Midnight Suns

Pick light or dark and focus that.

I rushed exploring the grounds. But it is only really needed for a few side quests.

Only use keys on purple or gold chests.

I think it helps to focus one or two characters at a time to unlock cards and build them.

chooka1 wrote:

I am a a few missions in I welcome newbie tips. For example, how do you spend a typical day in the Abbey after waking up? Regarding conversations, is there a min/max at play like there was in Mass Effect? Thoughts on how to choose how to use the gamma coils?
In short, any comments welcome!

After you wake up I check the Superlink. The only messages that really matter are the direct messages.

Then I run around the Abbey and pick up all the resources (glowing balls of light). They're all inside except for some that will appear out in the training yard and rarely near the pool.

While doing that I'll talk to the supes. You'll get a feel about what type of response each one wants to hear from you. Eventually you'll get an option to give them gifts and again after speaking to supes you'll get a feel of what gifts will go over better.

If the supes ask for help and give you a choice of enhancements, focus on the benefit rather than the moral choice.

Typically, at night I'll do the exploring of the Abbey grounds. Also, after it rains, you'll find resources have respawned out there.

I only focused on upgrading myself, and two other supes. I found it too much to focus on more than that. That said you're going to find yourself in plenty of missions with supes you haven't really focused on. It's sometimes painful but usually if you have two upgraded supes along for the ride you'll complete it.

You'll want to focus on at least one supe that can heal others.

For cards just make sure not to get rid of all your Quick cards in your or other supes hands. Those are a good way to get some heroism and take out trash mobs without sacrificing a card use. Those are good cards to upgrade first too.

I do a mix of light/dark cards for the hunter (mainly light though). There's a bonus item you'll get at some point much later where playing a mix of light/dark cards will net you two free draws. That's comes in handy.

Which reminds me if you don't like the cards you in a given hand, make sure to use reimburse.

Also you don't want to bunch up your heroes at the end of a round (unless you plan on doing an area heal) so use the Move option to split them up.

And yes, the comment about the chests is right. You'll get plenty of keys but focus on using them on the Epic and Legendary chests rather than the Common and Rare ones - although it won't hurt if you want to open a few of those when you first get some keys.

Oh make sure to pet Charlie once a day. And the cat if she's around.

I am sorely tempted by this since it is on sale for $40....should I pull the trigger?

I mean it was $35 last week.

The complete version was $60 instead of $100, bit greedy on the season pass they are.

I'd probably wait another couple weeks since it will go sub 40 again

Recommended two or three supes to focus on?

chooka1 wrote:

Recommended two or three supes to focus on?

Honestly anybody but Blade. His bleed has a limited use. Everybody else is great. Pick who you like based on character or fun.

Nico, magick, captain marvel

I certainly like Marvel so far. I don’t think I’ve yet met Magick.

Marvel is great early on but her value comes from dealing raw damage and those numbers don’t keep up with other ways of hurting enemies. Even so, with the right companions she’s good enough to get by.

I’m currently around level 20 and everyone is still viable on Heroic 2 difficulty. Even Blade. Bleed is obviously how they want you to build his deck, and rightfully so given the cards he has that chain off of bleed, but he also has a bunch of quick and chain attacks that can work well with the right combos.

The most fun I’ve had so far, though, is with Magik and Nico. Magik for environmental destruction and Nico for the randomness.

Yup. Same. Magik and Nico were my main go-to's. I stopped playing with Captain Marvel, Blade, and Doctor Strange pretty early on. It sucked when missions required any of those.

I wish some of the late comers to the party were there sooner as I liked a few of those.

I also learned to like Iron Man even though he wasn't used all that often. He was an ok stand-in for Nico or Magik once you started upgrading his cards.

NVM. I have successfully resisted the urge to buy. Watching videos of others play it (and working on my own backlog) will suffice for now

They capture his vibe well I think but why is it so hard to get good voicework?

That looks pretty decent. I was hoping there would be some extra content and just not added characters. But looks like there may be a few extra missions with the new villains.

Will probably try a playthrough again once all the DLC is out.

