Step-by-step F2P Guide
This is going to be a journal of playing SWGOH free-to-play from level 1. I've read/watched a lot of advice for new players, but nothing that takes the player through the leveling process. The long...
Forum Discussion
++++++++++++++++++++From bought hero to end of level 27++++++++++++++++++++
There's no rush to reach level 28. In fact, the longer you take the better. The only rule at this point is DON'T SPEND CRYSTALS.
Once I reached level 8, I unlocked Shipments. I opened Shipments and scrolled down to the bottom of the first tab. There are four items that I can buy for credits. I bought them. Every six hours, the Shipments tabs will refresh and I'll buy the four items at the bottom of the first tab again. I won't buy them if I've got a huge amount of them (say at least 50), but that won't happen for a while.
The Cantina table also unlocked. At this point, I can earn hero shards in one of two ways - the Cantina table or Hard nodes. From what I've read, the drop rate from both is one out of three. The big difference is that Hard nodes are limited to five uses a day whereas Cantina nodes can be used an unlimited amount. 1-2 shards a day is a trickle, so there are only a few heroes I plan to farm their shards from Hard nodes.
At level 9, I unlocked a side quest to win Light Size Battles 2-A, 2-B and 2-C. I've already cleared those levels. This is one of the oddities of the developers mucking with levels 4 through 6. I did the side quest anyway. I generally try to do all of the side quests I can as soon as I can.
I hit level 10 and unlocked Talia. She'll be my best Dark Side hero for quite some time. For Cantina, I'll use her instead of Clone Sergeant.
I did three Cantina battles and 2-A through 2-E Light Side Hard nodes. That took me to level 12, which unlocked Dark Side battles.
Hard nodes
For my Daily Activities quests, I have to fight five Hard node battles. There's no point in fighting more than five in a day. The number of shards gained through Hard nodes is trivial and the gear drop relative to Normal nodes is poor. At holo table level 6, there are some Hard nodes that have good drops and are worth farming for gear, but no Hard nodes before that are worth farming for gear.
Continuing on
I trained my three Dark Side heroes up to level 10 and cleared the first three Dark Side nodes. That took me to level 14. After that, I jumped around in terms of battles I fought because I always made sure that I'd win so that I wouldn't waste energy. It was a lot of battles before I reached level 15, where I unlocked Challenges. I hit level 16 quickly, unlocking the second level of the Cantina table. I cleared the first two nodes of the second level of the Cantina table.
At this point, my top priority is grinding the Cantina 2-B node, which gives Ezra shards. Ezra will be the first Phoenix team member I'll unlock. I've seen several guides recommend unlocking Hera Syndulla first, but her strength is her leader ability and it's only worthwhile if you have several Phoenix heroes on your team. Ezra is a good Attacker, so I'm going to farm him first. The node also gives Catina Battle Tokens, which I can use to buy Chopper shards.
Farming for gear
When choosing which node to attack for gear, I usually pick the right-most node in the list as it generally gives the most training droids and credits. But I also consider if the node also has other gear that I need. Just because the gear has a green dot doesn't mean it's needed - sometimes the gear is needed by heroes that I'm not equipping or I have 58 of them. The level 1 nodes will usually give 4-6 gear items compared to 2 for higher nodes, so I'll do those when I can.
At this point, my top priority for Normal energy is to gear up my heroes. I'll take my top 5 (Lando, Chewie, Luke, Talia, JC) up to the next level (Gear III at this point) and then I'll gear the other heroes I use (Clone Sergeant, Royal Guard and Snowtrooper) to the gear level below that.
Level 18 - Allies
I hit level 18 and unlocked Allies. Allies make clearing the Dark Side table much, much easier. I went to this thread, went to the last page and sent Ally requests to all the player who've posted their ally code recently. Another great thing about allies is that they increase the number of silver coins you get and at this point, the silver coins represent the most likely way of getting a new hero.
Level 18 also unlocked level 4 of the Light Side table. The levels of the enemies ramp up rapidly above my level, so I only feel comfortable attacking new nodes with the help of powerful allies. Consequently, I'm spending most of my energy gearing up my team. I took my top 5 (Lando, Chewie, Luke, Talia, JC) as well as Snowtrooper are to Gear III, plus Clone Sergeant and Royal Guard to Gear II.
