After 1 Year and $1200 this is what I got

bbigler

So I just hit Day 365 on my current roster (which is my 3rd roster in this game) and I wanted to show everyone what's possible with a new account. I also wanted to give advice to any new players that are struggling to progress quickly. The progression speed for new players is so much faster than it used to be. For my current 1 year run in the game it was broken up into 2 segments: 10/21 => 5/22 and 7/23 => 11/23. I did spend a significant amount of money buying HP for roster slots (I'm up to 317 slots), plus some other key purchases which averaged $100 per month. About $900 of the $1200 was just for roster slots. Here are my major milestones:

Week 1 - Champed 4 x 2-Stars
Week 2 - Champed 3 x 3-Stars
Week 3 - Started using a 1 cover Shang to fight
I steadily built up Shang & Polaris each week
Week 7 - Champed Polaris
Week 14 - Champed Shang
Week 26 - Had 3 x 5-Star Champs
Week 38 - Had 6 x 5-Star Champs
Week 43 - Had 9 x 5-Star Champs
Week 48 - Had 12 x 5-Star Champs
Week 51 - Had a Level 470 Omega Red

So after 1 Year of playing hard and getting every reward I could from every event, this is the result, which is nearly 15 x 5-Star Champs. What I think is miraculous is that while I was champing the Latest 5-stars, I also managed to Champ 3 from Classics: Electro, Colossus & Okoye. I didn't pull Classic tokens, but instead set them as my Favorite and used their 4-star feeders.

5-Star Tier: Rostered 59 out of 89
Lvl 471 Omega Red
Lvl 462 Crystal
Lvl 460 Shang
Lvl 458 Vulture
Lvl 451 Colossus
Lvl 451 Elektra
Lvl 451 Gamora
Lvl 451 Moon Knight
Lvl 451 Okoye
Lvl 451 Sersi
Lvl 451 Gwenom
Lvl 451 VenomRex
Lvl 450 Electro
Lvl 450 Ultron
Lvl 435 CarnageMiles
Here are my other meta characters in progress
Lvl 257 Kang (2/3/2)
Lvl 256 BRB (1/2/1)
Lvl 256 Mthor (2/1/2)

4-Star Tier: Excluding Limited Characters
Champed 45 out of 142, going up to level 308
Another 73 are fully covered (15 of them have 10+ saved covers)
Only 24 are not fully covered

3-Star Tier:
Champed All - Max Champed 25 of them
Dupe Champs = 8 (more in progress)
14 Ascended Characters here from lower tiers
I decided to only ascend 3-stars when I have Max+Max

Supports - only listing the r4 and r5 ones
250/250 Chewie
225/250 Chimichanga
150/250 Corvus Glaive
200/200 Atlantis
200/200 Avengers Towers
200/200 Black Widow Batons
200/200 Omnipotence City
200/200 Quantum Realm
200/200 Shuri's Lab
150/200 Hydra Henchmen
140/200 Blackbird
106/200 Proxima Midnight
106/200 Sanctum Sanctorum
100/200 Arc Reactor
1/200 Fantasticar
1/200 Mirror Image
1/200 Symbiote Goo
1/200 The Tinkerer

How Did I Do This?
My general advice to new players is to not hoard resources, but spend them to build better fighting teams. This game is all about getting good duos and trios, and the supports which make them even better. It's better to increase your fighting power even if you have to waste some covers in the beginning. My other piece of general advice is to prioritize your main fighters over your farms. Both are important, but if you have to choose between expanding the farms or getting a new daily fighter, get the fighter. A 3rd crucial piece of advice is learning the meta characters so that you favorite them and get them yourself. Sometimes the best character to chase is the one that counters the meta characters in PVP. But if you're not competitive and only play for fun, then ignore all of this except building up your farms because that gives you more resources and thus more characters to champ and play.

