When news about an Injustice: Gods Among Us sequel for consoles leaked last summer, it left us with a couple of questions about the mobile version. Would Warner Bros. and NetherRealm also make a sequel for mobile, or would they just continue updating the existing Injustice (Free) game which had already received massive amounts of new content over the past 4 years and was one of the most popular mobile games around? This past Valentine’s Day we got our answer as Injustice 2 for mobile soft-launched in the Philippines App Store, and this week the game has finally launched worldwide. While I’m not sure of the strategy of abandoning an existing successful game with a huge player base in favor of a brand new app, it does at least afford the series a fresh start, and the engine running the existing Injustice game was arguably getting long in the tooth. While Injustice 2 retains the core stripped-down fighting mechanics of its predecessor, it also makes some major fundamental changes to the entire formula. With that, we’ve put together a short guide in an effort to help you get the most out of this newest entry in the mobile Injustice series.
The Basics
The first Injustice streamlined the traditionally button-heavy one-on-one fighting genre down to something that worked on buttonless touchscreens. The did this by removing the ability to move freely about the arena, and instead had you focusing on face-to-face fisticuffs while the game ensured you and your opponent were always in position together. Tapping the screen landed basic hits, which could be strung together into combos by tapping a few times repeatedly and nailing a quick-time-event type gesture to land a knockdown blow. You could also mix in heavy attacks by swiping left or right instead of tapping. It was simple enough for anyone to instantly grasp, but nuanced enough that it took real strategy and expert timing to be successful against the increasingly difficult opponents.
Injustice 2 builds on those core mechanics. Tapping still performs basic attacks that can be strung together, but now swiping forward will produce a heavy attack that lunges your character forward, and swiping backwards will see your character dashing backwards away from your opponent. In addition, when dashing backwards you can tap the screen to throw a projectile, bringing this fundamental fighting game move into this streamlined touchscreen fighting system. You can also swipe upwards to do a jumping downward attack, and swipe down to do a sweeping low attack.
The result is that the fighting system is still simple enough to understand but much more complex and strategic than the first game. In both games, and one of the major reasons Injustice on mobile has been so enjoyable, the fighting mechanics feel tight and satisfying to perform. They’re really done a fantastic job at bringing all the elements that make traditional fighting games so good to this streamlined format, and that’s especially true in Injustice 2.
Energy
The original Injustice was a free to play game, and with that came one of the most detested elements of that business model: An energy system. However, the energy system itself was extremely friendly and after just a bit of progression in the game it became a non-issue. This is because each character in Injustice had their own allotment of energy, and once you collected enough characters on your roster, you could simply swap out members of your team when their energy ran out. It got to the point that I had so many characters in Injustice that by the time I made my way through all my different teams my original team’s energy was already refilled, meaning there was never a point where I’d need to stop playing due to having no energy.
Injustice 2 throws all that out the window. Instead, you have a single pool of energy that gets used up each time you play a round, no matter who you’re using on your team. Worse is that each fight takes quite a bit of that limited energy. You start out with 60 units of energy, but each Normal difficulty fight starts out costing 6 units each. Then, once you’ve beaten a level on Normal, you have the option of re-playing through all the fights on a Heroic difficulty setting for greater challenge and greater rewards, but these Heroic fights start out at a whopping 12 units of energy each. Woof.
Trying to be optimistic about this change, I’m hoping that the energy costs are only as high as they are due to the game being in soft launch and having very little content so far, hopefully preventing early players from blowing through everything too quickly. Maybe? For now it is what it is though, but there are a few things you can do to get the most out of the energy the game gives you, and in addition to just the old-fashioned tactic of waiting, these things all revolve around the game’s Daily Objectives.
Daily Objectives
Like most free to play games, Injustice 2 rewards you for playing everyday. There’s a series of Daily Login Bonuses that you’ll get one of each day simply for firing up the game. These aren’t terribly exciting, but they’re something. Then there’s a list of in-game Achievements, which are more long-term goals that typically reward you with premium Gems and various hero “Shards" which are used for unlocking and leveling up characters in the game. Then there’s the Daily Objectives and these are how you’ll level up your overall player profile and earn some of those precious energy units.