Level 20 - Events
When I got my next set of Daily Quests, I quickly got to level 20 and unlocked Events. I was lucky and there was an event giving a hero, T3-M4. T3-M4 kicks Clone Sergeant to the bench. Events are unpredictable, which makes this guide difficult as you'll have different events than I do.
You want to do your events every day.
Level 22 - Guilds
Being in a good guild makes a huge difference. A good guild provides you with a steady stream of gear and guild credits. But for you to earn guild credits, the guild has to frequently run guild raids at a level low enough for you to participate. If you join a sleepy guild that doesn't run many raids, you're going to lose out. If you join a high-powered guild that runs only high-level raids, you're going to lose out. I tried a number of guilds before I found "Orphans to the core", which is active enough to regularly run raids and is nice enough to regularly run Tier II Rancor raids fairly often.
What I do after my Daily Activities reset
Before my events reset (they reset at 11 am for me), I do Events and Guild Raids. I use my Normal and Cantina energy enough so that I'll be close to max energy when my Daily Activities reset.
When they reset, I:
* Click on Shipments, scroll to the bottom and buy what gear I can for credits
* Click on the Store, scroll right to the end and buy all the Bronzium Data Cards I can
* Do my Challenges
* Gear up with my new gear
* Fight 5 Hard Battles. My first priority for Hard nodes are those that complete a level. Completing a level gets me crystals, credits, Darth Vader shards and Ally points. If there are no Hard nodes that I haven't cleared before, I'll farm nodes for hero shards. I'll farm Dark Side Hard 1-A until I unlock Sabine Wren, and then I'll farm Resistance Trooper shards (Light Side 3-A or Dark Side 3-A).
* Fight Normal battles for gear
* Fight Cantina battles for Ezra or Hera shards
Level 25
This unlocked Fleet Commander Training: Admiral Ackbar. This is the first of the Training events that occur when you hit a certain level. I always do them as soon as they unlock. This one unlocked Resistance Pilot. If I didn't have T3-M4, then Resistance Pilot would send Clone Sergeant to the bench. But I do, so Resistance Pilot goes to the bench.
I have crazy amounts of both Cantina and Normal energy right now. As I've got all of my Daily Activities done, I'm free to do what I want. I'm going to use my Cantina energy first as unlocking Ezra as soon as possible is very important.
Ability Upgrades
I've gotten the material to upgrade abilities. For my first upgrade, the game forced me to upgrade Chewie's first ability Bowcaster. For my second, I upgraded Lando's second ability Double Down. Normally, I'd give top priority to the leader ability of my squad leader as that improves all my heroes, but currently only Lando and Luke benefit from Lando's leader ability. When I have my Phoenix squad, unique abilities will also be top priority. Next priority is AoE attacks (my Phoenix squad won't have any, so this gets skipped for them). Then basic attacks as they are the most used attacks. After that, I upgrade the abilities in the order of their importance.
In the long run, purple ability material will be the constraint for upgrading abilities and there'll be surplus greens and white, so using greens and whites now won't hurt me long term.
Level 26
The Rebels Basic Training event unlocked. This event gave me some shards, but didn't unlock any hero.
It's time to figure out who is going to be in my Squad Arena initially and then short-term. If I didn't have T3-M4, my initial Squad Arena team would be Lando, Chewie, Luke, Talia and JC, with JC getting bumped by Ezra as soon as he hits Gear III. But I do have T3-M4 (and you might have another hero that you go from an event of from a Bronzium Data Card) so I have to a different assessment. I have a 4* Lando and four 3* heroes (Chewie, Luke, Talia and T3-M4), so those five will be my initial Squad Arena squad. When Ezra gets to Gear III, I'm going to have him bump Talia. When I get Chopper to 3*, I'll have it probably bump Chewie. So I'm not going to gear Talia and Chewie any more.
I got T3-M4 up to Gear III and then started working on taking Lando to Gear IV.
Level 27
Another tier of Fleet Commander Training: Admiral Ackbar and another Rebels Basic Training event unlocked. The first unlocked the Resistance X-wing ship, which I won't use until level 60. The second gave me some more hero shards.
