Back in the day, Finnish company Rovio had made its name by releasing Angry Birds, a physics-based game that anyone could play on their own – it was fun, challenging, and most importantly, a huge hit for the company that made it. Since then, Rovio has come up with various titles in the Angry Birds franchise, expanded its reach to the more casual gaming crowd with a Match 3 twist to the series, and now, it would seem that they’re trying to court fans of MMO gaming with their latest iOS and Android title, Battle Bay. The game is described as a “real-time multiplayer battle arena in your pocket,” where you can choose a ship, equip it with guns, and hit the seas, ready to do battle in five-on-five stratgegic combat. And just as you can expect in any other MOBA, the game allows you to join guilds with other players, either with your own friends, or with new ones whom you could make in the process of playing the game.
We’ve got to give it to Rovio for releasing a rather unusual take on the MOBA – a more modern, sea-based take on battle arena gaming, as opposed to the fantasy-based settings found in the typical game of its kind. And while this game’s basics should not be unfamiliar to anyone who’s a veteran of the MOBA genre, our Battle Bay ultimate guide is designed for everyone – beginners, advanced players, or anybody else who’s been playing the game since its release.
1. Master The Controls
Before anything else, it’s important that you learn the controls in Battle Bay. If you’ve played similar MOBA titles, or even games such as World of Tanks Blitz, you won’t have any problems figuring things out, but if you haven’t, then things may get a bit confusing if you go out there without any idea of what to do.
The basic setup would be as follows: use your left thumb to control your boat’s movement. Slide your left thumb up to move forward, and slide it down to go backward. If you tap-and-hold left or right, the front of your boat will move in that direction, and you can also do this while your boat is in motion. We’ll tell you more about this later on, but we cannot stress this enough – keep on moving so you don’t get blown up quickly by the enemy.
Now moving on to your right thumb, that will control another virtual stick, this time corresponding to your turret. Likewise, you can move it up or down or left or right using the same controls we explained for the left virtual stick. Tap on the middle of the right stick if you want to fire at an enemy that moves into the range of your primary gun – provided that the crosshairs are green, meaning that you’re all ready to fire away.
2. Avoid The Red Circles And Choppy Waves
One of the very first things you need to learn when playing the game is to get out of Dodge, so to say, when you’re in a red circle. If you’ve got a speed booster, then use it, because that red circle is a sign of trouble; that means you’re under attack from the enemy. We would also suggest, in relation to this, to stay back if you sense that other players are ganging up on you, and to use the terrain to find cover.
In addition, you should also learn early on to take care when dealing with choppy waves. They can throw you off if you’re trying to aim, so if the waves are messing you up, we would suggest firing only when you’re sure you won’t be hitting a wave. You don’t want to misfire and waste your precious ammo. The best strategy is to stay on top of the waves, or better yet, wait until they pass.
As a bonus tip, you can leverage the waves in a way by moving in behind the waves to pull off a sneak attack on your enemies.
3. You Should Learn How To Aim While In Motion
Staying in one position will only leave you open to enemy fire – don’t make the mistake of becoming an easy target and getting your ship destroyed in short order. Think of what you will likely be doing when you see an opponent just sitting there and camping out in the open. What you should do instead is to be in motion as often as possible, and learn how to aim your weapon while you’re in motion. It won’t be an easy skill to learn at first, but once you perfect this, you’ll last longer in the game, and you’ll end up earning more rewards at the end of a battle.
4. More Helpful Hints On Using Your Weapons
Look at the red-colored number that appears above your target – that’s going to tell you if you’re too far from the enemy you’re trying to target, and the number will go down as you move closer. That means you won’t do serious damage to the ship unless you move closer. In addition, you’ve got a button above the main weapon stick that you can use if you’ve got a sniper weapon onboard. Use this button to zoom in and destroy enemies from afar; it’s always handy to have a sniper weapon, so make use of it the right way!
Also keep in mind that if you’ve locked into an enemy with your turret, they shall remain automatically locked until you manually switch to another target, or if the enemy boat is just too fast for your turret to keep up. You’ll want to remember this especially when the cannonballs appear and start moving you way. But then again, there’s an exception to this rule; if you’e trying to target various enemies in one part of the map, the choppiness of the waves could affect your turret’s auto-lock and force it to switch target.
