How To Strike Back
Now, in the beginning, or if you are power leveling you'll acquire low power cards through game play. These cards may seem great or worthless depending on how filled out your Power Card deck currently is. Remember, you want to fill out all of your power slots. So if you have empty slots, ANY power that fits in that slot is good, no matter how weak it compares to other cards.
So 1st you want to maximize your Bux cards to match your upkeep with your Career income. Stronger cards cost more, but be sure the output in stat points versus your upkeep cost is reasonable. Generally, it is as you go up, but there are a few exceptions where it makes more economic sense to buy a weaker Bux card. Next you want to fill up with as many Crystal Cards as you can. These can be won or purchased. Remember, only Mental Manipulation, Divine Fire, and Transport Reality are worth tiering, unless you are planning to polesit your toon below the level where these cards available.
Lastly, you want to acquire Morphon cards. This can be done through game play or purchase, but hold off on making purchases until you understand the principles outlined in this and future lessons.
Remember, you want to fill EVERY power slot. So you aren't selling ANY cards to farm resources until AFTER this criteria is met. But what do you do if you have an excess of Power Cards? At this point, you want to start selling cards off and use the Morphons or other igc gained to tier your other cards. With the exception of Mental Manipulation, Divine Fire, and Transport Reality, you should avoid tiering any Crystal cards. All other Crystal cards should be used as filler until they can be replaced with better cards and still maintain a complete deck of Power Cards. Again, players polesitting their toons below the lvl 84 through 90 threshold can take exception to this.
Now, let's go back to our gauge cards. For toons at or over level 90, the gauge cards are Mental Manipulation, Divine Fire, and Transport Reality. You want to tier at least 1 of each of these completely. Currently, and hopefully forever, that is tier 5. Let's look at the stats for these cards.
Mental Manipulation,
80 Att 130 Def 40 Move
Divine Fire,
140 Att 50 Def 60 Move
Transport Reality.
70 Att 40 Def 152 Move
The VAST majority of untiered Morphon cards will actually fall below these tiered Crystal cards. So, unless you're planning on tiering your Morphon cards to where they are stronger than your Crystal cards, these Crystal cards will serve you better than most untiered Morphon cards. I'm not just talking about the weak cards won from watching videos or doing missions and patrols either. Store bought Morphon cards are by and large subject to also fall under this. So you really do want to collect as many Crystal cards as you possibly can, unless of course you're Jeff Bezos' secret love child that collects a nice sum of hush money every month. (I don't know that this person exists. I'm just making jokes.) In some cases, it takes 2 or more tiers before a Morphon card out performs the top Crystal cards tiered. So again, if you are pretty sure you aren't going to spend the Morphons to power a card above what a tiered Crystal card can do, then it is a prime target to be sold once you have an excess of cards and can replace it with a top Crystal card, and the Morphons used to either buy Morphon cards that are better than your tiered Crystal cards, or to tier better Morphon cards, or even to buy gear or spin the Nova Shuffle.
Naturally, you want to sell your weakest cards 1st. The exception to this are cards that give enormous advantage per Morphon spent to tier. For example, Let's look at the card Noir World, won through gameplay in patrols.
Noir World
Level 1 64 Att 125 Def 77 Move
vs
Mental Manipulation
Level 5 80 Att 130 Def 40 Move.
Both cards are Defense cards. Noir World falls under the higher Def rating of the Crystal card's Defense and is pushed below Mental Manipulation, potentially falling off your deck. But it only costs 10 Morphons to tier. That isn't a lot and is actually a really good deal when it comes to stat points acquired per Morphon spent. But we'll get more into that aspect later. Right now, let's look at what those 10 Morphons do for you in THIS case.
Noir World
Level 2 80 Att 157 Def 97 Move
vs
Mental Manipulation
Level 5 80 Att 130 Def 40 Move.
Those 10 Morphons raised Noir World considerably, and made it worth tiering, primarily because this is just a good deal. So. let's recap up to this point.
1st, you want to fill out all your power slots with cards that can go there. Save ALL Morphon and Crystal power cards acquired through game play or purchase until this criteria is met. Do not spend resources tiering cards until you no longer need those resources to fill out your deck.