The Teams I Built
The 2-star and 3-star tier is so short lived I won't even mention those teams; I quickly built up Polaris & Shang, so they were my main fighters for a while. But I had a problem fighting Polaris or other SAP teams; that was solved by getting Morbius. I then got Valkyrie and could defeat any team with her and Shang. I played that duo for a long time in both PVP and PVE. Soon after Melinda came along and she turned that duo into a trio for PVE clears. Unfortunately, they're a glass cannon and climbing in PVP was difficult without lots of shields. Then Crystal was announced and I saw her as the answer to my problems. So I went after her, champed her and even added 10 extra levels. At that point I felt like I was officially playing the 5-star game. Crystal+Shang were my main PVP team for a long time, but that doesn't mean my other 5-stars were useless. Sersi was fun forming winfinite teams and Gamora was very efficient at taking out low level PVE enemies or clearing wave nodes (with Valkyrie & Melinda). Then I took a break from the game again.

When I came back, I had a whole year of characters to roster, of which I knew nothing about. So first I had to catch up rostering them and then I couldn't pick up where I left off. My half covered 5-stars in Latest were now in Classics. So, I built up some LT & CP again and then started pulling Latest. I was able to go back and finish Ultron and Moon Knight, whom I actually used. I did play some Ultron teams with Sersi or Polaris, which were fun and could hit above their weight. During the Quandry Boss events, I exclusively used Moon Knight with OmniCity. Soon enough I was back on track to champing the Latest Legends. Gwenom was first and I tested her out with Miles & SM2099 in PVE - it worked very well, but only against Goons. SM-India should make her more viable now.

And then I champed Omega!! We all knew he was great, so my plan was to put as many levels as I could on him. He instantly changed the game for me. I started using him with Crystal in PVP and miraculously I wasn't getting attacked all the time. How refreshing! He didn't hit as hard as Shang, but it was easier to climb and I was tired of spending my HP on shields. Lightning Rounds became so much easier too. In PVE, he destroyed with Valkyrie & Melinda, who fed him 7 Red AP every turn. That significantly reduced my clearing times. During this time, I favorited Electro because I wanted a counter to Omega & iHulk in PVP. I steadily built her from scratch and champed her in 2-3 months. It's really fun taking down Omega teams with Electro + Elektra (plus it justified champing Elektra). Unfortunately, that counter team invites tons of attacks from MThor teams.

After champing Electro I needed a new shard favorite, so I chose Colossus who I currently didn't even have rostered! I figured he would work better than Crystal when fighting MThor - so Colossus & Omega was my new PVP goal team. Coincidentally, a week before I champed Colossus, everyone else in PVP had the same idea and I started seeing tons of Colossus+Omega teams, especially in Lightning Rounds. I then could easily rank top 25, sometimes better. At this point, Omega replaced Shang in 99% of all battles. My new shard target then became Okoye and I managed to champ her just before my year mark. Combine this with my steadily improving supports and I have a very good PVE team too.

Production Rates and Other Interesting Numbers
As expected, my production rate increases over time, so here are my latest averages ignoring extras from the anniversary:
ISO = about 550K per week
HP = about 3500 per week
LT + CP = about 35 pulls per week

My Milestones are very interesting when you divide out the numbers:
501K Matches => 1,373 matches per day
41.37M ISO Spent => 795K per week
6,024 Health Packs => 16.5 health packs per day
3373 Team Ups Used => 9.2 Teams Ups per day
35,525 Boosts Used => 97.3 Boosts per day
305 Shields Used => less than 1 per day!
4,257 Support Levels => 81.8 levels per week
2,634 x 4-Star Covers => 50.6 covers per week
339 x 5-Star Covers => 6.5 covers per week
111 x 2-Star Champs => 2.1 per week
68 x 3-Star Champs => 1.3 per week

Yes, I'm quitting again
This progress far exceeded my expectations and far exceeded my past 2 rosters. A LOT can be done in 1 year and I know that any player can be competitive if they want to. If I kept on building this roster, I would champ Kang next to create an "Away Team" for PVE. Perhaps I would go after MThor just to see what she's like to play with (instead of against). I could just put levels on Okoye and/or Colossus if I kept playing. The LTs are coming in so fast now that I could spend my CP on Classics, which seems like a viable path. After another year, I could have most (maybe all) of the 4-star tier champed and all of my 3-stars ascended.

