Old player returning after a long while

Alterationartist

So lots of changes seemed to have popped up. I stopped playing shortly after they made 2* Daken have a third, but apparently before they gave one to 2* Bullseye? Those are covers that are going to annoy me in acquiring, I'm sure.

So Champions are a thing now. Not bad. A way to overlevel characters to semi balance them against one star above, without being strong enough to overshadow them? That's great. And they can respec as much as they want. That's also cool. Makes for convenient strategy and experimentation that doesn't break the bank.

You can't get standard covers with Iso anymore? Not a fan of that, but I guess they wouldn't want a new player to blow all their leveling dough on just plain covers. Mainly an issue cause there's a 1* Spiderman. Would like to max that out if I could.

There's Limited heroes now. Guess it just means it'd be too much tougher to power up those heroes than would be worth it. No problem, extra space for me.

Shield Ranks are nice. A good measure of time spent playing, though I guess I gotta start from the bottom. Definitely like that they let you select what difficulty of PvP you get. Might want to champion all my two stars before I go to level 4, but I like the option to progress.

A third currency, Command Points. You can roll for 4* covers and now there's 5* covers? Oh dear, I can see why they needed to make options for players to fight people on their tier. Let's hope the game stays satisfying for everyone.

Is there anything else I should know before I get way too deep?

mohio

Bonus Heroes - You can select any number of 3*, 4*, and 5* characters (whether you have them rostered or not) to be your bonus heroes. 5% of the time when opening tokens that can give these types of characters you should get an extra one of the character you chose. 5* very rarely happen, but 3* will come frequently if you play enough to get heroics and elite tokens scattered throughout the game. 

Edit: Forgot to add...You select bonus heroes in your roster page by clicking the heart overlying their cover. I believe the game will automatically pick some for you so you may want to go in and change them to the ones you really want. Also if you don't pick any in a tier that's the same as picking them all and you'll just get one at random. Last thing, you can only get a bonus of the type you pulled. So if you luck into a 4* from a heroic token you might get a 4* bonus hero, but cannot get a 3* or 5* on that pull.

carrion_pigeons

So you have a 2* roster?

You can post your roster to https://mpq.gamependium.com/ and link it in your sig on this forum if you want advice about leveling or roster decisions.

They took away buying standard tokens because it was a fantastically below-par way to spend resources and it inspired people to quit after getting basically nothing for spending their Iso.

Your first goal, if you're trying to actually play the game at a competitive level, will be to roster all the (non-limited) characters you can in the 3* and 4* tiers, via cover rewards in events and Deadpool daily quest.  The way so much of the game's prizes are randomized covers means that you will advance much less quickly if you try to focus on covering a few characters and minimizing roster slots.  The further along you get in this goal, the more you'll be able to do required nodes, which is how you'll actually be able to compete. 

As such, Hero Points are your primary resource, and they should be spent on nothing but roster slots. 
Also, you should avoid opening randomized tokens unless you have the space to roster a new character, because there are a lot of them and you are very likely to just waste covers if you don't.

CP is an unusual resource in that you can spend them on Latest Legends, which guarantees more recent characters.  Therefore it is beneficial to stockpile up to several thousand of them at once and blow them when there is a particular character you want.

Eventually you'll get to the point where you start to feel like you should transition to a new tier.  This will happen at about the point where you have most characters in the new tier rostered but un-covered, but with a handful (~3) of them fully covered, with the Iso to champion them.  Transitioning makes the game harder for a while, but it does give you a new source of materials (via champ levels) to speed up the acquisition process.

Transitioning into 3*s will take several months or possibly a year, depending on how much time you spend on the game.  Transitioning into 4*s will take longer.  Playing MPQ at a competitive level is a long term goal.  Decide early on if that's a thing you care to bother with.

If you don't want to play competitively, the game is still fun, if a bit shallow, and a lot on the grindy side.  You may never make it to 4* play, but the 3* tier is still well-balanced and interesting, although it doesn't change often.

Alterationartist

Oh that's neat. I noticed that pop up when I made it to Shield rank 7, but I didn't really follow it. Haven't open any packs related to it thus far, so it's good to know for the future.

Dormammu

Alterationartist said:

Shield Ranks are nice. A good measure of time spent playing, though I guess I gotta start from the bottom. Definitely like that they let you select what difficulty of PvP you get. Might want to champion all my two stars before I go to level 4, but I like the option to progress.

SHIELD Clearance Level (SCL) doesn't affect who you're fighting in PvP, MMR still determines that, it only affects the placement/progression rewards. In PvE it affects difficulty, however.

Jarvind

I'm gonna preface this by saying you've missed a lot. Personally, if I were this far behind the curve I probably wouldn't bother coming back, because catching up will take a long time. That said, if you do want to get back into the groove:

- There's a LOT of characters now, as you've probably already noticed. Because you get rewards every time you level up a champion, it also pays to have as many as possible. Get dem roster slots - don't bother using HP for anything else.

- Don't worry about the inability to buy standard tokens. You'lll get buttloads of them, as well as 1* and 2* covers, from normal play.

- It's also a good idea to "cycle" or "farm" 2* characters. Because there are comparatively fewer than in other tiers, you'll max them out pretty quickly. Rather than just start selling the covers, it's much more lucrative to make another copy and sell the maxed champion.

Because max-champed characters sell for significantly more (including some HP for those slots), you only lose a small amount of ISO in the process and can continue reaping HP, CP, 3* covers, and tokens from your 2*s. Since you've been gone a long time and might be actually using 2*s as your frontliners, it might be a while before you can do this without crippling yourself, but get it up and running as soon as you can.

