Please help my squad development, I went down the random line! Need to salvage my squad advice.

You just started. Go for the Phoenix and you will be fine. You can use Anhaldt101’s guide, but skip the Nute team for Padme and use Geonosians instead.

There is a lot, and if you want to do your best, you have to plan ahead - and ideally have a plan for every single type of energy and every single store.

At your level you're perfectly positioned to get a jump start on Fleet by farming Light Side node 4-d. This will get you the Vulture droid ship. Farm it 5 attempts per day, every day. You'll also get IG-86, but ignore it. Leave that droid at level 1/gear 1.

Phoenix isn't a bad way to go, but I would farm either Geonosian Spy or Kylo Ren Unmasked from the Cantina Battles right now.

The thing is that having a good crystal income makes a HUGE difference in this game. Even if you don't start farming Ezra & Hera right away, you will ultimately finish them faster by focussing on ships before anyone else so that when you reach level 60 and the Fleet Arena opens you can race into the top 50 for sure, and probably the top 10. By earning extra crystals every day you can buy energy refreshes and farm things twice as fast (or faster).

Obviously you're still going to get the Phoenix toons, it's just that you're going to be working on ships first, Phoenix 2nd.

The ships you'll want first are Vulture (as noted - as a bonus it's a droid ship and has no pilot to gear), Geonosian Spy's Starfighter, Geonosian Soldier's Starfighter, Sun Fac's Starfighter, and Kylo Ren's TIE Silencer.

When the Galactic War opens, buy NOTHING. Save all your emeralds (these are the Galactic War Tokens) until level 60 when the GW store starts selling ships, then you buy all the Sun Fac you can, plus Geo Spy's ship and Geo Soldier's ship as well. To make sure you don't miss Sun Fac's ship when it appears, you're going to set a minimum number of GWTokens to save in the bank ONLY for Sun Fac's Starfighter purchases. About 2000 is a good number.

When the Fleet Store opens you'll buy Vader and Vader's ship (the TIE Adv. X1).

By starting on fleet right now while others are still worried about their toons, you'll get a huge advantage, which you can turn into crystals, which will give you a huge farming advantage, and you can leverage those advantages to stay ahead of most other Free-to-Play opponents for however long you play the game.

Make sure you look around at the many other threads of people asking for advice so you get as much information as you can about the problems that others run into, their solutions, and how to build an energy/farming plan and a plan for each store.

Then if you need more help, just ask!

I hope you keep having a ton of fun.

"MasterSeedy;c-2235253" wrote:
There is a lot, and if you want to do your best, you have to plan ahead - and ideally have a plan for every single type of energy and every single store.

At your level you're perfectly positioned to get a jump start on Fleet by farming Light Side node 4-d. This will get you the Vulture droid ship. Farm it 5 attempts per day, every day. You'll also get IG-86, but ignore it. Leave that droid at level 1/gear 1.

Phoenix isn't a bad way to go, but I would farm either Geonosian Spy or Kylo Ren Unmasked from the Cantina Battles right now.

The thing is that having a good crystal income makes a HUGE difference in this game. Even if you don't start farming Ezra & Hera right away, you will ultimately finish them faster by focussing on ships before anyone else so that when you reach level 60 and the Fleet Arena opens you can race into the top 50 for sure, and probably the top 10. By earning extra crystals every day you can buy energy refreshes and farm things twice as fast (or faster).

Obviously you're still going to get the Phoenix toons, it's just that you're going to be working on ships first, Phoenix 2nd.

The ships you'll want first are Vulture (as noted - as a bonus it's a droid ship and has no pilot to gear), Geonosian Spy's Starfighter, Geonosian Soldier's Starfighter, Sun Fac's Starfighter, and Kylo Ren's TIE Silencer.

When the Galactic War opens, buy NOTHING. Save all your emeralds (these are the Galactic War Tokens) until level 60 when the GW store starts selling ships, then you buy all the Sun Fac you can, plus Geo Spy's ship and Geo Soldier's ship as well. To make sure you don't miss Sun Fac's ship when it appears, you're going to set a minimum number of GWTokens to save in the bank ONLY for Sun Fac's Starfighter purchases. About 2000 is a good number.

When the Fleet Store opens you'll buy Vader and Vader's ship (the TIE Adv. X1).

By starting on fleet right now while others are still worried about their toons, you'll get a huge advantage, which you can turn into crystals, which will give you a huge farming advantage, and you can leverage those advantages to stay ahead of most other Free-to-Play opponents for however long you play the game.

Make sure you look around at the many other threads of people asking for advice so you get as much information as you can about the problems that others run into, their solutions, and how to build an energy/farming plan and a plan for each store.

Then if you need more help, just ask!

I hope you keep having a ton of fun.

The main thing I will contribute is listen to MasterSeedy. Far too generous with his time and an authority on the forums.

Build up your geos, KRU and unmanned ships. At your level focus should be on fleet. Geos are useful pilots, Phoenix... not so much.

Don’t worry about current upgrades, you will need farmboy and some others. You have not taken them too far. Their use will come in time.

when I’m told to farm Ren unmasked does that mean continue to farm him until he is 7 star?

