0 to Plat in 2023

[Thermopyle2]

Since there's so much mixed information due to changes over time since launch, I just wanted to give a brief mini-guide on how to run through the trophy requirements pretty minimally.

To start, some basic info about the character XP:
While some enemies do give XP when being killed, more of your XP comes from clearing an entire group of enemies. Once you do that, you'll see a brief animation freeze that indicates the combat has finished and you'll get a chunk of post-fight XP. If you kill the last visible enemy and that doesn't happen, hit UP on your d-pad and look around. There might be a straggler up on a ledge that needs to be killed. If you don't see anything quickly, just move on, but it's good to check because post-fight XP can exceed 1000 and that's around 10% of a level even at higher levels.

 

Only the character you are controlling gains XP. You'll need to get one character to level 50 for a trophy, then switch to other characters to continue getting levels until you have 250 across your roster for another trophy.

 

For upgrade selections, I suggest carefully looking over the three tabs as some are much more useful than others. If you're not using dodge/block very often, the upgrades that let you attack from those states aren't going to do you any good. If you're not sprinting in the middle of fights, then sprint attack options aren't useful either. I suggest going for the basic light/heavy/ranged combos, some of the energy trophies if they're useful, and then focusing your upgrades in the Specialty/Mastery trees as I found those to be much more impactful. Anything that drops heroic orbs is great, anything that lets you use your assault/support moves more times is great, otherwise use your judgement based on the character.

 

Some basic info about combat:

The AI is bad about handling turrets and flyers, both of which can shoot missiles that stagger you and interrupt your attacks, or can hit you with elemental debuffs or make enemies invulnerable to harm. I suggest starting every encounter with a quick kill of the turrets and then keeping an eye on the drones and other flying enemies before you switch to the ground units.

 

When you hit enemies with enough attacks they'll become stunned, at which point you can trigger a takedown move (triangle+circle.) Takedowns do a lot of damage and you're invulnerable during them, plus every takedown gives you a good boost to health. Due to that, upgrades and weapons that do stun damage can be great, especially in a group, as you can trigger multiple takedowns sequentially which gives you some nice breathing room in the middle of a fight.

Some basic info about faction XP:
Once you've progressed to a certain point in the initial campaign (Reassamble), you'll get access to a faction coordinator that will let you take 8 daily faction assignments that give 200xp each, as well as a single-run daily quest that will give ~1250xp. There are two factions; Shield and Inhumans. In addition to the faction XP, the assignments and quests are your biggest source of polychoron, which you'll need in order to upgrade your major relic. Maxing out a major relic gives you a trophy, and it also lets you get from the gear level 140 to gear level 150 which pops another trophy--be sure to stick to one character and artifact as it takes a lot to upgrade a major relic all the way. So as soon as the faction quests become available, be sure to accept the assignments every day (there's a trophy for doing 100), and I also suggest doing the daily villain sector quest (there will also be a vault quest for the other faction, but those suck and you have to do 15 villain sectors for another trophy anyway.) You'll need to get to faction level 25 in one of the two factions and the dailies are your main source of that XP, so this trophy is time-gated and starting this as early as possible is ideal. 

Now that the game is offline, you can change your clock a day ahead whenever you've finished your faction missions. This will let you get 8 more missions and the quest for each so you can quickly grind those out while doing the other content. 

 

Some basic info about power levels:
Power levels in the gear are just a reference to your character's overall gear score. It has nothing to do with character level--you can have PL 150 on a level 1 character. Every time you open a chest, or every time you buy a piece of equipment from a vendor, you'll want to immediately go into your character screen (touchpad) and hold L2 to force the highest-PL gear to be equipped. This will cause the next chest or the vendor gear to be updated to match your new PL--all new gear you get is based off the PL of your currently-equipped gear. If your equipped gear has an average PL of 40, anything new you pick up should be at or slightly above 40. Every upgrade raises your PL slightly, which raises your next gear pickup slightly as well.

