I'm visiting the girlfriend while she recovers from neck surgery, but she's sleeping at the moment, nobody else is home, my EoTS nodes haven't refreshed yet, and I'm bored. So I thought to kill some time I'd write up an MPQ FAQ in case we get new players looking for advice. That said, I also feel like an FAQ would be best served as the first post of a thread instead of on page 7 (which would eventually get pushed back). So I'm being indulgent and creating a new thread after the previous main MPQ thread reached a whopping 7 pages. Excelsior!
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1) What is Marvel Puzzle Quest?
Spoiler
MPQ is a "freemium" match-3 game in the vein of Bejeweled or the original Puzzle Quest. Short version: collect Marvel characters and do battle with them by matching gems. It's more compelling than it sounds, but that's because there really isn't a good way to make it sound badass.
2) I just started playing MPQ, but there doesn't seem to be much to do; what gives?
Spoiler
Late summer/early fall of 2016 saw some pretty significant changes to the game in the form of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ranks and Clearance Levels; the former acts as a sort of gateway, while the latter affects your rewards.
3) Okay, so start with S.H.I.E.L.D. Ranks.
Spoiler
Virtually everything you do in the game earns you XP (this is separate from the XP your characters gain; we'll talk about character XP later). Fully clear all rewards from a node? You get XP. Open Heroic-or-better tokens? You get XP. Roster a character for the first time? You get XP. Apply covers to a character? You get XP. Champion a character? You get lots of XP. Apply covers to a champion? You get XP. In short, if you're playing the game, you're earning XP, which is then applied to your S.H.I.E.L.D. Rank.
Every time you rank up, you get an ISO-8 bonus. If you've just started playing, you won't have access to Story or Versus events until you reach Rank 10. Don't worry; you'll get there reasonably quickly just by playing the Prologue, farming its rewards, and building your 1* and 2* rosters. Once you reach S.H.I.E.L.D. Rank 10, the rest of the game opens up for you, and Clearance Levels become relevant.
4) What are Clearance Levels?
Spoiler
One gripe about placement rewards in Story mode was that lower-level rosters had an advantage for various reasons (which I won't go into) at earning rewards their roster might not otherwise be prepared to support. Clearance Levels segregate rosters of different strengths and provide rewards appropriate to where the user is in their roster building.
Clearance Level 7 and 8, for example, have covers for the 3* and 4* essentials in the progression ladder, while lower Clearance Levels may have the 2* and 3*, or even the 2* only, at the lowest levels. Placement rewards differ accordingly, and the Clearance Levels behave similarly between Story and Versus modes. In general, you will be better off selecting the highest Clearance Level open to you (especially in Versus), because the ISO-8 and Hero Point rewards are greater, even if the cover rewards aren't particularly useful to you. Command Point totals differ as well.
5) What are ISO-8 and Hero Points?
Spoiler
MPQ's micro-currencies. ISO-8 is used predominantly to train your characters. While you CAN spend ISO-8 on standard tokens or certain boosts, and in the early game you may find yourself drowning in ISO sufficiently to make the standard tokens especially seem like an attractive use of ISO, in the long run you'll wish you had it back. Use it for training, save it if you can't use it - because there WILL come a day.
Similarly, Hero Points can be used to purchase roster spots, cover packs, or boosts. If you're spending money to buy Hero Points, you may of course use them however you wish. I recommend focusing primarily on roster spots, though - eventually, a roster spot costs 1000 HP, and with over 100 characters in the game, 1k HP adds up as you build out. If you DO buy cover packs, limit yourself to the daily deals (unless, again, you want to splash the cash).
6) Okay, what about Command Points?
Spoiler
Command Points are MPQ's third micro-currency, but these aren't directly purchasable in quantity unless you spend at least $20 on the game in one shot. Outside of spending (either by you or by a fellow alliance member), you'll get some points from the hardest non-essential node in each Story sub, the 4* essential in each Story sub, periodic quantities from the Daily Resupply, Story/Versus progression rewards, and (potentially) Story/Versus placement rewards.
They're redeemed either to buy power levels for characters (20 CP per level for 3*, 120 per power level for 4*, 720 CP per power level for 5*), or special tokens that contain either 4* or 5* covers. I don't recommend spending Command Points on anything but Classic or Latest Legendary tokens. 3* covers are readily enough available that CP spending on them is probably unnecessary, and for what you'd spend on a 4* or 5*, you could pull 4-36 Legendary Tokens. Yeah, some of what you'd pull might be duplicate, unusable covers, but you'd almost certainly pull a few usable covers (and maybe quite a bit more than a few if your 4* and 5* rosters are still nascent).
Also! I don't recommend spending Command Points until you've reached the point of championing your 3* characters. 2* characters start at level 15, 3* at 40, and 4* at 70, so none of those will break your Story scaling or Versus matchmaking rating. 5*, however, start at 255, and you have about a 15% chance of pulling one of those from either Legendary token type. You'll be able to better sustain that if your 3* roster is making the champion transition.
7) It seems like each answer creates new questions. What are champions?
Spoiler
Basically, until late 2015, for 2* and above, once you hit max level for a character, any covers you pulled for that character were ISO fodder. Couldn't use them! With the advent of champions, you can feed that cover to a championed character for additional rewards in the form of ISO, tokens, Hero Points, and for 2* and 3* characters, covers for a specific 3* or 4* character, respectively. There is a modest ISO fee to champion a character, but the rewards along the champion path are well worth it.
