Marvel Puzzle Quest (Beginner’s Guide)

Although this post seems to be extreme deviation from my usual Christian posts, I lead a normal human life and one of my favourite past times is playing Marvel Puzzle Quest (MPQ). I’m not really a fan of Marvel but I relish the concept of matching gems in the vein of Candy Crush. However in MPQ, there is added layer of skill-based moves depending on the character.

After playing for several weeks, these are my tips:

1. Spend your Hero Points on expanding roster spaces ONLY

Hero Points is the premium currency that comes in rare doses. Although it can be used to upgrade moves, open new cover packs. I’ve found that the best way is to use it for expanding your roster space. You see, if your roster size is small, you only have limited number of characters and got to toss some of them out regularly. Who to toss out? I’ll come to that later. Events also rotate characters that are boosted to higher levels, so having a wider roster of characters improves your chances in new events. So spend your Hero Points wisely as it is precious.

2. 1-star * characters to Keep or Toss

This topic is rather subjective and you might not agree. But hear me out.

Best 1-star characters:

• Juggernaut (Classic): He is a monster. Max him out to skill build 5/5 and level 40. His Green and Red skills cost very little Action Points (AP) to execute. His Headbutt (Red) has helped me win countless fights and Green isn’t too shabby either.
• Storm (Modern): Her health is rather low but her skills more than make up for it. My skill build for her is 5/5/3. She does a lot of tile-clearing moves that lead to potential cascades. Get her.
• Black Widow (Modern): She is excellent at controlling the opponent. My skill build for her is 2/5 (Thanks to Polarity’s guide).  Why 2 and not max out? Because the increased cost of AP is more than the actual effectiveness of the move. Just trust me.
• Iron Man (Model 35): I don’t really like him that much. Juggernaut is better than him in terms of health tanking and damage. But if you want to use him, the skill build 5/5/3 works well. You normally won’t even reach his blue skill.

1-star characters to toss/sell at once:

• Spiderman (Original): Skills are useless in damaging.
• Venom (Dark Avengers): Seems to be of use when paired with Spiderman. His skill Devour gets his full effectiveness when there are more than 8 web tiles. And that’s pretty difficult. Venom is better than Spiderman but still sucky.
• Hawkeye (Classic): Pretty useless.
• Yelena Belova (Dark Avengers): Pretty useless unless you like the cover picture.

Having said that, here’s the only viable character team:

Juggs/Iron Man + M. Storm +Widow

         

 

 

 

 

I prefer Juggernaut. Max out their levels except for Widow to be 7 levels lower than Iron Man. This allows Iron Man’s blue colour to tank for her (meaning the damage goes to him instead). Again, thanks to Polarity’s guide.

Last note, if you somehow draw 3-star characters,  just sell them unless they are boosted for a certain event. If not, just sell them for ISO-8. 2-star characters are a sticky issue and I’ll not cover it here.

3. Spend your ISO-8 on your best characters

If you’ve sold away the other characters, level up only your main team. Forget the rest. And if you’ve followed my advice, your roster should have enough space.

4. Join an alliance

I randomly joined an alliance because it gives you extra ISO-8 everyday. I don’t bother sending team-up help to other members because that means you can’t use those characters yourself. Unless your roster size is huge.