You might be tempted to look at the individual characteristics of your gear, but realistically it doesn't matter until you max out at power level 140, at which point you'll want to start comparing attributes to make sure you get the best bonuses for your play style of that character.

 

Power levels are meaningless as far as actual gameplay goes, generally, as enemies scale to yours. There are minimum PL requirements for most events, however, so you will need to raise your PL in order to access the non-campaign missions later on. There are easy maps you can access and simply do chest runs in--run to the first chest, open and equip the content to raise  your PL, run to the next chest, repeat. Optionally if you have already been playing and you're switching to power-leveling a new character, you can do vendor runs to quickly upgrade your gear that way (this isn't possible early on due to lack of money for purchases.)

 

Once in a while, go in and scrap all your lower-PL gear. This will give you back money and also prevents new gear drops from being shoved into a box where L2 doesn't auto-equip them.

With the basics aside, the roadmap:

1. Play through the Operations: Reassemble Part 1: Reassemble campaign. All of your story trophies come from here and you'll get a number of miscellaneous combat and collection trophies as well. Simply follow the Avengers questline (those quests are marked with an 'A' and ignore the faction and character quests--we'll get to those later.) As you are going through the quests, in any section without fighting, keep an eye out for info items scattered around on tables and such as you need 50 of them. You likely won't get 50 during the campaign, but there are easy ways to get more later. Open any chests you see.
2. Once you're done with the Avengers questline and Kamala's story, stay in the Part 1 campaign menu--it's time to do character and faction quests, which gives you some easy miscellaneous trophies and grinding for vaults/chests/rescues.
   1. If you haven't already gotten Seeing Stars (Complete a quest objective without anybody taking damage), the easy place to do it is in the Shield Protocol questline, in the Secrets Within mission. Play it as Iron Man (or another character who can fly.) The first two mission objectives require combat, and then the third objective will be 'Reach Shield Bunker.' Simply fly directly to the objective, land, and hit the objective point and the trophy should pop. If you somehow receive damage and it doesn't pop, reload the mission.
   2. For Savior of the People (save 100 prisoners), Treasure Trove (open 50 cache strongboxes), Breaking and Entering (break into 30 depots), A Surprise Every Time (open 100 strongboxes), and progress towards Information Overload (collect 50 intelligence files), replay the mission Day of the Remains in the Inhuman quest chain. Follow the guide here to open the first Shield vault, then follow the steps here for the chests, rescues, depot, and the other shield vault. Once you rescue the last AIM agent, exit to the Quinjet and re-start the mission. If you finish the mission (Objective: Defeat 2 Adaptoids) the mission will disappear and you won't be able to run it anymore. So don't finish it unless you want to lose this easy grind method.
   3. Complete the Iconic Avengers and A Global Offensive mission chains.
   4. Go to the War Table, hit UP on the d-pad, and switch to the Avengers Initiative: War Zones. Switch to challenge level 1 (square for difficulty settings) and run a sabotage mission (brown icon, description will say something about taking something out, then 'Get in, do the job, come home!') for Trying on Perfection (100% rating with no team members going down) and More Important Things to Do (complete any mission in under 3 minutes.) For the specific mission, I suggest Pacific Northwest - Exo Hydraulics Foundry, if available. It may take a few tries to get both trophies.
   5. Switch to difficulty challenge 4 and re-do the above sabotage mission for The Best Around (100% rating on a challenge IV War Zone.)
   6. Do an Elite Heroic Hive at challenge level 1 for Truly Elite. 
   7. Do HARM challenges 1-V for Old Fashioned Beat Down.
3. At this point, the only trophies you have left should be the grindy stuff. Here's our roadmap for that:
   1. Pick a character to main to character level 50 (Time to Shine), power level 150 (On the Mountaintop), and major artifact +10 (Muahahahaha!). I suggest sticking with Kamala. She's got some really good group handling with her spin fist move, embiggen is great for multiple reasons, she can do lots of stun damage for constant takedowns and heroic orbs, and she has a healing support ability. Once you get her to character level 50 she should stay in your companion group for the rest of the game as she constantly drops heroic orbs and heals you up in that role.
   2. Continue doing the daily faction assignments and faction villain sector quests for Tentative Peace (complete 15 villain sectors) and Group Effort (level 25 in a faction.)
   3. Start running hives at challenge level 3 as you need to complete 50 for To the Dark and Back Again, and 30 challenge 3s for Holding it Down (complete 30 war zones at challenge 3 or higher). Hive progress seems to reset or not always count, so you might need to do more than 50. I recommend Pacific Northwest - Forest Hive, as it has the lowest PL requirement. Once you pop Holding it Down, begin doing everything on challenge 1. Hives should take 10-15 minutes at this point.
   4. When your character has a rare or better item at 140, you can get Investing in the Future with these steps:
      1. Go into your character gear in the category that you have a PL 140 item (let's say chest items for this example.)
      2. Click R2 on an item that is below 140 in the same category (another rare chest item with > 100 PL. Say one that is at PL 134.)
      3. Hold R2 over the level 140 PL chest item to consume it and upgrade the PL134 chest to PL140 and the trophy should pop.
   5. Once you have a character to level 50, begin running hives with other characters for the eventual goal of Back in Business (reach 250 hero levels across your roster.) Hives give fast, consistent XP for that. For Pacific Northwest - Forest Hive you'll need a minimum PL of 40 to run it, but that can be quickly gotten to by buying gear upgrades in stores or running chests in Eastern Seaboard - Enter the Avengers. If you don't already have Information Overload (collect 50 intelligence files), I suggest your second character be Spider-Man. His heroic quest chain is mostly doing things in combat or talking to a character in the Ant Hill, and running through his chain gives you 14 intelligence files. After Spider-Man, or if you already have Information Overload, I suggest Lady Thor as her ranged hammer throws are very OP and her 3 heroic moves are all very good. She also gives additional info files in her quest line for combat objectives.
   6. Once you've finished To the Dark and Back Again, if you still have additional hero levels to get, I suggest running the Snowy Tundra - Beating the Odds villain sector. Once you get to the end boss, the boss will begin making clones. Simply leave your game idling (or turbo square, L1, and R1 if you have a way to do that.) The clone deaths from your team AI, and from your turbo if you have that on, will give you constant XP, and when you die you'll immediately respawn into the same fight. I left it running while working and went from level 10 to level 30 on a character, then did the same with another.

