We’ve covered our fair share of Marvel-inspired mobile games, including some that created quite a buzz in the mobile gaming community. But what about the other side of the fence, meaning games inspired by DC Comics? Warner Bros has released a new game that covers DC superheroes, that’s simply called DC Legends. In this game your job is to lead a team of DC’s greatest champions, while making good use of your strategic mind. In other words, this is a strategy game with the best of DC’s superheroes and supervillains – you’ve got Batman and Superman representing the former and the Joker and Lex Luthor representing the latter, for instance, though there’s much more than those well-known DC characters. And you can even form a team of superheroes and supervillains as you battle Nekron and the Manhunters.
Those are just the basics of the game, and there’s a lot you’ll have to pick up in this game if you want to be good at it, while unlocking more characters and winning more battles, may it be against AI or human-controlled opponents. So join us, as we shall now be presenting to you our DC Legends strategy guide.
1. Choose Your Team Based On Who’s Representing Your Opponents
We’ll get to unlocking heroes/villains later on in this guide, but we’re going to spoil you a bit on how easy it is to unlock them – very easy, compared to other games. And it’s also similarly easy to come up with a winning team, as you can view who’s on the opponents’ side before you take on a mission in story mode or fight a human-controlled team in PvP mode.
Since you know what to expect from your opponents, you’ll also know which elements you’ll need to go with in battle. It’s good old rock-paper-scissors elemental hierarchy in here, and you should keep this in mind when choosing your team. Choose the characters/team whose elements are strong against the enemy, and you’re good to go.
2. Keep Strategy In Mind When Leveling Up Your Superheroes
Strategy isn’t just something you need to formulate in battle – it’s also something you should keep in mind when managing your team of characters. That’s because the game won’t give you a lot of XP potions to work with. But just like things are in your average sports team, there are heroes you won’t really be using all too often due to their lack of skill compared to others. Don’t focus on those heroes too often, and instead focus your leveling up efforts on your better heroes. Only work on the weaker ones if you’ve still got XP potions and/or money on hand. Generally speaking, The Flash and Wonder Woman are among your best choices if you have them, though those two are just a couple of good choices for leveling up early on in the game.
3. Choose The Right Time To Use Your Heroes’ Skills
Your superheroes and/or supervillains in DC Legends have their own special skills, but you shouldn’t use them just because you have them. Instead, you should be taking your time and choosing the right moment to activate them. In most cases, using those skills early would be fine, as their effects would be felt indefinitely, until they get de-buffed. But other skills are best saved for special occasions, such as the Heal skill, which should only be used for anyone in need of “medical assistance” in battle.
4. Do Not Play In Auto Battle Mode
So you’ve noticed that the game has an auto battle feature, and are thinking of turning it on so you can focus on other things while letting the AI take over. Is this a good idea? Should you be rolling the dice on an AI-controlled team, knowing what we’ve warned you in previous strategy guides for games like this? The answer is an emphatic NO. Sure, you can use auto battle from time to time if you’re up against a team of patsies, but otherwise, avoid auto battle like the plague. We don’t know if it’s just us, but the AI in auto battle is especially dopey and simplistic and not at all to be relied on against evenly-matched or tougher opponents.
5. Focus On That One Enemy Consistently
Don’t let up on an enemy just because their life/health points are almost snuffed out. An enemy on death’s door is still a deadly enemy as long as they’re alive, so you should take your opponents out one at a time, thereby allowing you to eliminate them and helping your team avoid costly damage. Generally, we suggest starting out with the easiest opponent to kill. Or better yet, you can target the one that deals out the most damage, so that you don’t need to worry about a heavy hitter on an opponent’s side.
6. Scout Enemies As You Go Along
We already mentioned the importance of scouting enemies before battle so that you can be sure you’ve got an elementally superior team. In addition to this, you should scout them while the fight itself is going on. Take note of any buffs they may have on them, and take note as well of the enemies you have no trouble beating, and the ones that are giving you a hard time. Bosses ideally always come last in campaign battles where there are boss fights aplenty, so leave them alone in the meantime as it will take a good many turns to get rid of them.
7. The Fundamentals Of Upgrading
As is the case in all strategy games or similar titles, DC Legends allows you several chances and ways to improve your heroes and their items. Their skills, for starters, can be upgraded, while their items can be empowered so you can improve their gear rank and accompanying stats. When upgrading Super Powers, you want to start with your tried-and-tested, capable heroes, the ones you use most frequently in battle. After that, you can then move on to the weaker members of your team. Also bear in mind that all items apply to all heroes when you’re upgrading your Super Powers.
With that last sentence in mind, you may actually have better luck waiting it out, and hoping you get enough items so you can upgrade a hero’s superpowers, instead of going for that quick, painless, and obvious upgrade on an item regularly used by those heroes who are on your “bench.” That also applies to empowering items, though it wouldn’t hurt if you empower items as the first thing to do after unlocking them.
8. How To Get More Upgrade Items
This is pretty similar to the crafting mechanic you probably know from many an RPG title. You need certain items in order to empower existing pieces of equipment. And you can find them by completing missions that offer that item(s) as a reward. And since managing one’s time can be quite the task in DC Legends, here’s a tip that could help you balance fast completion and necessity. Go as far as you could in campaign/story mode, grind for the required crafting items that you’ll need to upgrade characters and empower their items. It could make gameplay in general longer and more tedious, but in the end, you’ll be more powerful against AI opponents in campaign mode, and a bigger threat to human opposition in the other game modes.