I stopped at 196 xp, 4 short of going to level 28, and then waited for my dailies to rest.
Time to focus on Phoenix
From this point, I'm going to pour all the resources I can into Phoenix heroes. Tomorrow when I start playing, I'm going to farm Ezra shards. When I unlock him, I'll gear him up and start using him whenever I can. I'll then start unlocking other Phoenix team members and I'll pour my resources into them. My other heroes are going to get just the leftovers. Lando will be the one hero that I'll continue to gear as I'll be using him for a long time.
Here are the levels where I unlocked each member of my Phoenix team:
Ezra - 30
Chopper - 34
Hera - 37
Kanan - 40
Zeb - 42
Scoundrels
I've read quite a few guides and a frequent topic is the need to unlock Scoundrels for the Credit Heist event. My advice - don't worry about Scoundrels for a long, long time. In my prior run, I did try to build a Scoundrel team for Credit Heist when I was my level was in the high 50's and it was a mistake. For this run, it might not be a problem as my bought hero (Lando) is a Scoundrel and the login reward hero is Dengar, who also is a Scoundrel. I already have Chewie, so that means I'll have three Scoundrels without expending any additional resources. I could expand that team by either getting Bobba Fett from a Bronzium Data Card or getting additional Scoundrels from events (I just missed getting Mission Vao and Zaalbar).
The problem with building a Scoundrel team for the Credit Heist event is that it takes a huge amount of resources including...credits. It costs 1.1 million credits to take a hero from level 1 to level 60. If I acquire Stormtrooper Han using Squad Arena Tokens, then my Kanan won't be competitive with my Squad Arena competition. If I acquire Cad Bane using Galactic War Tokens, then my Zeb won't be competitive with my Squad Arena competition. If I spend Normal energy to gear up my Scoundrels team, then my gear won't be competitive with my Squad Arena competition.
Once I get my Phoenix team to 7* and Gear VIII at about level 65, then it makes sense to think about building a Scoundrel team. But not until then.
Status:
* Level 27
* 11 heroes
* On Phoenix shards, I have 12 Ezra, 10 Chopper, 1 Hera and 1 Sabine
* Lando has Gear IV. Chewie, Luke, T3-M4, Talia, JC and Snowtrooper have Gear level III
* 598 Purple crystals
* 689.8K credits
There's no rush to reach level 28. In fact, the longer you take the better. The only rule at this point is DON'T SPEND CRYSTALS.
Once I reached level 8, I unlocked Shipments. I opened Shipments and scrolled down to the bottom of the first tab. There are four items that I can buy for credits. I bought them. Every six hours, the Shipments tabs will refresh and I'll buy the four items at the bottom of the first tab again. I won't buy them if I've got a huge amount of them (say at least 50), but that won't happen for a while.
The Cantina table also unlocked. At this point, I can earn hero shards in one of two ways - the Cantina table or Hard nodes. From what I've read, the drop rate from both is one out of three. The big difference is that Hard nodes are limited to five uses a day whereas Cantina nodes can be used an unlimited amount. 1-2 shards a day is a trickle, so there are only a few heroes I plan to farm their shards from Hard nodes.
At level 9, I unlocked a side quest to win Light Size Battles 2-A, 2-B and 2-C. I've already cleared those levels. This is one of the oddities of the developers mucking with levels 4 through 6. I did the side quest anyway. I generally try to do all of the side quests I can as soon as I can.
I hit level 10 and unlocked Talia. She'll be my best Dark Side hero for quite some time. For Cantina, I'll use her instead of Clone Sergeant.
I did three Cantina battles and 2-A through 2-E Light Side Hard nodes. That took me to level 12, which unlocked Dark Side battles.
Hard nodes
For my Daily Activities quests, I have to fight five Hard node battles. There's no point in fighting more than five in a day. The number of shards gained through Hard nodes is trivial and the gear drop relative to Normal nodes is poor. At holo table level 6, there are some Hard nodes that have good drops and are worth farming for gear, but no Hard nodes before that are worth farming for gear.
Continuing on
I trained my three Dark Side heroes up to level 10 and cleared the first three Dark Side nodes. That took me to level 14. After that, I jumped around in terms of battles I fought because I always made sure that I'd win so that I wouldn't waste energy. It was a lot of battles before I reached level 15, where I unlocked Challenges. I hit level 16 quickly, unlocking the second level of the Cantina table. I cleared the first two nodes of the second level of the Cantina table.
