If you’re like me and put hours and hours into Marvel Puzzle Quest a few years ago, you might have been sitting around wondering what to do next. Well, worry no more, because DC is here with Heroes and Villains, their own Match 3 RPG for smartphones. It’s a lot of fun, but before long you might feel like you’ve hit a wall and can’t progress any more. Here’s what to do if you find yourself feeling that way.
Get All Your Earned Rewards
The first thing you need to do is make sure you’ve grabbed all the rewards you’ve already earned. For some reason, it feels like the game buries a lot of these rewards, but I don’t know why since it’s not like they’re time-limited or anything. Anyways, make sure you grab the chests on the bottom right corner of each map chapter, make sure you get the chests from the different achievement areas, and make sure you get your free energy from the store.
Complete All Available Missions
The next thing to do is explore all available gameplay styles beyond the main story. There’s assault (don’t worry, you’re not actually playing another person in real time, you’re just playing their team as if they were any story mission), challenges, events, and the choice missions that you access from the charges on the bottom left corner of the map itself. Each of these game types gives different types of rewards, and all of these rewards ultimately make your team stronger. Also, if you’ve been neglecting them, you can probably blast through a bunch of underpowered enemies to catch up with the main story, which will only give you more rewards.
Strengthen Your Team
The next thing to do is strengthen your team. The first thing you should do, to avoid wasting resources on characters you won’t end up using, is to recruit all the heroes you can. There are a few different resources that you can use to recruit characters, and since it seems like this is the only thing these resources are used for, you might as well take advantage and really only think twice once it comes to spending those purple gems (but even then, using 2,000 gems to get 10x premium recruits seems to be a pretty good use of them). Once you’ve recruited everyone, pick out your best characters (the ones with the most stars, probably), and then train them up to the max level. Just as a note, I recommend having one fully upgraded hero for every color for each hero/villain team (although, of course, neutral characters can pull double duty). After that, make sure you’ve geared them up as much as possible. This includes going to the shop and buying upgrade materials using your coins (since you probably have a lot). Finally, make sure to upgrade any powers you can upgrade (when you recruit a hero you already have, the recruited hero turns into a token to upgrade their passive power). This will make sure that you have the strongest team possible.
Have A Stronger Game Plan
Once you have the strongest team possible, it’s time to look at how you’re actually playing the game. First of all, it’s important to note that where you make a match affects which enemy is targeted (you can see in the first screenshot on this page that the top of each column has an arrow that either points to an enemy or doesn’t. Yes, the game tells you this, but I think it’s easy to forget. This is particularly important to think about because otherwise you might end up wasting attacks on enemies that aren’t there (though of course you’ll still be fueling up your characters’ special powers). Lastly, try to be more deliberate about which colors you go after/which powers you’re trying to fuel up. Speaking of which…
Dig Deeper Into Your Heroes
Once you’ve done everything listed above, it’s time to actually dig into your available heroes and see what their powers are doing. For example, you might have a green villain that seems less powerful than another green villain, but when you dig into their powers, the less-powerful one might have a useful healing skill, or a power that combines well with another hero you use. I list this step last because, if you’re anything like me, you’re distracted by using the coolest characters before you start digging deeper into this type of thing.
Rinse And Repeat
Once you’ve done everything listed above, your team should be a bit better! From now on, whenever you feel like you hit a wall, just cycle through all of these steps until you feel ready to take on the next mission. So far, the game seems like it’s not actually going to stop free-to-play players from having fun (well, assuming they don’t all of a sudden get a lot less generous with the energy… although I am somewhat nervous about that), so you should be able to brute force through any walls by strengthening your team using the steps above. Have fun!
One Last Thing: Autowins!
Having found myself stuck a few weeks after first publishing this guide, my wife showed me the way: autowins. Basically, you just go back to old levels you’ve already beaten and spend energy to “autowin” them and get a bunch of resources. Now, you’re gonna want to be careful here, because you can easily use up a ton of energy and suddenly find yourself feeling “energy pressure” for the first time, but it gets you so many resources that it’s worth it. If you end up doing a bunch in a row, you’ll probably level up in the process. More than that, you’ll get a ton of gear that you can use to upgrade your heroes! Find your favorite heroes, press the “auto-equip” button, and if you have full gear and are leveled up enough you’ll even be able to “Tier Up” your heroes for even more power.
Download DC Heroes and Villains for free for Android from the Google Play Store and for iPhone from the App Store
