Hey guys, so I've been playing this game for just over 12 months now on my main account,
Intimmydation swgoh.gg, so thought I'd do a Year 1 recap of the journey so far.
Also a disclaimer: This main account is not fully Free-to-Play, I have spent some money on the account on HDB, crystals, and a few packs. It's not a whale by any means, but not fully F2P either.
I'm going to break it into 3 different posts by:
1. Where I started
2. Where I'm at
3. Where I'm going
Where I started
So I picked up swgoh in December 2020 a couple days before Christmas, I think, while I was on holidays at the in-laws house. I had no clue what I was doing at first as I just started playing without researching anything, so was really just winging it. I didn't understand the importance of crystals so I am sure I paid to refresh the arenas and shops more than I should have, not understanding payouts either haha.
The Mandalorian was in full swing, so I purchased the $20 Mando character pack, and use as my main squad until ~level 53 Clone Wars Chewie, FB Luke, Kuill, IG-11 and Cara Dune. This took me to around the 2 week mark I think when I finally decided to watch some YouTube videos and pretty sure I came across one of Ahnald's farming guides and decided to farm up Phoenix to go for the Thrawn & Palpatine legendary characters. From there, the YT videos I would come across were talking about how powerful CLS and GAS were (for some reason I was watching older videos as there were already 4 GLs released by this time), so I put these characters in the back of my mind as possible targets (CLS & GAS).
After about 3 weeks into the game, around level 63 I think as I had just recently unlocked ships, I decided I was going to purchase the Hyberdrive Bundle after reading up on it, as it is such as great value for everything that you get. From there, I put together an empire team of Palpatine, Vader, Thrawn, Tarkin & TFP to use in Squad Arena, with a focus on bringing up Vader to be really strong (MM was my first zeta, you can find the thread somewhere here on the forums). I was finally starting to understand the mechanics of the game, and this team allowed me to hang out between #20-50 in Squad Arena for quite some time.
Around the same time, I discovered these forums, so began asking for guidance on where I should take the account. I was given advice early on by
@MasterSeedy &
@TheChild_eats_eggs1 that I should aim for a CLS team and Rebel fleet, as I seemed "close" to getting them especially with the HDB, so I decided I would go down that route. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't really say I was close, as I still had to go on to farm a full BH team to get Chewbacca, a full ewok team to get C-3P0, get a good guild to get Han, and the farm Chewpio who was still a single shard drop. Personally, I would not recommend this path now, BUT, I am glad I went down it as I am a huge OT fan and love my CLS team.
Once the full CLS team came together, probably around March 2021, I started to break top 20 in Arena and even into the top 10. I was already part of my Fleet shard chat, so I knew one for Squad probably existed and was finally able to find it and become part of the community (helped me to not get sniped back at my PO). As the full CLS team came to relics towards late April (I think), I was now able to climb and get top 2 positions in Arena daily....oh those sweet crystals were flowing (was also taking #1 daily in fleet with my rebel fleet headed by dual relic Han/Chewie).
I started to become very active on discord, both in the shard chats but also in some other communities I was introduced to, such as Darth Loquitur (a guild mate of mine,
@Arva invited me to his server). Oh, and I was able to join my current guild around this same time, coming in as one of the lowest GP characters, but punching up above my GP since day 1, and never missing 600 tickets since I've joined).
With my new guild earning some good GET2 monthly, I decided I'd work towards the Negotiator fleet as I wanted to build up a Padme GR team anyway, and eventually go for GAS....and while I love the Rebel fleet, I didn't want to invest all the carbantis into properly gearing Bistan & SRP for it to fully work. I am happy to say I was the 1st person in my fleet shard to get the Negotiator, but I hadn't developed the supporting ships yet so I couldn't even use it right away! But, figured out how to counter the other Nego's popping up with my Rebels for a while. Once I had my Nego to 6* the rest of my ships were finally ready to switch over, and then was also the first to get it to 7* with a r8 GK
At the end of May / early June, I decided I was going to start down the GAS journey, and shortly after this JMK was announced. My initial plan was to go for SLKR after GAS as I had all the BH ships already at 7* so just needed a couple FO ships, which I had started farming. However, after seeing how OP JMK is and that the gear reqs for JMK vs SLKR were pretty similar for me, as well as considering I was already gearing up a lot of the JMK reqs for GAS, I decided I would go for JMK as my first GL....hoping to have him by the end of 2021.....
