Wow, This Came Out Of The Blue

Remember my previous post discussing Havok? I published it early Friday morning (after having just recruited him and getting him to level 2), and in the afternoon the game developers rolled out a revamp for Havok, along with some other changes including the much-awaited Wolverine upgrade. See the complete list of updates here.

Essentially, disregard what I've previously posted about Havok. He's no longer a specialized protector that preys upon under protectors, and his move list has been heavily modified.

If you're one of those people who felt cheated of their 90 Command Points when they bought Wolverine, you may now rejoice, as your purchase is now markedly better than before. 

From a mere bleeder with regeneration and an immunity that's mostly irrelevant in PVP, he's now a bleeding-counter protector that can cheat death similar to Ghost Rider.

For Magneto owners / commanders / handlers (what's the proper term for a guy who gives an evil genius mutant orders to fight against riffraff on the streets, anyway?), you'll be pleased to know he's received a power-up in the form of a passive that gives the Magnetized status to enemies carrying metal, and allows preemptive strikes against Magnetized enemies.

Cable

Wasp

And if you're already looking forward to the next Spec Ops like me, it's highly likely that we'll need Cable and the newly-released Wasp (total cost of 225 Command Points) unless you want to skip the epic boss tasks with gold. I sincerely hope more chapters come out before the next Spec Ops though - if this trend of requiring 1 90 CP hero and 1 PVP tournament prize hero (assuredly an instant 135 points) continues, I'll probably be forced to skip my way past certain tasks to keep getting Spec Ops heroes, as I don't care for and suck at PVP.

No, This Is The Real Test

About an hour ago...

With plenty of time to spare

Here's what he has to say about joining my merry menagerie.

But wait, there's more!

Family drama at its best.

 

So it's hero babysitting time again, with another low accuracy hero. Thank Dormammu for Dark Sigil. Here's my current babysitting / all-purpose loadout.

Totally not S.H.I.E.L.D. standard-issue

Dark Sigil gurantees a hit for Havok (or any accuracy-impaired hero, for that matter), Spatha provides a counterattack chance with a guaranteed Evasion reduction on a hit, Radian Rifle has good synergy with Dark Sigil and has a chance for a second shot, and finally Signpost to make sure I don't run out of Stamina too quickly while sniping away at the enemy squad's health at the same time.

Now that Havok's joined the crew, it's time for the real Special Operation.

He's not just a Command Point farm anymore.

Cry Havok! Let Loose Special Operations 6!

In case the title didn’t tip you off, Special Operations 6 is underway in the always-in-danger world of Marvel: Avengers Alliance. This time around, the hero that could be yours for the taking is Alex Summers, also known as Havok.

 

The second Summers brother.

Havok is a blaster, the first blaster made available through a Spec Ops event. So far, in order of appearance, we’ve had a generalist (Mockingbird), a tactician (Emma Frost), two scrappers (Magik and Ghost Rider), and a bruiser (Valkyrie). While Valkyrie had to go through some powering up to be made worthy of being a prize (I’ve gotten her when her first two skills were still very underpowered), I can definitely say that when Havok hit the game, he lived up to his name. Why do I say that? Oh, for four reasons.

 

SHATTERING PUNCH

First, his basic attack costs no energy at all, and inflicts the Melt Armor status on the unlucky target for two rounds. That means the poor sap has an effective defense stat of 0 when computing combat damage, meaning he or she is going to take a lot of damage fast.

PLASMA WAVE

Second, his single-target ranged attack, while leaving a lot to be desired in terms of accuracy (it’s less accurate than the player favorite damage-for-accuracy weapon, the Golden Screaming Eagle), inflicts the Burning status on the victim and Removes Buffs if it connects. This includes special defenses (like barriers and shields that aren’t natural to the target) and other boosts, like damage ups and dodge ups. Also, a Burning target loses around 10% of its total defense while on fire, in addition to taking damage over time. All this goodness however comes at a steep cost in stamina - almost half of his maximum.

CHANNEL ENERGY

Third, he gets a free action that not only restores 20% of his stamina, but also buffs him with an effect that makes his attack critical hits for two rounds. Can you say pain for the bad guys? Oh yes, you can! While this does not solve his energy issues in full, it certainly helps with that problem, and critical hits are always welcome, whether you play PVP or just stick to PVE.

