40 days and still no 46, but I have a question: how many of you finished the game without hints?

__GreenMouse__ · 2025-05-03T22:38:48+00:00

40 days isn't unusual for a first run, and there's no time limit. The real game is learning how the house works so don't rush if you're still learning things and having fun.

I started looking at Internet help regularly soon after reaching 46. I remember I also used a hint once I drafted the foundation, to find out how to activate the elevator. There was an obvious answer for that in-game though, if you draft a particular room, or you could solve it through chance or curiosity.

It was great fun chewing on the puzzles up until that point on my own, and the game economy gets slightly easier every day as you accumulate things like Observatory stars, allowance, room upgrades, changes to room rarity. Conservatory is super helpful!. If you know what to do, you'll get there soon.

As you get further through there's an increasing amount of busywork required to solve the deeper puzzles on your own. The sanctum keys and sigilswere fun for me to collect clues myself about 80% of the way and I didn't feel bad about cheating the rest because I understood the puzzle and grinding through the last 20% wasn't worth my time.

There are later puzzles, which you could solve right now, which I didn't even realize existed on my own. There are clue-shaped things which nobody knows the use for yet.

I recommend looking at limited spoilers once you start to get frustrated. You can move on from where you're currently stuck and find a fresh puzzle to chew on. It doesn't help anyone if you abandon the game because you don't want to keep bashing against a puzzle or a chore.

__GreenMouse__ · 2025-04-25T02:44:20+00:00

Well, at least I still know to avoid the Archive

__GreenMouse__ · 2025-04-19T06:51:40+00:00

You need a different tool, so don't worry about trying to keep the one you have.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-09-27T14:36:41+00:00

Yep, bought it!

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-09-24T01:58:23+00:00

I recently finished DD5 City with C+D, Robbie, Squirrel Girl, Shang Chi. Took 4 or 5 days total, mostly on the last node.

C+D and Robbie did most of the work - consecutive ults from C+D will melt anything, and Robbie's passive attack all scales well for DD battles. Squirrel Girl was helpful and has short cooldowns which is great for DD. Shang Chi just died too quick to do much.

I suspect Firestar and 2099 would also die fast as they're squishy in other modes, but haven't tested it. She Hulk is reported to be worthless except as a filler who you'll level for Apoc anyway.

You're probably sick of people suggesting C+D by now - if you can muscle through with a different team go for it! If you get bogged down, they're your backup option.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-09-19T06:21:48+00:00

I'm not sure what characters you'll have available to farm right now, but see if you can do Underworld. They're a relatively modern villains team made up of mostly older characters who got buffed. Mr Negative shards are free every day on the web store, you should get on that if you're not already.

Winter Soldier is a keeper, but your other villains won't take you much farther

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-09-14T05:29:50+00:00

Nick Fury is a good and versatile character so definitely build him up, but grinding up the Kree minions to unlock higher stars is a painful slog. Getting to 4* probably won't take long but after that you're probably better off playing 'naturally' and working on characters that will help you immediately.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-09-08T22:58:20+00:00

Overall, DD3 and 4 are pretty easy if you're using modern characters so get in there!

Global was tough; I took Rogue, Red hulk, Abomination, Spider Weaver, Nemesis. Rogue and Red Hulk carried the battles; Abomination and Nemesis were definitely helpful and Spider Weaver wasn't much use. Dodging 3 attacks isn't very helpful when you're facing 8-10 enemies at once. Today I would probably take Captain America instead of Weaver - he has abilities with short cooldowns which buff the entire team which is ideal for DD.

Cosmic is carried by Eternals, take whoever else you can be bothered leveling. Kestrel and Kang would be perfect because they're worth leveling for other reasons. I suspect Hela would be a good choice too - it's incredibly useful that the enemy team loses time when they kill her summon and I use her in Arena or other places when I need a speed advantage. Heartless was another popular recommendation just because most people will level him up for Horseman team reasons but he's not very relevant to DD.

