MARVEL Avengers Academy tips

MARVEL Avengers Academy tips

And there came a day unlike any other, when Earth’s mightiest heroes would have to go to school! That might not be exactly how you remember the famous line from Avengers comics, but it’s the best way to describe Marvel Avengers Academy. The superheroes you know and love are now teens, assembled at a school run by Nick Fury. But what’s really going on there?

The only way to find out is to play through the fun story of TinyCo’s latest mobile game, taking in the stellar character interactions and enjoying the work of a star-studded voice cast. Not too many mobile games can say they have Dave Franco, John Cena and A$AP Rocky, but this one can.

It’s not a difficult game to play, as you simply assign heroes to tasks best-suited to their skills while building up your school and recruiting more characters. That doesn’t mean you’ll completely understand exactly what to do as soon as you jump in, which is why we’ve cooked up our Marvel Avengers Academy Guide with the tips, tricks and strategies you’ll need to get passing grades in the quest to defeat Hydra and get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding your super campus. Class is in session!

A Matter of Time

Marvel Avengers Academy is, at its heart, a time management game. The idea is to assign the right heroes to complete quests, some of which advance the story while others provide you with currency or items to help unlock characters or improve your campus.

All of the actions your heroes (and villains!) can perform take up different amounts of time, so there’s a constant juggling act required to have as many characters as possible working at one time. And unlike TinyCo’s previous hit game, Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, there’s no point in having anyone perform an action that isn’t working toward a quest objective, as it won’t yield any rewards.

Tapping on the icon in the bottom-left corner of the main screen will bring up a list of active quests that you can scroll through. Tapping on any picture in that list will pop up a window that shows what characters are needed, how much time it will take to finish their action and the reward you’ll receive when the quest is completed.

You’ll also see a selection of non-story quests on the Mission Board. These allow you to pick up extra credits and items using heroes who aren’t needed right that moment for story quests. They come in three tiers — easy, normal and heroic — corresponding to how much time you’ll need to complete them and the relative size of their rewards.

When looking at the portraits of the characters on the quest screen, you can tell at a glance whether they …

• Are available to assign to a specific task, which means a plain portrait.
• Have already completed that task, in which case you’ll see a green checkmark.
• Are already busy elsewhere, which will display a minus sign.

It’s important to remember that even if a hero is available for an action, the building they will need to use might be busy, which we’ll talk about in the next section. Some actions also require two characters to team up, which you’ll know because you’ll see their pictures swap back and forth in the quest window.

How do you get more done at one time? Recruit more characters, of course! Happily, we wrote a whole separate mini-guide for that.

TIP: If you’re fortunate enough to have the same action pop up for two different quests at once, assigning the hero to it will count toward the completion of both of them. You’ll see this fairly often with story and non-story quests.

Campus Tour

The buildings and other facilities on your Marvel Avengers Academy campus are the other key part of the equation when it comes to knocking out quests. Each one corresponds to different actions for specific heroes, so they’re definitely not just for show.

The most important thing to remember about campus buildings is that they can only hold a limited number of heroes in one place at any given time. That’s a crucial factor to keep in mind when assigning actions. For example, if you need Spider-Woman to fire her venom blasts at the Blasting Range for 45 minutes and War Machine to test out his guns for three minutes, it might make sense to give Rhodey the chance to do his thing first since Jessica will be tying up the target for a much larger period of time.

Buildings can be upgraded, which opens up additional actions and also allows them to be used by multiple heroes in most cases. You’ll need a fair amount of credits to do it, and the buildings can’t be used while the upgrade is in progress, so it’s generally something you’ll want to tackle when you’re going to be logged out of the game for a while.

As you expand to new parts of the campus grounds, you’ll notice that there are piles of debris of various sizes laying around. You can remove them by finding Pym Particles as quest rewards or use the Hulk’s special power if you’ve unlocked the Green Goliath. Either way, you’ll have to wait a certain amount of time for the debris to be cleared (and Hulk can only smash one pile at a time).

Last and somewhat least, there are decorative items that can be built around campus. These don’t do anything but make your academy look nicer, but hey, that counts for something too.

TIP: You may have to experiment a bit to discover how many characters a building can accommodate for similar actions. The dance floor at Club A can easily handle three dancers at one time after you’ve upgraded it once. The Timeless Archives can also accept three heroes at Stage 2, but only one person can use the reading desk, the computer and the bookshelf at any given time.

What Shards Can Do for You

There isn’t anything in Marvel Avengers Academy at launch that you’ll need to spend money on to unlock. The game’s premium currency, Infinity Shards, can be acquired simply by leveling up, and except for a few special characters, decor items and outfits, you don’t need them to do anything.

That’s not to say that Shards don’t come in handy, because they absolutely do. Think of them as a cure for impatience, as they can speed up any action or substitute for missing amounts of credits and/or items.

At least for now, the only way to earn Shards is by leveling up your academy and finishing certain parts of the story. That doesn’t get you many, so if you want to save up enough to buy heroes, you’ll have to resist the temptation to spend them. Kind of like you’d have to resist using the power of the Infinity Gems if you got your hands on one of them …

TIP: When you’ve invited a new character to campus, you’ll have to collect items, finish an action and spend a certain amount of credits before you unlock him or her. You can spend Shards to unlock them instantly, but if you fulfill some of the conditions, you’ll note that the cost to unlock goes down. Thus, you can find a happy medium between waiting forever and blowing all your Shards if you’re willing to put in at least some of the work.

Dress for Success

Janet van Dyne, better known as the Wasp, isn’t just a natural at making people look fabulous. Her store, Van Dyne’s Outfits, unlocks relatively early on and is more useful than it might first appear.

The outfits you buy at Van Dyne’s open up additional quests for the heroes who wear them, as well as granting bonuses that reduce the time spent on certain actions. More than any other items in the game, they’re probably worth laying out some credits or Shard