 

What about the Taking Aim, Future Imperfect, and War for Wakanda campaigns (Parts 2-4)?

There are no trophies directly involved in any of that content. If you want to do it, go for it--and in fact if you want the Avengers story to make sense you do have to play them. The main enemy and plot introduced in Part 1 doesn't get any real attention and resolution until later campaigns. The above roadmap is just for getting the plat, which only requires Part 1: Reassemble, and then the rest is doable within the War Zones mode.
 

Why bother writing this? There's already two trophy guides.

Just to address some of the outdated info and give a focused look on how to get through the content in a way that minimizes running around looking for trophy strats or how to minimize overall effort. The new characters (Spider-Man, Lady Thor, and Winter Soldier in particular as they don't have actual campaigns to distract your efforts) and heroic campaigns make the info files no real concern, and the inability to replay story missions without resetting an entire campaign (like with the Seeing Stars trophy, or the Remains of the Days mission.) I spent a decent amount of time checking different sites trying to find up-to-date info, so this is a single place to shove everything.

Was this helpful, unhelpful? Any suggestions for a better approach on something? Let me know.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Thermopyle2

[TheYuriG]

1 hour ago, Thermopyle2 said:

Why bother writing this?

Never ask this, information is always good.

 

1 hour ago, Thermopyle2 said:

Was this helpful?

Yeah it was, thanks for posting.

[MrTulike]

That is really helpful, thanks! Any suggestions on which character to main or they are all viable?