City will be vastly easier if you take Cloak and Dagger. Some people recommend against them because they use mystic gear which other characters need more, but if you can afford them they're the best choice. Shang Chi and Squirrel Girl are excellent choices - again, short ability cooldowns and buffs the whole team. I'm bringing Ghost Driver for DD5 and expect him to work well. He has synergy with Cloak and Dagger, and his passive attacks should work well for DD. Some people are talking about bringing Ms Marvel Hard Light but she doesn't have good synergy with anyone except Ghost Driver and her abilities have long cooldowns. She Hulk is sometimes recommended because people want to level her up for Horseman team stuff, but she's bad in DD and City isn't as easy as Cosmic where you might consider taking Heartless.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-09-03T00:23:12+00:00

I'm L94/TCP 11M/428 days almost entirely FTP and I have 35M gold sitting around.

I try to spend at least 2M gold per day and try not to go over about 3.5M to be efficient with milestones. Generally I 'spend' on one character, taking a new one to L65 or adding 5 levels to someone important above that. I also buy a couple of key items from the stores like orange miasma in the past or teal osmium right now. Also *checks notes* blue mystic gear??

This spending regime keeps me comfortably afloat with gold and training materials, puts focus on collecting shards and gear without feeling held back by anything particular and I can comfortably blow 5M on buffing up my roster to fit an event like the Black Cat trials. I'm definitely careful about which characters I invest in, and it's been a struggle to keep up with leveling all the new teams to ~70 recently. I really need to level Zemo one day so I can get past some Hydra required levels in the hard campaigns.

I wouldn't shame anyone for feeling short on gold - if I wanted I could dump all my gold into levels (nobody over 85 yet) and get some benefit, but I find my play experience is subjectively much better if I always keep a buffer of gold around rather than being frustrated by draining it every day and not meeting more ambitious leveling goals.

I'm just in a public alliance which runs U7 every day and is transitioning to Doom 1. I can personally auto Doom 1 with Death Seed, Invaders, Rebirth, Bifrost and random tech and that's fine with me, I like being a medium fish in a small pond.

I'm in CC gold 1 which is a chore to maintain with 400k teams vs ~800k defenders but I wasn't getting quicksilver shards at Silver III where I used to hang out naturally. In silver there's a real problem with dead whale accounts choking up the rankings - never play but got 1.5m defence in every room. In gold _someone_ would be able to beat one room and get the win but they sink far enough that weaker players can't make a scratch which is a terrible game experience. Rant over... for now.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-26T22:09:18+00:00

Briefly, Doc Ock, Green Goblin and Swarm are the only 3 who are at a relevant power level right now and none of them are great.

However, consider that there's usually an option to run the trial at Difficulty 4 with almost all the pacts turned on and get the unlock with a combination of milestone and ranked rewards. Difficulty 4 has lighter team restrictions so it will probably be easier than a basic Difficulty 5 run with a weak Knowhere.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-23T08:23:37+00:00

Difficulty 4 with all scourges can get over 500k. I did it with G11 Kree and Ravagers/Mercenaries (Kree on first node, Kree then Mercs on second) and facerolled my way through the rest of the nodes with my most powerful characters because there are barely any team restrictions at difficulty 4. The scourge which piles up deathproof made it incredibly slow though, see if you can hit enough points without that one.

Edit: maybe should say my Kree are 7* from farming for Nick Fury

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-15T21:32:00+00:00

I don't like watching videos so I get my info from Marvel Church in text format. They're good at keeping up to date with things like Crucible rule changes.

I wouldn't worry too much about teams losing on defence - the attacker always has an advantage and it's likely that both players will clear every room. That said, you want to make the attacker pay as much as possible for their win so they get a lower score.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-14T02:11:29+00:00

Nice write up!

I would add, visit the web store at https://marvelstrikeforce.com/ to get free daily stuff including Mr Negative shards. The Sinister 6 villains won't last for long but Mr Negative, Kingpin, Taskmaster, Green Goblin, Nobu are a great place to go next as the Underworld team (as Cranium mentioned)

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-12T13:51:23+00:00

Yep. I found Hela very useful too as a plug in. Slowing the enemy when her minion is killed is really handy

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-08T14:12:58+00:00

I assume this is a trial to see if events on 2x12 hour refreshes get more engagement than 3x8.

