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

Just so you know, you should keep your 17 priority toons a level behind your player level to conserve credits. Later as the cost for leveling increases faster than your credit income, it's fine to keep them up to 3 levels behind your player level.

Everything else should be no closer than 5 levels below your player level. This means that toons like Clone Wars Chewbacca should be lagging in level more (he's currently 51 out of a possible 51), as should Farmboy and Leia (they're rebels, which you need, but they're not healers to get you through GW and you're not using them to get Thrawn or Palp, so let them fall back a few levels) and Fives & Royal Guard.

By laying off those, you can bring up Boba & Vader, who are currently level 1 each, but are much better toons than CWC or Farmboy. Vader's better than any of them, actually, and Boba is as good as or better than the others except Fives. This gives you more toons to swap in & out during Galactic War so you can get farther. It's rarely going to be 1 or two more levels that get it done, and if you are cutting it that close, they're going to start the next fight pretty wounded, so having more toons in reserve is always a good idea.

Even though Talia isn't on our priority list, you have to have good healers to get through GW until you have Bastila Shan. She's one of only 3 healers you've got (the others are Jedi Consular & Ewok Elder) so I can understand keeping her 1 level below player level for a few more levels. If she gets lucky with Bronziums & you suddenly find she's better than Jedi Consular on stars, I like her a lot because she gives her teammates Turn Meter when she heals them, so I can even understand making her your first-choice healer and giving her more gear and first chance at going up levels over Jedi Consular, but for now I think you're on a fine path with those two. Bring Talia up to g7 when you have the chance, though. You'll need her for a while.

Ewok Elder could use a bit more gear when you have the chance, but at level 47/51 he's level appropriate. Even letting him fall back one level farther is okay.

Okay, just to let you know, I'm going to go back & edit your Guild Store purchases to get you some Talia. You really need the short-term healing while waiting for other squads to come together. She has many other sources, but your Guild Store toons are mostly lower priority than your Regular Energy farms or your Cantina Energy farms, so in the short run I'd rather you get her shards there. The goal is only 5*, so that should happen quickly. Since you have her at 3*, that means you have at least 50 shards out of only 145 needed for 5*. A pack a day would mean you're working on her for 10 days or less. She's still not a high enough priority to spend your Sun Fac special fund, though. And after 5* you can let her passively move up with Bronzium shards & random GW shards & such. If she ever gets one of the big 50-shard Bronziums, you could look at her to see if she's close to 6* or over 6*. If she's over, that's fine. If she's less, you could even buy a couple more stacks of shards from the Guild Store to push her up to 6* if you don't have your Bastila Galactic War team ready by then. But once she's 6* there's no reason to push it to 7*. She'll get there on her own, and you only need her as a short-term measure until Bastila is unlocked & geared. That will take a little while, but not too long (especially when you're farming Bastila shards with both Regular Energy and Fleet energy at the same time). If you haven't unlocked Bastila yet, then you can't possibly be high enough level to need a 7* Talia is what I'm saying.

Wow. It just ate a long post on the remaining stores. I am so frustrated.

Actually, that's weird. It even deleted an earlier post that had already been up on the thread for a while. It back-deleted things. I don't know how that happened. Wow, that's a lot of work gone.

Fleet Arena Store:

1. Collect 2k Tokens, and only spend below that for your highest priority
2. TAX-1 & Vader simultaneously, and equal priority. Since you have effectively 2 highest priorities until one of these is done, you might think about keeping 3k in the bank temporarily. For instance, Sun Fac is important, but he does have other sources. If you're on this step and you collect more than 3k because they aren't showing up enough, then you can spend on Sun Fac's Starfighter or other things farther down the list.
3. Sun Fac's Geonosian Starfighter
4. Sun Fac => 6* (if he's at 6*, let him finish using other sources)
5. Slave 1 (Boba's ship)
6. Imperial TIE => 5* (after that, use other sources)
7. Grievous
8. Ghost & Phantom II (simultaneously & equal priority)
9. Rex's ARC-170
10. Bistan's U-Wing
11. Scimitar & Poe's X-Wing (simultaneously & equal priority)
12. Gauntlet Starfighter
13. Ahsoka Tano (Fulcrum) & Chirrut Imwe (Simultaneously & equal priority)
14. Plo Koon & Wedge (Simultaneously & equal priority)

After that (and maybe even before since Plo Koon & Wedge have other sources), you will buy Zetas and ONLY Zetas until the end of time... or until you get so far ahead on zetas that buying Tusken Shaman starts to look good to you. :smiley:

Guild Events Store:

Unfortunately for clarity, this is actually more like 2 stores, because there are two different "Guild Events" currencies. They are typically called Guild Events Token -1 and Guild Events Token -2, and are abbreviated GET-1 & GET-2, which is what I'm going to call them.