Edited March 29, 2023 by MrTulike

[Thermopyle2]

3 hours ago, MrTulike said:

That is really helpful, thanks! Any suggestions on which character to main or they are all viable?

I found Kamala and Lady Thor to be very easy. Kamala has moves that do large amounts of stun damage in an area, which makes it easy to attack a group of enemies and then spam takedowns, which then restores your health while you're invincible and also triggers heroic orb drops (with the right character upgrade) at which point you can trigger embiggen or the hand slap which do high damage and stun and drop more heroic orbs.

Lady Thor's basic attack for me was just throwing the hammer over and over. Since it hits enemies on the return, flat shields are no use (enemies facing you get hit from behind), and the hammer itself knocks enemies away which makes for easy control of the crowds. Her special abilities do good group damage as well--the assault ability is a bunch of lightning damage in front of her which can take out large crowds in a single shot while restoring your assault heroics (with the right upgrade) so you can use it fast repeatedly. Her hammer throw does an area attack that hits all enemies for 30 seconds or whatever. And her support attack works pretty well, too.

Male Thor's range attack is the same, but his heroics aren't as good.

Spiderman is also a good character to play (plus he has that 14 info file mission chain), and Kate Bishop has some really nice moves as well. If you hold down square she'll shoot a smoke arrow that does high stun damage, which lets you chain takedowns like crazy. Combine that with some of her other moves and she's quite fun despite being relatively fragile.

[NewDust]

What would be the best mission(s) for Treasure Trove and Savior of the People if one has finished Day of the Remains (since every guide seems to be written from before the rework that makes this a one time only misssion)? 

[Thermopyle2]

Savior of the People you'll actually get quite a few of by running hives. It's pretty common for one of the stages to be a thing where you have to protect three AIM scientists who are defecting, and those count towards the trophy. If you finish the hives without having that trophy you can just run the Eastern Seaboard - Enter the Avengers mission which always has one to rescue and sometimes a second. I suggest this map for running chests to increase your PL in the guide, so while doing that you should also rescue the person in the map as well (they'll be on your objective display.)

For Treasure Trove, there's also Pacific Northwest - Stark Realities. I also completed Day of the Remains without meaning to and Stark Realities is what I ran as a replacement. 

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by Thermopyle2

[NewDust]

32 minutes ago, Thermopyle2 said:

Savior of the People you'll actually get quite a few of by running hives. It's pretty common for one of the stages to be a thing where you have to protect three AIM scientists who are defecting, and those count towards the trophy. If you finish the hives without having that trophy you can just run the Eastern Seaboard - Enter the Avengers mission which always has one to rescue and sometimes a second.

For Treasure Trove, there's also Pacific Northwest - Stark Realities. I also completed Day of the Remains without meaning to and Stark Realities is what I ran as a replacement.

 

 

Thanks. Already finished the hives, tried to get that out of the way before the patch (to prevent it from bugging). Doing Stark Realities now for the Caches and it is not too bad (what is, after 50 hives) and then just do the Enter the Avengers mission to finish it off. Also wasn't sure if the scientist counted for the trophy, so I should be quite a bit on my way.

 

Then just a few more Villain sectors and I should be done with the platinum.

[Thermopyle2]

I've seen some mixed comments about whether the scientists count. Pretty sure mine popped on one of those hive missions, though.

[NewDust]

Plat get. 100 aim prisoners literally popped at the next (actual) prisoner I freed, and villain sectors only needed two more. I got my time back. This game was better than I expected, but the grind definitely hurt the experience.

Edited March 29, 2023 by NewDust

[AdrenalStone21]

What’s an updated time amount with all the updates?

[diskdocx]

49 minutes ago, AdrenalStone21 said:

What’s an updated time amount with all the updates?

I would also be interested in this info - especially given all the DLC will be free as of the end of this month.

 

I'm also curious about this Iron Man Variable Threat Battle Suit which is supposed to be available only if you have 1 trophy before the Apr 1 update. I guess I should download and pop one ASAP?

