Bounty Stars is a new space RPG by DeNa, which is available on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The game offers players a chance to explore the galaxy’s “colorful underbelly” as you join a “comical world of scheming bounty hunters.” You will be tasked to put together a crew of bounty hunters and a fleet of starships, as you hunt down the galaxy’s most notorious bad guys. You can blast, charm, and cheat your way through the farthest corners of the galaxy so you can pick up some important information on these criminals and track them down easier. DeNa also promises explosive shootouts, tactical strategies in ship-vs-ship battles, and the ability to upgrade your crew members and unlock more abilities.
That’s Bounty Stars in a nutshell, and despite the quirky nature of the game, this can be quite the intensive playing experience, and there’s a whole lot of stuff to pick up when trying to learn how to play. So if you’re a beginner, do check out our exclusive list of Bounty Stars tips, tricks and strategies, but check it out as well if you’re a more experienced player who needs to jog their memory on the basics, or learn something completely new.
1. Earn XP By Putting Criminals Behind Bars
If you’re able to imprison one of your galaxy’s many criminals, your characters will earn experience points, and some of them will level up once you’ve filled up their XP bar. Leveling up a character, as we shall be explaining further, improves both their ATK (attack) and HP (health points) ratings, and without further ado, let’s talk more about leveling your bounty hunters up.
2. Use Training Materials Of The Same Class To Train Your Character
Prior to the start of a face-to-face battle, you want to have your top bounty hunters ready, and you want them trained before anything else. Once a character has been trained, his or her health and attack ratings will improved each time you level them up. And there’s no better way to do this than by using materials that belong to the same class. So how do you do this?
First, you have to go to the Crew Quarters, then look at the background color of the icons of each of your bounty hunters; the color represents their class. For example, Pilots have a dark blue background color for their icons, while Gunners have a red background color. Next thing to do would be to check your XP training materials. If you want your characters to level up faster, you should use items that have a background portrait color matching that of the character icon background color. If the colors match, the material does indeed match the character’s class. And as a bonus tip, you may want to use higher rarity items in the training process, as that adds more XP to the character you’re training.
3. How Can You Get XP Items / Materials
You may be wondering where you can get XP items or materials for the level-up process we had told you above. You can collect them when they are dropped by enemies you beat in face-to-face battle. Additionally, you can get new XP materials and items via the Launch Stamp Book’s daily rewards. Your in-game credits may also allow you to buy these items while in exploration mode. Also make sure you’ve got some healing items for your ships and characters by visiting the nodes that are marked with the letter C; the traders at these nodes may also be able to sell you XP items.
4. A Quick Primer On Abilities
All of your characters have their own unique abilities that can deal out more damage to criminals if you’re in a face-to-face battle; some of these abilities will require you to wait a while before they’re activated, while others can be unleashed immediately. But how do you make those abilities more powerful? We’ll show you how in the very next tip.
5. You Can Also Use Other Characters To Level Up Your Bounty Hunters
Aside from items and materials, you also have the option to use other characters – preferably the ones you don’t like or no longer need – to train your target/base characters. This could often be a better choice, as same-class characters can allow you to upgrade one of your base character’s abilities, apart from gaining XP. The one caveat here is that the abilities have to be exactly the same, or you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of this additional perk.
6. How To Orient Your Ship
Now that you know about how to make your characters better, in terms of attack, health points, and abilities, let’s move on to the space battle aspect of the game, which is an integral part of what Bounty Stars is all about. These are fights that take place while you’re controlling your spaceships, and are not to be confused with the turn-based, face-to-face battles we were telling you about in the earlier tips. So let’s get those tips started by showing you how to orient your ship the right way.
First of all, tap on the dots you see in front of your spaceship, and drag the dots so you can plot the path of your ship. Dragging to the left moves your ship left, while dragging to the right moves it right – easy-peasy. You will also see a cone once you tap and drag on the dots. That’s the field of view of your ship, or your FoV, and it’s important because your ship will attack a criminal ship if that enemy ship is within the FoV. That’s where you’ll need to take note of how you’re controlling the ship, because it’s always best if the cone faces the enemy ship.
