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
++++++++++Levels 50 to 59+++++++++++++++
Level 50 unlocks mods. Before I discuss mods, I want to talk about the increase in credits for leveling. Here's the cost to go one level:
9 -> 10: 1,065
19 -> 20: 2,130
29 -> 30: 2,982
39 -> 40: 17,040
49 -> 50: 46,221
Taking a Light Side and a Dark Side squad from level 49 to level 50 takes almost 500K of credits. It's really important from now on to only level up heroes that I need to level up.
Mods
Mods are a terrible game feature because (1) it's very confusing and complex, (2) it's a great way for whales to insanely boost their heroes and (3) you don't know how good a mod is until you upgrade it to level 12.
Mods are something you equip to improve your character. You can only equip six mods and you can only have one mod of each shape. The shapes are square, diamond, circle, arrow, triangle and cross. There are two different attributes to determine mod quality - their initial color and the number of dots. The initial colors in order of improving quality are: white, green, blue, purple, gold. White 1-dot mods are the worst quality mod and gold 5-dot mods are the best quality mods.
Some guides:
Warrior Presents' BEST MOD GUIDE video
Grraahhggh's Massive Mods Guide
MobileGamer's MOD Guide Revised - Speed Secondaries video
BritishBambi's Beginners Guide To Mods video
Gaming-Fans.com Mod suggestions for many heroes
Crouching Rancor's Mod Advisor Tool (You have to enter your ally code to use the tool)
There's three parts to mods: acquiring them, upgrading them and then equipping them.
Acquiring mods
The first place you'll acquire mods is the Mod Battles holotable. On the first stage, you get 1-dot or 2-dot white mods. That's basically the worst and second worst quality mods in the game. On the eighth stage, you get 1-dot or 2-dot white mods. After completing stage 3, you unlock three Mod Challenges. The only point in battling on the Mod Battles holotable is to unlock Mod Challenges.
The second place you'll acquire mods is Mod Challenges. The Mod Challenges and the type of heroes required to perform it:
All - Health
Jedi - Defense
Jawas - Critical Damage
Scoundrels - Critical Chance (Must complete Stage 4 Mod Battles first)
Rebels - Tenacity (Must complete Stage 5 Mod Battles first)
First Order - Offense (Must complete Stage 6 Mod Battles first)
Empire - Potency (Must complete Stage 7 Mod Battles first)
Resistance - Speed (Must complete Stage 8 Mod Battles first)
Each Mod Challenge has three tiers and has five stages:
Tier I - Gives 1-dot, 2-dot and 3-dot mods, oppenents are level 65
Tier II - Gives 2-dot, 3-dot and 4-dot mods, oppenents are level 70
Tier III - Gives 3-dot, 4-dot and 5-dot mods, oppenents are level 75
I was able to clear Tier III of the All challenge with little difficulty in my prior run with a level 58 Phoenix team. The first time I cleared a Mod Challenge, I got two White mods of the highest possible dots. After that, I got a random mix of colors and dot levels. I've found nothing on drop rates for colors or number of dots for a Mod Challenge.
The third place to acquire mods is from the Mod Store. The great thing about the Mod Store is that you see what you're going to buy. The two bad things about the Mod Store is how rarely good mods show up and how expensive they are. The Mod Store is why I'd love to have 50M credits at level 50.
The fourth place to acquire mods is events which happen randomly. I've got ten 5-dot Blue mods and six 3-dot Blue mods from prior events.
Upgrading Mods
Mods are like yearling race horses. You can look at their bloodlines to guess which one will turn out best, but it's only until you've spent a lot of money training it do you know how good they actually are. You don't see all of the Secondary Stats of a Mod until level 12. Upgrading every Mod up to level 12 costs a prohibitive amount of credits.
I'm not going to go into how Mods change as they upgrade as it would be too long. See BritishBambi's Beginners Guide To Mods video. From what I've heard, the color changing will stop in Mods 2.0
Unless you have lots of credits, you want to stop upgrading your mods at level 12. Up to level 12, the Primary Stat gets upgraded and a Secondary Stat gets added or upgraded. At level 15, only the Primary Stat gets upgraded. The credit cost to upgrade the different dot count of mods to levels 12 & 15 are:
1 - 5.8K & 13.4K
2 - 12.3K & 28.8K
3 - 27.6K & 73.2K
4 - 47.7K & 128.7K
5 - 86.2K & 248.4K
Equipping Mods
You want to equip the mods that best suit the role of your hero. I looked at the Gaming-Fans.com Mod suggestions. Their list is probably awesome, but (1) I think it probably applies to 5-dot mods and (2) the recommendations are probably going to change radically once Mods 2.0 drops.
