10 common (early gamer) mistakes to avoid in Summoners War
1. Ignoring early game missions (Summoners Way, Challenges, Daily Missions)
Summoners War is a marathon, not a sprint! Take your time to get used to the basics – you will get a good understanding by simply following the ‘Summoners Way’.
You will learn the fundamentals and receive a good amount of rewards to start with.
It’s also recommended to complete your Daily Missions. The rewards may not seem impactful at first, but especially the Summoning Scroll Pieces and the crystals are worth it. Make sure to check the current Events regularly – the rewards are one of the best ways to acquire valuable stuff.
Don’t be lazy if you wanna be the very best.
2. Spend crystals the wrong way
This is pretty simple: everything you spend crystals on that is not Energy is the wrong way.
Sure there are some exceptions, such as the buildings “Crystal Titan” “Crystal Dragon” “Crystal Lake” “Gusty Cliffs” and “Practice Battle Field“. Or some special offers – the Black Friday Special Shop, for instance, is one of the rare exceptions.
The biggest trap a lot of early gamers fall into is the Premium Pack I (you can also see a lot of mid/end game players buying this). It looks like a good offer: buy 10 Mystical Scrolls and get one for free… But you will regret it and miss your 750 crystals.
You need an average of 200 Scrolls for a Nat5, meaning you would need ~18 Premium Packs which equals 13.500 crystals. Even with the best valued in-game packages you would have to pay ~ $500 !!
If we convert these 13.500 crystals you could buy 42.750 Energy instead (225 refills á 60 crystals for 190 Energy). This will bring you a lot of high quality Runes and also a lot of scrolls as they also drop while you farm.
Overall you’ll need a combination of Monsters, good Runes and Artifacts. Missing one part will make the others worthless.
Crystals are used for Energy refills.
3. Switching Dungeons too early / often
Different dungeons offer you various runes and loot. Of course, you’ll want a bit of everything, but at the beginning, it’s crucial to stick to one dungeon (Giant’s Keep) for a while to acquire some basic runes first.
Different dungeons require different teams. You would have to rune many more monsters well enough to be able to run all of them. This is not possible without farming in Giants for some time first.
While you’re farming your first rune sets there, you can start to build teams for the Trial of Ascension (ToA) and the Rift Beasts before you begin farming the other Cairos Dungeos like Dragon’s Lair or Necropolis.
Build one team after another.
4. Level every monster you get
Most players get excited when they see lightnings in their summoning. Congrats, you got a 4- or even a 5- star monster! At this point, many newbie players instantly do everything they can to get this new monster to at least level 35 – and this is, in most cases, a waste of time and resources.
There are useful monsters and less useful ones. In the beginning, very few monsters are of interest because you need to focus on your starter dungeon teams. They consist of a lot of free to play 3-/4-star monsters – some of them are even fusionable.
Always ask (yourself or others) if this has any use case in a team you’re building right now. If not, lock that monster and store it for the moment. You can always level it once you really need it. Also, the next two points are connected to this one:
Only if you need it, you should level up a monster.
5. Use all 4* as Skill-Ups
Monsters in your team should have their skills maxed (most of the times). As a beginner this is not always easy, but you should never user your last 4-star monsters to skill up others’ abilities. Always keep one of each element in your storage, you never know when they might be needed. Some monsters might get better after a balance patch, or you might discover that you’ll need them for one of your upcoming teams. So, make sure not to feed them too early. Light and Dark 4-stars should ‘never’ be used as fodder, they are very rare, and some of them can be a game changer in late game content.
5-star monsters should never be used as skillups at all. If you have a useless dupe (a monster you already have of the same element) you can exchange them for ‘Ancient Crystals’.
Also related to the skillups is the next point:
Keep 4*’s and 5*’s one of each element – one day you’ll need it.
6. Using Devilmons for 4* monsters & useless 5*s
Devilmons can be obtained for free (Arena, ToA, …) but are limited. Also you can buy them for real money in various packages. However, they are still rare and expensive and should not be easily used for every 5-star monster and not for 4-stars.