7. A General Overview Of How Your Ships Operate And How Boost Works
Your ships would only be able to move and attack so far. There are other limitations, such as their inability to turn completely, and the fact that they only attack once a ship is in range. But you can improve their range, or at the very least go the opposite way in a 270-degree turn if you’re under attack. Tap on a ship, then tap on the white Boost arrow so you can boost their range. In addition, you can use the Boost feature to turn sharply away from enemy ships to avoid their attacks; this time, it’s activated after tapping the Go button.
Boost does have a cool-down period, though, and you will have to wait it out for a few turns before you can make use of it again. And as a bonus tidbit on Boost, you can also use it to make your mother ship do an instant 180-degree turn.
8. How To Proceed When The Battle Begins
Once the battle has officially started, look at the position of the enemy ships, and check the red arrows ahead of each ship. That tells you where the fleet will be heading. You may also want to pinch the screen to zoom in and see where exactly a ship is positioned.
If you notice that the arrows are pointing toward your fleet, that means the criminal ships are planning to attack your fleet directly. But you can simply go on the attack immediately, as there’s no need to wait until your ships and the enemy ships are closer to each other. Drag the dots or nodes of your ships toward the enemy ships, and do so as far as possible, all the while checking to see if the enemy ships are within your FoV. Hit the Go button so that your ships can immediately go on attack once the enemy ships are within your range.
9. Catch Ships As They Try To Escape
There may be some enemy ships that would try to escape as your fleet attacks them. They are, in fact, easier to gun down, as it would take a while before they turn around and try to attack you once again. They’ll be taking in damage from your fleet by the time they have turned around, so go chase down those ships that seem to be moving away from your fleet.
10. Your Ships Have Special Abilities Too
It’s not only your characters that have special abilities; your ships also have some of their own, and you can view them next to the pilot icon. That also applies to your mother ship, which has the Evasive Maneuver ability, one that you can use to avoid all incoming attacks. You won’t, however, be able to use your special skills right away after they have been activated, and they will also have a cool-down period of a few turns, just like the aforementioned Boost.
11. Collect More Schematics To Upgrade Your Ships
In order to upgrade your ships, which you should do regularly, you’ll have to collect that ship’s schematics. Bounty Stars will give you a special bonus, letting you use your gold credits to buy one or two schematics, or sometimes more. Apart from that, you’ll need to complete space battles in order to gather more of them; as it is, space battles ARE the main way for you to get more schematics.
12. How To Get More Free Novas
Novas are a special currency in the game, and you can use them to get better bounty hunters to join your team. You can get a guaranteed three-star rarity bounty hunter with 100 Novas, and that could really help you in improving your team. But how can you get these Novas, and how can you get them for free? Fortunately, there are many ways for you to do this.
The easiest way to do this would be to play the game everyday, even for just a few minutes a day. That’s going to log a new entry into the Launch Stamp Book, which is like a logbook that details your daily rewards. For your fourth consecutive daily login, you’ll get 50 Novas, then you’ll get 40 Novas on day 7. After that, it’s 50 more on day 10, 80 on day 13, 100 on day 19, and 200 on day 22. As you can see, those Novas can really add up quickly if you play the game regularly, so keep playing Bounty Stars if you want to stock up on this currency.
Additionally, you can gather more Novas by completing missions. Click on the Missions button to view the objectives you can accomplish to get rewards. Novas are just one of the different types of rewards you can collect, so you’ll want to complete more missions or objectives to get more of them. These are tasks you can accomplish while normally playing the game, such as defeating a certain number of enemies in turn-based battles, successfully training a pilot, etc.
Lastly, there is a possibility that the Gift Crates may come with Novas inside, though the upside here is that they may also come with a random character inside.