 

PLASMA SPHERES

His ultimate (jargon for the ability gained at level 9) is a Catastrophic attack that slows and dizzies all the targets (note the plural) that it hits. As with all Catastrophic attacks, this attack can’t be protected against, and ignores avoidance abilities. It’s an area attack that inflicts two inconvenient status effects on enemies in addition to damage, so what’s not to like? The answer – stamina cost. Similar to his Plasma Wave, Plasma Spheres also drains about half of his stamina bar.

Observant players have commented that causing the Dizzy status effect on all enemies makes a great setup for the much-maligned Nightcrawler and his ultimate, a multi-hit, single-target stealthy attack that also hits all Dizzy enemies. Whether this will affect the upcoming PVP tournament or not remains to be seen.

Havok’s an energy guzzler – no questions about it. Both of his ranged plasma attacks drain roughly half his stamina bar per use. Fortunately, he comes with passives to help him with that stamina problem of his – and by that, I mean his inability to continuously blast away with plasma against his enemies. Mind out of the gutter, you!

So when you see a lot of beam spam and pew-pew flying about, that’s the best time to unleash Havok!

Tigra Trouble

Currently, the M:AA forums are abuzz with the man of the hour, the Merc With The Mouth a.k.a. Deadpool. He was a much sought-after character, being the prize for the top players of Playdom's first PVP tournament. The announcement of his availability for purchase after four days effectively eclipsed the debut of female Avenger Tigra.

For a lot of players, the Recruit button had a big question mark at the end.

Imagine - the announcement of a new hero arriving in four days was much bigger news, and was met with more enthusiasm than the immediate availability of a new female hero. I know what you're thinking - wouldn't stereotypical comic / Marvel geeks salivate more over a sexy cat-woman than they would over a masked assassin with guns and swords? Why is the opposite happening?

Nice answer, Wade, but not the one we're going with.

Part of the reason is the metagame, at least in PVP. The Infiltrator class, ideally counter-attacking every turn and ignoring tank / protector characters and striking fear into the enemy team, is not in its best environment thanks to the presence of agent weapons and characters whose attacks do not provoke counterattacks. A powerful deterrent to using Infiltrators in the PVP metagame is the presence of Ghost Rider, a popular Scrapper option. An oft-repeated aphorism in the game forums is "The game hates infiltrators right now," and Tigra is an Infiltrator.

As she was available earlier, players were able to check out her recruitment cost. Along with many other players, I was taken aback at her steep cost of 90 Command Points. To put things in perspective, Hercules, The Hulk and Thor clock in at 90 CPs. The reality-altering (and if the comics are to be believed, reality-shattering) Scarlet Witch also costs 90 CPs. Based on these three alone, one might conclude that 90 CP characters are unstoppable forces of destruction. However, other 90 CP heroes include Wolverine, Captain America, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Beast, Rogue, and Gambit (who's also another 90 CP Infiltrator). Comics-wise, they're not really on the level of the four 'unstoppable forces' I've listed earlier. They're still all good, for a certain value  of good.

Clockwise, from top left: Hercules, Hulk, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, Beast, Black Panther, Spider-man, Captain America.

Now, if any M:AA players actually read this, they'll argue that Wolverine is an underwhelming 90 CP hero. I would have to agree. I used to think that Black Panther shared Wolverine's corner of shame, but a recent update allowed him to gain massive destructive potential and use it in the same turn, so the corner is solely Wolverine's again.

With the revamp to the bleeding mechanic, patched to coincide with Tigra's release, Wolverine got a slight bump in terms of utility. Of course, the change brought a new round of complaints, mostly from Black Cat players and the Black Panther players. Bleeding now only stacks up to three times, but the bleeding damage now fires at the start of each turn and with every hostile action. Hostile action here is defined as an attack or counterattack. Hostile actions also include (according to the last time I checked) effects such as Icy (from Laufey's Knife and Laufey's Needle) placing a status effect on an opponent. I am of the opinion that this should not be the case - after all, if you touch a very hot piece of metal, and you get burned because of it, it doesn't mean that the metal had any hostile intent toward you!

