First Team(s)

This post focuses on the FIRST team you need to develop, where they excel and where they fall short, who to drop out and when and which teams to focus on later in the game.

Keep in mind that there are far BETTER teams in the game but obtaining them requires money a big amount of luck or money. They will not be described here but if you get some of the characters described in this post that will be useful in the later stages of the game, keep progressing them.

Limited start

In the beginning you will have only a handful of characters to use and you will want to develop BOTH heroes and villains equally to progress their respective campaigns and later the nexus campaign.

But as you level up and clear achievements and daily objectives, you will get orbs that will help you unlock other characters. This guide will help you focus your resources on the characters that are most valuable and save on those that will not provide as much later in the game.

DO NOT invest blue gear or ability materials in ravager minions and don’t progress their level beyond what is needed to clear early campaign nodes.

It is very important to develop ONLY one or two teams first that will help you get to other content. You want the bare minimum of your characters to be the best they can be for the least amount of resources because there will be better teams in the future and you will want to use those materials on them without looking back on the teams you used long time ago but have very little worth now.

Heroes

Team

Alternatives

Rationale

The three S.H.I.E.L.D. Minions are easily accessible within the first week of playing. They are Skill characters and that means the gear for other more valuable characters will not be used. They are very good in early arena, raids and blitz. It doesn’t cost a lot in ability materials to unlock their best synergies. Once matched with Coulson and Fury they will be one of the top teams in the game. Not that important but they are also used to unlock Iron Man.

Thor plays a part in both Cosmic and Mystic Campaign later on. He is a part of Asgardian team that is one of the top 5 teams at this time. And he is also required to unlock Black Bolt which is one of the top characters in the game. He will be unlocked through the welcome calendar just by logging in every day. He is a mystic so he will lift a bit of that skill material pressure from the team.

Captain America is a very plug ‘n’ playable character that can be used in many other teams and it is always. He is Bio so materials required for him should not clash with any other of this team’s members. He provides energy to Thor and a bit to one other team member. He also and provides the sorely needed defense-ups to this team.

I will not write much about the Trooper or Operative as they get left behind later in the game and it is hard for them to find a “home” in other teams. This means using resources on them is wasteful in the long term.

Investment

Note that this is the top investment I could recommend at this time. You will only want invest in them sufficiently to 3-star Heroes 5-3. After that stop! Exception here being Thor as he will need to be beefy for the cosmic and mystic campaigns.

Character	Level	Gear tier	Basic	Special	Ultimate	Passive
S.H.I.E.L.D. Assault	48	4	3	3	N/A	3
S.H.I.E.L.D. Medic	54	8	4	4	N/A	3
S.H.I.E.L.D. Security	50	6	3	4	N/A	2
Captain America	48	7	3	4	2	1
Thor	60	10	5	5	5	4

I have left the star rank out because, other than stats, it benefits them only for obtaining Iron Man which is not that important. This means you don’t need to farm them. Just to keep competitive in arena, to help clear content but you can prioritize other characters over them. Exception is Thor which is required for Black Bolt so you won’t mind ranking him up.

Availability

You should be able to clear campaigns with S.H.I.E.L.D. Minions within the first week of playing as well as Thor. Captain America will be unlocked within 2 weeks of playing at 3 stars.

Character	Campaign	Other
S.H.I.E.L.D. Assault	Nexus 2-3	
S.H.I.E.L.D. Medic	Heroes 2-3 Villains 1-6	
S.H.I.E.L.D. Security	Heroes 3-6	Arena Store (don’t buy here)
S.H.I.E.L.D. Operative	Heroes 4-3	
S.H.I.E.L.D. Trooper	Villains 4-3	
Captain America	Nexus 1-3 Heroes 6-9	Welcome Calendar
Thor		Welcome Calendar, Raid Orbs

Villains

Team

Alternatives

Rationale

Mercenaries are an easily available team that recently got a boost. They are also required for Payday event. Since gold is the constant bottleneck in the game they should be on your priority list. They are available early in the game and you should progress their star level continuously to progress in payday in order to minimize and postpone the gold bottleneck as much as possible.

Crossbones is a good early game villain with good damage and but he brings nothing else to the table. And has no later use except for maybe some challenges. But good villains will be hard to find at this stage. That is why he is included.

Hand Sorceress is a mystic hand villain. She will provide heals that are absent from this team. Farm-able very early in the game on 2 nodes.