In general, you should assume that if someone gives you advice to farm a toon, they're giving you advice to farm that toon all the way to 7* ... UNLESS they specifically say otherwise by giving you another target, like,

Farm Hera to 5* then bring Ezra up to 5*. Keep alternating so you can use them to get Thrawn as soon as possible instead of getting Hera all the way to 7* but still not being able to unlock Thrawn

That's advice that people might give, but when they give it, they should be clear about it (and you should understand the reasons for it or ask a follow up question).

Now to get specific about KRU. KRU is tricky. Normally you're farming a particular toon, but in this case you're farming both the pilot and the ship at the same time. In this case I suggest setting your goals for the ship and letting KRU be whatever he is when the ship reaches the next goal.

And, yes, although it wasn't mentioned above because we weren't spelling out a specific plan for Cantina energy, having multiple competent pilots at Level 60 or 61 (it will take a couple days to use your GW Tokens to buy those Geo Ship blue prints after all) is a bigger advantage than having one 7* pilot. This wouldn't be true later where getting a pilot to 7* also means being able to take that pilot to g12 right away. But when you're level-limited, the difference between a g7 KRU at 5* and a g7 KRU at 7* isn't that big, so it's helpful to have competent allies at KRU's side. Unfortunately two of the three allies you want most right away are also farmed by the same Cantina energy.

For that reason, you don't want to spend so much time on KRU that you don't get your Geo Spy & Geo Soldier in shape. The really important thing is to get the ship, TIE Silencer, up to 5 stars by the time you hit level 77. But since you're starting early, that's going to be easy.

As I said above, when setting goals, given that KRU is on the same node as TIE Silencer, I would measure your progress more by TIE Silencer and just let KRU's shards be whatever they're going to be. Since the drop rate is the same but KRU drops 2 shards at a time while Silencer only drops one blueprint, you should always have between 1.75 and 2.25 times more KRU shards than you have TIE Silencer shards.

That means when you have 50 TIE-S blueprints, you should have a minimum of 88 KRU shards. Then when you have 80 TIE-S blueprints, you should have 140 KRU shards minimum.

This results in a general rule that KRU will have one more star than his ship, the TIE-Silencer.

When getting ready for level 60, I would bring TIE-Silencer up to 3-stars. Just don't worry about where KRU is. You'll be bringing TIE-S all the way to 7-stars eventually, so of course KRU is going to get there as well, but we will be bouncing back & forth a little to keep a balance so that GeoSpy & GeoSoldier aren't ignored.

3-star Silencer will mean 88 to 112 shards of KRU. Whatever it is doesn't matter, because that's all 4* territory.

When you have that, make sure your Spy is 4*, then make sure your Soldier is 4* so that they match KRU.

Then bring TIE-S to 4* (which will take KRU to 5* unless you're very, very unlucky - in which case you'll still be only a couple shards short. If this happens, you can spend an extra day of Cantina energy to bring KRU up to 5*, but really it shouldn't be necessary).

Then Spy to 5*

Then Soldier to 5*

etc.

Your most influential pilot early is going to be either Spy or KRU - both are good at that level. I prefer spy, and I would probably actually bring Spy up a star first, then have KRU & Soldier follow (rather than having KRU be the first pilot to get each next star), but that's a preference. There's no data that's going to tell you which way is better, so while I might have an opinion, you should do whatever makes you happier. If you want to lead with KRU/Silencer and have Spy follow, that's fine.

This is the way.

Hanging on to the Crystals is generally a good plan at any stage of the game. But don't hang on to so many that you can't do your planned daily farms. At your stage of the game, you should be spending 50 to 150 crystals per day on energy refreshes. (One cantina & one Regular, or just Regular, one or two doses, would all be fine ways to divvy up your crystals income.)

Your Galactic War tokens have to be saved for now - your first priority for GWTokens is ships, and they don't sell ships in the GW store until level 60 (unless I have misremembered, tell me if they appear before level 60)

The Guild Store doesn't have any gear in it worth your Tokens yet. If you want gear there, you'll have to wait, but since there are characters there you need, I would start spending on Shards of characters right now. NO GEAR.

Cantina & Arena tokens should be spent, not saved, at this point in the game. So you'll need character farming plans for those last 3 stores (Guild, Cantina, & Arena.)


Are you sure yet what you want out of those stores? Or would you like help coming up with a plan for them?

Mod strategy will be another post, but sell anything that isn't a 5-dot mod UNLESS it's a gold mod, with 3 or 4 dots, and it has a speed secondary. (Even those you'll sell eventually, but in the early game those are still useful)

So level up all your gold mods that have speed, even the 3-dot & 4-dot ones. Otherwise, stick to the 5-dot mods.

On 5-dot mods, sell ALL of them that are white. For the rest, only upgrade them if they have a Speed secondary already showing, but don't sell them yet if they don't. I'll share some more complicated ways of thinking about which mods to sell & keep later, but for now, those ones that don't have speed secondaries, but aren't white either, you'll be saving those for a bit. It's not good to use money on them now, but they may turn out to be good later.

You are a scholar and a gentleman sir.

Well, a scholar anyway. I think gender prevents me from being a gentleman. :wink:

Let's work on a plan to get you some Energy & Store priorities, then match that with some gear priorities & see if we can't get you ready for fleet and also get you better at Squad Arena at the same time.

