RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Slay Every Drag Queen Challenge

Canadian mobile game developer Leaf Mobile has recently announced that its subsidiary East Side Games Studio unveiled a new game. Titled RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar, it’s inspired by the reality TV hit show with the same name. The game is available on Android as well as iOS and according to the developer, it’s the first major mobile game production that puts the LGBTQ+ community at the forefront.

Players will step into the shoes of a rookie drag queen who believes they have what it takes to be the next drag race superstar. The game is all about allowing users to build their glamorous alter ego, a process which starts by creating your avatar.

Once their persona has been created, players will need to concentrate on “werking” in order to collect the necessary resources to upgrade their wardrobe and compete against other drag queens for fame. Making progress is a pretty slow affair in this game, and so you’ll have to dedicate some time and effort to upgrade the style of your character and help them win the top queen title.

If you started playing the game yourself, but you don’t seem to be winning fashion duels the way you thought you would, don’t worry we’re here to help. We’ve put together a RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar beginner’s guide where we outline a series of tips and tricks that will help you grow your wardrobe fast so you can become the best drag queen you can be.

1. Automate Your Werkstations

Before we can talk about outfits and extending your fashion closet, you’ll need to gather the means to pay for them. Enter the Werkroom – the place where you can get your hands on all sorts of resources.

Get to “werk” and set up stations to produce Werk points which gradually accumulate over time. Initially, you’ll have to manually collect these, but once you start grabbing rewards you’ll be able to unlock helpers or Pit crew members. The role of these characters is to automate your Werkstations, so you won’t have to worry about collecting the constantly accumulating Werk points.

On the other hand, even with automation in place you’ll still have to collect the XP each Werkstation generates. XP increases the amount of werk that can be collected at each station. The more Werk points you spend on a Werkstation the more XP you can produce and thus the more Werk you’ll make.

The Werkroom hosts episodes, and each comes with its own series of tasks you need to complete, for instance gathering a number of Lipsticks. In exchange for your efforts you can win various reward boxes which can contain all kinds of goodies such as Rudollars, Lipstick, Gems, Werkstation cards and more. We’ll detail each of these items in turn later in this guide. Once all of these tasks are completed, a new chapter will be unlocked. When this happens, you’ll have to start the Werk point collection process all over again by setting up each Werkstation and kickstarting production anew.

Anyway you’ll need to evolve your Werkstations up to a certain level (varies depending on the station and how far along you are in the game) to be able to able to automate the collection of Werk points. You also need an associated Pit crew member to help you out. Whenever automation is available for a certain Werkstation, you’ll notice a small green button next to it (just like in the screenshot below).

Levelling up your Werkstation by virtue of XP also yields rewards, but of a smaller caliber. You’ll be able to grab items such as Pit crew cards, Lipstick and more. Lipstick is particularly vital as it will help you upgrade your Werkstations thus improving their overall output. The same resource is needed to level up your Pit crew members, that and their associated cards.

Bottom line is this, automating your Werkstations allows you to work more efficiently allowing you to focus solely on XP collection – which is a slower affair. Actually, once you’ve automated your stations you can go ahead and take a break from the game for a little while. Later on, you can return and the XP will be waiting for you.

2. Activate The Werk Multiplier

Accumulating as many Werk points as possible is essential if you’re looking up to speed up the game a bit. That’s why it’s a good idea to activate the Werk multiplier as soon as possible, and to make sure it stays on in order to maximize your gains.

In exchange for watching a series of ads, you can double your profits for a total of 12 hours. We know watching ads is annoying, but if you’re playing on a F2P basis you might want to take advantage of them as much as possible to make the pace of the game more enjoyable.

3. Upgrade Your Werkstations And Pit Crew Members

To get even more werk flowing in, you should prioritize upgrading your Werkstations and Pit crew members. You’ll need Lipstick for that and lots of it, and so you won’t have any choice but to pour your efforts into werking and focus on resource collection.

You can win substantial amounts of Lipstick by unlocking Achievements, which is done simply by playing the game, being active and participating in as many drag races as possible. On top of that you can earn Lipstick from other sources including:

• Completing goals in the Werkroom.
• Getting XP bonuses from the same Werkroom.
• Claiming the free gifts from the store.
• Winning prizes in Events.
• Collecting Ru Badges during the Season and unlocking the relevant prizes.

When it comes to upgrading Werkstations and Pit crew members you’ll also need to collect specific cards, on top of Lipstick. You can get these through gathering XP and Werk points and unlocking prizes after hitting the necessary milestones. Getting cards is not a problem in RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar, as the game ensures you have plenty of those.