Even worse for clarity, the GET-1 purchases are placed below the GET-2 purchases. So... I'm going to do them in the order you see them, with GET-2 first.

Fortunately for clarity, there are very few things you want to buy here for a very, very long time. You will accumulate these currencies slowly, so by the time you accomplish anything here, you'll have had a long time to think about next steps (which are basically gear, gear & more gear after you get these first steps done).

GET-2 Store:

1. Malevolence Blueprints until 7*.
2. Negotiator blueprints until 7*.

That's it. That's the list. Should take you about 2 years. Seriously. It goes a lot faster later, but right now you can't do much in Hoth Territory Battles and the real income is found in Geonosis Territory Battles, which you can't think about doing right now.

GET-1 Store:

1. Hermit Yoda => 7*
2. Save 40k GET-1
3. This comes in parts. First ask yourself, "Have I started the General Skywalker Clash on Kamino Epic Confrontation or the Malak Star Forge Showdown Epic Confrontation?"

• If yes, keep saving until you have the toon you're aiming for so you can take it to 7* right away.
  
• If no, Unlock Wampa (unlocks at 5*/145 shards)
  

4. Save up GET-1 until you unlock GAS or Malak (requires about 70k GET-1 to take one of these characters to 7-stars after unlocking them in their events, so keep saving until you unlock one or until you get 140k GET-1)
5. Purchase shards of whichever one of GAS or Malak you got first
6. Purchase the other
7. If you have both GAS & Malak at 7* ... OR.. if you have 70k in the bank for each toon you haven't unlocked yet, then you can bring Wampa up to 6*.
8. Once Wampa is at 6* ask yourself, "Am I working on the Jedi Knight Luke event right now?"

• If yes => bring Wampa to 7*
  
• If no => leave Wampa alone & save up enough GET-1 to finish Wampa whenever you start on that event, and then start spending any extra GET-1 on gear.
  

The thing with Wampa that's a little weird is that there's ONE place outside of GET-1 to get Wampa shards. That's an event called "Galactic Bounties I". (Yes, there's also a "Galactic Bounties 2" but Wampa is only in GB-1). It requires 5x Bounty Hunters and you're allowed to pick which one of several mini-events in the list you want to do. They're pretty much the same, save that some are easier and some are harder. To complete the hardest one, which gives you 20 Wampa shards, you should have all your Bounty Hunters to g11 or higher, with Bossk well into g12 if you can manage it.

So this isn't an event you're going to complete soon, but absolutely as soon as you can complete the Wampa tier of GB-1 you should only do Wampa & nothing but Wampa. All the other characters you can get other places besides the event and using GET-1, but not Wampa. This is at least better than Hermit Yoda since you can't get him anywhere except using GET-1.

The point is that getting Wampa from GB-1 is also an extremely long road. The event occurs about once every 50 days and you can get only 20 shards, which means about 0.4 shards/day. You can quickly see that relying only on GB-1 and not spending any currency on Wampa will take you about 800 days (or 2.2 years). But on the other hand, GET-1 is extremely precious and you don't want to spend it on anything unless you absolutely have to do so.

But if you spend to unlock Wampa, then you only need about 15 months of events to get Wampa the rest of the way to 7*. In the meantime, Wampa is required for the Jedi Luke event, but isn't a gamebreaking toon (he's good, don't get me wrong, but not gamebreaking). So spending your GET-1 on Hermit Yoda, GAS & Malak until you need Wampa for Jedi Luke is the smart thing to do. But you're going to have to spend some amount of GET-1 on Wampa, so that's why I recommend using saved GET-1 on Wampa to reach unlock if you're not ready to spend iron GAS & Malak.

And then on the back side, you just save up GET-1 until you are ready to finish Wampa in a hurry, but keep it in the bank since that way if you end up not going for JKL as soon as you think you will, there's time for more Galactic Bounties to come around and reduce your GET-1 cost for finishing. That, of course, leaves you more GET-1 for rare gear.

It seems weird to do all this saving and checking back, but it makes sense since you don't know how many Galactic Bounties events you'll be able to fit in before plunging ahead on the (very steep!) Jedi Knight Luke requirements.

Grand Arena Store:

This should only be used for high-end G12 gear. This means if it's not on the top row, don't buy it here. You can buy it elsewhere.

Some people also buy Kyrotech here. I don't, but by the time you need Kyrotech you can make up your own mind. My major rationale for not buying Kyros here is that you're always going to get caught short on something. So if you have to leave yourself short on something, you want to leave yourself short on the things that are cheapest to buy with crystals. Kyrotech salvage is cheaper to buy for crystals than G12-finisher salvage. So I buy G12-finisher salvage here & farm what Kyrotech I can with regular energy (since I'm done farming all regular energy toons until they add more someday), and the rest of the Kyrotech I just buy outright for crystals.