Now, you need rebels & Jedi early (this is part of why Phoenix is so important, since they're a rebel team with good synergy and also 2 of them are both rebels **and** Jedi, so you fill two roles with a single character).

But neither of those can consistently win Fleet Arena matches early. Phoenix requires gearing 6 characters for just 2 ships, which is a heavy gear tax, and even then the Rebel fleet doesn't come together until you have Rebel Y-Wing or Han's Falcon or both. Those are a ways off, so during early fleet days you're going to suffer a lot without a different fleet.

That's where we get the priority for Geos & Tarkin. (Some people run Geos under Ackbar and apparently that works well enough at early levels even if later you want them under Tarkin.) Geos pair with Vulture & Hyena - 2 of the three droid ships - extremely well. You'll be going for Vulture, too, but Hyena isn't farmable for you yet, so Vulture is the 6th toon you need to make sure that Tarkin's Cap Ship can get all its promotions.

So now we need pilots, and the best squad of early pilots is Geos, but they don't do well in Squad until they get Geo Brood Alpha, and his node isn't farmable until level 83. You also need more dark side ships to promote your dark side fleet commander (Tarkin) and so you're going to work on Vader & Kylo Ren Unmasked. Both of these are good individual toons and have good ships. Together you'll have 5 dark side ships up and running soon. You'll just need one more later to be able to promote Tarkin's capital ship to 6* (after that there's an event to promote your cap ship the rest of the way to 7*, but you have to wait for it. It only comes around once every 2 or 4 weeks, I forget exactly).

So you have to make it a more general Separatist squad, and they can still do well there. So you're going to need Nute as the leader of that squad.

Finally you need a good GW squad, and the key to GW is healing - especially protection recovery, if you can get it. Phoenix does well here... but not early. You don't get the Omegas you need for Hera to get everyone healing adequately until level 78 or so.

Protection recovery is hard to get outside Phoenix during your stage of the game, and the best way to do that is to farm Bastila, who gives bonus protection to all Jedi at the beginning of the fight. She doesn't provide protection recovery during a fight, but the bonus is granted completely fresh at the beginning of each fight, so no matter how close you were to dying a the end of the last fight, with Bastila you start out with a big stack of protection all over again.

Now, Bastila needs Jedi, but Jedi are on your early list anyway. So this gives us a total list of short-term goals of:

Toons:
Geos
Jedi
Phoenix
+Bastila
+Nute Gunray
+Vader
+KRU

Ships:
Geo Spy Starfighter
Geo Soldier Starfighter
Sun Fac's Starfighter
TAX-1
TIE-Silencer
Vulture droid

With Ezra & Kanan playing double roles in Phoenix & Jedi, this is 4 (geos) + 6 (Phoenix) + 3 (extra jedi besides Kanan & Ezra), + 4 more key individuals. Of those 17 toons, 5 are Cantina farms. That makes certain things hard, but we'll do what we need to do, and the fact you're starting early helps.

For ships we need 3 from the Galactic War store, 1 from the Fleet store, and 1 from Cantina. The 6th ship can be farmed only through regular energy. You're going to get & promote a couple light side ships as well, but you won't be putting a lot of effort into them.

So 17 priority characters, 6 priority ships. It sounds like a lot (and it is!) but figuring out where they all come from makes things easier.

Remember that the goal for ships is to have the 3 geos in top shape ASAP and always to use them together. Because you start out with limited slots available in reinforcements, the order you promote & level & improve abilities on those other ships can be customized to fit whatever pilot you think is best for you at the time.

So let's make a plan, remembering that your key to GW success is Bastila, who won't be ready for a bit, so we have to keep a couple healers leveled in the meantime until we can unlock your real GW super-hero.

Okay, here's the first draft of a plan. If you're not having fun with this plan, let people know. I can't be reading your thoughts to know what makes you happiest in the game, so instead I'm basing these recommendations just on what works to efficiently power up. But if you have a favorite SW character, we can tinker with the plan to help you get there sooner to make sure the game stays fun for you. Remember that if the plan is preventing you from having fun, even if it's very efficient & well thought out, then it's a bad plan. The point of the game should always be to have fun. While getting powerful characters & ships can be fun, there are lots of powerful characters & ships, so if you don't like one path, there's another that will work if you just ask around.

Here goes:
Mod Energy:

Keep farming the highest levels you can. Sell anything that's 1* or 2* (you'll get some of these as you go through the levels of the Mod Battles). For 3* or 4*, sell anything that isn't Gold, and even sell Gold 3* & 4* mods if they don't have a speed Primary or speed Secondary (only arrows have speed primaries, though). Using borrowed allies, you should be able to easily defeat any new level of Mod battles pretty much instantly. If you don't have any allies in your guild with strong characters, let me know & I'll make you an ally so you can borrow my best toons. They can make short work of mod battles and also give you some idea of what their abilities are and how to use them when you get them later.)

Cantina Energy:

TIE Silencer => 3* (This brings KRU to 4* as a side benefit)
Geo Spy => 4*
Geo Soldier => 4*
Spy => 5*
Silencer => 4*
Soldier => 5*

Interlude for Ezra? If you're doing well in fleet, you could take a break to get Ezra to 5*. Otherwise keep going.