4. Ignore Your Fashion Sense, Watch The Combos

Next up, let’s step into the changing room where your character preps for challenges. You can participate in various fashion show offs including Daily, Weekly, Maxi and Mini challenges. There are six free Daily and Weekly challenges which you can enter in a row, after which you’ll need to wait a bit to access more a use an entry ticket instead (a resource which you can win from time to time).

Now, while you might be tempted to focus on the aesthetical aspect of outfit creation while prepping for a challenge, we encourage you not to. To win in this game, you’ll sometimes have to abandon your fashion sense and go for practicality. The result, well, might not look too pleasant to the eye, but it will help you triumph over the other drag queen.

Each challenge tasks the player with creating an outfit according to a list of specifications or tags – which are the characteristics that describe a piece of clothing. You’ll be able to view them in the Challenge screen when you’re getting ready to dress up your character for the show down. Below we’ve listed the attributes for your convenience.

• Glitz
• Edgy
• Eleganza
• Basic
• Romantic
• Pop
• Fantasy
• Sexy
• Fetish

Most basic pieces (2-stars) of clothing are described by one tag, but more sophisticated ones will feature multiple characteristics. For instance, the 2-starred Red Pinup shoes are initially described only by the Basic tag. Once you upgrade the item, the item will gain a Romantic tag, as well.

The challenge requirements list the number of items associated with a tag that your drag queen needs to wear in order to enter a drag race, and each has a combo assigned to them. To give you an example consider this requirement: Sexy (1) x 1.5, Basic (1) x 1.4 and Romantic x 2.0.  This means that in order to enter the challenge your character needs to don AT LEAST one Sexy and one Basic item.

The Romantic tag is optional and its absence won’t have any bearing over you being allowed to participate in the challenge. However, given the large combo of x2.0 associated with the tag it would be highly beneficial if you could find a few Romantic items for your drag queen to wear. During each round, make sure you check what the biggest combo offered is, and try to equip a few extra items in that category, if possible. Combos are the key of quickly winning challenges, so don’t overlook this aspect when you’re putting the clothes on your drag queen.

Initially, at least, we recommend that you create outfits consisting of as many pieces as possible. That means top + bottom + shoes, instead of equipping your character with a single body piece such as a dress and then just adding shoes. This method gives you the best chance of collecting the necessary number of tags, especially in the early stages of the game when your wardrobe consists mostly of lower 2-starred items which have not been updated yet (and so have only one attribute).

To view the items that you have available under a certain tag, tap on the characteristic in the top left part of the display and then browse through the apparel sections to view your options. If you have some cash to spend, we recommend also checking the Shop. You’ll find items that are relevant to the challenge at hand and so you can boost your wardrobe last minute thus ensuring your success.

So remember, watch the combos, ignore your fashion style and make sure you use only items sporting tags which are included in the challenge if you wish to win.

5. Upgrade Your Drag Outfits

Upgrading your drag outfits is essential for a positive outcome at the end of a challenge. Clothing pieces in this game sport between 2 and 5 stars each, and of course the 2-starred ones are less impressive, while the 5 star ones are the sickest. The problem is those are super expensive and so you won’t be able to flaunt them on stage too early in the game.

Anyway, clothing pieces with less stars attached to them are nothing to scoff off, if you make sure you upgrade them quickly. You see the more stars a clothing item has the more tags will define its fashion style. So a 2-star clothing piece can have 2 tags once it has been upgraded, while a 3-star one will boast 3 tags. As you start putting away a bit of money in your account, start targeting 3-star items as they boast two-tags right from the get-go and they only need one upgrade to have the maximum tags.

With more tags defining an item, your chances of meeting challenge requirements will increase considerably. This is what makes 5-star items highly desirable, as they can be upgraded to have up to 4 tags. The only problem is that you’ll need to spend 4x the price of that item in order to have them fully upgraded.

So how do you upgrade clothing pieces? Well, you’ll need cash (Rudollars) and a duplicate outfit. Duplicates are pieces of clothing you already own. You can get more drag pieces from various sources not just the store where you need to spend the cash you’ve accumulated so far.

It’s also possible to obtain occasional new outfits from the Werkroom goal rewards during episodes, events, as well as Ru Badge prize tiers during the Season or by cracking open Kiki chests. Some outfits are harder to find than others, so don’t pin your hopes on them. Instead focus on upgrading the more common ones.

