Those of you who read last week’s column will know I’ve found myself a new obsession in the form of upcoming mobile RPG, Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2. The title was recently soft-launched in Australia, Denmark, and Sweden, and should be available worldwide hopefully sooner rather than later. In case you’ve managed to pick it up after reading our take, we thought we’d put together a handy general tips & tricks guide to help you start out in the game.
SPEND GOLD WISELY
Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2 is surprisingly generous when it comes to providing you with avenues to acquire free gold, but it’s important to spend it wisely if you’re not keen to open up your wallet. You may be tempted to spend your free gold on Superior Power Cells (which are the only way to acquire new heroes), but don’t! Superior Power Cells can grant you a new hero, sure, but they can also grant you abilities for the characters you already have, reducing your chances at pulling a new hero.
Instead of burning all your free gold on Superior Power Cells, save it for Energy refreshes and Scouting mission refreshes. The currency used for Scouting missions recharges once a day and only provides a single ticket at a time. Purchasing the currency will give you three in one shot, making it a super efficient way to spend your 5 gold. Scouting Missions are crucial to hero progression and they’re also a decent means of gaining experience outside of chapter content.
SAVE UP TASK REWARDS
This one is a bit more simple and straightforward, but you don’t need to claim task rewards right away. I’ve found the best thing to do is to save them up for a situation where my energy is low and I’m close to leveling up (which refreshes your energy). These are great for pushing you over that final hump and letting you extend your play without having to even spend any gold on a refresh.
MAKE FRIENDS!
Filling up your friends list and teaming up with your friends’ heroes is a great way to keep the silver flowing into your coffers. Each fight requires you to team up with another player’s hero, but the silver reward is doubled if that player is your friend. You also receive silver rewards whenever a friend on your list teams up with one of your own heroes, so having an active friend list is a great way to generate silver. Here’s a pro tip for you: put your most powerful or rarest character into the leader (first slot) of your team. This is the character that will show up as available for a team up when other players are looking, so having a rare or powerful character your friends are familiar with is a great way to ensure they frequently pick your hero over their other options, maximizing your silver gains.
BUILD A BALANCED ROSTER
When starting out you’ll be given Hawkeye and a couple of free heroes to round out your starting line-up. From there, it’s important to fill out any holes in your roster to ensure your team is as diverse as possible. There are five different classes in the game, so the best thing to do is to focus on getting one of each to the best of your abilities. Obviously, Power Cell pulls are random, so there isn’t a whole lot you can do there, but one thing you can do is use the free Avenger pick you get for your seven day login reward to fill in any holes. You might be tempted to pick up Iron Man, because, well, he’s Iron Man, but it’s probably a better idea to pick up an Avenger for a class you don’t have yet. All of the free Avenger options are pretty good, so you can’t really go wrong here.
TEAM COMPOSITION MATTERS
Be mindful of the enemies you’ll be fighting in each battle. Class counters, while not as punishing as the original Avengers Alliance, are still important to minimize (or leverage to your advantage). Believe it or not, the game can get pretty tough, and giving your enemy free Class Advantage buffs definitely doesn’t help your chances of coming out the victor.
On the flip side, there are a ton of different synergies you can find in the game, so putting together a creative frontline that takes advantage of each hero’s skill set can be a huge boon. For example, free attack teams are pretty popular. Characters like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Moon Knight, Star Lord, Captain Marvel, and so on, all work well to enable and take advantage of free attacks. Another emerging trend are ‘shock teams’, which use characters that deal shock damage to synergize well with Electro’s Static Shock debuff. There’s all sorts of stuff you can come up with when team building, so think outside the box, especially if you want to find success in PvP!
INFORMATION IS POWER
If you’re ever confused about something or just want more information, hold your finger on an element of the UI to get more information. You can do this on your enemies to find their exact stats, level, buffs, and debuffs. For boss fights, you can get a better idea for what sort of mechanics (if any) you can expect by reading his description or other traits. It can also be useful for other things, like finding out what certain attributes mean, or where you can find materials needed for research. It’s just a handy tool to have. I do wish the game had a chat, so players could ask each other for information, but maybe that will come later.
BONUS TIP: TAKE OUT A.I.M. BLASTERS WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE
These guys are definitely overtuned right now. If you run into these guys in an enemy wave, take them out immediately. I don’t care what your previous plan for the turn was or what other priority target is also in the wave, these guys will completely wipe your entire frontline if they get to use their sweeping blaster attack, don’t give them the chance.
Have you been playing Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2? Share your own tips in the comments below!
