Part one of this blog is for people thinking about taking up Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. I wish I knew what I was in for before I started.
Being 40 something I was brought up on a diet of fruit, veg, regular exercise and Star Wars. George Lucas gave us a universe of timeless enjoyment. The good guys were hopelessly lost, the bad guys were so very good at being bad. It was what every eight year could ever need to spur on their imagination.
Move forward 30 something years, ignoring those 3 terrible incidents, and we have mobile phones and freemium apps. You know the download and play for free but pay for some stuff if you want it games.
For two years I had not touched any game, be it PC or mobile, bar Words with Friends which is really a language development tool rather than a game :). Then one bored lazy day and a quick app store search led me to the Star Wars Galaxies of Heroes.
“COLLECT, FIGHT, DOMINATE
Collect your favorite Star Wars characters, like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Darth Vader, and more, from every era – then conquer your opponents in epic, RPG-style combat. Build mighty teams and craft the best strategy to win battles across iconic locations to become the most legendary hologamer in the galaxy!”
Bait to any Star Wars fan.
The game seems interesting enough, collect some heroes (characters), advance through rounds of fights while leveling them up. The psychiatrists at EA did a great job in creating something that appeals to our instinct for possession, progression, development and reward.
NOTE: The game is about making teams. The enjoyment comes from mixing and matching your characters together in teams of 5 to take on the AI and other players (PvP). PvP is really is just the AI in disguise.
There is something like 80 characters to collect, in order to get the most from the game you would want to collect as many as possible. This will allow you endless hours of pleasure surmising which combinations make the best teams. Of course this is only worthwhile if the characters reach the maximum level as there is no point fighting a lvl 80 team with a lvl 60 team.
After three months of playing it became apparent that it is not possible to collect a large array of characters without spending some money. The game is designed with a bottleneck, credits. Credits are needed to train and gear up the characters. You just will earn enough to be able to promote a large number of characters at a time. The best strategy is to focus on a few, 10 or so and level them. In the beginning you will have to play and level what you get in order to progress, as you unlock new characters I would suggest focusing on your top 10. This will mean abandoning certain characters to come back to later. Just focus on your top 10. Get them to lvl 80, 7*, then go back to the others. It is easy enough to go from lvl 1-50 so it's not a problem abandoning a lvl 50 character to start a new replacement. The point being if you try to level the new character and the current lvl 50 one you will find that when you get to lvl 65 you cannot level them both. So Stick with 10, you will probably find 7 or so favourites and swap out the last three every now and again.
When Rancor raiding one good team is better than many weaker teams. If the raid boss is lvl 60 and you can field one lvl 70 team you will do a greater amount of damage vs fielding 5 teams of lvl 50. You will also need a strong team for Galactic Wars (PvP) and Squad Arena battles (PvP).
Note: PvP is stretching it, you never play against another player. The AI controls player teams.
Much of the content one can do for free, of course you can speed up progress and get exclusive characters through purchase. Who begrudges EA, they have provided a product and need to make a return. And so my folly into purchasing crystals began.
Those choosing not to pay for the game would collect the easy to farm characters. Certain of these proved popular and as such everyone is farming the same teams.
Certain characters are only available through the use of crystals and then you have a random chance to acquire them at that.
Buying Crystals
The pricing model is simple, in game purchases are made with crystals which can be bought in various quantities. This means you don't really know how much a in game purchase is costing you in hard cash.
Crystals can be bought in different bundles. I have rounded up the little penny. No one is fooled these days into believing 14.99 is not £15.00
- 220 - £1.50
- 610 - £4.00
- 1340 - £8.00
- 2800 - £15.00
- 7370 - £40.00
- 15710 - £80
I typically bought the £15 bundle and occasionally topped up with lower amounts. My calculations are based on this purchase price.
Note: It is more expensive per crystal to buy the £40 bundle than the £15 bundle. Doh.
Leveling characters
- Collect shards to get characters from 1* to 7*
- Collect gear from lvl1 gear to lvl 11, could be more not sure.
- Level character from lvl 1 to lvl 80. Rumour has it that at some point may goto 90.
Character shards and gear are farmed, bought in the store or via special packs. They can also be bought with other in game currency earned for completing daily tasks. When farming battles you only get a percentage chance of receiving a shard. I have seen the number 33% mentioned but am not convinced.
Acquiring a character:
On the whole most characters are obtainable from multiple battle locations.
Farming battles. You are limited to three attempts per battle per day, at 33% chance expect 1-2 shard a day for most characters from farming. I frequently get 0.
- Spending reward currency 5-15 shards a day, per currency.
- Chromium packs. 350 Crystals. either 10-12 shards or 1-4 character drop.
- Aurodium Packs. 750 Crystals either a 3/4 character or shards
- Shard Shop. Swap shards earned for one character for another character at an exchange rate of 10-1. This is not a cheap way to farm characters.
Expect to earn somewhere in the region of 55 shards per day across multiple characters. Farming all 80 Characters to 7* this way will take 480 days.
Darth Vader
DV shards are earned through achievements or purchasing through the shard shop.
General Grevous
The general is only available from the shard shop.
Farming Character Shards
Character shards can be farmed and bought with a number of currencies.
- Basic energy, 375 per day used on light side/dark side battles. 12/16/20 per battle.
6-10 shards per day - Cantina energy 120 per day. 8/10/12/16 per battle.
5 shards per day - Global wars, 100-1200 tokens won. 400 exchanged for 5 character shards. 15 pd.
5-15 shards per day, depending on progress. - Squad arena. Depends on placing expect 200-700 coins per day. 400 per 5 shards
Expect 5-10 shards per day. - Achievement awards. The only way to earn Darth Vader* shards is via the achievement awards or the Shard Shop where you can trade 20 other character shards for 2 Darth Vader shards.
*More about the Darth Vader in the second part of the blog, he is the great disappointment.
Chromium packs
1 - 350 crystals or £1.90
4 - 1330 crystals (5% discount) or £ 7.10
8 - 2520 crystals, guaranteed 1-4 character or £13.50
Buying the Chromium pack is a nice way to get started. You get a chance of acquiring a character or at least a boost of 10 or 12 shards towards one. Each packs costs 350 crystals or £1.90. Buying the £15 bundle I was able to purchase the more expensive Multi Chromium Packs. This gives you 8 sets of shards at a discount, one of which is a guaranteed character.
Playing for free you can expect to earn enough crystals to buy one pack every two to three days.
Aurodium pack.
New characters are released via the Aurodium Pack. Bearing in mind these characters cannot be acquired elsewhere in the game.There is no point buying the Aurodium pack unless you are willing to go all the way and level them to 7*.
Aurodium packs: Cost 750 crystals. Each pack contains something like 5 items.
As an example for the Geonosian Spy you could get
- The new 4* character or shards towards the character. Remember anything less that 5* is just not worth the effort..
- 5 Shards towards another character
- 100K credits.
- 10 4-star training droids.
- 2 Ability materials
Check out part two for the true cost of buying a character this way.