While this works for me, there are a few toons that you can access without going through a huge event that requires g13 or relics on your characters **and** actually require Kyros before g12 (most toons only require Kyros in the very last/most expensive piece of G12 gear at the right/bottom corner of the G12 gear screen). Padmé is one. She's an event toon, but you can easily get her done without taking any toon to relics. Shaak Ti is another, and she's available from Fleet Battles, so you can't get her yet, but you can get her relatively soon and certainly don't need any relic Pilots on your ships to start earning her shards. Admiral Piett is a third - and he's a regular farm that you could do right now if you wanted (do not farm him yet, I'm just saying it's theoretically possible), and he requires Kyros.

From this we know that there are times when you might be needing Kyrotech but not needing G12-finisher pieces. If you find yourself in such a place, then maybe purchasing Kyros there would be a good idea in that situation. Eventually, though, everyone will get to the point in the game where you have a steady crystal income and you need multiple relic characters. At that point, buying only G12 finisher salvage is the way to go in the GAC Store.

Shard Shop
This store will open automatically as soon as you get your first shard or blueprint that you don't need because the ship or character is already 7*. But even after it unlocks you won't get Shard Shop currency very fast. Just think about it, all those random shards that drop in Galactic War or from Bronziums? For me 100% of those generates ShShCurrency, but for you none of them do. When you have 1 x 7* character, then even when those random shards drop, there's only a tiny chance they're for the character that's 7*. The others shards will simply continue to rack up and you can't tell the game you would rather have ShShC. It's simply not a possibility until the character in question hits 7*.

So you don't really need a plan yet, but I'll give you one:

Buy Mk5 Stun Guns and only Mk5 Stun Guns. They cost 372 ShShC for a package of 5 salvage.
You'll never have too many of them, and they show up pretty rarely, but even so you won't have enough currency to buy all the Mk5 Stun Gun salvage that shows up here. They show up once or twice a week, I think, and that means you have to get 50 shards (or 20 ship blueprints) you don't need for characters or ships that are already 7* every single week just to make sure you can keep up. You're a long way off from that. So right now, it's Mk5 Stun Gun salvage only (make sure they're not Mk4 Stun Gun salvage which are much easier to get). Actually, not even right now. It's whenever you achieve your first 7* toon.

Someday when you are buying every single Mk5 Stun Gun salvage available in this store and you still keep building up currency, you'll hit 2,000 ShShCs in the bank. When that happens, you'll need to make a new plan to buy some other things in that store so as not to let that currency sit there, wasted. Until then, though, nothing exists in this shop for you except Mk5 Stun Gun salvage.

Bless Kyno for resurrecting that for us, GMan!

probably not green

I laughed so hard at that. Thank you. And enjoy your tea!

I sent a note to the forum moderator and they were able to resurrect it, so it was frustrating in the moment, but all is good. If you see Kyno bopping around the forums, remember that they were the nice person who did that for us.

Okay, first:

Never be afraid to ask for help. it's fine.

Second, GW does get more difficult at between-levels. That's normal. When you are crushing the Fleet Arena you'll have extra crystals to spend and you can improve your characters so much faster.

Think of it like this: What if it was going to take you 6 weeks to get each of your characters ready. BUT... you couldn't start for 8 weeks because you're sole focus right now is fleet. BUT... after those 8 weeks you could get 1 character ready per week.

Sure, you're going to be three weeks behind on that first character, since 8 + 1 = 9. But you'll be a couple weeks ahead on the 2nd character since 9 + 1 = 10 but 2 x 6 = 12. And you'll get farther & farther ahead every time you train up a new toon in 1 week instead of 6. That 3rd one would be yours on Week 11 with the Fleet Arena plan, but week 18 if you raced ahead with toons.

Now, those numbers are made up, they're not meant to tell you exactly how long things are taking or will take, but that's just an example to prove the point that if you can increase your resources by taking a couple weeks away from the thing that feels important, you might actually find that you get to your real goal quicker. Your real goal isn't finishing Galactic War today. Your real goals are much bigger than that and GW is just a step on the way. But Fleet Arena is a bigger step and you win in Fleet Arena by getting ahead early. Everyone is going to continue to develop their ships, so if you can't zoom into the top 50 right away, it's going to be harder to get there later. You can make small, everday improvements, but you'll only be keeping up with your competition, not surpassing them.

That's why you've got that big store of GW Tokens. I doubt anyone else you'll be playing against has that much currency saved to get out ahead on Geonosian ships.

it's normal to doubt since you don't have a lot of experience in the game and you haven't seen how good things can snowball into better things into amazing things. it's also normal to be a bit distracted, even bewildered by the multitude of things to do, and all of them feel like you have to do them RIGHT NOW. But that's not true. Everyone else is just as torn in different directions as you are. Take a breath. Get yourself back on the track you want to be on, and everything will be fine. There's no crisis here. Most people aren't planning ahead hardly at all, so if you took a week or two off the plan, you're still way ahead of them.