Spy => 6*
Silencer => 5*
Soldier => 6*
Spy => 7*
KRU => 7* (will get you a few Silencer shards as a side effect, but won't bring Silencer up to 6*)
Soldier => 7*

After that we have to make a new plan. You have to get Ezra as soon as possible, but Hera is important as well. So lead with Ezra:

Ezra => 5* (if not 5* already)
Hera => 5*
TIE Silencer => 6*
Ezra => 6*
Hera => 6*
Ezra => 7*
Hera => 7*
Silencer => 7*

About then you might be ready for Geonosian Brood Alpha, but maybe not. Ideally this all goes fast enough that you're done before level 78, but I haven't done the math yet on that.

Remember you're still going up levels pretty quickly, so you get all that level-bonus Cantina energy to dump right into these characters without worrying about a limit on # of attempts at a particular node. These goals will generally go by pretty fast.

Fleet Energy:
There might be a little while when you first open Fleet Battles that you are struggling to win even the easiest fights. That's okay. Just do what you can, and if you can only beat the first battle, then it drops Clone Sergeant's ARC-170 which is a good ship. So just spend your extra energy there until you can beat more battles.

As soon as possible, you want to beat the second Hard battle, though, which is Anakin's ship, the ETA-2 Starfighter. Once you're this far, Anakin's ETA-2 is a priority farm, so spend all the energy you can on that before trying any other battles that day.

If you're stuck on Stage 1, you can farm 5x ETA-2, 5x Clone Sergeant's ARC-170, then 5x either Imperial TIE or Lando & Lando's Falcon (your choice). You'll have just 45 energy left over after 15 stage-1 attempts and you can use that try to progress further with normal or had battles on stage 2.

When you've beaten Stage-2 Hard, you can farm this:

Bastila Shan (2-D)
Anakin's ETA-2
Carth Onasi (2-E)

in that priority order. Now, I know that Anakin and his ship aren't on our immediate priority list, but this ship is a long farm and is a fantastic ship later, so just plug away at the blueprints but don't bother to spend on leveling the ship or upgrading its abilities right now. If you level it to your player level - 10, that's probably high enough even if you think you have spare energy. It won't become a priority until you have Padmé close to unlock, since that's when you start gearing Anakin. Carth, though, he's a stand in. We'll replace him on the priority list when you get higher.

After you've defeated Stage 3 of Fleet-Hard, that list stays the same, but once you defeat Stage-4 you get access to a lot of interesting and powerful options. Then your priority list looks like this:

1. Bastila Shan
2. Anakin's ETA-2
3. Greef Karga + Rebel Y-Wing
4. TIE Adv X-1
5. Jolee Bindo
6. Carth Onasi
7. Clone Sergeant ARC-170

Obviously you can't do all of these at once. You get 285 free Fleet energy every day, and most of those cost 100 energy for 5 attempts. Fortunately the ETA-2 & Sergeant's ARC-170 are only 80 energy for 5 attempts, so without costing yourself crystals on a node refresh (which is a very bad thing to do at your stage of the game) you can farm 3 items the full 5 attempts each, as long as one of them is either the ETA-2 or the ARC-170 (2 x 100 + 1 x 80). That extra 5 energy per day will eventually add up enough that you'll have to spend it somewhere, but you can get rid of it just by doing 2 attempts on some other priority node once per week.

When you defeat Stage 5 the priority list changes even more, because we have to add in Shaak Ti, The Mandalorian, the B-1, and Enfys Nest. But it's going to be a long time until you get there, and some of the other things on this list are likely to be finished by then (like Bastila and Anakin's ETA-2, at least). Stage 5-Hard doesn't even unlock until level 82. We'll have time to update the plan by then.

Okay, that's the plan for the 3 easier energy types. Next up is regular energy, but that will be in a different post.

Okay, regular energy comes in at a rate of 375 per day, and you should do 1x 50-crystal refresh for an extra 120-energy per day. Plus you'll get energy bonuses for going up a level, which will happen on days you can't choose, but that extra energy can just go to the next character on the farm list. You should never be paying to refresh nodes until you have so many characters that you don't have enough characters left to farm to use up all your energy. That's more than a year away, probably more like 2 years away, since they're always adding new characters every few months.

So remember this is a priority list but most days you won't have enough energy to farm everything on it. Thats fine. That's the plan. When you finish something higher on the list, cross it off and keep going with the next one down. That's why we put more characters on here than you can possibly farm at once... but also because of that bonus energy, which can go to the next character down even before you've finished your current farms.

First lets list some possibilities for your level:

Geos:
Poggle the Lesser (requires level 54, but I'm putting him on the list. Just skip him until you have the required level)

Phoenix:
Sabine Wren (She's a long farm, might as well start now)

Jedi:
Jedi Consular - he's a healer, so we'll stick with him for GW for now
Mace Windu - he's terrible. Eventually you have to get him, but for now, no.
Jedi Knight Anakin - a fantastic toon. We'll farm this one.
Luminara Unduli - Also a healer, We'll stick her as a low priorityin even though eventually you're going to be finishing her using GW Token so that you can have her available, at least, during GW when you need healers.
Jedi Knight Guardian (just... no)
Bastila Shan (STRONG yes)
Barriss Offee (If we can fit her in, she's better than Lumi, since Lumi can be finished in GW Store)
Jolee Bindo (requires level 59, but we can put him on the list now &you can add him into rotation when he's available.)

