CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars Ultimate Guide: 14 Tips, Tricks & Cheats to Win More Fights

CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars is a new game from ZeptoLab, and if the name of the company rings a bell, that’s because they’re the same people behind Cut the Rope and King of Thieves. This is an Android and iOS “battle bot constructor,” where you can create your own “war machine” from the parts you collect, and take on other players in automatic PvP combat. You won’t get to micromanage things and strategize on the spot like you would in other PvP games, but that’s where the thrill of the game comes from – it’s player vs. player battle, with a league system where you can move up from your lowly backyard circuit to the World Championship.

As your goal is to create a battle robot (piloted by a cat, hence the name of the game) and have it fight other vehicles controlled by human players, there’s a lot of crafting here, as well as upgrading. You’ve also got “dozens” of weapons, gadgets, and body shapes to choose from, and that allows you far more than one way to create the perfect fighting machine. So how do you do that, and how can you move up faster in this game? We’re glad you asked, as we’re now bringing you our CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Robots ultimate guide, which we’ve designed to answer those two questions and then some.

1. You Don’t Have To Upgrade Parts Right Away

Although you may instinctively want to upgrade your vehicle’s parts, you shouldn’t bother too much early on. You’ll only start receiving solid, satisfactory parts once you’re at Stage 4 in the Championship, and as you keep ranking up, you’ll be more likely to get better, more useful equipment for your robot. Fortunately, it’s not too hard to make it to Stage 4, so be patient, wait until you’ve got some five star-rarity parts, and save your upgrades for that time.

2. Don’t Be Afraid To Make Changes If You’re Not Doing Well

Now you shouldn’t expect to do well right off the bat – there’s a chance you’ll be ahead of the curve in the early goings, but if you aren’t, that’s just normal, and you can always change your robot’s design and experiment with other body types if your current setup isn’t working. If that doesn’t do the trick, you can upgrade some individual components that stand out above the others. Otherwise, follow what we told you in the first tip, and stock up on that equipment – you shouldn’t wait that long before you get five-star parts that are actually worth using, and more importantly, actually worth upgrading.

3. Be Prudent As Well With Your Upgrade Points

Other games will allow you freedom to reallocate upgrade points after the fact. That’s not the case in CATS; once you’ve performed an upgrade, you cannot undo it, and you cannot reallocate upgrade points that you’ve already spent. If you’re in the early stages of the game, you should simply wait it out, and not spend your points yet. As you move on in the game, you’ll unlock new areas for your vehicle/robot, and these can be upgraded as you go on. And trust us when we say this – the first new areas aren’t really too exciting or useful in the grand scheme of things.

When it comes to spending upgrade points, we would recommend that you spend them on additional extra energy boosts corresponding to different body types. More energy means more leeway in terms of the weapons you can equip, and with a wider range of weapon choice comes better chances of winning battles.

4. Test Different Body Types Before Upgrading

In relation to the above tip, it’s always a good idea to experiment – at the end of the day, you’ll want to stick to what is tried and tested, but you can’t know that unless you’ve actually tried. Test different body types out for yourself, and don’t spend upgrade points on your Titans (the first robot types where energy can be upgraded) unless you’ve tested your fair share of robot bodies, and found your favorite among all the choices.

Once you’ve found your favorite, that’s when you can start spending your upgrade points. We would typically suggest that you wait until you’ve reached Stage 7, as that’s when you won’t just have Titans, but also Sneakies and Surfers. Unlike reaching Stage 4, reaching Stage 7 isn’t quite as easy or as simple – moving from stage to stage takes progressively longer and gets progressively harder. Until you reach that stage, we suggest spending a couple upgrade points or so to tide you over, preferably on your weapons.

5. Don’t Ignore The Quick Fights, And Take Part In Them Smartly

The Quick Fights mode may sound like CATS’ equivalent of exhibition games or matches in other titles. And while it may sound like it’s optional that you take part in these battles, you SHOULD take part in them, as each win in a Quick Fight allows you to earn points. More points means more chances to climb up the ladder and make your way from strength to strength, getting promoted from one league to the next. No, don’t let the language used throw you off – Quick Fights are not to be ignored, and you should fight to win like you always do so you can get promoted faster.

Remember that if you’ve racked up a five-fight winning streak in Quick Fights, you’ll be rewarded with a Super Box. That’s another very important thing to keep in mind when talking about this mode – you can still fight a Quick Fight even if all box slots are filled, but you should make sure you’ve got some slots empty in case you’re able to reach the above-mentioned milestone and win a Super Box.

6. You Lose Nothing By Betting

CATS has a feature where you can vote on vehicles taking part in an upcoming battle, but this isn’t simply for social media or engagement purposes. That’s because you technically aren’t voting as much as you are betting on the outcome, with your “wager” being a piece of equipment. If the vehicle you voted for loses, then you lose that piece of equipment, but if you win, you’ll earn a bonus on that item and also get some points in your name.

Fortunately, your wager won’t always be gone forever after you’ve placed it as a bet on a battle; the game will ask if you want to watch a video so you can keep the part. That means you should always play this game with your Wi-Fi or cellular data turned on, and watch ads so you can keep your parts; otherwise, you’ve effectively lost your bet in every way possible! We would also suggest voting for the vehicle that most players have chosen; this isn’t an ironclad rule that works 100 percent of the time, but most of the time, it’s a case of majority wins in here.