As I said before, you start the game with a base of 60 units of energy, and that base total goes up by one each time you level up your player profile. For example, I’m currently level 13 and now have a total of 72 energy units: 60 plus the extra 12 I’ve earned through leveling up. When you do level up you get 30 units of energy, and by completing the Daily Objectives you should be able to level up about once or twice a day, especially during the early portions of the game. Coupled with one of the Daily Objectives which gives you 30 energy units itself, plus the Arena Objective which awards another 30 units, and you can get typically 2-3 full energy recharges per day, in addition to whatever energy has recharged just through the passage of time. All this should result in about 30 minutes to an hour of active playing time per day without spending Gems to refill your energy. Here I’m going to list out every Daily Objective along with the easiest ways to complete them.
Free Gems, Stamina, and Tickets – This one’s as easy as they come. Simply claim your reward of some Sim Chips (which allow you to simulate a battle and collect the rewards from it without actually playing), 30 units of energy, and some premium Gems once each day. This is the first big “refill" of energy you can get after your initial supply is used.
Campaign Battles – Just beat any 4 Campaign Battles to claim this. They can be battles you’ve already beaten and using a Sim Chip to simulate a battle also counts towards this. You’ll earn some overall XP for your profile, some coins, and an XP capsule that can be used towards leveling up any of your fighters.
Operations – These are the timer missions you can send characters off to complete while you’re not using them during normal play. You can’t use any characters while they’re on an Operation, so just use any extras you’ve collected and save your mains for playing. More on this later. The shortest Operations are 30 minutes, so complete 2 of those to easily complete this objective.
Hero Training – This is a tricky one. There is a mode called Resource Missions which has you fighting a series of increasingly difficult battles in order to earn some character XP rewards. Each day of the week has a different set of Training missions for each type of character class in the game. If you’ve played Marvel Contest of Champions this should all seem quite familiar. There’s a couple of problems though. First, the difficulty increases dramatically in each subsequent fight. You will probably fare alright in the first fight, and possibly even the second, but you better have some high-level characters ready for the third fight and beyond. In addition to that, you only have 3 chances to play through any given Training mission, and once that runs out you’ll need to spend premium Gems to buy 3 more chances. The easiest way to complete this objective is by playing whichever fight you’re appropriately leveled for 3 times to fulfill the quota.
Enter the Arena – The Arena uses a separate set of energy that’s per character and more like how the energy worked in the original Injustice. So, for the Daily Objective reward which includes a hefty chunk of XP for your profile level AND another 30 units of energy, simply play 3 matches in the Arena.
Ability Upgrades – If you open up a character’s profile you’ll see 3 tabs in the upper right of the screen: Abilities, Talents, and Stats. Go into the Abilities tab and upgrade any of that hero’s abilities twice to earn this objective. Since the price for upgrading an ability goes up exponentially, this one can get tricky if you don’t have a ton of coins saved up. However, if you take your time and only upgrade two a day for the purposes of this objective then it should scale well compared to the amount of coins you’ll be pulling in. However, these abilities are the same as the 3-tier special moves of the first game, and it’ll eventually be crucial to upgrade them all the way to keep yourself competitive against the increasingly difficult AI in the campaigns. It’s kind of a balancing act. If you have a few extra characters that you aren’t using on your main team, you could upgrade their abilities for the purposes of this Objective while working on maxing out your mains.
Gear Upgrades – This one can be tricky too. You’ll most likely get at least one piece of Gear you can equip a character you have, and in fact I think the game explicitly gives you all the Gear for Harley Quinn as part of the early tutorial portions of the game. In order to upgrade a piece of Gear, you’ll need to shatter Gear that you’ve collected but don’t have equipped and don’t care about and use those shards towards upgrading a piece of Gear that you DO care about. Early on this will likely be tough, but the more you play the more Gear you’ll collect and thus be able to give up towards upgrading other pieces.
Chest Collector – You’ll complete this Objective by opening 3 chests per day. There are 2 types of chests in the game: Basic Chests and Hero Chests. You’ll get a free Basic Chest once every 4 hours, or you can buy one for 4,000 coins. The Hero Chests costs 150 premium gems each. How you go about completing this Objective each day is up to you. Gems are harder to come by and have an even more important use (which I’ll talk about later) so in general I’d avoid buying the Hero Chests. You can wait out the timers on the Basic Chests and open 3 of those for free per day, but I’m generally not that patient and have enough coins saved up that I’ll typically open the free chest and then buy 2 more chests to complete this Objective. Once you get a good chunk of change saved up that is typically the easiest way to go.