- It's generally a good idea to champion most or all of the characters in a tier before moving on to the next tier. This keeps you from bouncing back and forth between tiers and feeling like you're "treading water" because you're spending resources on 3*s when you have 4*s ready to level up. Additionally, 3* champions will feed you 4* covers which lets you get a head start on the tier.

- DON'T OPEN TOKENS WHEN YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH ISO TO LEVEL UP A CHARACTER. Selling covers sucks. Controlling the impulse takes getting used to, but it's worth it. When you have some ISO stockpiled, open tokens til you have a cover for somebody you can champ, then do it. You'll end up sitting on a lot of tokens for a while, but this will pay dividends. Also, ISO comes much more readily now than it used to. You can get enough to champion a 3* character in 2-4 days at Clearance Level 8 - I imagine it'll take a bit longer at lower SCLs, but should still be pretty fast. You'll also increase in SHIELD rank pretty rapidly for a while, which will help since you get a chunk of ISO at every new rank.

- You'll get some Legendary tokens and CP at some point, probably. Just sit on 'em. It'll be a while before you're ready to jump into full-blown 4* play, and even longer for 5*s, so there's no sense opening them before you're ready. You'll end up selling covers. This is less of an issue since they locked PVE scaling to your clearance level instead of roster strength, but if you want to dip your toe in the PVP waters, rostering 5*s will give you some troubles there, too.

- In addition to buying Legendary tokens, you can use CP to direct-buy covers for a character in a color you already have at least 1 of - HP is no longer usable for this purpose. Generally, it's a good idea to avoid this and save it for tokens, but if a character is stuck in a 5/5/2 build it's sometimes worth it.

- You may want to consider the VIP option if you don't mind spending a bit. It'll get you a supply of daily rewards - ISO, HP, a bit of CP, and a couple Legendary tokens per month - which will make a significant difference at your level. It also unlocks Intercepts, which are extra rewards you can get after clearing PVE nodes - mostly these are extra ISO, though you'll also get some HP, tokens, and very rarely a Command Point.

If the 10 bucks a month is more than you're comfortable with, if you spend $2 you'll still unlock the intercepts for a month, which are a huge amount of extra resources. If you don't want to spend at all, you'll find ISO is still much more readily available than it was back in the day.

- Go clear the Prologue if you haven't already. They did away with that obnoxious 70 ISO reward instead of the actual node reward a long time ago, so if you play a node with four rewards four times, you'll get every reward. As such, the Prologue is an excellent source of easy ISO, 2* covers and a bit of HP.

Hope that helps - good luck.

Alterationartist

Thankfully, I've never been super interested in the top tier things. I like this game because there is always progression, and Championing my 2* is just another layer to that. Like multiple people suggest, I've never done anything except buy roster slots so I may fill them with basically every 3* for the purposes of Required nodes. All my 2*s are championed now, save for Bullseye, because I seriously never expected him to be more than he currently is, so I'm already establishing a valuable Champion base to build more HP and 3* covers off of.

The Bonus hero option does sound like a good thing for someone who wants to build up a select few characters just to have the levels, so I might use it just to establish some fighters for story missions. Even with all the additions, I seem to be generating Iso a lot faster than I'm losing it, so I might end up with a stockpile anyway. As such, I mainly looks for HP procurement where I can, which is why I'm not in too large of a rush to roster every 3*, but I will start with the ones that pop out of 2* champions and try to go from there. It seems like HP is a lot more easy to acquire now, especially from what I see from DDQ, though it's always tempting to buy some HP and get some extra slots just in case. I don't like spending money on free to plays, mainly because there is never a ceiling, and would prefer not to lose a collective triple digit figure for a game I eventually might quit. Again. (Rage of Bahamut, whyyy)

I just plan to do my best and see what comes of it. I don't need to be at the top, but I do want to have more and more heroes, because what can I say, I like Marvel characters, and imagining the kind of shenanigans that make Loki, Hulk, and Phil Coulson have to work together to take down Thanos, Doctor Strange, and Iron Man is just too fun for words.

Landale

Welcome back!

Just a quick note on the farming of 2* - you will overall "lose" a little less than 8k ISO, when you take into consideration:

• ISO received when selling a 144 champion
  
• ISO received from champion rewards
• ISO cost to champion
• ISO unrealized by not just selling the initial 13 covers + 50 covers of champion levels for the new champion

However, for that 8k you get a number of Heroic tokens, command points, and Hero Points.  It's usually pretty worth it, IMO.

Also, there's bonus rewards when you finish a fight that randomly pop up, but only if you have purchased something (anything) in the past 28 days.  So, for example, you can buy a 28-day VIP subscription, and you'll occasionally receive bonus rewards (they used to be called "intercepts").  The first fight of a given day is guaranteed to give a bonus, and the probability drops over the course of the day after each bonus reward is received.  Supposedly, you can receive up to 20 of them throughout the day.  These bonus rewards give a variety of resources: hero points (10, 25, 100), a command point, ISO (500, 1000, or 2000?), or tokens (Elite or Heroic).  You can also just buy $2 worth of hero points and get the rewards for 28 days as well (reportedly, I haven't tested it myself).

Also, in the characters section of the forums there's a "ranking" of characters that someone compiled.  It's a decent starting point for where to put your focus, but it's all about personal preference at the end.

My favorites are:
3* - Strange, Thanos, Iron Man 40, Black Widow, Captain America, and Cyclops
4* - Star-Lord, Cyclops, Blade, Captain Marvel, Medusa, Gamora, Luke Cage, and Coulson


My personal preference was to champion all the 3* characters before moving on to champion any 4*s.  The 3* characters all give a nice toolkit for helping with the transition.  Plus, it gives more options when you have all the boosted 3* heroes for an event.  In addition, the Deadpool daily gives a 3* cover everyday, and those 3* champion rewards can really start adding up.

Anyway, I hope you have fun with it again!