Priority Individuals (Bastila/Nute/Vader/KRU):
Only Bastila, and we already put her in under Jedi. In fact, I'm not even sure why I ever listed her separately except she's that much more important than the other Jedi. She's absolutely key.

We're also going to snag all the pilotless ships as soon as we can, just because they're all amazing at lower levels where the pilotless ships were designed to go against relic pilots at 7* and high g11/low g12 pilots at 6*. They're at a crazy advantage early.

So here we go, focussing on Rebels, Jedi, Geos, individual priority toons, & certain ships. I'll number them, but also they're just listed in order:

1. Vulture droid (60 energy/day, node = light 4-D)
2. Bastila Shan (80 energy/day, = Dark 5-B)
3. Sabine (60 energy/day = Dark 1-A)
4. Poggle (+IG-2000 as a side benefit) (80 energy/day = light 6-E)
5. Jedi Knight Anakin (80 energy/day = light 5-C)
6. TIE Bomber (80 energy/day = dark 5-A) (+ Kuiil as a side benefit)
7. Jolee Bindo (80 energy/day = dark 6-D)
8. Barriss (80 energy/day = Dark 5-C)
9. Jedi Consular (60 energy per day per node but has two nodes, one light, one dark. So 120 energy/day = do both light 1-B & dark 1-D)
10. Range Trooper (an imperial, but trust me, 60 energy/day, dark 3-A)

If you wanted to do all of that, it would require 5 x 60 = 300 + 6 x 80 = 480
Total = 780

Of course, two toons aren't even available yet, and they're both 80 energy/day, so the total for right now is 620 energy to do all of them. With bonus energy from gaining levels & starting with 495 per day (all your free energy + one 120-energy refresh) you should have enough going on. In fact, on days when you don't go up a level, you could purchase 2 refreshes and that would be 615 energy or just 5 less than enough to do everything that you currently have levels to do (go to bed a half hour late & just do it all). After you qualify for Poggle & Jolee, 615 energy will be 15 more than you need for all your priorities #1-8 (everything above Jedi Consular). I think that's enough for you, since more nodes become available all the time & you're not likely to finish any of these until after Light-7-A through 7-D become available, & then we'll be changing things again.

So let's stick with this as your list until further notice. When you start crossing things off your list we can go back & see what else we might add.

In the meantime, if you absolutely have to have a final farm, Light 6-C is General Veers + the B-28 Extinction Bomber. Use that if you're overwhelmed with energy because you bought so many refreshes without thinking.

You'll notice if you're using your critical thinking that you've got more Jedi on here than you absolutely need. This is because you want Yoda (GMY) sooner rather than later, and with Jedi Consular and Barriss available in Bronziums and as rewards other places, it's possible that you'll end up with enough bonus shards to make farming them the faster way to get a 7* Yoda if they just stay somewhere on your priority list (though not, obviously, at the top).

Also we want to keep those up there for a while to help you right now in Galactic War. Yes, Bastila will eventually make your Jedi the kings of GW, but you have to get her unlocked first, where you've already got JC unlocked and Barriss is a solid toon all the way to the endgame, so you might as well do some farming on her so that if you get lucky & open her in a bronzier you don't regret that you haven't kept up with her node.

And now, for the stores.

Shipments
The first 4 slots are all low-level gear, but it's available for cheap and what you don't use now you'll crap for relic materials later in your career. BUY ALL THE CHEAP GEAR, EVERY TIME. If it's not those first 4 lots of gear, though, skip it.

Weekly Shipments
Buy the character shards that are available for 1Million credits if you feel like you can. Buying those might have to wait until you're a bit higher level & you've got the income, but they're always worth it. As you go through the game, you'll eventually find that it's easier to get 1M credits than it is to get 10 character shards of most characters. Before level 78 I'll let you decide whether you feel like you can manage it each week, but at level 78 and later if you can't get 2M credits per week there's something seriously wrong. Although it's only 20 shards/week, you'll find later that you got a good head start on a whole bunch of toons you didn't realize you had shards for.

Cantina Battles Store

1. Chopper => 5*
2. Ahsoka Tano => 6*
3. Boba Fett => 5*
4. Hoth Rebel Scout => 5*
5. Chopper => 7*
6. Ahsoka Tano => 7*
7. HR Scout => 7*
8. Boba Fett => 7*
9. Fives => 7*
10. Cassian's U-Wing => 5*
11. FOO => 5*
12. Old Daka => 5*
13. Poe Dameron => 5*
14. Storm Trooper => 5*
15. Qui-Gon => 5*
16. Pao => 5*
17. Bistan => 5*
18. Jawa Scavenger => 5*

Now, just to be clear, ALL of those toons =at the bottom from 10 (Cassian's U-Wing) on down are what I call "just in case" toons (or "ship" for CU-W). You're going to need them, but you don't need any of them soon, and you don't know what order you're going to need them since that will depend on what goals you set down the road. (And also, sometimes, opportunities created by good luck with Bronziums or whatever.) So instead of farming the first 3 all the way to 7* & then realizing you need Pao sooner than the toons you finished, but you have to start from scratch, just take them each to 5* and move on. As soon as you have a real plan for one of the toons that requires it to be 7* and not just unlocked, then you can come back and finish it, but it only takes half the time since you're starting with 145 shards.