At this point, my top priority is grinding the Cantina 2-B node, which gives Ezra shards. Ezra will be the first Phoenix team member I'll unlock. I've seen several guides recommend unlocking Hera Syndulla first, but her strength is her leader ability and it's only worthwhile if you have several Phoenix heroes on your team. Ezra is a good Attacker, so I'm going to farm him first. The node also gives Catina Battle Tokens, which I can use to buy Chopper shards.
Farming for gear
When choosing which node to attack for gear, I usually pick the right-most node in the list as it generally gives the most training droids and credits. But I also consider if the node also has other gear that I need. Just because the gear has a green dot doesn't mean it's needed - sometimes the gear is needed by heroes that I'm not equipping or I have 58 of them. The level 1 nodes will usually give 4-6 gear items compared to 2 for higher nodes, so I'll do those when I can.
At this point, my top priority for Normal energy is to gear up my heroes. I'll take my top 5 (Lando, Chewie, Luke, Talia, JC) up to the next level (Gear III at this point) and then I'll gear the other heroes I use (Clone Sergeant, Royal Guard and Snowtrooper) to the gear level below that.
Level 18 - Allies
I hit level 18 and unlocked Allies. Allies make clearing the Dark Side table much, much easier. I went to this thread, went to the last page and sent Ally requests to all the player who've posted their ally code recently. Another great thing about allies is that they increase the number of silver coins you get and at this point, the silver coins represent the most likely way of getting a new hero.
Level 18 also unlocked level 4 of the Light Side table. The levels of the enemies ramp up rapidly above my level, so I only feel comfortable attacking new nodes with the help of powerful allies. Consequently, I'm spending most of my energy gearing up my team. I took my top 5 (Lando, Chewie, Luke, Talia, JC) as well as Snowtrooper are to Gear III, plus Clone Sergeant and Royal Guard to Gear II.
Level 20 - Events
When I got my next set of Daily Quests, I quickly got to level 20 and unlocked Events. I was lucky and there was an event giving a hero, T3-M4. T3-M4 kicks Clone Sergeant to the bench. Events are unpredictable, which makes this guide difficult as you'll have different events than I do.
You want to do your events every day.
Level 22 - Guilds
Being in a good guild makes a huge difference. A good guild provides you with a steady stream of gear and guild credits. But for you to earn guild credits, the guild has to frequently run guild raids at a level low enough for you to participate. If you join a sleepy guild that doesn't run many raids, you're going to lose out. If you join a high-powered guild that runs only high-level raids, you're going to lose out. I tried a number of guilds before I found "Orphans to the core", which is active enough to regularly run raids and is nice enough to regularly run Tier II Rancor raids fairly often.
What I do after my Daily Activities reset
Before my events reset (they reset at 11 am for me), I do Events and Guild Raids. I use my Normal and Cantina energy enough so that I'll be close to max energy when my Daily Activities reset.
When they reset, I:
* Click on Shipments, scroll to the bottom and buy what gear I can for credits
* Click on the Store, scroll right to the end and buy all the Bronzium Data Cards I can
* Do my Challenges
* Gear up with my new gear
* Fight 5 Hard Battles. My first priority for Hard nodes are those that complete a level. Completing a level gets me crystals, credits, Darth Vader shards and Ally points. If there are no Hard nodes that I haven't cleared before, I'll farm nodes for hero shards. I'll farm Dark Side Hard 1-A until I unlock Sabine Wren, and then I'll farm Resistance Trooper shards (Light Side 3-A or Dark Side 3-A).
* Fight Normal battles for gear
* Fight Cantina battles for Ezra or Hera shards
Level 25
This unlocked Fleet Commander Training: Admiral Ackbar. This is the first of the Training events that occur when you hit a certain level. I always do them as soon as they unlock. This one unlocked Resistance Pilot. If I didn't have T3-M4, then Resistance Pilot would send Clone Sergeant to the bench. But I do, so Resistance Pilot goes to the bench.