So, I'm going to go by a few simple guidelines initially:
* Speed is the most important attribute for all my heroes except for maybe Kanan. Ezra should have first dibs for Speed and Hera second
* Arrow mods with a Speed primary are much, much more desirable than any other type of Arrow mods (none of my initial Arrow mods have a Speed primary)
* Health and Protection are good for all characters, though Kanan should have first dibs on these and Chopper second
* For now, ignore % Protection as it doesn't kick in until Gear VII
* Chopper's other important attributes: Defense, Tenacity
* Ezra's other important attributes: Offense, Critical Chance and Critical Damage
* Hera's other important attributes: Potency and Offense with Tenacity and Defense as nice-to-have's
* Kanan - MAX HIS PROTECTION. other important attributes: Defense and Tenacity
* Zeb's other important attributes: Potency
Set bonuses
Each mod has a type and a set of each type gives the hero a bonus. Initially, all my mods are Health mods and for every pair of Health mods, that hero gets a bonus to his health (the amount of the bonus will change with Mods 2.0).
This may change after Mods 2.0, but for now long-term here are the number of each type of mod I'd like for my heroes:
Chopper: 4 Health and 2 Defense (Triangle and Circle)
Ezra: 4 Offense and 2 Critical Chance (Triangle and Circle)
Hera: 6 Health
Kanan: 4 Defense and 2 Health (Triangle and Plus)
Zeb: 4 Health and 2 Potency (Diamond and Triangle)
Rules for buying from the Mod Store:
* Top priority is an Arrow mod with a Speed primary for all characters except Kanan
* Next priority is a Critical Chance triangle mod with Critical Damage primary for Ezra
* Buy only mods that fit the type of sets I want long-term for my heroes
* Buy only mods with at least a 4 Speed secondary (unless it's an Arrow mod with a Speed primary)
* Have at least 1 million in credits after the purchase. I don't want to be unable to upgrade a hero because I bought a mod when I shouldn't have
First steps with Mods
To unlock mods, I trained a hero to level 50, which unlocks the Mod Battles. Mod battles have five stages instead of the normal three because...well because. Don't make the same mistake I did on my first Mod battle and not change the default order of heroes - I didn't have Hera as leader and lost the share of unique abilities. Once I won my first Mod battle, mods themselves were unlocked.
Next, I went to the Mod store to see if there were any mods I wanted to buy. It's pretty rare that there is one, but I was lucky today - there was a 5-dot blue Offense diamond mod with a 5 Speed secondary. That set me back 2.93M credits.
I want enough mods to have a complete set for each Phoenix team member. After clearing Stage 1 of the Battles holotable, I had four of the pluses and at least five of the rest. I did another 1-F to have a full set for everyone.
Now, it's time to upgrade my mods. First off, I upgraded all my 1-dot and 2 dot mods to level 12 and my 3-dot mods to level 9. I then upgraded my 5-dot mods with a Speed secondary of at least 4 to level 12 (I have three, including the one I bought).
Lastly, I assign my mods. One mistake I see a lot is players who put everything on Ezra and put poor mods on the rest of their heroes. I'm particularly happy when I see Hera with little in the way of mods as she's the first hero I try to kill. Kanan has first priority for mods that give either absolute amount of protection. I assign the mods in the following order: Ezra, Kanan, Chopper, Hera, Zeb. My two leftover mods I gave to Grand Moff Tarkin.
My plans for mods for the future
The most important thing to understand about mods is that most of them suck. Spending a lot of resources to acquire new mods has a very low return on investment. I personally prefer the sure return of spending Cantina energy to get hero shards to the gamble that after spending a huge amount of resources I might get some good mods. Consequently, I'm not going to be getting a lot of new mods.
If I've got at least 2.25M credits, I'll peruse the Mod Store. If there's a good mod I can afford, I'll buy it. If I get some mods from an event, I'll do what I did above (upgrade 3-dot to level 9, upgrade 5-dot mods to level 12 if they have a Speed secondary of at least 4) and assign them. But I should rarely get a new mod.
