If you are here, then you probably have either already started playing Marvel Strike Force or you are interested in beginning the game. For those who aren’t, or you want more information, Marvel Strike Force is a turn-based action RPG. It is very similar to other gacha games that are out there, with multiple characters to collect and rank up, synergies between characters and PVE/PVP battles.
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If you have played anything like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes, Summoners War or DC Legends, then you know the general gist of things. You will start with some weakish characters provided during the tutorial missions, and have the option to farm other characters after then.
Terminologies
Here are a few different terms that you might be seen thrown around.
- Buff: A positive effect on your characters, shown with a green picture.
- Stealth
- Offense Up
- Defense Up
- Speed Up
- Deflect
- Taunt
- Evade
- Counter
- Deathproof
- Regeneration
- Assist Next
- Immunity
- Debuff: A negative effect on your character, shown with a red picture
- Offense Down
- Defense Down
- Speed Down
- Blind
- Stun
- Bleed
- Heal Block
- Ability Block
- Disrupt
- Ability Energy: Basically how “charged” one of your skills is. Needs to be fully charged to use.
- Cleanse/Clear Negative: Removes negative effects from your characters
- Dispel/Clear Postive: Removes positive effects from the enemy/enemies
- AoE: Area of Effect (Divided into adjacent and all enemies)
- Chain: Will hit one enemy, and then “chain” to the next one across. Deadpool can also chain back to enemies he has already hit.
- G13, G12, etc. – Gear 13, Gear 12, basically what Gear your character is currently at
- 3*, 4*, 5* – What star your character is currently at
- RS – Red Stars
Currencies
- Gold: This is the general currency used for the Supplies store, levelling up characters, levelling character’s gear and combining their gear, and basically everything. Gold is very accessible, and you’ll get a lot of it. The bad part is that you need way more than you could ever possibly get. Make use of it when needed, but try and save some to level your characters up as you go. Keep some in reserve for unlocking characters and combining their gear too.
- Power Cores: This is the “premium” currency. Lucky for us, FoxNext hands out a few each day to you. It’s primarily obtained from levelling up, doing your daily missions, spending real money and Arena Payouts each day.
- You want to spend this on 3 times the Energy Refresh per day
- If you get extra, you can do 3 times the 100 Energy Refresh too. DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU ARE WHALING
- You could refresh a node to get more than 5/10 tries per day at it. I would suggest refreshing in these circumstances
- You need a 3rd Villain to be able to enter the Villain Campaign
- Once you unlock the Jessica Jones node and start farming her until unlock
- Once you unlock the Iron Fist node and start farming him until unlock
- Free Energy Refill Credit: Obtained through achievements and Daily Missions, these allow you to make energy refreshes. Keep in mind that the cost for these is equal to the current cost to refresh with power cores. They supplement and give you one refresh a day usually.
- Arena Credits: You get 250 Arena Credits each day for completing the daily mission to do 2 Arena Battles, and also an amount of Arena Credits based on your ranking.
- Blitz Credits: Provided for winning Blitz Battles, completing Blitz Milestones and the Blitz daily mission.
- Raid Credits: The most controversial of currencies, most people have a different idea on how to spend them.
- Blitz Charges: These are obtained through daily missions and challenges. Used to refresh your characters to continue competing in Blitz. They are vital to getting a high score in Blitz.
- Free Raid Energy Refill Credit: One of the rarest Currencies, it is only obtained through special events or purchasing Offers. These take the place of cores to refresh your raid energy.
- Health Charges: Obtained through Challenges, these are used to heal your characters in raids and revive them. In raids, your character’s health is persistent in each node. Therefore, between nodes you may want to heal them at times.
- Raid Tickets: These are earned once you join an Alliance at level 20. You can earn 600 per day, and they go straight towards your Alliance. They are used to open Raids for your Alliance, which will be described below.
First Day
Or more precisely, first things to be doing.
- When the newcomer pack becomes available, GET IT. They are incredibly helpful characters. If you are one of those people who likes to spend a little bit of money on games, this is the best value you will find. Below is an example of one of the New Player offers.
The current offer is for Venom. This gives you a very easy option to get 3 Villain Characters which are required. If you ever intend on spending GET THIS.
Other offers worth buying are:- The New Player Orb Bundle
- The level 10, 15, etc, Power up packs for cores if you have them (This is a good F2P option to get some quick gold and training mats)
- Any deal that includes Iron Fist or Daredevil to unlock them as they are both wanted desperately for your Defenders team
- Complete as many story missions as you can, to unlock character nodes and gear nodes that are required!
- Try to three star any nodes that you do complete. This means that you will be able to go back and Auto-Complete that node, saving time in the future.