Ascension is certainly going to change this game going forward; the character combinations are endless! Plus, a new player can get to a 5-star level even faster now. I don't know if PVP will be a nightmare for them though. If I ever come back (which I don't plan on), I would start over again just to see how fast a new player could ascend characters and what that MMR would be like. Perhaps another brave soul out there would do this experiment for me? I'm not sure if it's crazy or brave to build something up and then throw it all away in order to try again and do it better the next time.

Glockoma

Nice write-up!

Colognoisseur

You should rename this to What $100/ month gets you as a new player and drop it in the Tips and Guides group. Really clear examples of what can be done in a year.

Vhailorx

I appreciate the write up. But I don't think I would consider $100/month to be a fair judge of "true" progress speed, especially since you spent it optimally (ie all on roster slots while targetting the two best characrers exclusively).

Most players will never spend that much on the game, and most people will take a lot longer to figure out how the game works and what resources are most important.

Still, it seems very clear that covers are far more readily available at all stages of the game than they used to be.

bluewolf

If one was starting out and devoted roster slots to 1->2s and farmed them instead of continuing the chain, they can turn 76 1* covers into (edited: 365 HP, not 465) (after selling) and keep up a pretty steady stream of HP income for rostering all the characters. (Or anyone who values fast HP gain.)

You can always keep some eventually and keep ascending for better (and slower) rewards but you need a LOT of roster slots now with all the characters.

A 2* gives out 315 HP from farming, obviously because of the 3* feeding, they reduced other resources in champ regards.

Anyway it’s a good resource for the sorely needed HP after the initial investment of double rostering those 1s.

Might mitigate the need for spending a bit.

bbigler

@Vhailorx said:
I appreciate the write up. But o don't think I would consider $100/month to be a fair judge of "true" progress speed, especially since you spent it optimally (ie all on roster slots while targetting the two best characrers exclusively).

Most players will never spend that much on the game, and most people will take a lot longer to figure out how the game works and what resources are most important.

Still, it seems very clear that covers are far more readily available at all stages of the game than they used to be.

You’re right, the only way a new player would repeat my performance is if they get excited about the game and want to play it competitively, which leads them to researching the best strategies (plus they’re willing to spend some money). Then they could do this. That could happen if a competitive player left another game and tried this one.

bbigler

I still standby my previous statements that even if a new player doesn’t spend (or spends very little) they can still enter 5-Star play within a year. If I had fewer roster slots, then my farms would be less productive, which turns into fewer pulls to get 5s. But farms build themselves up and expand naturally. So I think spending this amount of money only made a 15% difference in my speed.

Edit: I consider $100 a month to be in the medium range of spending, where $10 is considered low and $250+ is considered high.

Zarqa

Great write up. This very much matches my experience as well. Consider me that ‘new player that got excited about the game and wanted to play competitively’ almost 2 years ago.

Daredevil217

I appreciate you putting the $$ spent right in the thread title. Too many times people focus solely on “you can do X in Y amount of time!” and undersell just how much money can expedite progress- especially in the early game.

That said, 100 dollars a month for a mobile game seems really high to me. For 1200 you could buy 20 full-fledged AAA titles on release day. Or you can improve your roster in a match three game.

bbigler

@Daredevil217 said:
I appreciate you putting the $$ spent right in the thread title. Too many times people focus solely on “you can do X in Y amount of time!” and undersell just how much money can expedite progress- especially in the early game.

That said, 100 dollars a month for a mobile game seems really high to me. For 1200 you could buy 20 full-fledged AAA titles on release day. Or you can improve your roster in a match three game.