5. The Basics Of Battle Bay Matches
Battle Bay matches are five-on-five battles, where your team’s goal is to destroy an opponent’s side within five minutes, or for your team’s boats to make it to the green circle, as it’s seen on the mini-map and on the battlefield, while holding that area for a given amount of time – think about it as kill the enemy, or capture the flag. The capture meter goes up as more of your team’s boats appear in the circle, but it stops completely when an enemy ship moves in – you don’t want that to happen. Still, most battles would have teams trying to destroy the other, trying to get as many kills as possible. The capture-the-flag strategy usually is used when a team has more remaining ships than the other, and the outnumbered team is trying to draw single ships into battle, while hiding out for as long as possible. If you see a team utilizing this strategy, then your best bet is to move toward the capture area, while the other team presumably chases you ther eventually.
6. Don’t Be A Stranger, Interact With Your Team
A lot of MMO games won’t really require you to communicate too much with the real players you go up against. But that’s not the case in MOBA games, especially titles where you’re part of a team. It’s the real-life interaction with actual human beings that makes these games so fun, but things can get, well, sort-of serious, and that would require you to use in-game chat commands to galvanize your allies and talk them into cooperating. Stick close together, and have each other’s back – it’s also a good idea to gang up on any enemy ship that gets separated from their team. And while you may be powerful enough to go solo and act separately from your teammates, it’s always better when you’re working together.
7. Don’t Stick Too Close To Each Other
While it’s not always advisable to be the maverick of your team and try to take down enemy ships by your lonesome, you shouldn’t stick too close to your teammates either. Battle Bay, unfortunately, doesn’t have any collision detection, and if you get too close to a teammate, your ships may look like they’re on top of each other. That may be an invitation for opposing teams to use their area-of-effect weapons; these weapons, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, could take out multiple enemies with one shot, so watch out for them!
8. Every Ship Has Their Own Specific Role
There are, fortunately, only five types of ships in Battle Bay, and each of them play a different role in battle, being strong in some areas in weak in others. Well, except your all-rounder boats, that is.
Early on, you’ll start out with Shooters, and these boats are the aforementioned all-rounders that are decent in all areas, but not particularly strong in any. Enforcers are your close-contact ships, melee ships, so to say, that could do a lot of damage while going toe-to-toe. Speeders are faster boats (naturally) that can be used for scouting purposes, while you and your other teammates look for targets. Defenders are the tank-type boats, with the best health and defensive stats; if your boat is a Defender, you’ll be doing the dirty work, soaking up damage and dealing some of it out, while your teammates do most of the damage. The Fixer is a support boat, with healing effects for boats that get damaged in battle.
9. Focus Fire
In other words, for those who aren’t familiar with the jargon, this means firing at the same targets your teammates are attacking. This is a great way to chip away at your opponent, taking out enemy ships one at a time. Yes, it’s a good idea to look for the boats that have the lowest health, but if you focus fire on a boat with a lot of health, that could do the trick just as well , especially if that boat has gotten isolated from the rest of the opponent’s team. Help your teammates out, and once you’ve taken out that ship, you can regroup and move on to the next ship.
10. Watch Ad Videos After Battles
Once you’ve completed a battle, you will be asked if you want to watch an ad video. For watching these 30-second clips, you will get a 20 percent bonus to your rewards, while getting one Pearl, with Pearls being your premium currency. We would suggest watching these videos after you’ve actually won a battle – 20 percent of 5,000 will get you a bonus 1,000, while 20 percent of 500 is only worth a bonus of 100 in common currency. This is important, because ads aren’t unlimited. And if you’re upset with the lack of pearls as rewards, don’t worry – as we always say, they can add up before you know it!
11. Need To Level Up? Train Your Crew
It’s a rather peculiar mechanic in the game, but here’s how you can gain more XP in Battle Bay. Instead of earning XP by winning or taking part in battles, you can gain it by training your crew – this can be found in the bottom of the screen, on the second icon from the left in the main menu.
You’ve got a total of ten crew members, though you will only be able to train all of them and access them once your player level (or captain level) is at level 14. Crew members have their own distinct skill trees, and these skills/talents are capable of providing specific buffs, which may include simple ones such as additional raw damage for a weapon, or changing its effect or area of effect. You may also get additional hit points for all your ships, among other buffs you can get through a crew member’s talents.
There’s a bit of strategy involved here, as you can have multiple talents active at the same time, and that means different ways for you to customize your ship and ensure it’s consistent with your play style or that of your team. For example, you can activate specific talents that improve damage so your Defender could be more than a basic tank, dishing out damage while soaking it up. Speed and weapon boosts could suit your ship if you’re a hit-and-run player – you need speed to get away, after all, once the enemy ships try to get back at you. Also, you can use those HP buffs if you want to become less squishy while controlling a close-contact melee ship.