Yondu is a cosmic character that may be useful for the Cosmic campaign where we will get Scientist Supreme but with this guide you will manage with only the 3 Asgardians. Also has some value to unlock Star Lord but for this guide this is low value.

Investment

This, like for the heroes team, is the top investment I can recommend at this time. Build them up just enough to 3-star Villains 5-3. And in case of Yondu only keep investing if you need his help to 3 star Cosmic 1-9 or further for mystic campaign. Then leave them on the side.

Character	Level	Gear	Basic	Special	Ultimate	Passive
Mercenary Riot Guard	51	5	3	3	N/A	1
Mercenary Lieutenant	49	5	3	2	N/A	1
Bullseye	42	4	3	2	2	1
Hand Sorceress	44	4	3	2	N/A	1
Crossbones	40	4	3	2	2	1

Availability

Character	Campaign	Other
Mercenary Riot Guard		Blitz orbs
Mercenary Lieutenant	Villains 3-3	
Bullseye	Heroes 2-6 Villains 1-3	
Yondu	Heroes 1-9	
Hand Sorceress	Heroes 2-9 Nexus 3-3	
Crossbones	Beginner event	Blitz orbs

Goals Reached

Don’t expect much from these teams. Their goal is to set you up initially and to get you to Heroes and Villains 5-3 nodes so you can farm AIM Assaulter and Security. This team may even get you to under 1000 arena and make your life easier in raids.

To do list

While you are building this initial team you should also be doing some tasks to prepare for the next stages of the game. This part of the article lets you know what to do in other game parts.

Arena Store

• Unlock
• Unlock
• to 6 stars
• If you unlocked Okoye, Black Panther and Killmonger then pause AIM Researcher to unlock to get you started on the Chaos Theory event.

Raid Store

Orbs are normally a far better value so I can’t believe what I am saying but buy these characters:

• – He doesn’t drop at all from the orbs and you need him for Black Bolt
• – You want to get to Phoenix as soon as possible so 6-star him ASAP
• – Just to keep up with other Wakandans for the chaos theory event

If you buy orbs you will have all characters from the orb at around 4 stars.

If you buy the shards from the store you will have 3 characters you need for this guide at 5 stars for the same cost. And you will avoid the physical pain felt when you get Ravager Stitcher.

Don’t buy gear unless no other option. At least for now and only if you are investing in Asgardians or AIM.

Blitz Store

This is a hard one as normally I would say open orbs because of the gold and better value per shard but for this guide you will need only 4 characters from the store at most. so i suggest getting these 4 to 5 stars and then opening orbs.

• – 5 star
• – 5 star
• – 5 star
• – buy to catch up to other mercenaries only for the payday event. Then pause.

Once this is done or if you are gold starved go for the orbs .

War store

• Unlock
• 6 stars

Resource allocation

As a general rule of thumb, don’t use anything you don’t need right now. An example would be Purple gear orbs. Save them for when you know which characters will be using or an orb opening event. Another example would be Ravager characters (or any other). Mine sits at 500 power just because I had no other villains to go through villains campaign at the time. He will stay there as long as I don’t find a use for him or until they change him so he is not trash.

Energy

Keep buying 4 energy refreshes daily for power cores. It is the best investment of your cores. Benefits are numerous.

Guild

This is very important. A good guild may have use from you and you from them. Your progress will be much slower without the daily raids, donations and Stark tech. Please check Marvel Strike Force discord channel to find a good guild.

Keep donating to be able to buy red stars promotions for your characters.

Also you won’t be able to farm Sif or Graviton and other war store characters unless you are in an alliance that plays war or level 20 at least.

Other

Blitz and raids are very important to your roster and character development. Keep blitzing and raiding as much as you can.

Where to next?

By now you should be able to guess. We only progressed campaigns to get AIM characters and in stores we are focusing on Asgardians.

Asgardians are the ones that will get you through the cosmic campaign to get Scientist Supreme and mystic campaign to get Loki. They are your arena, raid and war defense team. They can get you Black Bolt which is needed for Ebony Maw.

As you will probably not have all the Asgardian characters you will have to use replacements. Scientist Supreme you will use as a healer of the group so she has a priority over other AIM characters in terms of leveling, abilities and gear.

AIM will be used much later on in the Dark Dimension I. They are easy to farm, don’t need a lot of resources and even though slow for raids, they have super sustain that is needed for this game mode.

DDI is super important to set you up for Dark Dimension II and III.

Please read this guide to discover how to progress your teams further.

Comments

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