When my heroes hit Gear VII and get protection, I'll change around my mods to take advantage of % Protection. That should be the only time I do wholesale mod reassignment.
Level 50
I think Dark Side Stage 5 was unlocked last level, but I didn't clear any of the nodes. Now, I need to reach Dark Side 5-K to farm Mk 4 Arakyd Droid Caller Salvage. I can win the fights on Stage 5 if I have an ally with the power of at least 4K, but I don't have many of those. So I'm waiting and waiting for the ones I have to become available.
I have 79 Darth Vader shards. To get #80, I have to activate one more hero or promote two more heroes. Not sure which while happen first.
I got Zeb to 5* and then did my Squad Arena run for Day 13.
Buying shards in the Guild Store
My guild Orphans to the core regularly runs raids that I can participate in, which means I get a steady amount of Guild Tokens. My first priority for Guild Tokens is to buy gear, but often the gear choices aren’t helpful to my Phoenix team. Consequently, I’ve steadily built up Guild Tokens. When I have more than 900 Guild Tokens, I look at buying hero shards. There are only three heroes I’ll buy shards for in the Guild Store - Resistance Trooper (top priority), Finn and Poe. Those three will be the heart of the team that will eventually replace my Phoenix team.
Side note: In my last run, I got several side quests that had Guild Tokens as a reward. I've got none so far this run. I don't know if I've been unlucky now and lucky before or if there was a major change in the rewards for guild side quests.
Unlocked Darth Vader
I got Ima-Gun Di from a Bronzium Data Card. That gave me my 17th Light Side Character, which gave me two more Darth Vader shards. With 81 shards, I was able to activiate Darth Vader. I immediately trained him up to level 50 and geared him. That makes my Dark Side team Grand Moff Tarkin, TIE Fighter Pilot, Royal Guard, Darth Vader and Embo.
The current event is Corsucant, the second tier of which requires three Empire heroes with at least three stars. Darth Vader gives me my third such hero, joining Grand Moff Tarkin and TIE Fighter Pilot.
(To be updated. In before Mod 2.0)
Level 50 unlocks mods. Before I discuss mods, I want to talk about the increase in credits for leveling. Here's the cost to go one level:
9 -> 10: 1,065
19 -> 20: 2,130
29 -> 30: 2,982
39 -> 40: 17,040
49 -> 50: 46,221
Taking a Light Side and a Dark Side squad from level 49 to level 50 takes almost 500K of credits. It's really important from now on to only level up heroes that I need to level up.
Mods
Mods are a terrible game feature because (1) it's very confusing and complex, (2) it's a great way for whales to insanely boost their heroes and (3) you don't know how good a mod is until you upgrade it to level 12.
Mods are something you equip to improve your character. You can only equip six mods and you can only have one mod of each shape. The shapes are square, diamond, circle, arrow, triangle and cross. There are two different attributes to determine mod quality - their initial color and the number of dots. The initial colors in order of improving quality are: white, green, blue, purple, gold. White 1-dot mods are the worst quality mod and gold 5-dot mods are the best quality mods.
Some guides:
Warrior Presents' BEST MOD GUIDE video
Grraahhggh's Massive Mods Guide
MobileGamer's MOD Guide Revised - Speed Secondaries video
BritishBambi's Beginners Guide To Mods video
Gaming-Fans.com Mod suggestions for many heroes
Crouching Rancor's Mod Advisor Tool (You have to enter your ally code to use the tool)
There's three parts to mods: acquiring them, upgrading them and then equipping them.
Acquiring mods
The first place you'll acquire mods is the Mod Battles holotable. On the first stage, you get 1-dot or 2-dot white mods. That's basically the worst and second worst quality mods in the game. On the eighth stage, you get 1-dot or 2-dot white mods. After completing stage 3, you unlock three Mod Challenges. The only point in battling on the Mod Battles holotable is to unlock Mod Challenges.
