Seriously’s new iOS mobile game, Best Fiends Rivals, takes you to the world of Minutia, where you can battle it out in matches against real-life players from all over the world, and fight for big in-game prizes. This is, in fact, the “world’s first casual multiplayer puzzle game,” and as far as the Best Fiends franchise is concerned, the game promises hundreds of “never before seen” puzzles, which could win you currency, chests, and more goodies. Your goal is to eventually make the City of Fiends, which is where the world’s best players get to compete, and while you can simply choose to compete against the rest of the world, you can also start or form your own team, which is the game’s equivalent of joining or forming a guild. Can you make it to the top of the leaderboards and become, quite literally, the “best fiend” out there?
Before you can even get there, you’ll need to start at the bottom, and if you’re new to the franchise, you’ll need to figure out how things go in the world of Minutia. Read on, as we now bring to you our Best Fiends Rivals strategy guide for beginners and intermediate players, where we talk you through the things you need to do in order to make it past the first few levels and worlds — your first big steps, so to say, before you reach the City of Fiends.
1. Know The Basics Of The Game
Best Fiends Rivals may be a puzzle game, but unlike many other casual games of its kind, it is not a Match 3 game in the truest sense. Yes, you will need to match at least three pieces of the same kind, but instead of swapping one piece for another, or making matches of four pieces or more to create special pieces, you’ll need to swipe your finger to connect identical pieces in any possible direction. There’s really nothing much when it comes to the barest of the basics, but apart from that, there are a few other mechanics that set this game apart from the traditional Match 3 game.
As you progress along in the game, you will collect cards corresponding to each of the individual Best Fiends. Before each match, the game will pre-assign some Best Fiends to your party for that particular match, but more often than not, you will be asked to choose by swiping upward for the Fiend of your choice. Each of these Best Fiends have special abilities that activate once they’ve been charged up, by matching pieces corresponding to their color; for example, you’ll need to match blue water drops to charge up Buggles, purple mushrooms to charge up Dennis, and yellow flowers to charge up Kwincy. We’ll talk about those special abilities in a bit, but you can view them at any time by going to the Fiends tab and tapping on any of your available Fiends, or those whom you have yet to unlock.
2. How Do The Matches And Chests Work?
Talking about the matches, these always would pit you against three other human players, where your goal is to beat the rest of them to get more trophies and better chests, all of which contain any combination of coins (common currency), gold (premium currency), and Fiend cards. Finishing first place gets you three stars and a Large Chest, second place gets you two stars and a Small Chest, third place gets you one star and a Bronze Chest, fourth place gets you nothing. Obviously, you want to avoid finishing dead last; at least for second and third place, you get a consolation prize in the form of chests. But aside from not winning any kind of reward for finishing last, this is the only situation where you will get minus trophies. In order to make it to a new world, you’ll need to collect the requisite number of trophies, so with this in mind, you’ll want to avoid finishing last if there’s no way you can realistically come out in first place!
With the stars you collect, you can also open Star Chests, which become available to unlock for each 15 stars you receive. There’s no grinding mechanic in this game — the levels are procedurally generated, and if you get one star in a level, or worse, no stars at all, you can always play another match/level, and hope to do better the next time around. That means it can take you 15 matches or more before you can unlock a new Star Chest, though that’s not what you want to happen, especially since the game has only four available slots to unlock chests, with the time to unlock each chest lasting no shorter than three hours.
3. Generally Speaking, Work Your Way From The Bottom Going Up
This is a standby tip in Match 3 games, and it also applies in Best Fiends Rivals, even if the Match 3 mechanics are, as previously mentioned, not of the traditional variety. Especially if you don’t see any good opportunities to match a long line of identical pieces, you’ll want to start by working your way from the bottom going upward, so that you can let new pieces drop down, with hopefully better matches to come. Don’t be discouraged if you’re behind; the main thing is for you to look for the best and longest possible match, especially if it meets the requirements of the level you’re playing.
4. Some Levels Will Ask You To Collect Diamonds Or Rockets
Although the more basic levels will ask you to collect pieces of a certain color, others will ask you to collect some of the other items that appear on the board, namely diamonds and rockets. This is quite easy, on the surface, as all you have to do is to make a match next to the diamond or the rocket in order to collect it. Matching a third rocket will take out a horizontal or vertical line, depending on where the rocket is pointing, and that’s also what you’ll need to do if you want to eliminate the tree barks that oftentimes take up most of the board and cannot be matched normally.