Well, it’s only $20 - $25 per week, which is my disposable income for frivolous things. I would never spend that much all at once.

But I want to make it very clear that hard work got me this roster, not $1200.

Bad

Many people do compare gacha games with AAA ones, something impossible to compare.
Gacha games on mobile are playable 7/24 and the continued work on them can make people play, maybe for 10 years.
And AAA games usually are just software for your hardware, probably just for to play at home,and it's a finite experience which can be prolonged to a limited extent.
According to this approach spending some money in a gacha game you know you will be playing for many years (without quitting), it's a right investment. And perhaps cheaper than to acquire some hardware and to buy expensive games which usually offer some dozens of hours in play, no matter if the graphics are awesome.

KGB

How did you get the totals for matches played (500K plus)? I've never been able to see how many I've played or how much ISO I've spent etc?

Also 1373 matches a day at say 10 seconds a match is 13730 seconds = 228 minutes or 3.8 hours a day. That's a TON of time invested (obvious why you are retiring again, MPQ was a second job for you). That's the number new players should also be focusing on as much as the 1200 dollars. It's clear you need to play a LOT to get where you did even if it cost 0 dollars. As a frame of reference I definitely play < 100 matches a day doing full CL10 PvE + PvP to 1000/25 wins.

KGB

P.S. This is a great write up of your efforts in both time and money.

bbigler

@KGB
I went to quests => milestones to see my current number of total matches and ISO spent. But you’re very observant to realize that I played A LOT - it did feel like a part time job. I don’t know exactly how many hours per day it took, but combining play time, planning time, opening tokens, applying covers, alliance chat, forum posts, etc, it added up to around 5 - 6 hrs per day I think. That’s why I needed to quit.

Edit: I played SCL10 to 4 - 5 clears and PVP to 50 wins, plus Lightning Rounds and DDQ and whatever else comes along.

trenchdigger

Matches means matching tiles, so a single cascade could be 6 or more matches. Your 100 games a day could well be a similar number of matches.

Daredevil217

@bbigler said:

@Daredevil217 said:
I appreciate you putting the $$ spent right in the thread title. Too many times people focus solely on “you can do X in Y amount of time!” and undersell just how much money can expedite progress- especially in the early game.

That said, 100 dollars a month for a mobile game seems really high to me. For 1200 you could buy 20 full-fledged AAA titles on release day. Or you can improve your roster in a match three game.

Well, it’s only $20 - $25 per week, which is my disposable income for frivolous things. I would never spend that much all at once.

But I want to make it very clear that hard work got me this roster, not $1200.

Only one way to find out! It’s time to do another experiment spending no money and seeing how far you get in a year! Welcome back!

5+ hours per day is willldddddd. Yeah… best to stay retired.

Daredevil217

@Bad said:
Many people do compare gacha games with AAA ones, something impossible to compare.
Gacha games on mobile are playable 7/24 and the continued work on them can make people play, maybe for 10 years.
And AAA games usually are just software for your hardware, probably just for to play at home,and it's a finite experience which can be prolonged to a limited extent.
According to this approach spending some money in a gacha game you know you will be playing for many years (without quitting), it's a right investment. And perhaps cheaper than to acquire some hardware and to buy expensive games which usually offer some dozens of hours in play, no matter if the graphics are awesome.

MPQ is my favorite game. Perhaps my favorites of all time. But I also play AAA like Hades, all Zeldas, Spider-Man, NBA 2K, etc. I can like both. But if I could cop 20 games or see a 15% bump in admittedly my favorite game, it’s not even a choice. I’d take the slightly slower progression and enjoy Mpq along with all these other great titles. However, if you put in the number of hours the OP did then yeah, you probably don’t have time to play another game (or have another hobby, or family lol).