6. Play Challenges To Get Kikis And Win Prizes

We encourage you to enter Daily and Weekly challenges as soon as possible. These are your only options of obtaining Kikis (Golden Keys) which are a special type of resource. Collect enough and you’ll be able to crack some nice chests that can contain clothing pieces of various tiers.

This is a great way to expand your wardrobe with more uncommon high-end fashion pieces. Don’t worry if you don’t think you have what it takes to win these challenges. You will still win a Kiki during the Daily ones, but you won’t get as much cash.

Daily and Weekly challenges, as well as the Mini and Maxi ones also shed Badges, but only if completed successfully. These are resources that count during the Season reward track. Collect them and you’ll be able to unlock all sorts of prizes including Tickets for extra participations to challenges, Rudollars and outfits.

The Mini challenges are usually the simplest to beat, so if you want to grab a few extra Rudollars and badges, don’t hesitate to take them up whenever they appear in the Werkroom.

7. Read Your Messages

Winning drag challenges comes with nice rewards and while they can be pretty consistent, they are no match for Achievement rewards.

Simply by playing the game and making progress you’ll unlock achievements as you go along. You’ll need to remember to check your Inbox constantly so you can have access to the latest rewards you’ve acquired. You can do so by tapping on your avatar in the top right corner of the display. Then click on “News and Messages” and then Messages again to see what has been made available for you.

Achievements offer the best rewards including Lipstick, Rudollars and Gems, so don’t ignore them. They might bring the boost you need to complete a goal in the Werkroom or provide the monetary assistance for a new outfit.

8. Exchange Items And Watch Ads

Ads appear in moderation in RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar Review, so don’t worry you won’t be too overwhelmed by them. So when they appear, you should definitely take advantage. Case in point, whenever you spot the trader in the Werkroom make sure you exchange some of your cards for Lipstick.

As we explained in an earlier section, Lipstick is a very important resource which allows you to upgrade your Werkstations as well as your Pit crew members, thus we encourage you to take up any opportunity of collecting more. As we already noted, you won’t have trouble collecting Pit crew or Werkstation cards in this game, so don’t worry about spending them. Make the trade, because you’re always going to be in need of more Lipstick during this game.

Also in the Werkroom make sure you to tap on the filming crew whenever they appear. Just by watching a short ad, you’ll be able to add a nice bundle of Lipstick to your constantly waning reserve.

At the same time, don’t hesitate to press the “x2” button every time you return to the game after an absence. The game offers up some idle rewards, which increase with time, and you can double the amount you’ve earned just by watching an ad.

9. Participate In Events

Events are truly special occasions in RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar because they don’t happen all that often. You’ll be notified in advance when one is about to start and our advice is to try and make time to play during such occasions. Some events are available for a longer time than others, so don’t worry if you didn’t make it in time to catch one. Perhaps you’ll get luckier next time.

Events are the perfect occasion for acquiring additional resources, as well as unique outfits and rare cards, so don’t miss out on that. For instance, during the Miss Vanjie event you get the chance to grab the Epic Vanjie card. More realistically, you’ll probably end up winning other rewards which can be pretty sweet too. For instance, the chances of unlocking a rare outfit are pretty good. All you have to do is play.

Gameplay during events is exactly the same as during the normal game. You’ll need to set up your Werkstations from scratch, unlock Pit crew and assign them to their posts to automate the process of collecting Werk points. Don’t forget to check what rewards are available to redeem after the event has finished.

10. Spend Gems In The Resource Store

Gems are resources you can win sometimes in the Werk room, but also by unlocking rewards during the Season or by hitting a new achievement. Gems can be used to refresh the outfit store and bring in new clothing items, but the game does a good job at doing it by itself, so we advise against this practice.

Instead, you should spend your Gems in the Resource shop (which you can access from the Werkroom by pressing on the shopping bag icon in the lower right corner) on any resource you might be short on including XP, Lipstick or Rudollars.

So if you’re looking to hit a milestone or to buy a certain outfit, but you just need a bit more cash, check your Gem reserve and see if you can exchange them for what you need. For instance, you can get 6000 Rudollars if you’re willing to part with 180 Gems from your stash.

If you’re feeling lucky, you can go ahead and buy a Werkroom chest in exchange for 70 Gems. This might contain Lipstick (up to 260), as well as various Werkstation and Pit crew cards.

With this last tip we conclude our RuPaul’s Drag Race Superstar beginner’s guide. We hope you enjoyed reading it and have managed to find a few useful tips and tricks that you’ll be able to incorporate into your own strategy in the game. If you have knowledge of any other strategies that haven’t been mentioned in this guide, don’t hesitate to share it with us via the comment section below!