I’ve been playing this game casually since ~Nov 2018 on Server 14, purely as a free to play (F2P) player and maintain a spot in the top ~2k players on the server. If you’re new or inexperienced, then take a look through these tips on how to optimise your gameplay!
Videos
Let’s start simple – as a F2P player you’re going to be watching 3 ads each morning. This will allow you to raid content later, meaning you can complete some activities with the click of a button.
Guild/Clan
Join a guild. You might have zero interest in making friends, but the better the guild you’re in the more you will progress. What makes a guild good? The number of active players and the maturity of the guild. While in a guild you will have access to the guild perks, these benefit all manner of activities, such as providing more energy, cheaper shops and boosts to activities. The guild unlocks these perks through members playing the game and providing a form of XP, so more active members = more perks. While in a guild you can also partake in wars where the members of your guild attempt to defeat the members of the opposing guild, each war won yields a promotion and some free loot.
Free Stuff
So you’ve joined a guild, the bare minimum you should be doing is collecting your free stuff. You get 5 free gold crates (1 every 10 mins). You get 1 free guild crate each day, and 1 free diamond crate every 2 days. Diamond crates are the most valuable, and can yield whole champions for free. The crate will go to your inventory rather than get opened upon purchase. You are advised to open these asap if you’re just starting out, and when you have most of the champions you should save these for when a new champion you particularly want is released and open them then in the hopes of unlocking it for free.
You should also attempt the trials, and port/docks at the highest difficulty you can clear. These alternate daily and culminate on Sunday with everything being available. Completing these without anyone on your team dying will award 3 stars and allow you to raid that difficulty henceforth. Logging on at 12 – 2pm, 6-8pm and 9-11pm awards 60 energy for free, so be sure to pick that up. If the times seem off, you probably need to adjust your timezone settings so that the events occur at a good time for you.
Gold
It comes and goes very quickly, especially as you gain in levels. The best source of gold is from the creep surge and the city watch. The main gold sink are character skills, so prioritise the characters that you will use the most, and the skills they have that have a level requirement to keep them effective.
Diamonds
These are rare-ish you’ll get a few here and there, but the most reliable way to receive them is to participate in arena and coliseum battles. If you make it to the top spot you’ll just need to stay there for a period of time and then you’ll be promoted to the next tier, awarding more diamonds each day.
Contests
Every weekend there’s a contest that runs, the rewards for these are very useful and so most people save all the items they get for these events. If you manage to complete all the reward tiers from a conquest you should stop there. The amount of resources you’d have to spend to gain first place would place you firmly out of the free 2 play camp.
How to complete:
City Watch – You’ll need a strong lineup and you’ll need some heroes with sustain to get by on harder difficulties. The best advice for this mode is to not play on auto for the first few levels. Use all your best heroes and don’t activate their energy skill, and then switch them out for other heroes at the end of each fight. This will allow the heroes to be able to activate their energy ability as soon as you need it on the harder stages.
Creep Surge – Hire mercenaries. Typically the cost the mercenary is more than covered by the winning prize of each zone. Experience will teach you which combinations of heroes work well for this mode, and allow you to judge how strong your team needs to be to defeat the enemy. Save your 2 raids for hard compositions that might prove difficult to beat. If your guild is constantly failing to clear 11 rounds, you could suggest to the people in charge that they should lower the difficulty.
Weekly quest to 175 daily quests – Do as many activities as you can. Make teams of characters that have low level friendships between the characters and gain 1 quest completed for each friendship improved. Enhance a badge every day, with 1 component part.
Invasions – The optimum strategy for this is to only spend 1 attack where possible on the Mama bots, but ideally hit the 10% damage mark. If enough people do this it can allow up to 10 people to gain resources from each Mama bot.
Is it worth Spending $$?
That’s a personal decision only you can make, however note that spending money on the game will award you all offers available at the time of purchase (assuming you spend enough to qualify) so it is better to wait until multiple deals are available.
