Welcome back to MSF Mondays! Each week we break down one more aspect of the hottest mobile game, Marvel Strike Force!
Last week we started a little series on resources, and we talked specifically about gold as it is often one major bottleneck for players. This week we are going to tackle a weirder bit of in game currency: Power Cores. You know, those little purple Diet Coke cans? While power cores are not typically a bottle neck—as you really don’t need power cores for anything—they are a tricky bit of currency to know how to spend.
If you are new to game and planning to spend any money at all, it is almost universal to cash in on the 1000 power offer! While power are not needed they can be useful to boost your in game progression. Boilon has a great video which I am working from for this article: the video is HERE if you desire to watch it in its entirety.
Free to Play (FTP) members, time is your commodity. What others spend in money you are having to make up with time spent in-game. Power cores can be a bit of an equalizer if you collect and spend them well, so let’s talk through this.
In the video, Boilon has a basic spreadsheet of the energy in which you get from the game throughout the course of the day and how that translates to the daily raids keys collected by each player (up to 600) for alliance raiding. We will get to raids in a different post, but the time in-game here is important. MSF has this set up so that you will be continually logging into the game to maximize your free energy refreshes. And they even give energy refreshes three times a day to keep you coming back.
There is also a time limit in which to collect these larger refreshes, as well as each player has a max in which the game will stop accruing energy for the player until spent. This essentially forces the player to be checking in multiple times a day to maximize their progression and to make sure they are holding up their end of the bargain in Alliance raid keys. If you have cores, you can use them to gain energy refreshes in any campaign mode. This is absolutely the most important way to spend your cores!
Campaigns also take up a good portion of your daily objectives, you need to have 3 Hero and 3 Villain attacks, and now with STRIKE pass, you need to have 400 units spent in Iso and Campaign energy to accomplish these daily objectives.
Mining Power Cores in Marvel Strike Force
Let’s break down the numbers on Power Cores:
- You get 50 for completing your Daily Objectives
- You earn between 20-45 Power Cores thanks to High Roller Milestones and 35-50 for Save the World, depending on your progress
Another way you will get a good chunk of your power cores will be ARENA. The Arena mode will be tackled in another post, but your early goals should be to hit the 1500 – 501 range, and set your sights on 250 and higher. If you can get inside 100, you are doing well!
You will also get cores randomly in giveaway calendars and such, or for completing achievements in game, but those aren’t as reliable as the daily objectives and such.
Over time you will make some sick gains. However, it is much tougher with power cores than it used to be since we have ISO campaign and the normal campaigns, as well as the event campaigns, all which are great areas to spend cores. With great cores come great responsibility.
Marvel Strike Force: Prioritize Your Spending of Power Cores
Campaign Modes
You should be using your four 50-core refreshes in the normal campaign modes (Heroes, Villains etc.) to farm character shards, and sometimes gear as needed. Until you can crack the top 100 in Arena this might be particularly difficult on a daily basis, so when you get a bonus bunch of cores from achievements or calendars, DO NOT spend them willy-nilly, we will get to that in a second.
ISO 8 Campaign
You will get a good portion of refresh packs on a daily basis, until you can build up a bit of core reserve, use only those refreshes for ISO campaign. I like to always have 1000 power cores stocked up, just in case there is a great way to use cores, such as 10 for 10 deals and other limited time offerings from MSF. Once you have a reserve, I recommend spending 50-core refreshes to round out your daily allotment for Iso campaign as well. Often it will be spending one or two refresh packs then two-three 50-core refreshes daily.
Special Campaign Events
My personal favorite way that MSF releases characters would be the special event campaigns. Save up cores for these events! I typically make a post about each one coming up, but this is when you dip into your reserve!
Where NOT to Spend Cores
In the game stores you will see fully formed gear and character shards for cores. NEVER spend cores on these. Likewise, they offer the ability to use cores to open specific orbs, I very RARELY ever crack orbs for cores, because it isn’t a good return on investment. These orbs are often RNG-based and you have the least control of what you are getting back for your cores.
Well I hope this helps you take your Squad from a D+ to a B- Commander!
Game Radar
Blitz: Things get rocky on Monday when The Thing comes to town for Blitz! Then, prepare to be pulled into Thursday’s Blitz: Blob!
Current Events: Support event is going on, giving you some extra goodies for using Support characters.
Upcoming Legendary: Magneto is on the way! Fittingly, this requires 5-star X-Men or Brotherhood characters, so hopefully you have those ready to go!
Previous Installments
You can check out all of our other Marvel Strike Force articles right here! We try to put out a new article every Monday, so stay tuned for even more content.
Join our Discord is you want to join us in nerding out over Marvel Strike Force.
Tabletop Takeaways: Tips for Dungeon Masters with a Narrative Spin