Cool swords, bro.

To wit, bleeding is shaping up from a straight-up Damage Over Time effect that needed to be built up to five stacks to become serious, into an effective punishment against multiple turns, counterattacks, and follow-ups.

The complaint from BC and BP users stems from the Exploits Bleeding attributes on Black Cat's Nerve Chop and Black Panther's Wakandan Arts. They now do significantly reduced damage, because they now get a max of 3 damage bonuses instead of 5 like before. I've seen people in the forums refer to the former as Nerf/ed Chop, and as for the latter I think people will be calling it WTF Arts.

Anyway, aside from being an Infiltrator, why was Tigra's first impression very bad for many players? The most common complaint is that she has no passive abilities.

Let's compare her with the other 90 CP heroes. Hercules will unleash critical hits per attack when he's loaded with buffs, Hulk gets more accuracy and damage whenever he's hit, and Thor is immune to a number of Damage Over Time effects. Scarlet Witch can dodge any hit 20% of the time, while Captain America can reduce damage by blocking it with his shield in addition to boosting his team's stats with his leadership. Spider-Man can divert an attack toward him, possible dodging it at the last second, saving the original target, and from time to time gain a sizable attack up as well. Wolverine is immune to fear effects and can recover some of his HP every turn. Beast gains an attack bonus if he does not attack that turn, and can make his team's next attacks critical whenever an enemy attacks. Black Panther has a chance to dizzy melee attackers, Rogue is immune to ground attacks thanks to her flight, and Gambit can throw a card at enemies who attack his allies, damaging the attacker and letting Gambit charge up his attacks.

Go to your Team Screen and select Tigra, then place the cursor over her image. The box in red pops up, which for certain heroes will display the passive abilities in this current uniform. 

In other words, she has no special defenses or quirks. Many players took one look at her and probably summarized her as a more expensive Black Cat. Both are female Infiltrators whose arsenals revolve around bleeding, and neither have any passives in their standard uniform / costume. Looking at it in a different light, there are 5 Infiltrators that cost less than Tigra does, and of those 5, 3 have passive abilities that make attacking them unattractive. Black Widow promises more damage to anyone who attacks her. Invisible Woman has a chance to flat-out dodge an attack and give herself increased accuracy, which translates to a greater chance to land a critical hit, and all of her damaging moves have Deadly Crits, which essentially means Normal Damage X Critical Damage Multiplier + Deadly Crits Bonus. Finally, Kitty Pryde has her dragon friend Lockheed, who has a chance to belch fire at whoever attacks her.

As for the other 2 Infiltrators who are cheaper than Tigra, one of them is Black Cat, who requires a combination of multiple bleeding stacks and her Stroke of Luck skill to land a One-Hit K.O. with her Nerve Chop. The other one is Nightcrawler, widely regarded by players as one of the worst heroes in the game at the moment, and whose specialty is inflicting the Dizzy status on enemies and executing follow-up attacks on Dizzy targets.

When trying to determine whether a hero is worth his or her point cost or not, it's fine to look at the little details and compare the hero to similarly-costed or same-class heroes, but that shouldn't be the end-all and be-all of things. As Albert Einstein said, 

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

So here's an alternate view I'm offering - Tigra doesn't have a passive (yet, as I'm still wishing she'll get one eventually) because she doesn't need one in her current role in the game. What is her role in the game? The answer, I believe, lies in the unique status effect she brings to the game, Shred.

Shred essentially enables characters who exploit bleeding to do so against targets that don't bleed, as well as reducing defense. Shred gets applied to targets hit by Tigra that are immune to Bleeding. In PVP, this applies to agents with the rare Fist of the Colossus equipped, as well as the heroes Luke Cage, Thing, and Colossus himself. In PVE, this applies to enemies with the Mechanical Body passive, such as the Servbots and the Sentinels.

Shred also stacks three times, and according to its description, counts as bleeding for the purposes of attacks. This will allow Black Cat and Black Panther to use their attacks with Exploit Bleeding to full effect, even against hardened targets. Of course, getting 3 stacks of Shred on the same target is going to require three turns with a low-level Tigra with her first attack.