Bad

@bbigler
You can see some opinions here. You like maths. I suggest you an exercise. With your current roster, how many daily hours would you need to do DDP, rank up t50 in PvE and get just 500 points in pvp.
Then you would get what amount of time aprox I play.
Because mind that you are playing optimally in the first year, but about keeping up with your time and money investment you aren't keeping up optimally nor rationally.

Tony_Foot

@bbigler said:

But I want to make it very clear that hard work got me this roster, not $1200.

Well no, try again without the $1200 and see how you do building the same roster in the same time frame. Yes you played a lot but the $1200 allowed you to.

bbigler

That’s the biggest problem here, too many people think money has bought my success but I know it hasn’t. And I’m not going to spend another year of my life just to prove them wrong. I know I can get similar results without spending because I’m smart and work hard. Did money win my tough battles with enemies two or three times my size? Did money make me dedicate hours every day to grinding away at all events getting the best rewards possible? Did money tell me what characters to favorite and champ in order to improve my strength? Did money tell me how to spend my resources in the best way possible?

I suspect that some people don’t want to admit that I can out perform them so they try to justify my success with spending in order to feel better about themselves. It’s the notion of writing off someone’s success with a factor that doesn’t show they’re better than you. Such as saying rich people are only rich because they got lucky or inherited their money instead of admitting that they worked harder and/or are smarter than you.

One of the reasons I post my progress restarting the game is to prove some people wrong. Those are the people that said new players can’t get 5-star champs for years or any other thing in their list of what new players can’t do. Anyone can succeed at this game if they’re dedicated.

But this is just a game and not worth arguing about. Is there anyone else on this forum with experience of long term progression with or without spending? If you play very little, then spending can make a big difference, but in my case, I estimate spending has only made a 15% difference. Instead of 15 x 5-Star champs maybe I would only have 12, for example. Those bought rewards only sped me up by a couple months, not years. And again, I’m not going to spend months of my time just to prove I’m right. That’s a waste of time.

bbigler

There’s more to the story here of my journey that has nothing to do with money….

When I started this roster, Shang was brand new and everyone said Apocalypse was the best character in the game, followed by Okoye. People thought Shang was good but not meta. But I could see that he was meta and just amazing, so I switched my 5-star favorite shards from Okoye to Shang. I then steadily built him without purchases and champed him in a few months. The wisdom of that decision gave me great power in PVP and PVE. And as you know, playing Shang requires a good deal of thinking, not mindless play.

When I was having trouble with Polaris and other SAP teams in PVP, people suggested that I favorite and champ Sabretooth or Mantis, but I thought Morbius was better. Against my better judgment I took their advice and favorited Mantis. She didn’t work that well, so I favorited Morbius, champed him and that solved my problems. Not only in PVP, but Morbius is a champ in PVE too. Also, I started using the Valkyrie + Shang duo in PVP before I saw other people doing it.

As other new 5-star characters came along I could judge pretty well how good they would be. I saw potential in Sersi when others did not. She can form winfinite teams which could take down anything. I saw potential in Gamora when others did not. She is very fast in taking down enemies at her level in PVE. I saw the defensive potential of Crystal when others did not, that’s why I focused my Latest pulls on her and managed to get her to 460.

When Omega came along I could see his greatness even when others said he wasn’t meta. I simultaneously made plans to focus my pulls on him and favorite/champ Electro as a counter to him in PVP. And then before it was popular, I made plans to get Colossus to join Omega in PVP.

My only prediction that didn’t turn out quite right was Gwenom - I was both right and wrong about her potential. I was right that she worked great with Miles & SM2099 and could decimate teams 100 levels above her, but I underestimated how quickly her match dmg would go to zero, thus making my baby champ Miles & 2099 tank. So, this team worked against 550 goons but not tile movers. Now with ascension and SM India, her great potential is back.

The point here is that there’s a lot more to this game than opening tokens, applying covers and copying the meta teams. It takes both wisdom and hard work to out perform your peers.

Daredevil217

Well, this took a turn…