[NewDust]

32 minutes ago, diskdocx said:

I would also be interested in this info - especially given all the DLC will be free as of the end of this month.

 

I'm also curious about this Iron Man Variable Threat Battle Suit which is supposed to be available only if you have 1 trophy before the Apr 1 update. I guess I should download and pop one ASAP?

 

1 hour ago, AdrenalStone21 said:

What’s an updated time amount with all the updates?

I'd still say 75+ hours, maybe a bit less if you really only focus on the Platinum. I also spend some time to rank up some challenge cards (free character battle passes) to earn some credits, which come March 31ste would convert into resources, for if I wanted to continue playing the game. Just the 50 hives (while working on challenges) took me a full week of multiple 4~8 hour sessions.

[diskdocx]

Just now, NewDust said:

 

I'd still say 75+ hours, maybe a bit less if you really only focus on the Platinum. I also spend some time to rank up some challenge cards (free character battle passes) to earn some credits, which come March 31ste would convert into resources, for if I wanted to continue playing the game. Just the 50 hives (while working on challenges) took me a full week of multiple 4~8 hour sessions.

Thanks for the info - do the Hives have to be done in co-op/online? And how long per Hive? I rarely get multiple hours of free time in a row, so that could be a deal breaker.

[NewDust]

1 minute ago, diskdocx said:

Thanks for the info - do the Hives have to be done in co-op/online? And how long per Hive? I rarely get multiple hours of free time in a row, so that could be a deal breaker.

Can be done completely solo, If you focus on one specific hive (Forest Hive - Pacific Northwest, which only has 5 floors, opposed to six) it should take you just a bit under 30 minutes per run.

 

It is a trophy known to be buggy, so keep a tally just to be certain. Mine popped exactly when it was supposed to.

[diskdocx]

40 minutes ago, NewDust said:

Can be done completely solo, If you focus on one specific hive (Forest Hive - Pacific Northwest, which only has 5 floors, opposed to six) it should take you just a bit under 30 minutes per run.

 

It is a trophy known to be buggy, so keep a tally just to be certain. Mine popped exactly when it was supposed to.

Great, thank you for the info. And @Thermopyle2for the thread.

[Thermopyle2]

5 hours ago, AdrenalStone21 said:

What’s an updated time amount with all the updates?

As far as I'm aware, the only thing the update makes faster is character leveling with the constant 1.5x XP.

The real grind components are the 50 levels for one character, 250 levels for the roster, and the 50 hives. If with this new update the hive counts work correctly instead of resetting every week or whatever, I would put the total time more in the 40-50 hour range. Running hives takes 10-15 minutes depending on if you go straight to objectives or take time to kill enemies you don't need to (they're good for XP, so that's not a bad choice), so that alone would take you 10-15 hours. The first campaign and character missions are all fairly short and I wouldn't expect them to take more than another 10 (the main mission can easily be done in under 5.) An extra 15 hours is pretty generous for the remainder of the content (villain sectors, chest runs for getting gear levels up, going on the slight side-missions in order to run Spider-man's quest chain for the info files, etc.) and still lands you around 40 hours.

 

If the hives are still buggy then you could spend a number of hours running them past 50, however. We'll see what people post with this update in place.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Thermopyle2

[ArabianSwordsman]

Did you ever run into a problem of not being able to accept daily faction assignments @Thermopyle2? I go to the section to accept the quest and it just says timer reset: 0s and I’m unable to accept them from either faction. 

[Thermopyle2]

10 hours ago, ArabianSwordsman said:

Did you ever run into a problem of not being able to accept daily faction assignments @Thermopyle2? I go to the section to accept the quest and it just says timer reset: 0s and I’m unable to accept them from either faction. 

I did a couple of times, but it was before the latest patch, so I'm not sure if my solution will work for you. What I had to do was close and relaunch the game.