However, it's just two if she's at least level 9 and has access to her Frenzy Skill.

First turn: Swipe, then Frenzy, gain Feral Instincts. Second turn, Swipe, then Razor Claws, gaining Sharpened Claws, then a follow-up Razor Claws against the same target. Feel free to send Black Cat or Black Panther in for the finisher.

Here's her level 2 skill. It certainly cements her dedication to the bleeding theme.

It's clear now what Tigra's role is - she allows attacks that depend on the target bleeding, including her own, to be used against everything. In other words, she ensures that a bleeding team does not automatically lose when  fighting a team with Colossus, Thing, or Luke Cage in it. (Does anyone really field Luke Cage in PVP?) Once the opponents are either bleeding or shredded, Tigra can go in for massive damage, helped along by her level 6 skill.

An important note: Shred doesn't work with the Ravaged debuff, which increases the health lost from Bleeding effects. Sorry, Wolverine, you're still stuck up the creek when you're fighting robots in-game.

My verdict - I'm getting her, as she'll prove to be great against everyone's favorite epic boss, Magneto. Recruiting her will let me finally train Wolverine up to level 10, as he'll now have a replacement who can cause more bleeding damage to happen despite Magneto's shields. She seem like she's going to be a blast to play, and it's highly likely she'll be required in the next Spec Ops. Besides, catgirls!

Spec Ops 5: Ride of the Valkyrie!

Spec Ops 5 just went live a few hours ago, and the heroine up for grabs this time around is an Asgardian (same race as Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three) named Valkyrie.

She's a female Bruiser (for those of you who prefer to keep or field a "girl power" team / theme), so that means She-Hulk isn't the sole "native" Bruiser anymore - "native" in this case meaning "without purchasing an alternate costume."

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll save myself over 9000 by letting you see screenshots from my game. Again, numbers may vary based on agent levels.

Our apologies to those who were expecting a transforming jet armed with more missiles than possible.

I've had the opportunity to use her against the mini-bosses and boss of SO5's mission 1, and from what I've seen she has severe stamina issues - which may go away with the proper Iso-8. She isn't an offensive powerhouse, like say, Hulk, Thor, or (when fully buffed) Hercules. Instead, she's used to support your frail team members by preventing them from being one-hit KO'd, which is typical in PVP - provided she can get her buff out first. While I haven't seen it in action yet, she's supposed to automatically step in front of a weakened ally and take the hit for him/her, unless Valkyrie herself is in critical health, or if the targeted ally is under her Deathwatch buff. 

This is her defining skill, her level 6.

Deathwatch supposedly revives you at 25% Health if you're KO'd, so not stepping up to shield a dude with Deathwatch makes sense. The thing to note is Deathwatch doesn't last the entire match - it expires after a few turns. This means timing is important. The loss of health is significant, but she won't die even if she's killed she takes lethal damage thanks to the buff affecting her as well. Should you find your Valkyrie revived at 25% Health, you'll want to make sure you pay your attacker back, using her spear, with this:

Be sure to growl before clicking on your target. "Geirrrrrrr..."

When her health is still high, meaning 75% or greater, you'll want to attack with Dragonfang, her enchanted sword, instead. It's a great attack when used alongside Storm, or an agent with Capacitive Impeder (which luckily I have), and it's easy on the stamina meter as well, so let them eat steel! (The attack animation is just badass!)

Electric-type damage needs more love.

Based on experience, when I take out an enemy that has the Deathglow effect, Valkyrie recovers 988 Health, out of her starting 3952. Doing the math, that's exactly 25% of her Health, the same amount she loses when she uses Sacrificial Blessing! Note also the number of hits: 3. For the PVP-oriented, 3 hits means that it bypasses Digital Decoy's two layers of protective illusions, and still leave a third hit to tag an opponent with Deathglow. If your target already has Static Charge, then he or she gets shocked too. Although if you really want to bypass Digital Decoy's protection, there's always this:

I'll not apologize for the pun, because it wasn't my idea.

Note the low stamina cost (lower than her Level 2, Dragonfang)! You can literally ride them down with her winged horse (!!!) every turn and not worry about retaliation - the damage leaves a lot to be desired though.

I'm currently waiting to finish the research on Task 6. 