Talents – This one is super simple. Go into any of your characters’ profiles and click the Talents tab in the upper right corner. You’ll have to have at least one of the character’s Talents unlocked in order to do this, which takes in-game coins, so if you don’t have one unlocked yet pony up the dough to do so. The Talent system is a neat RPG-like system which gives your character random stat boosts of varying levels of rareness. What’s cool is that you can re-roll one of those Talents for free once each day, and that’s per character. So for the purposes of this Objective simply go to any Talent and re-roll it for a cost of zero coins. Try to do it on a Talent that you’re not super attached to, as the new one will replace it. Don’t worry, you’re given the option of keeping your existing Talent or changing to the newly rolled one, but you’ll probably want to do this on a common talent instead of a super rare one. Just re-rolling once will earn you the Objective, but as an extra tip be sure to go through all your characters and do the one free re-roll for each of them in an effort to get better and better Talents.
Summary of Ways to Refill Your Energy
— Wait it Out – At 10 minutes per unit, it will take a LONG time to refill your energy fully. After playing during the day and utilizing the techniques in this guide to maximize my energy refills, I typically also make an effort to play through whatever energy I have built up before bed and then use those hours that I’m sleeping to let my energy refill.
— Claim Your Daily Objective – The “Free Gems, Stamina, and Tickets" Objective does’t require anything from you and can be claimed once a day for 30 units of energy.
— Fight 3 Arena Battles – You’ll need to level up your profile to at least level 3 before unlocking the Arena, but once you have it open for business, completing the “Enter the Arena" Objective is another way to a cool 30 units of energy.
— Level Up Your Overall Profile – You level up your overall game profile by earning XP through completing Daily Objectives as detailed above. Your energy fully refills upon level up, and your total energy cap increases by one.
Bonus Tip: Level Up and Use Operations
This guide is mostly about maximizing your energy in Injustice 2, but I’ve found a very useful tip that every player should know about so I think it’s worth sharing here. In the Operations mode, as detailed in the “Operations" Daily Objective above, you send characters out on timed missions to earn some rewards when you aren’t using them for your battling team. You can use premium Gem currency to upgrade the Operations which decreases the amount of time it takes to complete them and increases the types of rewards you get. While it can be tempting to use your Gems on Gold chests for a random shot at getting new characters, and that’s perfectly fine to do occasionally, my advice is to dump your Gems into leveling up the Operations missions as soon as possible as at the higher levels the rewards are fantastic.
Not only do you get huge chunks of character XP and gold, but you can also get Hero Shards and Gems themselves. For example: My main team is made up of three 3 star heroes, so while I’m actually playing the game I’ll send off some of my lower-level heroes to do Operations, generally the ones that take an hour to complete. Doing this throughout the day will help level up those heroes and earn lots of gold. Then, when my energy is tapped out and I’m done playing for the day, I’ll switch the low-level heroes to my team and use my high-level main characters for some of the high-level Operations. The highest level ones I can do at this point in the game take 11 hours each, so it’s perfect to send them off in the evening so they’ll be complete when I wake up in the morning. The rewards for these high level Operations are great and they’ve really helped me level up those 3 star heroes. Definitely take advantage of the Operations to help build up your entire roster of heroes.
Conclusion
This guide was intended as a collection of tips on maximizing your energy use in Injustice 2, and originally it was written during the soft-launch of the game and has been tweaked to reflect the globally launched version. The funny thing (sad thing?) is that the whole energy system, while not super friendly to start with compared to the original Injustice, has actually gotten worse with the global launch. The Daily Objectives give you less energy rewards and it doesn’t feel like you level up your profile as often as you used to. That said, there’s still a lot to love about this new Injustice 2 in terms of the upgraded fighting mechanics and improved visuals. I could never go back to the original Injustice now, and if you’re accustomed to the typical free to play shenanigans of today, then this will probably be another enjoyable daily habit for the months and years to come. Be sure to check out the forum thread as well as our Discord chat for some Injustice 2 discussion.