7. There Is No One Specific Way To Win More Battles

We’re going to move on next to battle-related tips, but before we get to those tips, we should inform you that there’s really no best way to win more fights in this game. Other games won’t make you wait too long before you find a favorite character or hero; in here, you have to do a whole lot of testing and experimentation, not just in terms of body style and weapons, but in terms of everything. And with that said, let’s move on to some real tips for winning battles, starting with a tip specifically centering on body types.

8. What Is The Best Body Type?

For starters, you may notice that your vehicles have different bodies, despite the fact that they may all be of the same type. Weapons and other pieces of equipment may have different slots in different positions, and that’s on account of CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars randomizing setups and the like. And when it comes to the best body type, one’s favorite may be another’s least-favorite, but we tend to prefer the Classic. As the name suggests, this is your no-frills body type, a “Goldilocks” body type if you may, as everything is just right – wheel locations, weapon slots, optional features, etc. Compared to other types, it seems better at flipping vehicles over, which makes it easier for you to get rid of them. But that is just our suggestion – again, it’s all about your preferred play style, and the body type you’re most comfortable using.

9. Melee Or Tank Vehicle?

CATS is not an RPG, but if we are to borrow some terms from that genre, there are some vehicles that are comparative “melee vehicles,” or those that are packed with weapons and capable of generating a lot of offense, but a little (or very much) on the squishy side. Conversely, you’ve got vehicles that can be described as “tanks” due to their high health points. But in this game, soaking up damage isn’t as important as it normally would be – you want a vehicle that’s capable offensively, as opposed to a hardy one, and a vehicle that can tip another one over, allowing you an easier chance to destroy it.

As a bonus tip (no pun intended), consider bonuses when using items. There are some that may be buffed or de-buffed depending on the items you pair them with. Just like body types and weapons, there’s lots of experimentation with regards to the items, so check all of them and play around with those combinations.

10. Choosing The Right Weapon

Pardon us if we’re beginning to sound like a broken record, but your mileage will again vary when choosing weapons, and you’ll need to run a lot of tests before you find the weapon that’s right for you. (Battery of tests would be more like it, to be honest.) But as a rule of thumb, you should make sure that the weapons are placed in practical areas, meaning places on your vehicle that can reach the enemy vehicle. You don’t want to be like that player you’ve probably seen, one whose vehicle has its weapons in all of the wrong places, hopelessly misfiring and not getting anywhere near your vehicle.

11. You Can’t Save Designs Just Yet

Unfortunately, CATS has yet to get a feature that allows you to save the designs you create – as a reminder, this may make it hard for you to comparison-test and see which design is better than the others. But you can, at the very least, use this workaround – simply take a screenshot of the design you’ve created, check your camera roll, and do your comparisons from there. It’s a bit crude as you’ll need to toggle between the game and your phone’s Photos feature, but it’s better than nothing.

12. Test Your Vehicles Against Top-Ranked Players

Moving on to design tips, one of the more basic tips we can suggest is to test your designs out against the best players in your league – fight the top ten players in the rankings, and take note of the design they’ve used. Obviously, they didn’t make it to the top ten for no reason whatsoever – they made it there because they’ve got a winning design. And that actually brings us back to what we’ve been telling you in some of the previous tips, that your mileage really may vary, with one design probably working well for one player, but not so much for the other.

13. Create An All-Rounder

As a general tip for vehicle design, you should be working toward making your vehicle an all-rounder, with enough weight that would allow it to flip other vehicles over and render their weapons useless, enough firepower with the weapons in the right places, and enough health points to ensure it lasts for the long haul. This may be easier said than done, but it’s a general rule that you should strive to follow – a jack of all trades is better than a vehicle that’s extremely stacked in one area but weak to extremely weak in the others.

14. About The Design Aspects You Need To Pay Attention To

Now that you know the importance of creating an all-around fighting machine, let’s talk about the different aspects of your vehicle’s design, and why they are individually important when it comes to running up a formidable winning streak, or at the very least winning most of your fights.

Talking about weight, we did mention it’s important because a heavy vehicle can easily tip over other machines. Even if your opponent’s overall stats are better than yours, you can still win the battle if you’re able to last until the walls come into the picture, and outmuscle the enemy machine.

We didn’t mention wheels in the tip right above, but we’re mentioning them here, because you need to choose the best possible wheels that could give you the biggest boosts in health, while also matching your vehicle type and syncing up to your play style. So if you’re working on a vehicle with a Classic body type that could easily flip over enemy vehicles, your wheels should be tilting downwards, which would allow you to get beneath other machines and push them up.

Weapons that can deal out a lot of damage are also very much recommended, but don’t go for the obvious route and choose the weapon that does the most damage. If that weapon cannot hit its intended target, you’ve essentially wasted your resources; the weapon you use should deal out damage, but more importantly, regularly hit its target. The Blade is typically a good choice, as it could attack from all directions, and not just one. And don’t forget your boosters; Forklift and Repulse are just two of the sundry items you can use to your advantage, and they’re among the more popular special gadgets that could give you an extra edge when fighting and making your way from one league to the next.

In relation with your weapons, you also be making sure that they’re placed in the right spot. As we mentioned above, the game could randomize wheel and weapon slot placements, among other things. Depending on what your needs are, look for the chassis type that has the most beneficial design in terms of item placement.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our detailed strategy guide for CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars. As always, if you know additional tips or tricks, feel free to leave us a message in the comment section below!