The second place you'll acquire mods is Mod Challenges. The Mod Challenges and the type of heroes required to perform it:
All - Health
Jedi - Defense
Jawas - Critical Damage
Scoundrels - Critical Chance (Must complete Stage 4 Mod Battles first)
Rebels - Tenacity (Must complete Stage 5 Mod Battles first)
First Order - Offense (Must complete Stage 6 Mod Battles first)
Empire - Potency (Must complete Stage 7 Mod Battles first)
Resistance - Speed (Must complete Stage 8 Mod Battles first)
Each Mod Challenge has three tiers and has five stages:
Tier I - Gives 1-dot, 2-dot and 3-dot mods, oppenents are level 65
Tier II - Gives 2-dot, 3-dot and 4-dot mods, oppenents are level 70
Tier III - Gives 3-dot, 4-dot and 5-dot mods, oppenents are level 75
I was able to clear Tier III of the All challenge with little difficulty in my prior run with a level 58 Phoenix team. The first time I cleared a Mod Challenge, I got two White mods of the highest possible dots. After that, I got a random mix of colors and dot levels. I've found nothing on drop rates for colors or number of dots for a Mod Challenge.
The third place to acquire mods is from the Mod Store. The great thing about the Mod Store is that you see what you're going to buy. The two bad things about the Mod Store is how rarely good mods show up and how expensive they are. The Mod Store is why I'd love to have 50M credits at level 50.
The fourth place to acquire mods is events which happen randomly. I've got ten 5-dot Blue mods and six 3-dot Blue mods from prior events.
Upgrading Mods
Mods are like yearling race horses. You can look at their bloodlines to guess which one will turn out best, but it's only until you've spent a lot of money training it do you know how good they actually are. You don't see all of the Secondary Stats of a Mod until level 12. Upgrading every Mod up to level 12 costs a prohibitive amount of credits.
I'm not going to go into how Mods change as they upgrade as it would be too long. See BritishBambi's Beginners Guide To Mods video. From what I've heard, the color changing will stop in Mods 2.0
Unless you have lots of credits, you want to stop upgrading your mods at level 12. Up to level 12, the Primary Stat gets upgraded and a Secondary Stat gets added or upgraded. At level 15, only the Primary Stat gets upgraded. The credit cost to upgrade the different dot count of mods to levels 12 & 15 are:
1 - 5.8K & 13.4K
2 - 12.3K & 28.8K
3 - 27.6K & 73.2K
4 - 47.7K & 128.7K
5 - 86.2K & 248.4K
Equipping Mods
You want to equip the mods that best suit the role of your hero. I looked at the Gaming-Fans.com Mod suggestions. Their list is probably awesome, but (1) I think it probably applies to 5-dot mods and (2) the recommendations are probably going to change radically once Mods 2.0 drops.
So, I'm going to go by a few simple guidelines initially:
* Speed is the most important attribute for all my heroes except for maybe Kanan. Ezra should have first dibs for Speed and Hera second
* Arrow mods with a Speed primary are much, much more desirable than any other type of Arrow mods (none of my initial Arrow mods have a Speed primary)
* Health and Protection are good for all characters, though Kanan should have first dibs on these and Chopper second
* For now, ignore % Protection as it doesn't kick in until Gear VII
* Chopper's other important attributes: Defense, Tenacity
* Ezra's other important attributes: Offense, Critical Chance and Critical Damage
* Hera's other important attributes: Potency and Offense with Tenacity and Defense as nice-to-have's
* Kanan - MAX HIS PROTECTION. other important attributes: Defense and Tenacity
* Zeb's other important attributes: Potency
Set bonuses
Each mod has a type and a set of each type gives the hero a bonus. Initially, all my mods are Health mods and for every pair of Health mods, that hero gets a bonus to his health (the amount of the bonus will change with Mods 2.0).
This may change after Mods 2.0, but for now long-term here are the number of each type of mod I'd like for my heroes:
Chopper: 4 Health and 2 Defense (Triangle and Circle)
Ezra: 4 Offense and 2 Critical Chance (Triangle and Circle)
Hera: 6 Health
Kanan: 4 Defense and 2 Health (Triangle and Plus)
Zeb: 4 Health and 2 Potency (Diamond and Triangle)
Rules for buying from the Mod Store:
* Top priority is an Arrow mod with a Speed primary for all characters except Kanan
* Next priority is a Critical Chance triangle mod with Critical Damage primary for Ezra
* Buy only mods that fit the type of sets I want long-term for my heroes
* Buy only mods with at least a 4 Speed secondary (unless it's an Arrow mod with a Speed primary)
* Have at least 1 million in credits after the purchase. I don't want to be unable to upgrade a hero because I bought a mod when I shouldn't have
First steps with Mods
To unlock mods, I trained a hero to level 50, which unlocks the Mod Battles. Mod battles have five stages instead of the normal three because...well because. Don't make the same mistake I did on my first Mod battle and not change the default order of heroes - I didn't have Hera as leader and lost the share of unique abilities. Once I won my first Mod battle, mods themselves were unlocked.