Things will be fine. There's no reason to panic.

Now, other things: I've sent you an ally invitation. If you accept it, you can play with my toys to get you through your Regular Energy, Cantina Energy, and Mod Energy battles. I haven't set up Dark Side battles yet, so it might have a mediocre character, but in a couple hours I will use SLKR there as my leader which will make him the toon you can borrow. on LS you get GL Rey. On Cantina & Mod Battles you get SLKR again in both places.

SLKR can solo all those battles, so you should be fine. For most of those battles, just put in any character that can survive while my SLKR trashes the enemy. You don't have to worry about your toons defeating the enemy. Just make sure that they stay alive & everything else will be fine. You'll 3* everything.

Unfortunately you can only use my toons 1x per day, but that's enough. Just do one new battle every day. No worrying about how long it's going to take, this is a game that people play for years. I'll try to get you boosted as fast as possible, but it's still a game that never really ends. There's always something to do, even for me 5 years in.

Now, Galactic War is **horribly difficult** with your roster, and it gets harder all the time. Your savior here is going to be Bastila. I know you're working on her. You just have to keep pushing. Once you have Bastila and 4 other Jedi (even if they're bad Jedi) you'll be back to winning GW and things will get much better.

Bastila is your key GW toon, okay? If you're worried about GW, we can find a way to help you farm Bastila faster, but don't worry about other toons. Bastila is the GW killer.

I'll take a look at your plan again, to see if there's anything else we should change, but you have both Spy and Soldier at 4 stars. Get Spy up to g7 and you'll be right on schedule. You also have KRU at 5*, so that is also a great head start on the people you'll be fighting.

One worry for me is that I don't see Sun Fac on your roster yet. I'll check things out to make sure the plan has you picking up Sun Fac.

Now, final step for this moment: You're thinking about spending money. That's FINE. You don't have to spend money, but you can.

The best thing to spend money on, if you're going to, is the Hound's Tooth back that gives you 80 shards of Bossk who is normally only available at level 85. With a 4* Bossk and an unlocked HT ship, you would definitely have an advantage over other people. A lot of your early fights will be easy for you.

BUT... the HT pack with Bossk & Ship costs $25 not $10. Off the top of my head I can't think of a package that costs $10 and would make a crucial difference, although if there's a pack that will let you buy Bastila that's $10, you could buy that one.

So spend nothing, spend to get Bastila, or spend to get HT & Bossk. Any of those three options are good.

Please remember though that I'm not telling you to spend money. Money does buy advantages, and you can turn those advantages into bigger rewards. If you just tried to buy crystals for $25 you wouldn't get nearly as many as you will get from getting Hound's Tooth early -- plus you have the Hound's Tooth on top of all those extra crystals.

But not all spending buys you a good advantage. There are lots of packs to buy and most of them won't move you up in fleet arena or squad arena, and they won't instantly make a difference in GW either.

On top of that, you're feeling a bit panicked right now. Making a decision about how much to spend when you're panicked is never a good idea. Take a breath. Fleet Arena doesn't start until level 60 so you have a couple days. Then look and see if you can even find those packs in the store. (They come and go.) When you're calm, if the packs are there, make a decision then. Whatever you do, everyone on the forum will still be happy to help you. No one is judging you for getting behind on your plan, and no one will judge you for spending money ... or for not spending money. Most people play the game for free.

Okay, i hope that helps. I'll double check the plan to make sure it's as good as can be, then I'll check back in again.

Take care.

MaterSeedy,

You are awesome. I am learning so much from your teaching, and it is really making the game enjoyable—I appreciate the time you’ve been taking to guide me along.

Sun Fac was one of the big mistakes I made. I simply forgot about him until the other day when I was rereading your writings. So I started farming him just a day ago, he is at 20/30. I plan to purchase his shards from guild store ASAP and get him up to speed.

Sun Fac is second priority only to getting Bastilla. I will be focusing on them both. No more side tasks to distract me, the true prize will be crushing fleet arena; this is the way. I would buy Bastilla if she was available now, but since I don’t see the package I will just focus on getting her immediately.

Although I agree, and probably won’t buy anything now. I’m going to keep lookout for Houndstooth package, it seems like it would be a nice boost.

I just used GL Rey in a light side battle. Wow. Just wow. Even one game a day with her will speed me through these roadblocks I’ve been hitting. It also made me realize just how weak my characters are currently. But like you were explaining, I now know this is a marathon not a sprint!

Please note, I’ve been using my iPad when writing these posts; hence the typos and grammar errors—I’m not a fan of typing in iPad. I’ll log into this forum from my laptop next time I post, so hopefully I’ll sound semi-literate.

Thank you as always for your time and guidance!