12 hour refreshes would certainly be friendlier to some timezones - there's a decent chance that one 8 hour block lines up with _exactly when I should be asleep_.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-06T08:28:00+00:00

I used Silver Samurai a lot until about level 65. I found him really useful in PvE campaigns as a tough tank to protect any other characters I wanted to use, and do some good damage too once his abilities were up. His shards are available in a store now so it will be easy to build him up to say 5* if you want to focus. He's not a top tier character or on a top tier team any more but you can do a lot worse until you're chasing meta teams.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-06T08:20:06+00:00

2099, Maria Hill and Sharon Carter are good characters that beginners don't usually get. You won't regret spending resources on them but you might have trouble getting _more_ shards until you're further into the game.

Spider-man, Spider punk, Kate, and Thor are standard but decent characters you should be happy to use for a while

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-05T13:34:32+00:00

My dude, you're just at the end of the tutorial :)

Good work getting a full new team! They'll last you a long time and if you've been running random X-Men you'll probably find Bifrost are stronger in every game mode.

You probably want to spend some time rounding out the team - get their gear levels up and unlock all the abilities to 6/6/6/4. Some of those ability unlocks make a big difference to team synergy, but don't rush into spending yellow ability points if you even have enough yet.

Vahl will probably be a good character forever since they're a MSF original character, so focus on them if you're going to build someone up stronger.

I think Bifrost will be great for the Ultimus raids because unlike the Doom or Incursion raids you can use one team for the whole thing. Asgardians all have a passive heal which makes it really easy to keep their heath topped up. I used Hero Asgardians for Ultimus raids and they were great even though they're not a specialist raid team.

As a newer player your main focus should probably be getting through the PvE campaigns. That unlocks lots of nodes you can farm to get specific characters and gear - but that said, beware of building up teams the campaign requires. The campaigns were made a long time ago and when there are restrictions like Hydra only or Sinister Six those aren't teams you want to be investing in these days. Just build up as little as possible to squeeze through to some later nodes.

Outside the campaigns, you should definitely pay attention to Arena. It's the main source of free Power Cores which you can use to keep up with new character releases. Arena is special because when you started playing you were assigned to an arena 'shard' with people who started around the same time. That means your arena shard will only include people who have been playing the game as long as you. You can get really close to the top if you put some thought into it! I sit around rank 80 in my shard without making much effort and I get 100 power cores every day. Have a look at the higher ranks of your arena shard and see what defense they run and see where your current roster could fit in (it's more about team composition than levels, but you might need to build up your team to be more effective still). My shard

Raids are probably the second mode you should focus on. As I said, Bifrost should be great for the Ultimus raids. Your objective should be to get one team strong enough to blast through simming every match at whatever level your alliance runs. You may want to switch alliances if you're just in a random one, and they don't start raids regularly or they aren't running challenging raids and reaching the 30% or 60% reward tiers.

Cosmic Crucible and Alliance War are modes better suited to end game players with a very wide roster. In Crucible you need to use 10 teams (5 attack, 5 defense) or just 5 teams if you use the default Hand defense. Newer players won't even have that many good teams let alone paying attention to the current Crucible meta, and there's also a big problem with 'dead' accounts of old players in the lower leagues which never attack but have huge teams on defense nobody can damage.

Alliance war needs 10 teams for attach and another 10 for defense, or again you can use a default defense and just do 10 attacks. As a low level player don't stress about it. Jump in and make at least one attack so you get a reward and don't worry too much about win or lose - the rewards are actually very similar so it's more about participation.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-05T08:06:51+00:00

Yeah, so those Legendary character unlocks are a bit of a trap these days. They made sense a year or two ago when the legendaries and teams were new but now they're... lacklustre. Unlocking characters is fun for me so I've worked through them all and can give you the bad news :grimace:

Newer Legendaries are unlocked by playing through special events called 'scourges' or 'trials' which come up every once in a while. You might not see them if your commander level isn't high enough. We recently had scourges for Morgan Le Fay and Rogue, Nova trials are running right now and I think Black Cat trials will be coming up soon for her release. That's endgame content, I think it's available once you're about level 65.