I'm glad to see they resisted calling the buff that this item grants "Drunken Fist."

Here's a hot tip for the boss fight on mission 1 - the Enchantress is protected by a Jotun bodyguard in the first two waves, but is alone on the third. She'll be protected by a Scrapper first, then by a Bruiser. In this fight, Valkyrie is a forced Team-Up. It's not difficult, though - the Enchantress has a nasty habit of fleeing the fight if she senses danger, so the bodyguard is good as toast once his mistress flees.

So, strategy - I brought Sif for backup, because the Enchantress can set enemies on fire with her Magic Missile. This made 2/3 of my team fire-proof thanks to their Asgardian biology, so I can get away with the cheaper, single-target Extinguisher instead of costly Flame Suppresants. Also, Sif can inflict the Tenderized status on an enemy, which will go long toward improving Valkyrie's slashing damage.

I suited up in a Blaster Trenchcoat, and brought the Faulteater (to hit the Enchantress with Damage Over Time effects despite her huge protector), a Magnetic Field Generator (I now never deploy without it), the Signpost (useful whenever you're fighting waves that contain more than one enemy), and a Possessed Pistol to ensure more damage.

"You've got a psychic machine pistol, a demonic staff, and two artifacts captured from super-villains. Standard S.H.I.E.L.D.-issue, my ass."

The fight was amusing, because after losing a certain percentage of her health courtesy of the Faulteater's Burning and Biofeedback effects, the Enchantress ran away. She did so twice, but there's something up with the passive on her Jotun bodyguards - weren't they supposed to be KO'ed when the Enchantress flees? Why are they still up and fighting?

She also has a nasty trick called Charm, which causes the character to lose an action per turn. This essentially locks the character out of the fight until he or she receives damage. She hit Sif with it (hmm, Girls' Love?) and then had the bright idea to hit all three of my team members with her Emerald Wave. 

Needless to say, Sif was not pleased, and since she, being a Scrapper, was the natural counter to the Enchantress' Infiltrator class, well, let's say what ensued was not the sort of intense girl on girl action promised on so much of my junk mail.

So what are you waiting for? Go and kick some Jotun and thugs to the curb and get on the path to recruiting Valkyrie!

Read The Field Manual – How to Play Marvel: Avengers Alliance for People Who Like Manuals

M:AA is a combat-oriented turn-based role-playing game, loosely based on the Cinematic Marvel Universe (the one where Director Nick Fury looks like Samuel L. Jackson). Here, players take the role of a rookie agent from S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intelligence and Espionage Division), who has just finished combat training when a mysterious pulse from outer space rains a mysterious substance (which SHIELD later calls ISO-8) that can enhance the performance of both men and machinery to the point that a thug armed with a knife can damage Iron Man’s high-tech armor, resulting in a mad dash by various criminal organizations in the Marvel Universe to gather as much of it for themselves as they can. Despite his or her just being out of SHIELD agent school, the player is immediately paired up with Iron Man and tasked to assemble a team of Earth’s mightiest heroes. Armed with nothing but a standard-issue SHIELD jumpsuit and Needle Gun, as well as a magical bottomless backpack that only he or she can see and use, he or she must stop the crime wave spreading across New York. That’s just for starters.

The new guy.

Basic gameplay proceeds as follows. Players choose a mission to undertake (there are typically six per chapter) and chooses which threats (color-coded by difficulty, blue ones are the easiest fights, red ones are the hardest, while yellow ones lie in between) to combat first.

Color-coded for your convenience. The red skull is a High threat, the blue ones are Low threats, and the named threats are either mini-bosses or the mission boss.

Defeating enemies in combat nets the agent some silver (in-game common currency), and experience points, which are also gained by up to two heroes that fought alongside the agent. Earn enough experience, and the agent levels up, while heroes who have earned enough experience to gain a level must take some time off for training. Training makes the hero unavailable for a fight until training is done, but he or she comes out of the training room with new abilities or room for better stats. These stats are Health, Stamina, Attack, Defense, Accuracy, and Evasion.

Stats - where would RPGs be without them?

