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11×11: New Season Cheats, Tips & Strategy Guide for Intermediate Level Managers

Nekki is the game company that you may know from the Shadow Fight series, but the company also has something for all of you out there who are feeling football (or soccer, depending on where you’re at) fever as the 2018 World Cup rages on. The latest game in Nekki’s 11×11: New Season series takes you back to the pitch, where you can work the transfer market, train your existing players, and level them up, in hopes of moving from one league to the next and dominating the in-game landscape with your shrewd business moves and big player acquisitions. This is a game that is available for both iOS and Android devices, so no need to worry regardless of which platform you’re on – you’ll still be able to manage your team from the ground up and compete against actual human-controlled teams in a variety of game modes.

Previously, we had provided you a beginner’s guide for the game, where we discussed some of the more basic things you need to learn before playing this game for the first time, or before/during your first few matches. Now, we’ve got something for intermediate-level managers – a second 11×11: New Season strategy guide, where we bring you nine more tips that will help you understand the other buildings you need to manage in the game, while also helping you get the most out of your players and maybe even assisting you in winning a few more matches.

1. How Do Sponsorships Work?

We briefly touched on sponsorships in the beginner’s guide — after all, they’re among the very first things you will acquire when playing 11×11. However, we felt that it would be better to provide a more detailed explanation in the intermediate guide, as these could play a bigger part as you get to sign bigger and better “deals.”

First of all, signing a sponsorship deal with a company (many of whom are based on actual products, cleverly renamed with Nekki or soccer-related puns, e.g. “Nekki Cola,” “Pringoals,” etc.) will require you to wait a few hours before you can cash in on it. That will then reward you with a variety of resources, including cash, Boosters (aka your coins), XP, Pro Points, and contracts — the longer it takes for the sponsorship to be completed, the more you’ll receive in terms of reward count and quality. Sponsorships, of course, are the main reward for winning a league match, though you should take care not to go overboard and compete in match after match after match just because you’re on a hot streak. You are only allowed to have three sponsorship slots filled, and only allowed to unlock one sponsorship at a time. (You can, of course, pay boosters to unlock a sponsorship immediately, though we wouldn’t always recommend it unless you’ve got a ton of them.) Once all your slots are full, you may want to wait it out before playing another match. Optimizing your unlock schedules could really help here — specifically, unlock those longer sponsorships before going to bed, or before any time where you believe you won’t be able to log into the game for a while.

As we had previously discussed, sponsorship contracts also become better and more attractive as you advance through higher and more difficult leagues!

2. What Are Pro Points And Master Classes?

See those purple tokens that you pick up each time you open a player pack or cash in on a sponsorship, among other methods? Those are Pro Points, and these are normally used to improve your players via Master Classes. Tap on the Team tab, then tap on any player whom you have on your roster — you will then see a list of up to three Master Classes, the first, and most expensive, which is to improve their talent by one star. Doing so will also reduce the XP cost of leveling them up, and also increase their maximum level by three. The second Master Class is to train a special ability, though this will only be available for rarer players — those in the Rare, Unique, and Legendary tier.

The third and last Master Class allows you to teach your players an alternative position; some players already have alternate positions, but most don’t. This is a great, and affordable (it’s the cheapest in terms of Pro Points in most cases) way to strengthen your lineup, as it always helps to have someone who could fill in at multiple positions on the field, allowing you to mix things up even more depending on the situation. While it may appear at first that your players are given new positions at random, you can actually choose their alternate position by tapping on any on of the available choices that appear after the Master Class is done.

As we mentioned, Pro Points can be earned mainly by opening player packs, winning World Tours and PvP tournaments, completing certain achievements, and by cashing in on your sponsorships. But by building and upgrading your Pro Center, you could allow your players to “acquire additional skills and improve their characteristics,” though that would mainly manifest in the form of the Pro Points you can acquire passively whenever you’re away from the game. Upgrading a Pro Center increases the offline production of Pro Points, so don’t neglect it when you’re upgrading your buildings.

3. Your Players Can Get Hurt, So Build A Hospital

Located on the far right of your city is a space where you could build a Hospital, and while you may feel at first as if you might not need it, you actually will. Players on your team, just like in real life, can get injured, and as we’ve noticed, it’s oftentimes your star players who would be most susceptible to injury. That’s right — the guy who scored a hat trick in your last game might get hurt the next, perhaps because he put up such an intense effort when he scored those three goals. You don’t want to be short a key player or two, and once your hospital is first built, you’ll have up to two MediKits to use to heal your players immediately — these MediKits do refresh, though it does take a while before you can get them back after you use them, as these get restored on a once-per-day basis. That requires you to use them prudently, but since you may be needing more MediKits to get by, we strongly suggest that you upgrade your Hospital, as doing so will increase the number of MediKits you can store. For example, if your Hospital is at level 3, you’ll have 21 MediKits to use on your players, which should be more than enough in most cases!

Also bear in mind that the higher an injured player’s level/rarity is, the more MediKits you’ll need to heal the injury immediately, even if it’s merely listed as a “light” injury. For example, we had one level 23, Legendary rarity defender require 10 MediKits in order to heal such an injury!