- Unlock three different Villains as soon as possible. I refreshed the node for Bullseye to ensure I got him as soon as possible on the first day using cores.
Where to Obtain Characters
Currently, there are a few ways that characters are introduced and able to be obtained.
- Arena/Raid/Blitz Store
- Farming Campaign nodes
- The Milestones and Rewards in Blitz
- Event Campaigns (A limited time campaign mode that rewards orbs for new characters)
- Event Raids (A limited time raid that you complete as an alliance for orbs of characters)
To find out where a character is farmable from, you can click FIND when you select them in the Roster screen.
Characters to Work On
There is a general order that I would suggest working on things included in the above image. Basically you want to go:
- Defenders to the point they can clear as much as needed
- Build up a good Villains team (preferably including some Cosmic characters to get started in that campaign)
- Farm for Star-Lord from the above characters
- Then Nick Fury and his team of SHIELD minions
- Start looking at Magneto, Shuri and Phoenix based on Red Stars etc.
Characters to Farm
The characters below are the ones I suggest you farm early, as they will get you far. However, there are definitely a lot of other options from the stores (for example, Deadpool from Arena Store) that you want later on.
Early Campaign Nodes
- Yondu (Heroes 1-9) – Amazing character all round. He summons Ravagers to do his bidding, dispels enemy buffs and has an amazing AoE ability.
- Jessica Jones (Villains 2-9, Nexus 4-9) – A part of our ideal team, she is an amazing debuff cleanser, has a nice dispel to help get rid of pesky taunts and generates ability energy
- Merc Lt (Villains 3-3) – An amazing Villain who can help get you through the campaign and is viable late game
- Iron Fist (Nexus 1-9) – A part of our ideal team, he hits very hard and has a really good heal when paired with Defenders.
- Punisher (Heroes 1-6) – Works incredibly well with our first team, the Defenders. Provides amazing damage, and synergy for the rest of the team.
Arena Store
- Drax – Good early game tank, with an auto-taunt at the start of the match. Can take a beating, but easily dispelled later in the game.
- Daredevil – Heavy hitter. Is immune to blind though, so isn’t bothered by Hawkeye. Good for Blitz, where you can build a team to compliment him.
- Mordo – Amazing mystic and cosmic toon, he is very good at controlling the battleground, used for the
Blitz Store
- Luke Cage – A vital tank for the Defenders team, while you get him for free it’s great to be able to get him higher stars and more health.
- Gamora – Amazing brawler, who packs a punch and can get another turn if she gets a kill. Definitely worth investing, especially for Cosmic Campaign.
- Spider-Man – One of the greatest characters after his character. He inflicts Defense Down on his opponents, and can follow up with a lot of damage. Great for the Brawler challenge and for the City events.
- Crossbones – My personal favourite character. While the game calls him a protector, he is more of a bruiser crossed with a Nuke. He shouldn’t be used for his tanking or taunt, but more for the Nuke that he unloads on the enemy.
- Merc Riot Guard – He is a great tank, has the ability to give others defense up and a great block chance. While he isn’t A team material, he is great for the Mercenary Gold Event.
Raid Store
- GEAR – This can’t be emphasized enough, gear is the number one thing to buy from the raid store. Most purple gear and blue gear is obtainable from here, but the most important ones when starting are Basic Catalysts and Advanced Phosphates. Advanced Basic Catalysts and Advanced Unstable Molecules are good choices too. Both of these don’t come in easy, and are very important for a lot of amazing characters. However, there are a few characters you definitely want to get from there. Originally, you won’t have enough resources to get both so focus on the characters.
- Hand Sentry – Great “tank”. Stealths everyone and puts evade on them. Counters a lot of teams who rely on AoE, especially characters like Yondu. Currently one of the best characters on Arena Defense.
- Rocket – Amazing damage dealer, who can wreck face in the right team. He is used for Blaster, Cosmic and Raids especially when paired with Star-Lord.
Blitz
- Blitz is the games most crucial game mode, in my opinion. It is the way that a lot of new characters are introduced, has some of the best rewards and has some of the best characters to purchase from it’s store. It also rewards a fair chunk of gold as well, which is the most important currency.
- With that in mind, it’s also very difficult. You need to balance multiple teams and have multiple teams that win at a high rank to be able to get optimal points. As a new player, I would suggest TRYING to get top 10% in every blitz, but this is going to take quite a while to achieve.
- Blitz is difficult to explain. Basically, you take a squad into the fight to battle other squads. You want to win, and you earn points for winning. When a character competes in a battle, win or lose, they go on a cooldown for 2 hours. To use them again before that, it costs 5 Blitz Charges. Then 10. Then 20, and so on. You basically need to make the best use of your WHOLE roster to be able to climb.
