In Marvel: Contest of Champions, there are four primary resources you need to progress. Crystals, Catalysts, ISO, and Gold. Almost every other resource in the game is used to acquire items from one or more of these three categories. Crystals are used to add new champions to your roster, ISO is used to level up those champions, Catalysts are used to rank up those champions, and Gold is the resource you need to spend in order to use ISO and Catalysts. Your goal as a player is to amass these resources and use them wisely on your best champions.
You can get through quite a bit of content on your own, but progression is always better with an alliance. Alliances are a core component of the game, and allow you to play game modes that are multiplayer focused. New and experienced players, however, will often struggle to find solid alliances that suit their playstyle, time commitment, and current status in-game.
How should I find my alliance?
Option A: Find an Alliance Now!
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The Auto-Join Button
The first, easiest way to find an alliance, is to simply hit “Find an Alliance Now!” on the alliance screen. Alliances have three settings – Open, By Request, or Closed. If the alliance is Open, it can be joined without any conditions being met. If it is By Request, you can apply to join the alliance, and the leaders/officers can contact you and approve or deny your request. If the alliance is Closed, you must directly contact the leader or officers to be invited.
Pressing the “Find an Alliance Now!” button will drop you into an Open alliance that is around your level. It might be a great way to start your MCoC alliance career, or it could be a total disaster. When you let the game choose for you, you have no idea if the people in this ally are actually coordinated, or if you have joined a group that will pull you down instead of help you progress.
Option B: Search for an alliance using the in-game filter.
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The manual search screen
This method will likely yield better results than letting the game randomly place you, as you can check out the alliances on the screen to see whether they have a solid War ranking, and see if the players are active. However, the search function is very limited, and thus it can be difficult to find an alliance that matches your progression.
Option C: LFG
The best and most effective way to find an alliance, is to join the MCoC discord community, and use the Looking For Group service available there. Many alliances advertise here, and you can post your profile and look for an alliance that will take you in that fits your playstyle.
What types of alliances are there, and which should I join?
The Laid Back Alliance
This is an alliance for someone who is looking for as little interaction with other humans in-game as possible. A laid back alliance simply plays the game like normal, and receives occasional rewards because of participation from other players from Alliance Events.
These give various rewards usually for just passively playing the game. In a laid back alliance, you will mostly be receiving these rewards, and perhaps an occasional Alliance Quest or Alliance War victory.
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The Alliance Events screen with some of the benefits of joining an alliance presented.
The AQ focused alliance
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Some high-tier milestone rewards for Alliance Quest
There are two types of alliance content in this game – Alliance Quest, and Alliance War. Alliance Quest is a Player vs. Enemy – you complete a map with your alliance mates on a battlefield put together by the creators of the game, going up against champions the designers have chosen. There are 8 different maps, each one progressively harder than the last.
An AQ focused alliance will often complete maps 6, 7, or 8 (depending on your alliance’s strength) five days a week. You will either be assigned or choose a path in this content that you will be responsible for clearing, and if you win, your alliance receives crystals that contain catalyst fragments, and more importantly, Glory, which is used in the Glory Store (which contains some of the most needed catalysts in the game).
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The Glory Store in all of its glory
The War-Focused Alliance
The other multiplayer content, Alliance War, is Player vs. Player. You don’t directly fight another player, but you do go up against their champions. This mode is all about shards. The rewards for victory against another alliance aren’t fantastic, but the rewards for the Season are incredible. The top alliances make a killing in shards and crystals from Alliance War. However, even the middle alliances have significant benefit from focusing War:
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The Gold Tier Alliance War Season Rewards
These rewards come at the end of the War Season (which lasts around 30 days) and are a satisfying result for the hard work of fighting in AW. An AW focused alliance would likely obtain Platinum in War (unless you are in a Whale Alliance), and receive a pretty penny at the end of the season.
The Well-Rounded Moderate Alliance
This alliance is the sweet spot for those that enjoy playing the game and want to gain solid progression, but don’t want the game to become a second job. A moderate ally plays to its strengths, usually doing average in War and Quest, but succeeding enough to grant the player solid rewards. This is the type of alliance I was in for quite a long time – an alliance that ran Map 5 and 6 in Quest, and placed in Gold 2.
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Map 5 Rewards
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Map 6 Rewards
The Well-Rounded Invested Alliance
This is exactly what you want if you are committed to becoming stronger, and are willing to put in the time and effort to make it happen. These alliances are focused and driven, going as far as they can in War and Quest to maintain the highest ranking its members are capable of gaining. These alliances are often very selective about the members that they choose to invest in, and have high expectations of the players within. The top world of Marvel: Contest of Champions is cutthroat, but it will give you the best progression.
The Whale Ally
The topmost tier of alliance are people who spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on the game, and because of that fight for top placement in all events.
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Whale rewards for the players with the most skill and the biggest wallet
If this is where you aspire to be, know that your wallet will not thank you. You can certainly play this game effectively and have a lot of fun doing so without opening that wallet, but if you desire to do so, perhaps one day you too will join in the super-cutthroat world of the very top alliances.
There are quite a few things to consider when joining an alliance, but remember this – an alliance is simply 30 people joining together and trying to make a game as fun as possible. If the alliance you are in does not respect the life you have outside of the game, it is time to find a new group. Find an ally that works with your lifestyle, and this can be a fantastic way to spend some time doing the old gacha-grind in a game with satisfying mechanics and exciting progression.
In the daylight, I teach students to read and write. At night, I revel in the mysteries of the world of gaming, and share the boons of my endeavors with those with a discerning eye and curious ear.