....to be continued...
Replies
As mentioned above, I'm in the thick of the JMK journey right now, with 8 more characters to relic, though most of them are sitting at g11 or g12 now. I'm at least 2 months away minimum as I need 57 more Wat shards which will take me 2 months as I get about 35 per month in my guild. I'm also working to finish off my last 2 501st clones to relic (both at g12.4+) to complete my GAS squad.
In mid November I was sitting around 2.8M GP and since I already had both 7* Negotiator and Malevolence (though hadn't leveled up my Geo / droid ships), I decided I would bloat up my GP to the 3.1M mark in order to move up a Division in GAC to where I would need 4 fleets, as I felt this would give me an advantage. Well, as soon as I got to that 3.1M mark (leveled all my Malev fleet + some more), CG decided to completely change the GAC landscape with the new model. This meant that to utilize my 4 fleet advantage, I would need to get to the Chromium League which meant 3.4M GP now. I decided I would just go for it, but this time it was not very easy, so I took a ton of characters to level 50 and g5 and put abilities on them. I made it to the 3.4M mark with 2 days to spare before the intitial GAC seeding, getting placed into Chromium 5.
In the very first round of GAC in this new system, I got put into the same pod as my old buddy @Arva and wouldn't you know it, we got matched together in the 2nd round. It was an epic matchup decided by 12 banners, both of us full clearing the other, although I came out on the losing end. We have very similar accounts, but he had me beat in relics & mods by quite a bit as his account was 6+ months older. You can find below the YouTube video of the battles from his point a view, a couple VERY close calls, but in the end he played a very good strategy and you can learn some tricks from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26CVGDPZOjQ
I also decided to go all-in on CAT as she is super OP, and got her about 2 months back and relic'd immediately. This allowed me to run a Padme CAT team in squad arena (while crystals were still a thing) and punch up beating the GLs (SLKR, JMK incl. CAT and sometimes SEE). I was still able to get #1 daily payouts even with 30+ GLs now in my shard. This made it quite hard when the GAC changes were announced, as I knew I was going to be taking a big hit to my daily crystal income, though with a lot less stress. Also, I suck pretty bad at GAC tbh and my account was not really built for it.
Anyway, here are some screenshots of my roster, currently at 3.45M GP and up to Chromium 2 now in GAC after going 8-2 so far (lost to Arva & to a GL, which tbh I should have beat).
Account Summary
I'm hoping that by end of Feb or early March I will have JMK completed, and then the big decision time comes. Originally I was thinking about going straight into JKL & JML since I have a lot of the requirements done or close already from CLS, but I believe I will go in a different direction towards Executor first. My goal would be that by the end of 2022, I have 2 GLs on my account + Executor + enough times to nearly fill all needed ones at Kyber in GAC. Below are the phases I am thinking about post-JMK
Phase 1 - JMK Immediate Aftermath
Phase 2 - Executor
Phase 3 - JKL & JML
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/245224/updated-new-player-farming-path-by-intimmydation#latest
I've faced off now in GAC between my 2 accounts against 4 people that I know from guilds, shards or discord servers...including an epic showdown with F2P Padawan on the alt. Link to the YT video is in that thread.
Also shoutout to a few other forum members not mentioned in above posts who have been helpful along the way:
@Freetoplay_Padawan
@Kyno
@Schwartzring
@Zentigix for accepting this noob into his guild (I think I convinced him because of my love of LEGO)
Thanks, really appreciate it. This account definitely wasn't the most efficient hence the new farming guide, but I am glad it is helping you out!!!