For the last few weeks, I’ve been working on and writing about pretty serious topics, and so I thought why not freshen things up a little? Also seeing how I’m a big advocate for mobile games, I’ve decided to make a Tips & Tricks article for a game that I must admit, downloaded once, deleted and downloaded again. In other words I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it for a while now, but recently started playing it again, and I’m liking more and more every time. The game I’m talking about is Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.
0. (Optional) Dark Side Starter Pack
So, in the beginning of the game, or once you unlock the Dark Side part of the campaign, you’ll be prompted to a little screen offering you a Dark Side Starter Pack for 4.99$ which expires after about four days. Now, before you grab your pitchforks, let me explain. I hate DLC and microtransactions as well, but this is the only time in any game, that I’ve given money for something like this. And it’s a pretty good bargain, you get character shards, a 3-star character, enough crystals for a Chromium Pack and a lot of credits. Ironically it’s the only item in the in-game store that’s actually worth it and not overpriced.
1. Sim Tickets
If you do your dailies, you’ll notice that every day there’s a quest that gives you 25 ticket items. These are used to instantly complete a chapter in the campaign, or a cantina battle (once you unlock those). Save those for the inevitable times when you don’t want to play but you still want to complete daily quests.
2. Managing Your Resources
Since every character requires gear, you may notice that you’re always getting a piece, but you can’t equip it because it’s not the right slot for the characters you have. I suggest keeping any spare gear that you don’t use. First reason is because there is no inventory limit, meaning you can stack as many as you want. There’s a sell items tab where you can sell all the ”useless” gear you have around, but I advise against that, because the sell prices are abysmally low, and you never know when a newly unlocked character may need to equip gear that you just threw out.
3. Building a ”One size fits all” team
Galaxy of Heroes has a somewhat linear and predictable gameplay, but there are a few things to consider when building a team. In order to build the best team for every battle, make sure to always have a tank and healer, for sticky situations when enemies are focusing on a character from your team who isn’t build to sustain large amounts of punishment, so that the tank can ”agro” while the healer… well heals your team. Having two or three well equipped damage dealers helps as well. This kinda ties in with tip #4 which is…
4. Prioritising Characters
It goes without saying, but gear and leveling priorities should be as follows: Healer > Tank > Damage dealer. While a bad tank is something your team can live without, a crappy healer character is crucial in order to achieve victory. This is also why you should use Ability Mats on character abilities that can benefit the entire team or do lots of damage.
5. Gearing and Leveling
Once you have the characters you want to focus on, it’s a good idea to gear them first. Every character has six gear slots and after those are filled up you can upgrade the character. Leveling your teammates is done by using experience items which are divided by tiers. I always keep the higher tier XP droids for later, and always level up character with low tier XP ones, and so should you! All this gear and XP talking raises a new question: Where do you get stuff like that? I’m glad you asked. You get these from…
6. Challenges!
I just want to clear up something. Completing chapter in the campaign or Galactic War, Cantina Battles and what-have-you awards you with gear and xp items. However these usually use up your energy. There is however another way! Daily challenges are a great way to stack up on items that you need and/or want. These are different every day, and can be played up to five times before you have to wait for the reset, but they’re relatively easy and offer great rewards. Items awarded from completing challenges include Gear items, XP Droids, Credits or Ability Materials . Challenges are usually accompanied by modifiers that restrict which types of character you can use or give the boss in the end of every battle a buff, and are honestly nothing to fear.
7. Shipments
Almost every subsection of the game has a shipments tab. Once you get to a high enough level and gain access to all of them, you’ll notice they each have their own currency tied to them. Shipments reset once every six hours, and an item can only be bought once, so that you don’t stack up on too much things at once, but gradually unlock stuff. I try to buy shipments at least twice daily, because each day there’s something that I need.
8. Cantina Battles, Galactic War and Key Card Battles
Cantina Battles are tied to a separate energy pool, and each battle costs eight energy. They are mostly a waste of time, HOWEVER you can play them as many times as you want, as long as you have energy and they always reward you with a special currency you can use to buy shards to unlock Boba Fett (not gonna lie he is pretty kewl).
Galactic War is survival type of scenario. Your character’s health and ability cooldowns carry from battle to battle, but after each fight you get a reward, so that you WANT to continue playing, and if a member of your team dies, you can replace them.
Key Card Battles unlock at level 52 and are supposed to be a high risk – high reward gamemode, but the community of the game feels pretty negative towards them, because they use up too much energy, and the rewards aren’t exactly great.
9. PvP
PvP is rank-based, so you may start with people who are easy to fight and when you get to the big boy league, things can get pretty hairy. However, based on your rank you get an in-game mail every day containing rewards from that bracket. The most expensive items in the shipment tab cost 400 tokens, so my advice is to try and keep a rank from between 2000 to 1500, if you’re not focusing on PvP all that much…
10. Crystals
Never, I repeat NEVER use crystals to refill energy, even though they’re a renewable currency. You also don’t have to buy a chromium pack every time you have 350 crystals. The best way to use them is to stack up until you have enough to buy the 8-pack from the store. That way you have a GUARANTEED chance to get a hero and you buy it with a 10% discount.
11. Unlocking Additional Characters
Most of the time, the game will reward you with character shards. Once you get enough, you unlock a character, and depending on that character’s tier, after unlocking them, any additional shards for the same character go to upgrades, so that you increase their power. Almost every battle rewards shards, and they can be played as much as you want. Hard Mode fights can only be played three times a day, but if RNGesus is on your side you’ll get your promised shards. If you want to upgrade a particular character, go and do battles that reward with shards for that particular character.
12. Daily Quests
My last bit of advice should go without saying but: DO YOUR DAILIES! Seriously, they reward you with all kinds of things, and once you get to a certain point, they don’t take more than 15-20 minutes to complete. Also make sure to login daily, because this game has the best login reward system I have ever seen.
If you sticked around long enough to read this I congratulate you! Now go build your party of heroes and conquer the galaxy. May the force be with you!
…but before we do, let me tell you a story. It was the 4th of August 2015, and I was on my way to the local games retaile
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