I did end up getting it (surprise)

Anyway - how can a game be so great but so horrible at the same time? The combat is wonderful, interesting fun, engaging and everything in the Abby feels like the worst of mobile games. You have to run around and collect random globes - which appear for no reason with no logic just poof they are there today. You have to spend resources to open chests which have items which require resources to us! For example I decided to open one chest and got a kind of cool looking headgear and thought I would equip it but it requires a lot of gloss to be able to equip it. Because of that, I have been ignoring all that because it feels so pointless but occasionally you get a card which is helpful so they make it slightly worthwhile.
It is kind of funny it feels like two separate teams worked on the different parts of the game.

Which of course kind of begs the question why do I keep wanting to play? It is somehow addictive despite half the game being rather horrible.

I'm with you except, for me, the fun of the battles couldn't make up for the grind of the abbey. If I could do all the abbey activities without running around, it might be better. Something like X-Com's base, perhaps?

And you need to get to level 5 friendship with heroes to unlock their Legendary skill. I've been playing it pretty slowly, so the Abbey stuff isn't really getting in the way. The chests are giving me cosmetic stuff or items I can craft anyway, so the searching around feels pretty optional.

Tip #8 just annoys me. Read the books in the library every day for extra arcane knowledge. This seems fine but then you realize it is just busy work like they have in Candy Crush, etc. Of course if you get arcane to level 4 apparently you can unlock level 1 chests with no keys - which would be nice but I hate the check list of things to do every day type system

10 Insider Tips for Dominating Marvel's Midnight Suns from the Game's Lead Designer

You can also get arcane knowledge daily by petting the dog. And with the books, only new ones will give you any points. I didn't mind (though I definitely didn't do it every day because it's not necessary), though, because it gave a bunch of backstory that I had no prior knowledge of thanks to never seeing/reading anything Marvel related.

Despite sounding negative I am really enjoying the game.

I do wish - as I have in many games - there was something between easy and medium. I turned it down from medium and now I am not having any challenge. But medium just felt to hard. Maybe now that I know a bit more about the mechanics I will put it back up

Thank goodness it lets me change it when I want.

Honest Game Trailers | Marvel's Midnight Suns

farley3k wrote:

Despite sounding negative I am really enjoying the game.

I do wish - as I have in many games - there was something between easy and medium. I turned it down from medium and now I am not having any challenge. But medium just felt to hard. Maybe now that I know a bit more about the mechanics I will put it back up

Thank goodness it lets me change it when I want.

The game eventually starts pushing you to turn up the difficulty. You'll get little pop-ups letting you know a harder difficulty opened up.

Problem with the difficulty is the henchmen hit a lot harder, and had more hit points, but it seemed like your heroes hit point pool or resistance to taking damage doesn't grow enough to be viable at the higher difficulty levels.

I went as high as Heroic II for a few fights and then lowered it to Heroic I. Even if I won the Heroic II fights the rewards were terrible as I would take many turns to complete the battle and have at least one or two KOs. Together that made the rewards less than if I just won the battle on Heroic I.

I do hope they make a sequel as its a good game and they can tweak some of these shortcomings to make it a great game.

Yeah the last time I played I dialed it down for one of the side missions at the base. And then I didn't turn it up quite as high. Getting downed pretty much loses you the bonus rewards so you need to find the difficultly where you never have to revive as your sweet spot

I stuck to Heroic III for about 80% of the time and dropped to Heroic II when I was bringing someone under leveled or when the stat modifiers were starting to feel limiting on who I could bring.

Stele wrote:

Yeah the last time I played I dialed it down for one of the side missions at the base. And then I didn't turn it up quite as high. Getting downed pretty much loses you the bonus rewards so you need to find the difficultly where you never have to revive as your sweet spot

The only bonus you get for more stars is a little extra gloss. You get more gloss and more xp for bumping up the difficulty, so the star ratings really shouldn't factor into what difficulty you choose. Just play on whatever is fun for you. Don't sweat the stars, or at least don't sweat rewards tied to the stars.

I think I have the walk around the Abbey routine down. Due to the time suck, I don’t spend. Lot of time wandering outside during the day and night. Any streamlining trips? Besides an occasional essence or ingredients discovery am I really missing anything? I’ve been waiting for the story to nudge me outside?

Any other early to mid game tips (15 hours?) to share?

When do you feel comfortable to scrap a card?

Thanks,
Chad

chooka1 wrote:

I think I have the walk around the Abbey routine down. Due to the time suck, I don’t spend. Lot of time wandering outside during the day and night. Any streamlining trips? Besides an occasional essence or ingredients discovery am I really missing anything? I’ve been waiting for the story to nudge me outside?