Once this is done, you want to replace weaker cards with stronger cards. This can be done through outright buying new cards or tiering existing ones to where they are useful. You want your weakest cards to be the strongest Bux cards you can get relative to the upkeep. (Remember, there are a couple exceptions in the Bux cards where the upkeep cost for one card isn't as high as the stronger card, but the amount of stat points gained per upkeep spent results in better stat scores for upkeep spent.) You want to have as many of these as your income will allow, until card excess pushes them out of your deck. At some point, you really want to have this be your weakest card.
As you gain more TOP Crystal cards, tier them. You want them to eventually replace all your Bux cards with stronger Crystal cards or stronger Morphon cards. This may never happen, but it's the goal before the next stage. Just like you want to replace all your Bux cards with Crystal cards, you also want to try to acquire as many stronger Morphon cards as you can to replace your Crystal and Bux cards. Again, this may never happen, but it's the goal before you move on to the next stage. Now, let's jump back to the gauge cards again.
Mental Manipulation,
80 Att 130 Def 40 Move
Divine Fire,
140 Att 50 Def 60 Move
Transport Reality.
70 Att 40 Def 152 Move
You've filled your power deck and have excess cards to sell off. Which ones should you sell? Should you tier the card instead and sell a different card? Well, before you sell anything, consider future growth. You're going to need cards to fill out new levels your toon reaches in the future. But if you're gaining Power Cards faster than you're creating power slots to put them, you might gain some benefit from selling the potentially weakest ones. By potentially weakest, I am only referring to cards you know you aren't going to tier.
Any Morphon cards you plan to keep, need to be stronger than the top fully tiered non Morphon cards you can afford. If they aren't, and you have no plans to make them such through tiering, then you might as well replace them as fast as you can with a fully tiered Bux or Crystal card in its place. Again, this is only if you have an excess of Power Cards.
So let's recap a little to show the extremes and everything in between, and contemplate where in the scale we fit so we can better plan long term.
1)The absolute ideal scenario is you have nothing but the best Morphon Cards all fully tiered culled from 1% Mystery Shuffle cards. This is only going to happen if you spend money, even at the lower levels. At the higher levels, this is a nigh impossibility.
2)You have all Morphon cards. Either naturally, or through tiering, all rank higher than the best fully tiered non Morphon cards you can afford.
3)You have no upkeep cards, but are fully stocked on Morphon and Crystal cards.
4)You have a lot of Morphon cards, but also have a lot of Crystal and Bux cards. Your Bux cards upkeep may take up your entire income.
5)You have Morphon, Crystal, and Bux cards. You are running the full measure or more (deficit) of Bux cards upkeep that your income can handle, possibly supplementing upkeep deficit with Bux gathered through game play, cash cows (discussed in a future lesson on alts) or the generous donations of others. It is possible you have cards gained through events or game play that are not as strong as your strongest Bux and Crystal cards. This player needs to seriously consider working in strategies on how to run large deficits when needed. We'll get into that in future lessons. Now, you're going to fit somewhere in there. You need to develop a strategy on how to manage your time and budget to make the most of your toon's potential.
The game has several divisions and so it allows even the most low budget toons the opportunity to perform on a top notch scale, even if it is at lower level divisions. What the best free and budget players will tell you is to slow level. This means to level at the absolute slowest pace possible to maximize your resources acquired each level, to optimize your gear and power base. All exp gain is done only to acquire more Morphons or Crystals at a high rate of resource per exp gain.
The faster you level and the smaller your budget, the harder this becomes. Remember, events are split into divisions based on level. So if your plan is to be competitive in events, then it is better to be at a lower level but stronger for that level, than it is to be higher level but only able to beat lower levels.
The exception to this is Division 1 toon trying to push the level cap wall. For Division 1 all that matters is being as strong as you can be. Levels is a way of gaining strength. Since strength per level doesn't matter to a Division 1 contestant, they might as well level as fast as they can. However, being a Division 1 toon at the top of the game requires a LOT of time and MONEY. If you want to be competitive but don't have both the time and a LOT of money to spend, Division 1 is not for you. It is far cheaper and less time consuming the lower the Division your toon operates at.
Lesson 6 will discuss how not all Morphon cards are created equal and why you should tier one over another.
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