‘Injustice: Gods Among Us’ Guide – How to Master the Game Without Spending Money

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Injustice: Gods Among Us, from Mortal Kombat developers NetherRealm Studios, really ripped it up on consoles when it released earlier this year. Like a previous Warner Bros. release, Batman: Arkham City, Injustice came with its own iOS companion game. While that game, Batman: Arkham City Lockdown ($5.99), was a fun Infinity Blade clone, the iOS counterpart of Injustice: Gods Among Us (Free) is something a bit different.

It’s not exactly a straight-up one-on-one fighter like its big brother, nor is it a strategic card game like one might guess from the App Store description. It’s also a free game, albeit with many opportunities to spend your cash on IAPs. I’ve played the game quite a lot, and with its recent update bringing it back into the spotlight a bit, I thought it might be good to share with you some advice on how to get the most out of the game without breaking your piggy bank.

In the Beginning

The first thing you’ll want to do, if you can, is to link your iOS game with the console version. You do this by creating a WB ID and using it on both versions. If you don’t have the console version, don’t worry. Since linking the versions is a mutually beneficial arrangement, go to any message board on the internet where the console game is discussed, and you’ll be sure to find some folks who want to share a login with an iOS player. You’ll then want whoever is on the console version to clear the main story mode. If it’s already been done (chances are good), you’ll get the main goodie you’re looking for out of this deal: a valuable gold Prison Superman card.

The reason why you want this Prison Superman is not because he’s one of the best cards in the game (he’s not) nor is it because of his fashionable orange jumpsuit. Simply, it’s that in Injustice, the tier of the card triumphs over (nearly) all. That sucks if you’re a fan of the Flash, but that’s the way it is. Prison Superman is one of the weaker gold cards, but he’s leagues stronger than most of the opponents you’ll face in the first half of the game. He’s often capable of handling entire teams of enemies by himself. With him in hand, you’ll have an easy time getting to the point where you can earn better rewards.

If you can’t get him for whatever reason, you’ll want to start saving up for either Regime Nightwing or Insurgency Lex, both silver tier characters. Nightwing will cost you 42,000 coins and Lex will run you 46,000 coins. While it’s cheaper to get a silver booster pack, you have a very low chance of ending up with a character that will be useful in the long run, while Lex and Nightwing can almost hang with the gold tier. Both of them have the very useful ability to drain their opponent’s special meter with their level one special attack. Nightwing’s speed makes it very easy for him to build up his meter and keep his opponent locked out, while Lex offers a passive health boost to his teammates. If you need to go silver, these are the guys you want to do it with.

With one of these three guys as your team anchor, you’re all set. You can fill in the rest of the ranks with whatever guys are available, but your anchor will probably do most of the heavy lifting for now. Try to focus on one team for now, only replacing members if you have a higher tier available. If you have three silver characters, stick with them until you can replace them with golds. Spreading your experience points around won’t do you any favors in the long run.

Go for the Gold

Generally, aside from progressing through the stages, your goal is going to be to save up to buy gold booster packs. You can get one per day at the cost of 75,000 coins. When you start off, it’s a crazy amount of money, but as you play, it’ll come within reach. It’s not a bad idea to have a couple of teams, so that you can alternate between them when you run out of energy. Do not waste any coins on silver or bronze boosters. They might seem like a good idea at the time, but you’re basically throwing away your money if you buy them. There’s only a couple other things you should be spending your coins on, but we’ll get to that a little later.

Once you have enough for a gold pack, you could leave things up to Lady Luck as to which gold character you receive. Yeah, you could, but we’re looking to game the odds a bit here, aren’t we? With that in mind, you might want to use something like iFunbox to back up your save file before you buy your gold pack. If you don’t get the card you want, overwrite your save with your old one and try again. For your first set of gold characters, it’s not really so important, but once you’ve got your team set, you’ll be looking to get extra cards for each to up their rank, and that’s where backing up your save file will make things a lot easier for you. The best characters in the game are the non-Prison Supermen and the non-Beyond Batmen, but most of the gold tier won’t steer you wrong. Black Adam is great because one of his abilities can drain special meter, so you might want to use him.