[p_v_m_a_25]

10 hours ago, ArabianSwordsman said:

Did you ever run into a problem of not being able to accept daily faction assignments @Thermopyle2? I go to the section to accept the quest and it just says timer reset: 0s and I’m unable to accept them from either faction. 

 

This is a known issue that occurs with the latest patch. They say it will be fixed with a hotfix that will be released tomorrow, April 4th.

 

https://avengers.crystald.com/en-us/patch-notes-v2-8/

[Manilu-08]

I'm going to start this game in a few days but I don't like to play the whole story first and then the side quests, I usually mix it up trying to vary it as much as possible. Can this cause bugs?

 

Also I have doubts about the difficulty, I don't want a walk in the park and I would start at Brutal and then lower the difficulty if necessary. Can the constant changes of difficulty cause bugs?

 

Have they released the April 4th update?

Edited April 9, 2023 by NicholasMondiale

[Thermopyle2]

7 hours ago, NicholasMondiale said:

I'm going to start this game in a few days but I don't like to play the whole story first and then the side quests, I usually mix it up trying to vary it as much as possible. Can this cause bugs?

 

Also I have doubts about the difficulty, I don't want a walk in the park and I would start at Brutal and then lower the difficulty if necessary. Can the constant changes of difficulty cause bugs?

 

Have they released the April 4th update?

It doesn't cause bugs, no. The walkthrough is organized the way it is for the sake of simplicity and for separating out the Shield missions more than anything--and those just for the easy trophies as described.

You can tackle the missions in any order you wish, the roadmap ignores the extra campaigns and extra characters (except for the ones that give info files without having their own story missions to slow things down.) It's organized with the emphasis on getting to the plat as quickly as possible. Doing sidestuff will still contribute to raising your power levels for whatever character you're playing as, and getting the character levels that you need 250 of. So go for it if that's what you want.

 

The game is pretty easy in the base content and I didn't do the later campaigns or the end-game content, not sure how much you'll get out of it if you're going in looking for a hard time.

No idea on the April update.

[angelbless45]

On 25/3/2023 at 4:49 PM, Thermopyle2 said:

Was this helpful, unhelpful? Any suggestions for a better approach on something? Let me know.

 Thanks for this. I was hesitant to try it with all the reported glitches and complains about grinding, but it seems more doable now. 

 

I just downloaded the game and will start my journey. Any final recommendation to speed things up?  

[Thermopyle2]

1 hour ago, angelbless45 said:

 Thanks for this. I was hesitant to try it with all the reported glitches and complains about grinding, but it seems more doable now. 

 

I just downloaded the game and will start my journey. Any final recommendation to speed things up?  

Main thing is still to focus on the daily faction stuff and the 50 hives (be sure to run them in challenge mode 3 until that trophy pops.) The 250 character levels was a decent grind and probably would have popped after the 50 hives at the time of my post, but now there's a permanent 1.5x XP so the levels might come first.

[angelbless45]

31 minutes ago, Thermopyle2 said:

Main thing is still to focus on the daily faction stuff and the 50 hives (be sure to run them in challenge mode 3 until that trophy pops.) The 250 character levels was a decent grind and probably would have popped after the 50 hives at the time of my post, but now there's a permanent 1.5x XP so the levels might come first.

Got it! Thank you very much!

[angelbless45]

On 26/4/2023 at 0:12 PM, Thermopyle2 said:

Main thing is still to focus on the daily faction stuff and the 50 hives (be sure to run them in challenge mode 3 until that trophy pops.) The 250 character levels was a decent grind and probably would have popped after the 50 hives at the time of my post, but now there's a permanent 1.5x XP so the levels might come first.

 

 

One question. I just saw people getting the platinum in 2-4 days and my questions is, if there is a daily faction restriction to get polychrons (and the faction trophy), how is it possible to get the platinum that fast if you need would need 640 polys for the the upgrade trophy and you get only 20-22 per day? or am I missing something?

Edited April 29, 2023 by angelbless45