There are some exceptions that could boost your progress in the early game but we can’t go that deep into it in this post as it is more a case by case scenario (like a lot of things in SW).
It’s recommended to use your Devilmons on the 5-stars you’re using in your early teams, especially the ones you will need later on in speed teams or PvP content. As it depends on your summoned monsters it’s hard to provide you with specific examples.
Devilmons are rare – spend them wisely.
7. Runing after sets only (Stats > Sets !)
Rune sets serve two different purposes: some increase your stats (like Energy, which gives your monster extra HP%, or Blade, which increases Crit Rate, etc.) and others directly impact the fight (Violent can give an additional turn, Despair has the chance to stun the enemy). Both are very important to get the most out of your teams – however, especially in the very beginning, it can be bad to focus solely on complete rune sets. Always keep in mind: “Stats over Sets!”
For your PvE teams, it doesn’t matter if your team is on a specific set or not. If you can achieve better stats by using a broken set (= without using a full rune set or only one set with mixed other runes), then go for it. Always make sure you obtain the stats you need, and stop trying desperately using full sets only. Of course, using complete rune sets becomes your best option later on, and that brings us to the next point:
Let me repeat: “Stats over Sets!”
8. Sort out runes wrong
This is the most challenging part for everyone in Summoners War. Rune drops and rolls are purely RNG, and therefore, everyone has different runes on their account. The most important thing is to get the most out of it – you need to understand your personal rune inventory.
Don’t worry, a general understanding of how runes work and which runes are more valuable than others will develop over time. In the beginning, it is crucial not to waste 1. your mana & 2. potentially usable runes.
For the beginning you can use this as a guidance:
sell runes that…
… are 4* or lower
… are green rarity or lower
… have only flat (= not %) substats
… have flat main stats on slot 2, 4 and 6 *
* except for legendary runes with SPD substat. These can be usable for ATK-bar pushers.
roll runes that…
… have high substats like SPD, HP%, DEF%, ATK%, CritRate (²)
… legendray runes with SPD substat, even if the main stat is flat
… are blue and have high %-substats to +3
… are purple and have high %-substats to +6
… are orange and have high %-substats to +6
If the rolls are good, continue rolling the rune. If it goes into the wrong substats or the rolls are low, you should sell it.
(²) you can check the range of the rolls by clicking on the substats on your rune. A pop-up will show you the min. – max. value per roll.
Runes are an essencial part but it is not easy. Take your time to ‘study’ the rune system of SW.
9. Ignoring the Free Rune Removal (FRR) Event to rerune monsters
As mentioned in point 8. you don’t want to waste your Mana. Removing runes from a monster costs you mana but that can be avoided. Once every month on the first Saturday (except if the first Saturday falls on the 1st) you can remove as many Runes and Artifacts as you want, totally for free! Good planning on monsters you want to rerune can save you a lot of Mana. That can be used for scrolls, rolling other runes and more.
Other ways to get / save Mana:
– do your daily tasks
– participate in the events (if you can choose between Mana and Energy – always go for Energy, even if you’re in need of Mana! Mana comes from farming, so take the Energy and farm any Dungeon)
– Farming Necropolis brings you a bit more Mana than Giants
Use the FRR Event and don’t waste your Mana.
10. Slack with your Arena invitations
Not much to say here. Use your Arena Wings to earn Glorypoints. You need to build / maximize your towers as fast as possible. If the enemies are too strong, you can use just one monster as your defense. It can even be a level 1 Slime. That way, more players will attack you, and you will drop in rank, and therefor find much more enemies with weaker defenses as well.
To build faster farming teams later on, you should follow this order with your towers:
SPD > DEF% > Crit DMG > HP% > ATK%
You don’t have to get a tower to level 20 before you start building the next one, but overall, this should be a good order to complete them. Also, don’t buy Arena invitations for crystals. It might speed up your tower progress, but it’s not worth it.
Arena Tower are sooo important, get them as fast as possible.