Players will need to watch their team’s Health points while in combat, because an agent or hero who loses all of his HP is knocked out and removed from combat. Combat is also dictated by Stamina – it is consumed whenever the agent uses one of his equipment or a hero uses one of his powers or attacks, and if it is depleted (or drops so low that no actions can be taken) the Recharge action or a consumable item must be used to replenish it. While there are also items that restore Health, and some that restore both Health and Stamina, there is no equivalent action to recover Health by forgoing an action or turn. Finally, both the agent’s teams and the enemy teams start the match with full health, and in the good guys’ case full stamina as well.

      Attack determines how much damage weapons and powers will do against a target, which is mitigated in turn by the target’s Defense. The chance of an attack hitting is dependent on the Accuracy of the attacker, as well as the target’s Evasion stat. These 4 stats may increase or decrease during combat, as a result of items, attacks, equipment, or powers.

Engaging enemies in a fight drains 10 Energy from the agent, of which he or she can have a maximum of 60. Energy recovers in real-time, at the rate of 1 Energy point every 6 minutes. Also, when an agent gains a level, his or her Energy is replenished to full. 

An Agent's Energy meter. Note the buttons on the left to  use stored energy from the inventory, and to  add more energy either from visiting your allies' maps or purchasing stored energy in-game.

Thus, even at low levels of play, a bit of resource management can already be seen in action. Pick the most Energy-efficient fights you can win and gain experience to level up. Leveling up in turn, allows you to prevail against tougher fights that will net you more experience.

Recharging your agent’s Energy meter and getting better stats are just some rewards of leveling up. The in-game store has items that are unlocked by the agent reaching a certain level. Other items must be researched in order for them to be made available for purchase, and apparently SHIELD is reluctant to release high-energy laser rifles and the like to rookie agents. For heroes, gaining a level either means new powers and abilities, or an ISO-8 slot. Yes, the rocks that every criminal organization is fighting over can be used to upgrade your own heroes, including your agent. I like to think of it as making a slight alteration to a hero’s outfit, like sewing a pocket for the piece of alien mineral. 

This screen allows you to add alien rocks to your suit to gain better stats. Click on the Iso-8 you want, then click on one of the slots beside the agent. You can "overwrite" occupied Iso-8 slots, allowing you to tweak your stats at the cost of losing a previously installed piece of Iso-8 and its corresponding bonuses.

Essentially, heroes’ outfits, suits, uniforms, whatever you’d like to call them, have 8 Iso-8 slots, and an agent can purchase new suits to get different abilities and to get more Iso-8 slots of his own. Iso-8 pieces can provide bonuses to one, two, three, or even all stats, though some research is required to make them available for purchase in the store. No research is required to slot the fragments you manage to take from fallen enemies, though.

I’ve been mentioning research for quite some time now, so let’s now take a look at how it works. Once a player has access to the Research button, he or she can choose a topic of research, which will unlock an item in the store and possibly further research down the line, usually level-locked. 

"Sorry Agent, we can't sell you this fist-mounted lightsaber because you haven't paid the lab rats enough for them to realize that there is such a thing as Plasmic Stability."

Research costs silver to fund, as well as SHIELD points to authorize. 

Taking the information from the image above and the one before it, to get an Energy Fist, a player needs to spend 207,040 silver and 31 SHIELD points.

SHIELD points and silver are also consumed when training heroes, and it is not uncommon to see players struggle in the beginning to amass both, and making tough decisions whether to unlock new technology or to develop their available heroes further. While silver can be earned by defeating enemies and completing missions, where does one get SHIELD points? We’ll get to that in a bit.

Spider-Man literally needs a day off to train from level 10 to 11, which will unlock his 7th Iso-8 slot. That, as well as 200,000 silver, which this player only has 251,555 of, and 35 SHIELD points, which is a drop in the bucket for this player.

At its core, Marvel: Avengers Alliance is essentially a single-player RPG with some Player Versus Player thrown in, that boasts a massive ‘socialization bonus’ – a term which I cannot be credited with inventing. Inviting your friends to join the population of the game yields rewards for you, as is the case with most Facebook games. Here, friends become sources of the in-game resources silver, energy, challenge points (for PVP enthusiasts), and SHIELD points, as well as certain consumables, in two ways. First, any of your friends who also play appear in-game as areas you can visit. 

