Roughly a billion years ago in App Store time, or about a year and a half ago in human time, I put together a guide for Injustice: Gods Among Us (Free). It’s a pretty nice guide, I think, but here’s something interesting you may or may not know about Injustice: WB Games updates this game all the freaking time. While a lot of the advice I gave in that guide is still sound, some of it is outdated and there’s a whole lot of new stuff to take into account if you play this game these days. With that in mind, I’ve decided to put together a new guide, a supplemental if you will, covering some of the changes and new aspects of the game as it currently stands. I’m going to start by revisiting some of the things I said in the old guide that don’t quite work anymore. I’ll then move into talking about Challenge Mode and Multiplayer Battles.

Updates:

What I said:

“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."

Don’t do this anymore. Rather, don’t connect your mobile Injustice to a random stranger’s console Injustice. After multiplayer was added in the big 2.0 update, WB started banning people who had shared their WB ID with too many others. If you’re going to do this, do it the legitimate way. Spend a few bucks and get a really great console fighting game, clear the story mode yourself, and get your Prison Superman that way. Alternatively, just skip on Prison Superman. It’s not that hard to get a gold character anymore.

What I said:

“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."

These guys are still great choices at the silver tier. I’d also add Regime Green Lantern for power-building support, Regime Doomsday for sheer strength, and Solomon Grundy for his passive resurrection skill. You’ll want to build a decent silver team anyway with the regular challenges requiring one. The Joker can also make a good “gotcha" character as his Toxic Death passive skill can take a massive chunk of health out of a gold character if they kill him. It’s risky, but if your other two team members are strong, he’s not a terrible choice.

What I said:

“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."

You’re going to want to invest in your silver and bronze characters to an extent now. They shouldn’t be your first priority, but you’ll want to have at least one good bronze team and perhaps two silvers to help you get through challenges more easily. Get your gold guys up and running first, because you won’t be able to make it without them, but your other characters have purpose now, too. Prison Superman is still pretty terrible, though. Don’t blow too much on him beyond unlocking his level three super.

New General Tips:

Farming Challenge Tokens: I like running through Battle 36 for this. It’s an easy set of battles, it gives a bunch of tokens, the XP return isn’t bad for characters under level 35 or so, and you’ll earn about 10k in coins, too. It’s easy enough that you can bring along silver and bronze guys with a strong gold one to boost up your lower-tier teams. Of course, if you can’t quite handle Battle 36, just run through whichever battle you can handle until you reach it.

Gear: You’ll want to pick up some decent gear for any of your regular characters. You can win gear in multiplayer without even trying, but if you have the money to burn, it’s easier to just buy a gear pack from the shop. Obviously, higher level gear is better, but anything is better than nothing while you wait for lady luck to strike. Once you’ve got your favorite team put together, it’s definitely worth sinking money into unlocking their extra gear slots.

Pack recommendations: The daily discounted gold pack is still a great way to build up your roster, but the smarter investment is the Red Son pack. It might seem pricey, but it guarantees you the same three heavy-hitters every time, allowing you to rank them up to Elite-7 without worrying about the roll of the dice that comes with regular packs. Some of the challenge characters are pretty powerful compared to what you’ll find in the regular gold packs, so if you’re going to go with a random pack, you might want to put your coins into challenge packs instead of regular golds. Don’t forget to sell your extras if you don’t need them.

Challenge Mode Tips:

Always make sure you run through at least the first level challenge. Once you have the card, you’re able to buy extras to boost it. If you don’t earn at least one, you might never get it. Clearing the easiest challenge isn’t all that hard, but if you happen to run into a particularly vexing battle, remember that buying your way past that battle is almost certainly cheaper than buying the reward card by itself.

Spread out your heavy-hitters. Energy is a bigger issue than having a strong enough team in the first two levels of the challenges. Sure, you can feed energy in if you have spares, but it’s smarter to break up your main team and have each member captain two other characters so that you can just switch between them when one team runs out. Your main guys won’t earn much XP from these battles anyway, so it’s a good opportunity to bring along a couple of weaker tagalongs and boost them.

Keep a variety of characters around. The needed characters for each challenge are often leaked before it hits, so keep an eye on the thread in our forums so that you know who you need to have. If you’re really going for the gusto, you’re going to need a gold version of each character boosted as high as possible, but for the first two levels of the challenge, you’ll probably be able to get by with two of your regular heavy-hitters and one bum of the right character type.

Check out the whole challenge ahead of time. This one probably goes without saying, but make sure you see which specific characters you’re going to need for each set of battles. For example, if you need Flash on your team for one of the pieces, don’t waste Flash’s energy doing the other parts of the challenge with him. Similarly, don’t use those characters when you’re grinding for tokens. Keep their energy for the jobs only they can do.

Multiplayer Tips:

Just participate. Even if you don’t win, by participating, you’ll usually walk away with something useful. Even if you’re not big on multiplayer, make sure you peek into the multiplayer mode once per week, have a couple of fights, and collect your rewards. It only takes a couple of minutes.

Remember, the team you exit with is the team the CPU will control. That means they won’t have access to their level 3 super moves, which greatly changes which characters are best. Try to think of the characters who irritate you the most to face off against. Chances are, they’ll be great candidates for the CPU to control on your behalf.

Pay attention to passive abilities. Those Red Sons I recommended earlier make a great team for multiplayer. With third level supers taken out of the equation, you’re left with fantastic passive stat bonuses and strong, multi-hit level two specials. Just make sure you don’t split them up. Killer Frost is very strong in multiplayer because she can shut down regeneration and power gains.

Keep an eye out for killer combos. Any character with a level one special that drains power, like Lex or Nightwing, combined with a character whose passive helps you build power more quickly is going to be a real pain for others to fight. Similarly, if you can stack bonuses onto a character with a strong level one special, like pairing Joker with two Harleys, you’re going to end up with a dangerous team. Combine Batman or Insurgency Batman with someone who helps build power and a drain character and watch the fur fly.

If WB Games keeps up their pace on this game, I’ll probably have to come around again next year for another update, but for now, that should at least bring things up to the present. It’s kind of crazy how much longer I’ve played this game than its console counterpart. I never would have guessed that back when I first downloaded it just to unlock the Batman Beyond costume for my PlayStation 3 version, but here we are. I wonder what will happen when the inevitable next Injustice game hits on consoles? Perhaps I’ll be too busy playing this to notice!