This guide is intended only for making it past all the game content, ie. the missions and bosses. It is quite simple without depth of detail but more like tips to make it through the game and just a bit of what to do after. Also, a most important point: this is meant for those who are not spending real cash for Merit Points or taking alot of time to do the free MP offers, as a few things are quite a bit different if one was to do so.
1. First thing to do is to add teammates. You NEED 5 teammates for every level you are, for example level 5 with 25 teammates. This is especially important in the beginning of the game where you do not have much money and really depend on the team size bonus. Some people have issues adding a bunch of people to their FaceBook profile just to play a game, but you can add friends on FaceBook, add those players to your SHC team and then remove them from FaceBook, keeping them on your team.
2. Get into a gifting group. This is more for speed of completion and enjoyment of the game rather than a necessity and it means keeping 32 (or whatever amount of gifts FaceBook allows you to send) SHC friends on your FaceBook to send and receive gifts from.
3. Stats allocation. This is a big deal and can be tricky to get right and although there are more ways than one to do this, I have found that getting your energy to 260 (or whatever the highest energy cost for a mission is) and then getting your agility to 100 before evenly distributing points into agility and life until you get through the game. This is contrary to what you would do if you were spending cash on Merit Points but you need those agility points for the limited team size bosses. Once you beat the game's missions and bosses you need to begin to put all skill points into life and increase your energy to a level where you can beat the highest boss or the Drill multiple times.
4. Equipment. This is a big deal for the limited team size bosses. The best game cash equipment in the order in which you should buy it is: 2x Gauntlets of Fire, 4x Gold Power Ring (upgrade much later to Golden Halos, after all other equipment is bought), 2x Bionic Deltoid Mobilizers, 1x Wall-Eva. These are the major ones to get, the others you should get when they become available are: Lightning Soles, Water Amulet, Coronary Enhancer, and Neuroscopic Vision. There is no need to get any other equipment for these slots until you can afford or unlock these. Use tokens for the Ring of Shrouded Beauty first, then the Terror Treads replacing your other rings and leg equipment.
5. Abilities. It is very important that you have enough abilities for your whole team, that should be your first priority with your game cash. For example if you are level 50 you need 250 attack, 250 defense, and 250 movement abilities to go with your 250 teammates. At the very least you need Superstrength, Contortionist, and Hypersonic. For the limited team size missions you need to get the highest available attack, the defense ability with the highest attack rating, and the movement ability with the highest sum of attack and agility for each teammate allowed. Defense does not matter at all in getting through the game and beating the bosses. The only other abilities your need to spend your upkeep on is Scarab Saddles. Tiering of abilties should be the last thing you do with your cash, it is the lowest return for your investment but does increase power level.
6. Careers. This is the trickiest part of the spending and has many ways to get it right. Basically there is no sure fire way to get it right, just upgrade your career when you have gotten all the abilities you can but still do not have the stats to get through the next boss. Make sure that you have saved enough money to switch careers AND buy enough abilities to use up the extra upkeep, this will keep you from getting hit multiple times by those fishing for game cash.
7. VERY IMPORTANT! Do not try to fly through the game content and jump ahead to fight only the bosses. Do each mission until you get the skill point rewards and do the Rare Ability Missions FIRST. This is also contrary to popular belief in which you just skip over them and farm the bosses for abilities but you want to level slowly, building your stats and abilities up without gaining too many levels to do it. This keeps you strong for your level. Also, you should use your fights to win game cash, not for the 50 experience, you want to become powerful for your level, not just gain levels as fast as possible.
8. The Drill. By the time you reach the Drill you should be well over level 100 (and have well over 500 teammates), assuming you completed all the missions and did Nexus missions first. Even so, you may find the Drill to be a big challenge. Easiest way to beat him would be to take out a very large temporary deficit, spending it all on Stellar Blast attack ability. Once you beat the Drill, sell off the Stellar Blasts and proceed through the rest of the game.
9. Spending the Merit Points you earn from leveling. The best thing to spend MPs on is equipment and since you will not be getting any from other places besides leveling, you should spend ALL your MPs on equipment. One thing you can't get much of with game cash or token equipment is Life Magnifiers, meaning a % increase. Look for equipment that has high % life increase, specifically in Bracers, which are the weakest game cash equipment but do not dismiss those with high damage modifiers as well. After the Bracers look for replacing the Head and Amulet. Replace the Arms and Legs (Bionic Deltoids and Terror Treads) last.
10. Leagues. To prolong the enjoyment of the game you should look for leagues to join that have Role Play or routinely participate in league wars. It is not always about winning but about challenge and fun.
11. Deficits. First, you should ALWAYS run a small deficit, just enough to keep you from accumulating money from your career, so you do not have to bank your cash every hour or risk losing it in arena battles. Once you reach the highest career and tier up all your abilities you should calculate how much of a deficit you can pay for with your repeated hits on the bosses and increase your deficit using Scarab Saddles. The rest of your mountain of money can be used to run temporary deficits, like the trick to beat the drill, in order to boost stats in league wars, assuming you found a league that does wars. Best boosts per upkeep are Stellar Blast for attack, Replicate for defense, and Portal Summoning for agility (it is really Scarab Saddle but I am assuming you would have these tier 3 making them too costly to buy temporarily. Alternatively you can keep tier 3 Portals and use Scarabs as temporary boosts depending on how active you are in league wars.)
Enjoy the game!
