic 10-pack), so if you miss few hundred points few hours before the season end, it is worthwhile to grind some high points enemies (up to 75 pts per match) until you reach the desired 4000 level.

There are other tips and tricks in other guides, personally I'd recommend visiting Polarity's guide on going from 1* to 3* viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3939 , it contains some practical hints on top of what you learned here. Enjoy MPQ!

fanghoul

A couple things I'd add to that:

Boosts: You don't have to worry about running out of these for the most part. You can run out, but you also randomly get them at the end of fights, and except for the all color boosts, you can buy more for iso-8 if you need to. You probably shouldn't buy a lot that way, but they don't need to be hoarded. Crit. boosts in particular can be burned indiscriminately, because they are very common as a reward.

Health Packs: If you have less than 10, they regenerate back to 10 at the rate of 1 per every 36 minutes. Use them on a regular basis, don't hoard them. You can play a lot more that way, which means being able to earn more rewards.

Team-ups: You get a few for free at the beginning, but then how do you get more? There's some chance of getting these in any battle where there's an opponent that can move gems, but asking your alliance for team-ups is a more reliable source. It does not cost them anything to give you team-ups, so like health packs, this is another thing that can be good to burn through, rather than hoarding them.

To request more team-ups, you need to be in the window where you'd be selecting them or boosts for a fight, and there's a button on the bottom of the window to request more from your alliance.

Huh, I guess all my advice is not to hoard things