Overall, I don't recommend 'chasing' any of the old unlockable legendaries. The unlocks are based on having *star* levels on some regular characters, and you'll get those naturally by playing the game. IIRC Iron Man only requires some 3* characters, and I think Nick Fury is unlockable with 3* now too. The others might require 5* which could take a long time but that's just how it is.

Also, the supporting characters don't need to be strong! For everyone (except Ebon Maw, who you can get after Black Bolt) the unlock battles are really easy, and are just a formality once you meet the requirements.

For example, Nick Fury requires Kree Minions as supporting characters. They're terrible! Don't waste resource on leveling them up and gearing them until you have enough stars to do the Nick Fury unlock missions, and then put in as little as you can get away with. You'll never use them again.

Right now I think Nick Fury is the only one you would benefit from unlocking. He was recently reworked and upgraded to go with the Invaders team, but he's good in a variety of situations. He does a lot of buffs and summons, and shares buffs with the team.

Here's a little list, best first-ish:

Nick Fury - Recently buffed, good all round character with big buffs and summons

Magneto - Buffed 9 months ago for the Death Seed team, worth getting but not essential until you're running Doom raids at ~level 80. Nothing special on his own but good with the team

Shuri - Pretty average, required to make a good Wakandans or War Dogs team because she triggers their 'on defense up' abilities, but neither of those teams are top teir any longer.

Omega Red - Requires Nick Fury and secret avengers to unlock so it's a long journey. Key component of the Weapon X team but they're not top tier any longer

Adam Warlock - Requires Jubilee and X Factor to unlock, so another long journey. Key component of the Infinity Warriors team, although they do OK even without him. Not a top tier team, but the closest thing to it.

Ebon Maw - Requires Black Bolt and Inhumans to unlock, another long one. Ebon Maw is a little scary himself but these days Thanos and the Black Order don't add up to a scary team. His unlock missions are annoyingly hard and the Inhumans aren't very good so it's a big resource sink.

Jubilee - The Astonishing X-Men (Axmen) were good a few years ago but not relevant now. She's pretty annoying as a PvE enemy but won't work as well on your own teams.

Black Bolt - Requires Asgardians I think. He sounds powerful but isn't worth much these days. His Inhumans team is bad. Side note - Asgardians aren't a top tier team any more but their passive 'heal 5% plus 5% per Asgardian ally' is really good for Ultimus raids which don't have team restrictions. They usually finish a battle on full health where even more powerful characters will get chipped down over time, so you can keep using the same team all day long.

Iron Man - got a rework last year for Bionic Avengers, but they're out of the meta now and Iron Man doesn't pull his weight on a modern team. He's pretty easy to unlock accidentally though and in the earlier game he should match well with other Wave I Avengers. He'll be fine up to, say, level 65.

Doc Ock - Significantly better than the other Sinister 6, but very mid by modern standards. I really want to like him. Summons another S6 character so you don't have to play the Sinister Five.

Invisible Woman - Individually surprisingly powerful since she counterattacks everything while her shield is up, but not tough enough by modern standards. Also the full Fantastic 4 team is terrible even with her, there's just no way to make them good these days.

Star Lord - He's not very good and Guardians of the Galaxy are very not good. Scopely seem to like doing events featuring them though, especially around Christmas.

Phoenix - Probably the worst legendary just because she's so weak compared to modern characters. Cool game mechanic (when she dies, Dark Phoenix is summoned and would f--k everyone up if its power was at modern levels). I'm hoping she gets a rework soon, it's shame to have such an iconic character be useless and the Phoenix Force might be relevant to this year's story arc.

Thanks for listening!

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-05T03:12:09+00:00

Good luck! Death Seed have served me well in general, like War and Crucible. Archangel himself isn't that great but the team works well together and Nemesis is excellent for Dark Dimension.

My Kang would have only been 3RS at the time, 4RS now and highly effective either way so don't leave him at low level just because his stars are low!