5. You Can Take Your Time Before Making A Move
Fortunately, Best Fiends Rivals is not one of those puzzle games where you have a limited amount of time to complete the levels. This isn’t exactly a real-time game in the truest sense, and that means you can take your time and take a few seconds (or more) to think of the best possible move that would get you closer to fulfilling the objectives of the level. There are move limits, but that’s essentially how long each level/match lasts; once again, your goal is to finish ahead of your other three opponents, and that means you’re not racing against time, nor are you trying to complete objectives within a given move limit. Your opponents are the other human players, and it would behoove you to take some time to make sure you’re making the right moves.
6. The Difference Between Collectors And Converters
Each of the Best Fiends in the game have their own special abilities, as we mentioned earlier. They could take out entire horizontal or vertical lines, for instance — these are self-explanatory. But these abilities could also be collector or converter abilities, which may sound very similar at first. There is a distinct difference between the two, however — Collector abilities eliminate all pieces of the color corresponding to the Fiend (that would be red strawberries for Dee, to cite a basic example), while Converter abilities transform 12 adjacent pieces into those corresponding to the Fiend (green leaves for Gene’s special ability, for instance). Make sure to go to the Fiends tab so you can review each character’s abilities, though you can also view abilities by tapping on any given Fiend during the selection screen before a level.
7. Choose A Balanced Lineup Of Fiends
When choosing Fiends to make up your party of four or five for a given level, you’ll want to make sure you’re going with a balanced lineup, depending on special abilities. Ideally, you can go with one Converter, one Collector, one Horizontal Bomb, and one Vertical Bomb in traditional levels, though you can also prioritize Horizontal and Vertical Bombs when it comes to the levels that require you to collect diamonds. Other than that, the key to success is to go with a balanced lineup, and also to choose those Fiends who are sufficiently upgraded.
8. Upgrade Your Fiends Whenever Possible
The chests that you win in the game come with Fiend cards inside, with the better chests giving you a better chance of unlocking rarer Fiends. Collect enough cards of a specific Fiend, and you can upgrade them in order to improve their stats. As the game’s matchmaking system tries to pair you up against players who are at a similar level as you are, you’ll want to upgrade Fiends whenever you’ve collected enough cards of theirs to get them from their current level to the next.
9. Join A Team
The folks behind Best Fiends Rivals decided to keep things simple, we guess. Instead of calling them clans, guilds, or whatnot, they decided to call them “teams,” yet the meaning is still the same. By joining a team, you can request cards without having to open chests (or wait a while until you’ve unlocked a chest), and you can also take part in team events, where you collaborate with each other and face off against other teams. This is an optional feature, but one that’s highly recommended nonetheless — not only can you get cards without waiting, you might also end up making some new friends with your teammates! If a game has a social element, you might as well check it out — you’ve got nothing to lose, after all.
10. Take Part In Events
If getting social is not your thing, then you can always take part in the individual events, which can be accessed in the Events tab, second to the right on the bottom menu. These events refresh on a regular basis, and while some of them are free to enter, other will cost you some premium currency — gold bars — to enter. Yes, it may be tempting to use those gold bars to open chests if you can’t wait that much longer, but you can also spend that premium currency to enter the Tournament Gold Contest, for instance, and take advantage of a chance to win some rare chests packed with goodies — we’re talking the usual, meaning currency, cards, and more!
11. Open Your Free Pouches Every Four Hours
Moving on to yet another way you can earn rewards in this game, Best Fiends Rivals has some free pouches, which you can open every four hours. You may want to have your notifications on, so you can open as many pouches as possible while you’re awake. These pouches don’t contain much by way of rewards, meaning a few coins, some gold, and some common cards. But these rewards can add up, so make sure you’re always on the lookout for the opportunity to open a free pouch in the game!
12. You Can Buy Cards And Chests In The Shop
The first tab in the bottom menu, the Shop, allows you to buy cards, chests, gold, and coins, and you may want to check this out from time to time, if you’re looking to get ahead in the game and further bolster your lineup of Fiends. You can buy new cards by spending coins — common ones such as Brittle, Buggles, and Vincent, for instance, will only cost you about five coins each, so this is a good way to get yourself closer to an upgrade if you’re just a couple cards short of leveling up the Fiend in question. Chests cost gold, though we must warn you they could set you back by quite a lot — Bronze, Silver, and Gold chests cost 200, 300, and 600 gold bars respectively! Gold can be purchased with real-life money, with the cheapest package (180 gold bars) costing $2 USD or its local equivalent. Lastly, coins are bought by paying gold, though we don’t see why you should be doing this, unless you’ve got a lot of gold in reserve — the cheapest, 1,000-coin package costs 90 gold bars, and that’s a small fortune in in-game currency, if you ask us.