But if you don't need ANY of them and you have them all at 5*, go back up to CU-W and take each one to 6* in order. Then go back and take CU-W to 7* ... but then instead of taking all the rest to 7* in turn, just keep buying CU-W shards even though you have the ship maxed. Turn those ship blueprints into Shard Shop Currency so you can buy gear with it. When the time comes that you need one of the characters below CU-W on the list, go finish it, then go back to buying CU-W blueprints.

All of those other characters will occasionally drop shards in events or Galactic War or Bronziums or whatever. Some of them will very slowly (VERY slowly) take themselves to 7* without any effort on your part. If you find that they got that last star without spending on them, you win! If you find you need them before that, well, it's a short farm since they're already at 6* + whatever random shards have dropped since then.

There are a couple more toons in the Cantina Battles store (JKG & Mob Enforcer) but they're not really worth the effort. If you're really, really desperate for something to do or if you're just a perfectionist who likes to have every toon, you can take them up after everything else on this list is at 7*.

Now, other people might tell you not to even start on those "Just in case" toons until you have a plan that requires them and they become a short-term priority. That's not my style, but it's a valid point of view. I like to be prepared in advance for when something comes up (maybe a new toon has good synergy with one of these that used to be disposable - that's what happened to Pao when Mon Mothma was released), but other people might just spend on something that they already have to get Shard Shop Currency even before starting to work on the Just In Case toons. If that's you, that's a perfectly fine way to play. It's not the way I play, because I like to be able to be prepared for the changes in the game when they come, but I understand. This is just my recommendation.

Guild Store:

NEVER buy gear here when you're under level 72. The gear available before then just isn't worth it. Your only options right now are buy toons or just save all your tokens for good gear later. You could save for gear, but there are a lot of toons you'll need from here, so I say if you're going to buy them anyway, might as well buy them now when you're not sacrificing current gear.

Exclusive to or vital from the Guild Store are these toons/ships:
Young Han Solo
Gammorean Guard
Colonel Starck
First Order Special Forces TIE Pilot
FO SF TIE (the ship)
Dengar
Darth Maul
Jawa Engineer
Paploo
Logray
Sun Fac
Old Ben
Cody
Echo
Rex
Clone Sergeant
Finn
Jyn
B-2
Zam

So let's put these in a priority order for you to work on until you start hitting levels where good gear hits the shop.

Guild Store Priority List:
1. Build up a bank of 2,000 Guild Store Tokens
2. Sun Fac
3. Talia => 5* (this was a late addition, but you need healing for GW right now)
4. FO SF TIE (the ship) + FOSF TIE Pilot (both simultaneously until Pilot is unlocked, then stop buying Pilot, but keep buying the ship to 5*)
5. Dengar
6. FO SF TIE (the ship) => 7*
7. FOSF TIE Pilot => 4*
8. Old Ben
9. Paploo
10. Logray
11. Colonel Starck
12. FOSF TIE (Pilot) => 7*
13. Barriss
14. Jyn
15. Finn => 5*
16. B-2 => 5*
17. Rex => 5*
18. Echo => 5*
19. Clone Sergeant = 5*
20. Cody => 5*
21. Maul => 5*
22. Zam => 5*
23. Jawa Engineer => 5*

From Finn on down are "Just in case" toons. You know what to do with those. Take them each to 5*, then take them each to 6*, then leave them alone. When you have to have one at 7*, interrupt what you're doing (since you don't need any of them that badly) and finish that one toon, then pick back up where you left off. Being comfortable with leaving them at 6* and not 7* even when there's no other toon to work on in the store is going to be pretty easy, since that means you can go 100% gear here, 100% of the time. And you'll love the gear you can buy here when you hit level 85.

You'll note I left off Young Han and Gammorean Guard. Yes, both of those are exclusive to the Guild Store, so if you don't buy them here, you'll never get them. You can bring those up to 5* if you want, but they've been useless for years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The reason I didn't put them on is because, although I don't know how far you'll get on this list before you start wanting to buy gear, you aren't going to finish everything before you get access to some good gear. So YH & GamG will be competing not against all the toons that are already 7*, but against gear you really need. You don't need YH nearly as much as you need g11 finisher pieces and Mk5 droid callers, so I recommend skipping them for a LONG time, maybe forever.

I also left off some toons because they're not exclusive to the store or even hard to get outside of the store. That said, there are 3 other toons that you might find useful to buy here someday if you're trying to finish them quickly. Those are Rey, Snowtrooper, Resistance Trooper, & Farmboy. I also bought Tusken Shaman here because I think it's rare outside of this shop, but you don't need him. I didn't even start buying him here until I'd been playing for three years. If you find yourself trying to prep for an event to get an important toon (like getting Farmboy to complete the CLS event) then you might want to add that toon to your Guild Store list temporarily. Otherwise, I'd just collect them elsewhere.

On the other hand, like I said, if you really want something because it would be fun for you, and if getting Tusken Shaman or YH & GG are fun for you, you should collect them. I'm just showing you an efficient way to get better at the game, but it's up to you to figure out how to make the game fun.