Here we are visiting Tony's neighborhood. Yes, that Tony - genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

You can click on indicated points to retrieve aid packages from them every 12 hours or so. These include silver pieces, Energy points (which are immediately added to your current amount of Energy), Challenge points (also immediately added to your current total, and can only have a maximum of 5 at any time), and SHIELD points. While a player can only receive 30 silver pieces (interesting!) per click (each coin icon representing 10 silver), a yellow lightning bolt restores just 1 Energy, and a red lightning bolt restores 1 Challenge. A purple SHIELD icon gives the player 3 SHIELD points at once.

We managed to snag a handful of silver and a small energy boost. The silver gets added to our current silver on hand, while the small energy, which will restore 2 energy points when used, goes into our inventory.

 Secondly, if your friends in the game actively play, you can send them gifts in-game. As of this writing, players can send each other EMP grenades, Pumpkin Bombs, First Aid Packs, and Shawarmas, all of which are consumable items in combat, as well as Unstable Iso-8 (available only during in-game events called Special Operations, with a limited-edition hero as the prize should a player participate and complete them), 2 Energy points (which are stored in the player’s inventory as opposed to being immediately), 1 Challenge point (which is stored the same way as gifted Energy), and finally 1 SHIELD point, which is immediately added to a player’s total. 

If you need EMP grenades to fight robotic opponents and you have none at the moment, where do the EMP grenades you send to your friends come from?

The Unstable Iso-8 is replaced with another consumable when there are no Special Operations running. Up to a maximum of 50 gifts can be collected per day, but a player can send as many gifts of whatever types as he or she wants to his or her friends.

For security and privacy purposes, the time stamp, names, and pictures of the gift senders have been blacked out.

The game’s reliable source of silver is also dependent on your friends list. There is a part of the game called the Flight Deck, representing the runway of the SHIELD Helicarrier.

See the green Z's above the jets? Put those lazy bums to work!

 Here, heroes may be assigned to a jet to fly Remote Operations, taking them out of the combat roster for periods of varying duration, and upon their return the hero will have earned some experience and brought home some silver. The amount of silver earned per jet depends on the level of the hero, the level of the jet, and the length of time the hero was away.

Use these short missions to let your heroes earn silver for you while you're busy with other tasks - like household chores or the work that's been piling up on your desk while you were busy playing.

A level 12 hero, which is the maximum in the game, will bring home 90% bonus silver per completed remote operation. The thing is, training a hero from level 11 to 12 costs 300,000 silver.

To purchase new jets, one spends silver, and sends out a request to friends to join the player’s flight crew. Once the crew is assembled, the new jet becomes available for Remote Operations. Higher level jets, which earn more silver, can be obtained if one’s agent has reached the appropriate level, can pay the silver for the upgrade, and has enough friends to crew the vehicle. It is possible for one’s friends to be part of more than one jet’s crew, thus it is entirely possible to field a complete set of 8 fully upgraded jets with just 8 friends who actively play the game.

If you have no Facebook friends to invite or willing to help you along with the game, the last resort is to use gold. Gold in-game is a resource that is progressively more difficult to come by the higher your level is (you gain 1 gold each time you hit a new level), but it can also be bought using real-world money, via credit card. 

Are you willing to part with your hard-earned cash for the game?

Using the current conversion rates in-game, 1 gold can be exchanged for 1 SHIELD point (not recommended) or 2 Command Points (which are used to recruit heroes, and buy alternate uniforms for them). Gold is also used to purchase powerful and limited-edition weaponry and equipment. Gold can also be used to fill in for missing crew for your Flight Deck jets, at a rate of 1 gold per crew missing.

If you’re not picky about inviting people on Facebook to become just gaming friends, you can (as yours truly did) create a forum account for the Facebook version of the game, and visit the Find Allies thread. Here, you can click on people’s Facebook wall links and send them a friend request. (PRO TIP: you might want to consider creating a list for your gaming-only “friends” to keep them separate from your actual friends and relatives.) This saves you the onus of using gold to crew your jets, and if you don’t like your Facebook page getting bombarded with updates and pictures you don’t find funny, you can always block them.