Any other early to mid game tips (15 hours?) to share?

When do you feel comfortable to scrap a card?

Thanks,
Chad

There are "puzzles" to solve outside the abbey. Quite a few actually. You'll kinda get a notification that you've wandered upon one of these puzzles but it's not always 100% clear. Most of them are just find a few items and bring them back to where the puzzle triggered. And some require spell usage.

Outside the abbey is actually pretty large. There's a lot to explore.

Also for ingredients if you've gotten them all don't bother going out until it rains again or the day after it rains (forget which).

I really only scrapped cards somewhat near the end of the game. I needed lots of resources to upgrade or create copies of high-level cards and scrapping them was quick and easy way to get those. But yeah by the end there were a bunch of cards I never used for Hunter and my two other mains. I could have scrapped them a lot earlier in the game without issue.

Should I be concentrating on few characters or trying to spread the experience? Some games only let you take a few folks but then suddenly for "story" reasons you need to bring two groups or can't bring certain characters. That kind of thing has taught me to swap folks each mission but sometimes I don't even like the characters but I want them to get experience.

farley3k wrote:

Should I be concentrating on few characters or trying to spread the experience? Some games only let you take a few folks but then suddenly for "story" reasons you need to bring two groups or can't bring certain characters. That kind of thing has taught me to swap folks each mission but sometimes I don't even like the characters but I want them to get experience.

Focus on who you like. The daily training will allow you to skip levels for characters you choose on occasion.

But yes story missions sometimes require characters besides Hunter. All side missions require one hero. And you might want to check the mission board before you send out someone on a hero op. Or you might lock yourself out of progress for one game day if they are required for the mission you want to do

I had 3 main characters: Hunter, Magik, Nico. That was my A team. Then I had kinda a B team with Ghost Rider and Spider Man who I would swap out if Magik or Nico got injured.

But yeah focusing on just the 3 characters did hurt when you couldn't take either of them and had to use your B and C team members. There was one frustrating story mission (w/ Crossbones) I couldn't complete when I had to use my B/C team. I had to keep lowering the difficulty until I passed that one.

Honestly though I wouldn't change the way I did it. I had a lot of fun playing with those three characters and got through the game fine with the exception of that one mission.

I have about 40 hours in the game so far, and similar to Farley, it's been a love/hate kind of game. I like the card game a lot, though I'd sacrifice a toe to get a version with more open XCOM-like maps to play in. The boxing ring–style arenas get the job done, but I keep thinking how much more epic the encounters would feel if the maps were bigger and facilitated actual movement. (And yeah, I'm sure that would introduce a bunch of "hidden" problems the designers would have to solve.) And while I put stupid amounts of time into the Abbey—and the character interactions it facilitates have grown on me a lot—I also hate hate hate the sheer volume of pointless running around to collect absolute BS it asks for (and I hate myself for continuing to go along with it).

In hindsight, it seems like unless you find yourself doing a lot of cauldron brewing, it's probably OK to stick to just doing the story-driven Wanda pathway stuff to get the four power words as they open up and ignoring the rest. That's still a fair bit of running around the grounds, but I think you can really leave the rest of the wandering and collecting (for mysteries, journal entries, witch relics, and on, and on) until you've got all four words and can then just devote one session to trying to go everywhere without any restriction. I don't think any of it advances the story in any meaningful way, mostly just netting you more cosmetic unlocks that you won't use. (At least fast travel helps some.)

For the fun bits, I've focused my friendships on Nico, Magik, and Strange, but I've been using just about everybody in the encounters. That's probably diluted my level-ups to a degree, but they all have so many fun abilities to play with that I can't pin myself to just an A- and B-squad. Keeping it on the standard difficulty, so far, it hasn't impacted my ability to keep pushing through both side and story missions. (I'm into part 2 now.)

For me, it's no XCOM (and I desperately want an XCOM3), but it's a great game for just getting to do fun and crazy stuff with superheroes. And much as I was sure I'd bounce off the EMO kids/book club/hangouts stuff, I'm having a great time with it. It's introduced me to and made me like several characters I never really got much exposure to (not to mention picking back up my expired Marvel Unlimited sub).