Last thing is that you'll notice that finishing FOSF TIE (Pilot) is much farther down the list than FOSF TIE (the ship). This is for a couple reasons. One is that you should pick up a few shards of FOSFTP in events, but it's harder to get blueprints of the ship. But the other is that you have to have a certain number of dark side ships to qualify for promotion events for Tarkin's Executrix and also for the Zeta challenge. To qualify for those, the Pilot doesn't have to be a certain number of stars, only the ship itself. You're going to have a Geo fleet, and the FOSF TIE won't work particularly well with them, but as long as you have it, it will unlock events that then the Geos can beat even without calling in reinforcements because their synergy is just that good.

Now, if you don't have FOSFTP even unlocked when it's time to use his ship to qualify for events, that's bad. So we're going to get that done before working on Dengar. Anyway, just follow the priority list & I think you'll be fine.

One final note is that except for Colonel Starck, all of these toons pop in & out of the store randomly. Because of that, it's often a good idea keep a bank of 2k tokens. Use those for whatever is your highest priority, but if you can buy the next thing down on your list without going under 2k tokens, go ahead and do that. This will be especially helpful on the Ewoks and Clone Sergeant, which show up pretty rarely.

...okay that's enough for one comment. The rest of the stores will come later.

Remembering our priorities are
Geos
Jedi
Phoenix
+ 4 individual priorities (Nute, Bastila, KRU, & Vader)

Plus Geo ships, Vulture, TIE Silencer, TAX-1 (Vader's ship) + at least 1 other dark side ship, but also ANY pilotless ship we can access. You'll notice we'll be working on more ships than we strictly need since we don't know which ones will come through for us. RNG and a few other things will play a role, so farming a couple extra ships to make sure we can keep up with event requirements is a good idea.

Alright then. Let's create a plan for the remaining stores.

Kanan is both Jedi & Phoenix & an obvious first choice, but Tarkin is a close 2nd. Also, Kanan is being farmed in large part for the Thrawn, GMY & Palpatine events. In those events to make progress to the next tier, ALL of your characters much be at the next star-level. So Kanan won't help you get to 7* by being 7* unless all the other members of the squad are also there already. So I'm going to have you get Kanan 5* ready first, to be able to unlock things, but then I'm going to have you take Tarkin all the way to 7* next, then finish Kanan. This is probably better because in Arena (squad or Fleet) every little bit of power helps, but the events are all-or-nothing. If you think that you have other Jedi (or rebels or Phoenix) going up so fast that they'll be ready before Kanan, then drop Tarkin for a few days to boost Kanan so he's not the last one of the team to get to that star-level. But I don't think that will happen.

Squad Arena Store:
1. Kanan => 5*
2. Tarkin => 7*
3. Kanan => 7*
4. Nute Gunray => 7*
5. Greedo => 5*
6. StormTrooper Han => 5*
7. Leia => 5*
8. Ackbar => 6*
9. STHan => 6*
10. Leia => 6*
11. Ackbar => 7*
12. Leia => 7*
13. STHan => 7*
17. Greedo => 7*
18. IG-88 => 7*
19. Cassian => 7*
20. Ventress => 5*
21. HK-47 => 5*
22. Sidius => 5*

If you get done with all that, we can talk about what comes next. Note that the last 3 toons are "Just in case" at this point. If your NightSisters need Ventress before that, though, that's fine. Because I used so many intermediate steps, this looks like a lot more work than it is. The first 13 steps are just 7 toons.

The struggle on this list is that we have an as-yet unstated lower priority or two than just those we originally listed. When we're not working on our original list of 17 characters, we fall back on other priorities, like improving performance in Territory Battles (which for you means rebels generally, but Rogue 1 & Phoenix especially) and bring up your Bounty Hunter squad for use in the Bounty Hunter events (there are a number of them) and the BH mission in dark side Hoth TB. If there were Imperial Troopers in the Squad Arena store I would have added them to this list before Ventress, since they, also, have special missions exclusive to them in dark side Hoth TB. In any case, I'm trying to balance those other priorities when we get past the 17 characters we know are tops.

Since they're not primary priorities, there's some room for debate on order, but Leia & STHan, for instance, help you get CLS, and I would like to set you up to get him sooner rather than later, so they're on the list before, say, Ventress, even though NightSisters are a good squad.

In any case, this is a good starting point and if you want to vary things up later, that's fine.

Galact War Store

SAVE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW.
I don't want you to spend a single token in the GW store. In order to torch your opponents in fleet, you're going to use your saved tokens to get a massive head start on buying ships.

The GW store should start selling ships at Level 60 (unless I'm badly misremembering), so keep saving more & more for your best shot at ULTIMATE POWER.

Once you hit level 60, you'll start buying, but if you buy the Geo ships randomly, you'll soon find that you have lots of shards of Spy's & Soldier's ships, but none of Sun Fac's. This is because Sun Fac's ship is rare, while Spy & Soldier's ships are common. So the odds are that they'll come up first, you'll spend on them, which will run you out of tokens, and then you won't have any tokens available when the Sun Fac ship does show up.