9. Unlocking More Heroes – The Basics
We did say above that it’s really not that difficult to unlock heroes in DC Legends. The catch here is that it could take quite a while. You will need Hero Shards which can then be used to unlock heroes and level them up, and there are a lot of places where you can get them for free. Within the game, playing through one campaign will give you loads of Hero Shards as a reward, and you’ll likely have a formidable stable of heroes with great variety. (So far, the game only has Superman shards as a reward for completing the Campaign Missions.)
Likewise, playing a campaign mission for the first time can give you Hero Shards. And playing those Heroic difficulty missions can be a good way to gain attention, a ton of rare and powerful shards, and move forward. You’ve also got Live Events and specific missions, which could either reward you with a new hero, or simply their shards. Live Events are tougher and you’ll need to be sure you’re sending off your finest heroes off to battle. But they pay a lot in terms of rewards, which may include, but not be limited to Hero Shards and crafting items that may be rare enough to allow for a significant improvement.
Alternately, you can to the shop to buy premium currency with your real-life money, then use that premium currency for packs that are guaranteed to contain some shards inside.
10. Take Part In The Wrath Arena
You should also test your mettle against other human players by stepping into the PvP Wrath Arena. Win as many battles as possible, because your rewards will include Battle Essence, which can be used in the in-game store in exchange of the Big Arena Pack. (We should warn you to avoid the Mini version of this pack due to the mediocre rewards within.) Make sure you’re doing your best to move up to a higher ranking, while avoiding demotion in your current league. Being in a good league and moving quickly up the rankings will get you recognized, and the game will reward you with a ton of Battle Essence.
So as to set your expectations for the battle arena, each win will give you 30 Battle Essence units each, and the Big Arena Pack costs 380 at the store. That’s at least 13 wins, so go for the victory each time you enter the arena, and you’ll be able to afford that Big Arena Pack in no time.
11. Login To The Game Every Day
Warner Bros has given some good incentive to players who can’t get through their day without a nice battle. The daily bonuses add up each day, and missing just one day will reset things back to zero. So show the fine folks at Warner Bros just how much you love this game, login every day, even if it’s just to log in and claim your daily reward, and you just might end up with some Hero Shards.
12. Overview – Don’t Expect To Have All The Heroes Covered Here
We’re going to be covering a few good heroes and villains whom you can place in your team, so just to make sure we’ve got the expectations set properly, take note that some of the names we mentioned might not be in your collection at the moment. The game has about 40 characters to unlock, with a lot of them available via random drop, and depending on how far you’ve reached in the game, you may only have a few, or a lot (but not all) of the heroes/villains. Also remember that we came up with our choices with the assumption that all characters are generally of a similar level; some of your heroes may be much farther leveled-up than others, after all.
13. Your Mileage May Vary
While we’re making our suggestions based on our experience and that of others, we should also say that your mileage may vary – one person’s ideal setup may be completely non-ideal for the other. You also have to consider elemental bonuses when coming up with a team of heroes/villains. So with that in mind, you may have one of the most powerful characters in the game against one team setup become completely useless against another, while a weak character might look better than they normally should be if they’ve got the elemental advantage.
Yes, there are some characters who are naturally better than others, but speaking in general terms, it’s all up to your preference and the elemental advantage or disadvantage you may have over the enemy.
14. Heroes With Leader Skills Are Generally Better
We did say that some heroes are better than others, and once again speaking generally, it’s the ones who have a Leader skill who make great choices from the get-go. These skills provide buffs to their teammates, so if you’ve got a character with a Leader skill, assign them as such and reap the benefits for everyone else in the team. You can also unlock Leader skills through the usual upgrades, but that might take a while to pull off; it may be better to hope against hope you get a character with a Leader skill early on in the game.
15. Have A Balanced Team
We’re only going to talk about this tip in brief, but before we move on to our list of top characters based on element, we’ll get this one out of the way. In order to ensure yourself of the best chances of winning more consistently, you should have Red, Blue, and Green elements all represented. You wouldn’t want to stock your team up with heroes from one element alone, or mostly representing one element, as you’ll be receiving the proverbial short end of the stick when you’ve got the elemental weakness against your opponent. Don’t be one-dimensional – take all of the elements into account when forming your team!
16. Suggested Red Heroes Characters
First and foremost, you want to have the Dark Knight himself – Batman – as part of your team due to his standout all-around skills. Concussion Grenade works by reducing the entire enemy team’s strength, while Full Armor Beatdown is another good skill as it increases damage to Taunting enemies. We’d also recommend a good few supervillains from the Batman franchise, such as Harley Quinn (Love/Hate for guaranteed critical hit, Distract and Destroy for reduced enemy agility) and the Joker, who has a Leader skill. And moving on to another franchise, Green Arrow can use his invisibility powers to become impervious to enemy damage, as well as Cover Shot, which removes any enemy buffs.
17. Suggested Green Heroes Characters
As for the Green Heroes, Flash is arguably one of the game’s best heroes to use due to his blazing speed and attack frequency; he can attack twice in the same time it takes for other heroes to pull off one move. Lex Luthor would be our top supervillain here, as he provides a speed buff to all your other heroes, with 50 percent auto heal for everybody if he’s named team leader. Also, Bizarro is good in meting out damage, and also has an auto-heal ability as one of his passive skills.
18. Suggested Blue Heroes Characters
Black Adam has several things going for him, including skills such as Khandaq Storm (buff removal, lower cool down time, additional damage) and his extra turn passive skill are both very useful. He can also deal out a lot of damage. Sinestro and Zatanna stand out as healer characters, with the former being more powerful than the latter in that regard.