4. Get More Transfer Slots By Upgrading Your Office

The players made available in the Transfers menu may seem limited at first. Not all positions will be available, and you may not be satisfied with the common players whom you could acquire on the cheap (compared to other transfers, that is), but wouldn’t be much better than the ones you have on your lineup. In order to increase the number of players you can choose from on the Transfers menu, you’ll need to upgrade your Office. Doing so, according to the building description, also “increases the team’s profitability,” so there’s no downside, really, to spending some cash on leveling the office up.

5. Rarer Players Have Special Abilities

Once you acquire your first Unique players via task completion rewards (as explained in the first guide), you’ll see that they have Special Abilities — these are higher-level skills that not only enhance your player’s basic stats, but also increase their chances of making big plays, such as scoring a goal via a cannon shot, via a header, etc. Special Abilities may, in some cases, give your players a physical boost in certain situations, such as additional speed. That’s one reason why completing tasks and achievements is so important — the players you acquire when you open the packs have abilities that aren’t found in your common players, thus increasing your chances of picking up a win against a tougher opponent. You can train new special abilities for your players via the Master Class section — Rares have one special ability slot, Uniques have two, and Legendary players have three. That’s going to cost you a lot of Pro Points, but it’ll all be worth it.

6. You Can Change The Look Of Your Team’s Uniform For Free

This is merely an aesthetic change that doesn’t really matter, but you may have noticed that other games force you to pay premium currency (or worse, real money) to make aesthetic changes. Fortunately, Nekki did not go this route with 11×11, as you’re free to make changes to your uniform’s colors or design without having to pay anything, may it be in-game currency or real money. You can also edit some player details, though as we’ve seen, this is only limited to a player’s jersey number — otherwise, there’s no changing a player’s name, though we could probably understand why. (In Top Eleven, for instance, you can pay in-game currency to change a player’s name to anything you wish — your name, a real-life soccer player’s name, or even a “dirty” name. Nekki might want to avoid such abuse, hence their decision to restrict player edits to the jersey number!)

7. A More Detailed Explanation Of Player Stats

We mentioned stats in the first guide, and we mentioned above that you can only customize jersey numbers when it comes to a player’s “personal” details. But you have free reign to customize their stats in any which way you desire. Want a forward who can also perform hard tackles like a defender can? That’s all well and good. Conversely, if you want a defender who could be a threat to score some goals, that too can be arranged. Of course, it’s still best to focus stat upgrades on what a player of that position is expected to do, but for the benefit of those who want to create players with multiple specializations, we’ve broken down the individual stats for your benefit.

Tackling is self-explanatory — it affects the chances of your player landing a successful tackle on an opponent, and is best focused on if you’re upgrading a defender. That too applies with passing, as it determines pass accuracy, and while best focused on with midfielders, we’d say it’s a good stat to focus on if you’re upgrading a defender or forward. Athleticism is more of an all-round stat — it can be beneficial to all positions equally, but it’s not the first thing you want to focus on. Shooting, obviously, is a forward-centric stat because it determines the accuracy of your goal attempts. Lastly, Dribbling determines dribbling accuracy, and it’s another stat that fits the jack-of-all-trades status — not a bad thing to possess regardless of position, but not the best stat to upgrade ahead of the others.

Things are less cut-and-dry when it comes to the goalkeeper stats, which start out with Reaction — a stat that affects how quickly your ‘keeper can block an incoming shot. One-on-One determines how well your ‘keeper can dispossess an opponent in a one-on-one situation. Athleticism is also the measuring stick for speed, strength, and agility, like it is to other players, Positioning affects the chances of a goalkeeper being at the right place and the right Tim to stop a shot, and Goalkeeper Technique is a general stat that affects how well your goalkeepers play out there on the field. As mentioned last time, GK Technique is arguably the most important stat, follow by both Reaction and Positioning.

8. What To Expect In Tournaments

Aside from the usual League games, you can take part in tournaments in 11×11, and these are essentially four-team (or eight-team) battles where you may be allowed to take part in, with rewards such as cash, XP, Boosters, and player packs awaiting you. At first, they won’t seem like much, and your opponents may look unusually easy to beat due to the huge discrepancy in Top 11 Rating. But you will find, soon enough, that the competition becomes tougher as you compete in city after city, though that also means that the final reward for winning a tournament will go from a few hundreds worth of cash, to player packs that could really help you improve your team and make it stronger. Make sure to bring your A-game when playing in this game mode!

Lost a Tournament game at some point during any given tourney? Don’t worry! The good thing about 11×11 is that you will have a chance to try it again, with the option of paying 10 Boosters to be able to replay the tournament from scratch without having to wait.

9. Basic Post-Halftime Strategies

When it comes to managing your lineup after halftime, it’s more than just swapping out some players to give the rest of your team a change to shine. You’ll need to take into account the score — are you tied up, are you leading, or are you behind? If you’re tied or trailing, then you might want to shift to a more attacking, pressing game plan, and add a forward up front to increase your chances of scoring. But if you’re ahead, you’ll be best advised to shift to a more defensive setup, switching to short passes and more conservative, technique-based play. You want to catch up if you’re behind and hang on to your lead if you’re ahead, and few quick tweaks to your strategy could do the trick for you.