So we're going to do what we've done elsewhere. You're going to keep a minimum fund of 2,000 tokens. You cannot go below that except for your very top-most priority. That way when a rare priority shows up, you can actually buy it. Notice I said "a rare priority" and not just Sun Fac's ship. That's because even after Sun Fac's ship is done, there are still some rare ships in there and you'll want to buy those using the same kind of banking system or you'll never finish them.

Fortunately the characters are all the same toons, all the time, no rotation, no RNG. That makes the characters easy & you don't have to keep a bank once you have all the ships collected. But be aware, you're going to need every single one of the ships sold here, so it's going to be a long time before you can get rid of the bank system.

When you hit level 60, just buy any Geo ship that comes up, nothing but Geo ships, as fast as you can get them. You do that until you've spent down to your 2k minimum. Go crazy.

After that, this is your priority list:
1. Keep 2,000 in the bank except for purchases of highest remaining priority
2. Sun Fac's Starfighter => 7*
3. Spy's STarfighter => 5*
4. Soldier's Starfighter => 5*
5. Zeb => 5*
6. Spy => 6*
7. Soldier => 6*
8. Spy => 7*
9. Soldier => 7*
10. Zeb => 7*
11. Poggle the Lesser => 7* (if he's not 7* already from farming him elsewhere)
12. Imperial TIE Fighter => 6*
13. Cad Bane => 7*
14. Clone Sergeant's ARC-170 => 6*
15. Imperial TIE => 7*
16. Clone Sergeant's ARC-170 => 7*
17. Resistance X-Wing
18. First Order TIE Fighter => 6*
19. Ahsoka Tano's Jedi Starfighter => 6*
20. Plo Koon's Jedi Starfighter => 6*
21. Umbaran Starfighter => 6*
22. Jedi Consular's Starfighter => 6*
23. ==>ANY ships that aren't at 7* yet, pretty much in random order (but remember the 2k bank rule for the highest priority ship to make sure you finish your rare ones)
24. K2-SO => 7*
25. Teebo => 7*
26. Biggs => 5*
27. Luminara Unduli => 5*
28. Phasma => 5*
29. Magmatrooper => 5*
30. NightSister Initiate => 5*
31. Biggs => 5*
32. Tusken Raider => 5*
33. Resistance Pilot => 5*
34. Dathcha => 5*

Everything below Teebo are your "just in case" toons. Again, some of these (like Biggs) you will definitely want, but when you want him is pretty debatable. You need him for a rebel fleet, but that's not your first fleet, so it will be a while. in any case, you can always take one of your "Just in case" toons to 7* any time you need them. Just make sure before you do that you actually need them. K2-SO & Teebo might be "Just in case" toons, except K2-SO is needed for Hoth TB, and Teebo is important (if not exactly needed since there are more than 5 ewoks) for the C-3PO event.

But if you're going to get BB-8 before C-3PO, then you might want to finish Phasma before even starting on K2-SO & Teebo. All the way down to #13 the priorities are pretty solid, but after that if you have an important reason to vary from the plan (like going for BB-8) then vary from the plan. This is just about what priorities look like right now. When you get closer your priorities may have changed, so keep yourself the flexibility to change the plan (and to ask questions on the forums about changing your plan if you feel like you want help making the decision).

You'll note that Zeb gets up to 5* so as to help with minimum unlock of Palp & Thrawn as soon as possible, then puts off 7* for a bit. I think that's fine. I doubt your Hera will be 5* before you get Zeb there, so you should be good.

Mod Store:
Until further notice, literally don't buy anything in this store for ship credits - ever. Not anything. When you have 20+ regular ships at 7-stars & level 85 and at least another 3 (preferably 4) capital ships at 7* and level 82+, then you can start thinking about someday wishing you might maybe buy a mod for ship credits. For now, no. Your fleet is what's going to power you to more crystals and the crystals will power you to greater heights in all phases of the game. So don't mess with your fleet's success. Got it?

As for regular credits, I don't think you can afford any of those mods either, but if you're feeling rich some day, you can buy a mod for regular credits under the following conditions:

It's a gold, 5-dot Arrow with a speed primary and the set bonus is not Health or Defense
OR
It's a gold, 5-dot mod with a Speed secondary of +5 or +6 (+6 is extremely rare, but they can happen, don't look for them or you'll be depressed at how rare they are, just focus on +5 Speed mods)... AND ...
It's a Triangle or Plus ... AND ...
One of the following:

• It's got an Offense, Crit Chance, or Crit damage set bonus and the mod Primary stat is Offense, CC%, or Crit damage
  
• It's a Plus with Potency set bonus and a Potency primary stat
  
• It's a Plus Tenacity Set Bonus with a Tenacity primary stat
  
• It's a Triangle with Potency or Tenacity set bonus and the Primary stat is CC%, Offense, or Crit damage
  
• It's a Health set bonus with a Health primary stat
  

Now, there are other worthwhile mods, but you're not even level 60 yet and credits are incredibly hard to come by, not to mention the fact that you won't be able to collect mod slicing materials until you're over level 80, which makes white, green & blue mods unlikely to be worth anything for months, at least. So maybe don't buy any mods at all, but if you do, buy only the ones above: gold, 5-dot mods, of the rarer types (Arrow, Triangle & Plus) with +5 Speed secondary or a speed primary and that have a decent match between the Set Bonus and the Primary Stat.