Don’t invest too heavily in your first anchors, whether it’s Prison Superman, Lex, or Nightwing. What you will want to do is to unlock each of their specials as they reach the appropriate level. It won’t cost you much, and having access to the final special increases your power exponentially. In fact, you’re going to need level three specials once you reach a certain point in the game. Don’t bother putting extra money into boosting the specials, though. Save it for gold packs. Once you have your three proper gold characters, then you can start boosting their special abilities. It varies from character to character which ones you should invest in, but it’s generally a pretty good idea to boost the level three special first, as that’s going to be your game-breaker.

Spend Wisely

As far as spending your coins goes, then, it should follow this kind of pattern. First priority, getting a gold character. Second, unlocking his or her specials. Do these two steps until you have three gold characters. Then, buy their passive power/energy/experience boost cards. Finally, boost their special moves. After that, you can focus on getting extra cards to promote your main team, and picking up extra characters to create a second or third team.

Generally, the best bang for your buck battle-wise is going to either be the bonus battle of the last set of stages you completed, or the first battle of the set of stages you’re presently working through. Once you make it to the last set of stages, the first battle there provides good coin for the difficulty and is a pretty comfortable place to farm.

Focus on Specials

Now, once you’re in a fight, you’ll want to be doing a few things. First off, fights basically revolve around firing off specials. If you hit your opponent with more specials than he hits you with, you’ll probably win. With that in mind, you should be watching both meters at all times. The computer cannot use level three specials, but it’s not shy about popping the other two types off. It especially likes to use a special after being knocked down, so you’ll want to block if the computer has any specials stocked after a knockdown. Attack the opponent to build your meter, generally shooting for firing off the most powerful special attack you have available. In the long run, this means you’re going to be working towards filling your bar for your level three attack. Once you have your meter built, let fly, but try not to waste it on an opponent with low life.

If your opponent has a special move that drains your energy (Lex, Nightwing, Black Adam, Green Arrow, Sinestro, Cyborg), you’ll need to use a slightly different strategy. Designate one of your characters as a decoy. Use that character to pop off level one specials and wear down the opponent, while your other two characters build meter waiting. Once one of the other two team members has a full meter, wait until the opponent empties his bar, then tag them in and let the level three special fly immediately. No matter which character you’re fighting, be very cautious when they have meter. They might say the best defense is a good offense, but in Injustice, that’s not the case. You earn more special meter energy from taking hits than delivering them, generally speaking, and an unblocked special attack can be absolutely devastating, especially from someone like Superman, Batman, or Doomsday.

With your gold team all powered up, you’ll be able to handle tougher matches, which will earn more coins. At this point, feel free to fill out your roster with some of your favorite non-gold characters. At the very least, they’re useful for the new challenge matches introduced in the latest update. Eventually, you’ll want to aim to have at least two teams of gold characters, which will allow you to play longer during each session.

Finally, some general tips. Make sure you log in every day if you can to collect the rewards. Don’t sweat if you miss a day. The rewards aren’t contingent on consecutive logins. You won’t earn much in the way of coins until you’ve logged in for 60 or more days, and the Harley cards are appropriately a joke, but the energy refill items you’ll earn every second day are quite useful. Try not to waste those during the earlier stages that only require one energy point per fight. You’ll find them far more useful later in the game when you’ll need three energy points per fight.

I’ve played Injustice quite a bit since it was released, and although it sometimes feels like a grind, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, and haven’t paid a cent. I made some mistakes on the way, like buying silver or bronze packs, or sinking a bit too many coins into Prison Superman, but I can now justify those mistakes by saying I made them all for the sake of giving you, dear reader, some sound advice on this day. Have fun, and when you see Regime Superman, give that jerk a punch in the face for me.

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Injustice: Gods Among Us