Next, I went to the Mod store to see if there were any mods I wanted to buy. It's pretty rare that there is one, but I was lucky today - there was a 5-dot blue Offense diamond mod with a 5 Speed secondary. That set me back 2.93M credits.
I want enough mods to have a complete set for each Phoenix team member. After clearing Stage 1 of the Battles holotable, I had four of the pluses and at least five of the rest. I did another 1-F to have a full set for everyone.
Now, it's time to upgrade my mods. First off, I upgraded all my 1-dot and 2 dot mods to level 12 and my 3-dot mods to level 9. I then upgraded my 5-dot mods with a Speed secondary of at least 4 to level 12 (I have three, including the one I bought).
Lastly, I assign my mods. One mistake I see a lot is players who put everything on Ezra and put poor mods on the rest of their heroes. I'm particularly happy when I see Hera with little in the way of mods as she's the first hero I try to kill. Kanan has first priority for mods that give either absolute amount of protection. I assign the mods in the following order: Ezra, Kanan, Chopper, Hera, Zeb. My two leftover mods I gave to Grand Moff Tarkin.
My plans for mods for the future
The most important thing to understand about mods is that most of them suck. Spending a lot of resources to acquire new mods has a very low return on investment. I personally prefer the sure return of spending Cantina energy to get hero shards to the gamble that after spending a huge amount of resources I might get some good mods. Consequently, I'm not going to be getting a lot of new mods.
If I've got at least 2.25M credits, I'll peruse the Mod Store. If there's a good mod I can afford, I'll buy it. If I get some mods from an event, I'll do what I did above (upgrade 3-dot to level 9, upgrade 5-dot mods to level 12 if they have a Speed secondary of at least 4) and assign them. But I should rarely get a new mod.
When my heroes hit Gear VII and get protection, I'll change around my mods to take advantage of % Protection. That should be the only time I do wholesale mod reassignment.
Level 50
I think Dark Side Stage 5 was unlocked last level, but I didn't clear any of the nodes. Now, I need to reach Dark Side 5-K to farm Mk 4 Arakyd Droid Caller Salvage. I can win the fights on Stage 5 if I have an ally with the power of at least 4K, but I don't have many of those. So I'm waiting and waiting for the ones I have to become available.
I have 79 Darth Vader shards. To get #80, I have to activate one more hero or promote two more heroes. Not sure which while happen first.
I got Zeb to 5* and then did my Squad Arena run for Day 13.
Buying shards in the Guild Store
My guild Orphans to the core regularly runs raids that I can participate in, which means I get a steady amount of Guild Tokens. My first priority for Guild Tokens is to buy gear, but often the gear choices aren’t helpful to my Phoenix team. Consequently, I’ve steadily built up Guild Tokens. When I have more than 900 Guild Tokens, I look at buying hero shards. There are only three heroes I’ll buy shards for in the Guild Store - Resistance Trooper (top priority), Finn and Poe. Those three will be the heart of the team that will eventually replace my Phoenix team.
Side note: In my last run, I got several side quests that had Guild Tokens as a reward. I've got none so far this run. I don't know if I've been unlucky now and lucky before or if there was a major change in the rewards for guild side quests.
Unlocked Darth Vader
I got Ima-Gun Di from a Bronzium Data Card. That gave me my 17th Light Side Character, which gave me two more Darth Vader shards. With 81 shards, I was able to activiate Darth Vader. I immediately trained him up to level 50 and geared him. That makes my Dark Side team Grand Moff Tarkin, TIE Fighter Pilot, Royal Guard, Darth Vader and Embo.
The current event is Corsucant, the second tier of which requires three Empire heroes with at least three stars. Darth Vader gives me my third such hero, joining Grand Moff Tarkin and TIE Fighter Pilot.
(To be updated. In before Mod 2.0)