- As you win battles, your multiplier gets higher as you climb tiers. That means you can eventually get to the highest tier (8.3) and keep winning over and over to get the best points. This is really difficult, as your opponents get harder each time you win a battle. If you lose a battle, you drop down to the lowest rank in that tier (eg. Tier 1.4 to 1.0) and need to climb again. Lose a battle at the lowest rank of a tier, and you drop down to the next tier (eg. 7.0 to 6.0)
- There are currently 2 Shards for Blitz. Beginner and the Normal bracket. You will be in the beginner bracket for 30 days before graduating. Take advantage of it as best you can!
- Don’t be disheartened if you don’t score well on the first few Blitzes after you get out of the beginner bracket. Remember you are competing against people who have a fair bit of a lead on you.
- Blitz makes use of your whole roster, so it is ideal if you can find teams that work well together.
- The general gist is to get your modifier as high as possible to get more points, then switch to using your teams that will win at a high rank. That way, you get the most points possible.
Tips for Blitz
Raids
Once you reach the level that you can join an Alliance, head to the main MSF discord and get into a good one. Raids are one of the most important parts of the game, as they provide a lot of materials to level up your characters abilities, and also Raid Credits for the gear.
Arguably, the best raid team currently is as follows:
- Minn-Erva, Thanos, Rocket, Star-Lord, Groot
This team generates a lot of healing, damage and overall utility, HOWEVER, it is very late game as it requires a character that is unfarmable, a legendary, and an orb-only drop character. For new players, the much better option is getting the Defenders to a high level.
That is:
- Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, Punisher.
This is an amazing beginner team, with a lot of free damage and a lot of healing. They will kick ass for ages.
Arena
Arena is probably the third most important gamemode, after Blitz and raids. This is how you get power cores, and Quake/Drax. There are characters who work well here, who might not be great in other game modes. Arena is split into multiple shards, depending on when you start and possibly timezone. However, there is only one Arena Payout time, unlike other games like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.
It’s basically a ladder you need to climb. Number one is best, and that is where you want to aim. People can attack you, you can attack people to climb too. You have 5 free attacks everyday, with a break in between each.
You set a team that your enemy will attack, by using “Set Defense” if that wasn’t obvious. You need to make sure this stays up to date with what you want it to be. Make sure your best team is in here. Best Offense team and best Defense team will usually be different.
My suggested early game Arena Team is
Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Spider-Man, Crossbones and Punisher
This is a very early game Arena Offense and Defense team. Eventually you will want to have different characters on Defense than on Offense, switching characters around to meet your needs.
- Once you unlock Daredevil, replace Crossbones with him
- Once you unlock Iron Fist, replace Spider-Man with him.
This team should carry you for quite a while.
Alliance War
In Alliance War, your alliance will be pitted against another alliance of similar ELO. This is based off of two factors. Your current win/lose ratio and your alliance’s overall total collection power.
You will use your whole roster for this game mode, including:
- 8 Teams placed on defense within your helicarrier room
- 8 free attacks
- 4 attacks purchased with War Energy currency
A character who is used on Defense can not be used to attack, and a character who has attacked can only attack once. You will want to coordinate with your alliance members to make sure your attacks and defenses are being used well.
Dark Dimension
Dark Dimension is a late game mode. Very late game. You won’t even want to worry about this until you are clearing Ultimus VI on a regular basis, and doing very well. It is split into two levels.
- Enter the Darkness requires 5 characters at 6* or above. Clearing this will give you a LOT of Orange Gear and allow you to get a few characters to gear 13. DO NOT use your orange gear straight away. You want this gear saved for when you enter…
- Fear the Darkness. This requires 5 characters at Gear 13, and is one of the hardest challenges currently in the game. Beating this rewards you with even more orange gear to get your characters to Gear 13 and Ultron, arguably the strongest character currently in the game. Definitely worth it, but this won’t be for ages.
- Once you’ve cleared Enter the Darkness, start collecting Unique Orange Gear materials to get characters to Gear 13. There are a number of guides for this, so make sure to check some of them out or ask me!
Red Stars
Red Stars are an alternate way to power up your characters later in the game, and currently unlock at level 52.
Basically, when you open a red star orb you receive between 1 Red Star (2% Power Increase) and 7 Red Stars (75% Power Increase). As you can imagine, 7 Red Stars are very rare to get and amazing. A few things regarding them:
- Duplicate Red Stars work towards a better orb that will guarantee a 4 Red Star, then 5, 6 and finally 7 Star character.
Quick Tips
- Save gold for your main team and don’t spread too thin
- For minions/characters that you aren’t using now, Invest until they are Level 25, Gear 4, and then leave them. They will make good teams for Blitz to rank up your modifier quicker.