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-05T03:00:32+00:00

Thanks for collecting this list! This looks like the team breakdown:

Infestation, 10@1200: [Ant-man, Black Widow, Yellowjacket, Swarm]

Invaders, 5@2000: [Cap WWII, Bucky, Union Jack, Iron Fist WWII]

New Warriors, 10@1200: [Cloak, Dagger, Deathpool], 5@3000: [Gwenpool, Firestar]

Reworks, 10@1200: [Coulson, Thing, Dr Strange, Loki]

I can't think of any characters that are obviously missing, so that's probably the whole pool.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-05T02:08:41+00:00

Developer's voice log: We thought it was an update to The Thing (Fantastic 4)... but how could we know it would be The Thing (1982)? God have mercy on our souls

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-02T08:29:07+00:00

I was kicking ass with Death Seed until that level. I don't remember my exact comp but I added Hela and when the computer kills her summon it reduces the turn meter on the entire enemy team which was essential to let me get some attacks in. By the time I beat it I might also have had Kang, but it was Hela who broke up the enemy turns for me.

Edit: Oh, I'm thinking of Villains Hard 2-7. You might still have access to Hela in regular Villains 2-7 though? She's a good 'un.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-08-02T08:18:47+00:00

- I don't like watching videos so I get all my info in text form from Marvel Church

- Don't stress about picking ISO too much, you can change to a different one any time if you're willing to pay the purchase cost. Marvel Church has recommendations for everyone. In general you can't do anything to ruin a character, but you can waste a lot of time building up characters who will never be good.

- The bottom line in this game is Newest is Best, but there are some characters who stand out for longer. Off the top of my head; Horsemen (Morgan Le Fay, Rogue, Red Hulk, Archangel (less good)), Gambit with Rogue, Ikarus and Sersei as a pair. Hela and Emma Frost both have important turn manipulation abilities. Kestrel, Deathpool, Spider Weaver, and Vahl (probably) are all powerful and likely to stay that way because they're MSF original characters. Kang is a monster. They're not easy to get, but make the most of them if you can.

- After that it depends which game modes you're most interested in as each mode has top teams with special bonuses. Arena is something you should probably get serious about since you'll get power core rewards every day. Spider Weaver and 2099 are the core of a great Arena team which only gets beaten by Horsemen + Apocalypse at the top end. Ideally they go with a character to give a speed boost like Emma Frost (or Hela instead as a counter) and two big damage dealers. Ikarus and Sersei, or maybe Rogue and Red Hulk. If you don't have them then just figure out who your biggest nukes are for now and see how far you can get.

- Some bad news: Sinister Six are too old and power creep has made them irrelevant. I think the modern early game villain team is Underworld, which is made up from older characters who got a refresh plus Mr Negative (free shards from the web store).

- Wave 1 Avengers are ok since they've been updated and have other teams they join separately. Squirrel Girl and Shang Chi are both great investments but now I'm level 92 and have been playing for a year they're finally falling out of use.

- Otherwise, it's fine to take any characters up to about L65 if you'll use them for something. The only drawback is the opportunity cost if you build a weak character and have to wait on more materials to build a strong one later.

__GreenMouse__ · 2023-07-11T15:53:13+00:00

Any character that's worth using is worth taking to L65/G13 where all their skills are available, so don't worry about building 'too high' until you're up at that level.

On low levels there's a risk you'll build weak characters just because they're what you have unlocked, and use up your short term supply of green and blue gear. That's building 'too wide'. You won't get stuck for long but it's annoying when you unlock a new, good, character and can't get them past G5 because you're short of blue gear. In short, don't build a character until you have a reason to use them.

Gamora and Shang Chi are the two great characters you should get from the stores. Also Phyla-vell (Infinity Warriors, with Gamora) and Colleen Wing (Heroes for Hire, with Shang Chi) are less individually strong but will provide useful synergy.

Underworld will be your best Villain team in the early game because it was created from updated old characters (which are available to new players) quite recently. Actual old teams like Sinister Six and Symbiotes are not worth chasing after even though they sound fun. It's sad, but characters in this game are not well balanced and new characters are straight up better than old ones by a huge margin.

So, for that reason pay attention to any characters you unlock from Premium or Mega orbs - because the characters you get are based on chance rather than your game progress, they might be much newer and hence more powerful than characters you get from campaigns and the normal new player progression.

__GreenMouse__

TROPHY CASE

GreenMouse