12. Training Takes A While, But Don’t Waste Your Premium Currency
There is one key drawback to training, and it’s the simple fact that it’s going to take some time – some training sessions may take as short as 10 minutes, while others may last several hours, especially if you’re trying to level up your crew members from one rarity tier to another. You have the option to spend your Pearls to expedite the process, but unless you’ve got a ton of them at your disposal, we suggest you hang on to them as long as possible. We would instead suggest training your crew smartly; if a session won’t take too long, you can handle it while you’re actively playing the game, but if it’s going to take multiple hours, you can set it up for the evening, just as you’re about to head to bed, or right before you’re going to be away from the game for quite some time.
13. Make Sure Your Inventory Space Is Upgraded
When talking about what you can spend your Pearls on, the best thing you can use them on is increasing your inventory limits. That’s going to allow you to store more items, and you shouldn’t cherry-pick – just keep bringing those items in and storing them, while making sure you’ve got more than enough space at all times. We’d recommend setting a goal of reaching 30 (in terms of space) as soon as possible, and getting rid of items you no longer need or want once your inventory is close to getting filled up completely.
We’ve also got a bonus tips you might want to consider when maintaining and managing your inventory space. Sometimes, you may want to pay attention to the rarity of an item that’s stored in your inventory. If you’ve got an identical that’s got a higher rarity, you should scrap the item with a lower, more common rarity – why should you keep something that’s got a more powerful identical, after all?
14. Upgrade Your Materials / Weapons Regularly
Many of the items you can get in Battle Bay can get upgraded, and that includes your inventory materials. But you should be careful when choosing materials to upgrade, as many of those required in upgrade recipes are rather difficult to come upon. Wasting upgrades on items you don’t really need at the moment or use would be just that – a waste.
When it comes to weapons, we recommend playing a few games and fighting a few battles with different weapon types, and seeing which weapon suits your play style the best. Once you’ve found your favorite, you can focus on it as your tried-and-true weapon to upgrade. Most players favor the Mortar as their top weapon, others prefer the Cannon, but you may have your own unorthodox favorite; whatever it is, focus your upgrades on that weapon. Also bear in mind that rarity plays a big role in determining how effective a weapon is; if your favorite weapon happens to be low on the rarity tier, you’ll want to hold off in the meantime until you find an uncommon, rare, or better version later on in the game.
15. Complete The Quests
Battle Bay, like any good MOBA worth its salt, comes with a questing system. You will be given a new quest multiple times a day, and the game will allow you to have three active quests at any time. Normally, you’ll be asked to do things you can achieve by playing the game naturally, such as winning a given number of battles, sinking a given number of ships, etc. Sometimes, you’ll be asked to do something more advanced, but you will always get common currency (gold) as a reward, with sugar as an occasional reward. You’ll use sugar to upgrade equipment and train your crew, and will be allowed a maximum amount of sugar depending on your captain level.
You can earn a ton of currency for completing even one quest, which means these are definitely worth the effort. Additionally, you can earn bonus reward crates if you’re able to complete a specific number of quests in any given calendar week — that’s Monday to Sunday, not any seven-day period!
16. Switch Weapons And Look At What The Enemy Is Wielding
Going back briefly to battle-related tips, the game will allow you up to three different items, may they be weapons or other assorted items. That means you have the luxury to bring more than one “tried and tested” item with you, and to switch from one item to another as the occasion dictates. There is a cool down period, though, as you’ll have to wait some time before you fire the weapon again, and a little less time between switching from one weapon to the next.
Also make sure you’re looking at the weapon your opponent is using. It can oftentimes be as simple as glancing at the cannon on an enemy ship and which direction it is facing. That’s going to tell you the type of weapon they’re using, and if they’re aiming at you or at someone else. If they’re targeting another ship, that should be your chance to home in and focus your fire on that enemy.
17. How To Get More Pearls, Items, And Materials
You can complete a variety of achievements in Battle Bay, and most of these will reward you in pearls. You may, on the other hand, get reward crates, and these come with items and upgraded materials. Tap on the hamburger icon to view a list of achievements you have yet to complete, and see how close you are to completing them.
The in-game shop allows you to buy different types of crates – Free, Star, Premium, and Epic. Free crates can be redeemed every seven hours, and just as you would expect, you’ll mostly get common stuff here. Nothing to get excited about, really. Star crates can be purchased with the stars you earn by winning battles, while the Premium and Epic crates can be purchased with your Pearls. The Market tab also includes parts and other stuff you can buy with your common currency.
Also, we would advise you to log in to the game every day. For each day you log in consecutively, you’ll get a progressively better reward. For example, if you’re able to log into the game for one consecutive week, you’ll get a crate full of items and materials, and that’s never a bad thing to have.