You can even "farm" champions - if you max-level a 2* to level 94 and champion them, once they've been fed 50 champion levels, you can sell them for a passel of ISO, some Hero Points, and repeat the process to claim all those champion rewards again. It's slightly ISO-negative to do that, but you get tokens, Command Points, Hero Points, and the aforementioned covers every time through. 2* characters get 3* covers in their champion rewards; 3* get 4* covers; and 4* get Legendary Tokens (which have a 15% pull rate for 5*). You can "farm" 3* through 5* champions, also, but where 2* have 50 champion levels, 3* and above have 100 champion levels each, so you're PROBABLY not going to max-champ those characters with any alacrity unless, as with Hero Points, you spend money regularly, and in quantity.
One additional benefit? You can re-spec a championed character at will; if you have a specific build in mind, but the covers just didn't drop that way, you can either wait for the cover you want to drop and apply it to the character to 'fix' them, or you can champion the character once they've got 13 covers and 166 levels, and re-assign the power levels however you desire.
8) How should I focus on my roster growth?
Spoiler
When you start the game, focus on a few 1* characters. You'll start earning 2* covers pretty quickly, so you'll probably want to focus on 2-3 1* and otherwise start growing 2* characters as soon as you can. 1* characters can't champion, so the sooner you get 2* going and championed, the sooner you can start reaping the benefits.
3* covers drop reasonably frequently. Less often than they used to, now that Clearance Levels result in different placement rewards for players of different roster strengths, but reasonably frequently. Enough so that you should never worry about "having" to sell a 3* cover. Yes, the sooner that 3* is on your roster, the sooner you can build them, champion them, and all that jazz. And if you're spending money on Hero Points to fund your roster growth, rock on. But you might find yourself in a position where you're short on Hero Points and your roster is full. That's okay! A 3* you have to sell today is a 3* you'll see again someday. Heck, Deadpool's Daily Quest alone rotates through all the 3* in the game every 40 days or so, which means you could (in theory) fully cover an entire 3* roster doing nothing but playing DDQ for one calendar year or so. What's DDQ? More in the next answer.
4* covers are more scarce, but that scarcity also means it's going to take you longer to get enough covers for any given 4* to make them a valuable member of your roster. Use your judgment (or your wallet) when deciding whether or not to roster a 4* character. There are about a half-dozen 4* who get either 2 or 3 covers for free via the Daily Resupply, which is almost like a free 1/1/1 (except Star-Lord; he's the only one of that group to get just two covers). Those characters are: X-Force Wolverine, Invisible Woman, Nick Fury, Elektra, Star-Lord, and She-Thor. None of those guys are considered "top tier," but they're all useful in their own ways. You could do worse as a starter 4* collection when you get to that point, but hey - your call.
9) Anything else I should know?
Spoiler
Join an alliance as soon as you're able. Even if it's not a 'top scoring' alliance, just being in an alliance can get you as much as an extra 2000 ISO per day. It costs 69,530 ISO to raise a 2* character from its base of level 15 to its cap of 94, and another 5000 to champion that character. The bonus ISO for being in an alliance will cover that in just a smidge over 30 days.
Participate in Deadpool's Daily Quest every day. As you get started, you'll only have reliable access to the 1* fight, the two-wave fight, and the 2* fight. The 1* and 2* fight are worth a combined 1500 ISO/day, though, and the 2-wave yields a taco token, which can be redeemed for 2* covers, 3* covers, ISO, Hero Points, or health packs; you also have about a 4-5% chance of pulling a 4* cover or a Legendary token. As with spending Command Ponts, should you pull that Legendary Token, don't open it until you're beginning to champion your 3* characters.
Find a 2* team that works well together and get them raised to level 70+ as soon as you can; that will help you win the 2*-only fight in Deadpool's Daily Quest, and as soon as your 3* roster starts to grow, you can use those 2* characters to team with the essential 3* character for an extra taco token, and on their own to win an additional cover for the 3* character in the Big Enchilada. All told, between the daily ISO bonus for winning at least one fight, and the minimum 3700 ISO you can clear from DDQ if you have access to all five nodes, that's nearly 6000 ISO per day just from playing DDQ. It costs almost 120k to raise a 3* character from level 40 to level 166, so that's basically 5% of any given 3* character's leveling needs every day just for playing DDQ. If you play Story and Versus regularly, you can clear as much as 20k ISO in a day.
In general, you don't want for one character to far outstrip the rest of your roster in terms of levels. You don't want a 5* at level 255 hanging out when the rest of your roster are 2* characters in the mid-30s. Likewise, you probably don't want to max or champion 3* characters until your 2* characters are in their own champion cycles. Once the 2* characters are champions, however, they'll start feeding you 3* covers. Hawkeye, for example, feeds 3* Iron Man covers. You can use these either to roster a 3* you don't have yet (yay, DDQ accessibility!), to build a character who isn't yet at the maximum of 13 covers, or to add champion levels to championed 3*. As a result, it's a pretty good idea to keep an eye on which characters you have championed and what covers they feed, and focus your resources on the appropriate 3* so you can take maximum advantage of those covers.
I'll update this post over time if and when additional questions come up so that the answers are always readily available to new players, instead of forcing them to dig through the thread.
10-28-2016, 11:15 PM