I have crazy amounts of both Cantina and Normal energy right now. As I've got all of my Daily Activities done, I'm free to do what I want. I'm going to use my Cantina energy first as unlocking Ezra as soon as possible is very important.
Ability Upgrades
I've gotten the material to upgrade abilities. For my first upgrade, the game forced me to upgrade Chewie's first ability Bowcaster. For my second, I upgraded Lando's second ability Double Down. Normally, I'd give top priority to the leader ability of my squad leader as that improves all my heroes, but currently only Lando and Luke benefit from Lando's leader ability. When I have my Phoenix squad, unique abilities will also be top priority. Next priority is AoE attacks (my Phoenix squad won't have any, so this gets skipped for them). Then basic attacks as they are the most used attacks. After that, I upgrade the abilities in the order of their importance.
In the long run, purple ability material will be the constraint for upgrading abilities and there'll be surplus greens and white, so using greens and whites now won't hurt me long term.
Level 26
The Rebels Basic Training event unlocked. This event gave me some shards, but didn't unlock any hero.
It's time to figure out who is going to be in my Squad Arena initially and then short-term. If I didn't have T3-M4, my initial Squad Arena team would be Lando, Chewie, Luke, Talia and JC, with JC getting bumped by Ezra as soon as he hits Gear III. But I do have T3-M4 (and you might have another hero that you go from an event of from a Bronzium Data Card) so I have to a different assessment. I have a 4* Lando and four 3* heroes (Chewie, Luke, Talia and T3-M4), so those five will be my initial Squad Arena squad. When Ezra gets to Gear III, I'm going to have him bump Talia. When I get Chopper to 3*, I'll have it probably bump Chewie. So I'm not going to gear Talia and Chewie any more.
I got T3-M4 up to Gear III and then started working on taking Lando to Gear IV.
Level 27
Another tier of Fleet Commander Training: Admiral Ackbar and another Rebels Basic Training event unlocked. The first unlocked the Resistance X-wing ship, which I won't use until level 60. The second gave me some more hero shards.
I stopped at 196 xp, 4 short of going to level 28, and then waited for my dailies to rest.
Time to focus on Phoenix
From this point, I'm going to pour all the resources I can into Phoenix heroes. Tomorrow when I start playing, I'm going to farm Ezra shards. When I unlock him, I'll gear him up and start using him whenever I can. I'll then start unlocking other Phoenix team members and I'll pour my resources into them. My other heroes are going to get just the leftovers. Lando will be the one hero that I'll continue to gear as I'll be using him for a long time.
Here are the levels where I unlocked each member of my Phoenix team:
Ezra - 30
Chopper - 34
Hera - 37
Kanan - 40
Zeb - 42
Scoundrels
I've read quite a few guides and a frequent topic is the need to unlock Scoundrels for the Credit Heist event. My advice - don't worry about Scoundrels for a long, long time. In my prior run, I did try to build a Scoundrel team for Credit Heist when I was my level was in the high 50's and it was a mistake. For this run, it might not be a problem as my bought hero (Lando) is a Scoundrel and the login reward hero is Dengar, who also is a Scoundrel. I already have Chewie, so that means I'll have three Scoundrels without expending any additional resources. I could expand that team by either getting Bobba Fett from a Bronzium Data Card or getting additional Scoundrels from events (I just missed getting Mission Vao and Zaalbar).
The problem with building a Scoundrel team for the Credit Heist event is that it takes a huge amount of resources including...credits. It costs 1.1 million credits to take a hero from level 1 to level 60. If I acquire Stormtrooper Han using Squad Arena Tokens, then my Kanan won't be competitive with my Squad Arena competition. If I acquire Cad Bane using Galactic War Tokens, then my Zeb won't be competitive with my Squad Arena competition. If I spend Normal energy to gear up my Scoundrels team, then my gear won't be competitive with my Squad Arena competition.
Once I get my Phoenix team to 7* and Gear VIII at about level 65, then it makes sense to think about building a Scoundrel team. But not until then.
Status:
* Level 27
* 11 heroes
* On Phoenix shards, I have 12 Ezra, 10 Chopper, 1 Hera and 1 Sabine
* Lando has Gear IV. Chewie, Luke, T3-M4, Talia, JC and Snowtrooper have Gear level III
* 598 Purple crystals
* 689.8K credits
