This starter guide provides advice for players who do not know how to begin their Mech Arena journey. It mainly teaches you what to do on your first day, week and month - making the right decisions that will help you enjoy the game in the long run.
Installing the Game and starting a new account[]
Mech Arena can be installed on mobile devices (via Google Play or Apple App Store) or on a computer (via installing a launcher app called “Plarium Play”). You could manually search and download these apsp to create a new account. Alternatively you might have received a referral link from a friend - opening this link will take you to the right location to download the game and start playing. By installing the game via a referral link you will get a small resource pack and your friend might receive referral rewards.
Controls and interface[]
Mech Arena is a fast-paced PvP mech shooter. Build out your ideal squad from an ever-growing array of Weapons and Mechs with special abilities for endless combinations. Jump into quick, metal-crushing combat and compete against players from across the world. Are you up to the challenge? Enter the Mech Arena!
When you start playing this game, you will be walked through a tutorial for the basic controls on how to move your mech, use your ability, shoot, reload and capture control points. After the initial tutorial you will join your first Control Point Capture (“CPC”) battle taking place in the original Mech Arena map. After this first battle you can continue the tutorial for your hangar interface. Alternatively you can wait 30 seconds and a button to skip the rest of the tutorial will appear. For your first time playing we recommend that you continue with the tutorial.
Combat Controls and Interface[]
There are six basic operations:
- Moving: You can move forward, back or to the sides (relative to the direction your mech is facing) by using the left thumb controller on mobile, or using the W-A-S-D keys on a keyboard. Your mech moves at the same speed in all directions. This will be animated in the game by the lower half of your mech moving its legs / wheel / appendages.
- Sprinting: You can sprint for up to 3 seconds (which will increase your mech speed by 15%) by pushing the left thumb controller further away from the middle on mobile or by holding the Shift key on a keyboard.
- Aiming: You can aim up, down or around using your right thumb controller on mobile, or moving your mouse around. This will be animated by your mech moving its torso (carrying the weapons) up/down and turning around.
- Shooting: Your mech can equip up to two weapons, one on each side. You can shoot them both at the same time or shoot them separately. On mobile you have 3 buttons, to shoot right, both or left weapons (from top to bottom). On PC you use the right/left mouse button to shoot. You can toggle on and off the option to link the weapons so that they always shoot simultaneously.
- Reloading: When your weapons run out of ammo they will start reloading automatically. Alternatively you can manually start a reload while your weapon’s magazine is partially spent by pressing the reload buttons on mobile or using the Q-E keys on a keyboard. Some weapons automatically recharge their ammo when you stop firing (like Repeaters) or continuously recharge (like Arc Torrent and most beams) and don’t require any manual reload.
- Activating your Mech’s Ability: You can activate your mech’s ability using the top left button on Mobile or using the spacebar key on a keyboard.
There are two menus you can view during combat:
- Match Roster: This menu displays the teams, team members and their current score. You access it by tapping the score at the middle-top of your screen on mobile or pressing the Tab key on PC.
- Settings Menu: Accessed via the gear icon at the top left corner or the Esc key. This allows you to change various graphics, audio and gameplay settings. Most commonly used to change the aim assistance mid-game. From this menu you can also swap to a different mech while your current mech is still alive (that would instantly kill your current mech and affect the match score). You can also abandon and exit the match from this menu.
Hangar Controls and Interface[]
When not in combat, the main screen is the hangar view screen. You can place up to 5 armed mechs in your active hangar, and these are the mechs you will have available to use when you enter a match. You can click on each of these mechs to swap the mech, weapons and pilots that you want to use in that hangar slot. When you begin the game you will only have 1 hangar slot unlocked, but you can pay the resources to unlock more slots.
From this main hangar screen you can also click on buttons/icons to access the following menus and screens (note: some of these might not be available until you reach the perquisite division):
- User/game menu/Achievements
- Season Pass
- Flash deals reminder
- Progress Path
- Events and objectives
- Modifiers
- Division
- Friends / Referrals
- Clans
- Messages
- Special Event
- Tournament Info
- Daily Login Program
- Special Crates
- Combat and Victory Points
- Battle (enter a match)
- Form a Team (Enter a Team Match)
- Squad Presets
- Silver Crates
- Gold Crates
- Shop
- Gear Hub / Inventory
- Chat
- Time-Limited Rewards
First Steps[]
Account Set-Up[]
Its is recommended to save your game progress in an account you can reliably access. PC users will have already created a Plarium account that saves your game progress, which you can further insure by linking to your Google/Facebook account for easier password recovery. Mobile players are recommended to tap their Profile -> Connections and link their profile to a Google/Facebook account or create a Plarium account. Note on that last one: REGISTER a new Plarium account, not LOG IN to a Plarium account which might overwrite the profile you already started on your device. Linking your account would back up your data in case something happens to your mobile device.
Resources and Progression[]
Everyone enjoys the game in their own way and you can have fun playing your initial hanger indefinitely without any progression or playing in a non-optimized way. That said, the following are recommended steps to optimize your resource economy with long-term gameplay progression in mind.
- Don't upgrade anything. Focus your progression on unlocking Gear Hub tiers by buying mechs and weapons from your highest available tier. Those will be more valuable and powerful than upgraded beginner gear. Once you get closer to mid- or end-game you'll have a better understanding of what gear is worth upgrading.
- Regularly completing daily objectives (and watching ads on mobile) contributes greatly to obtaining resources.
- Pilot resources are SLOW to accumulate, it is best to start saving early. Consider acquiring an epic pilot (Such as Rosa which is arguably the only non-legendary pilot that remains useful in end-game hangers) to facilitate completion of daily pilot objectives. Also, be careful about spending too many Pilot Marks upgrading rare pilots which lose their relevance at the end-game. Upgrading rare pilots up to rank 4 is considered a reasonable compromise.
- While it seems initially that you mostly need Credits, within a few weeks you can accumulate a surplus of millions of Credits (especially since you're doing your daily ads/objectives and NOT UPGRADING ANYTHING). The bottleneck that would dictate your progress is A-Coins, so be diligent about obtaining A-Coins and prudent about spending them.
- After the first couple of Gear Hub tiers (which are comparatively cheap and can be unlocked within a few days of free play) it is advisable to only spend resources when an event compensates you for it. Remember: as your hanger becomes more powerful the game gets harder. Why not demand compensation for making your own game more difficult?
- This game can be played 100% free without any In-App Purchases. Spending real money could potentially speed up your progression, but be wary of the Constant Upgrade Fallacy. If your hanger becomes more powerful faster than the rate at which your skills improve, you will struggle and lose more battles. If you do decide you want to spend real money, consider the following:
- Shop offers are generated by an algorithm without human review and they vary dramatically in their value/price ratio (That is, if you assign an enjoyment value to a digital token that is technically worth $0.00). Credits are absurdly overpriced in the store so you can ignore the official "discount percentage" as an indicator of value. Before being nerfed, the gold season pass was a good benchmark to compare resource offers. Today a good benchmark would be 160-200+ acoins per $1
- If you're considering an In-App-Purchase of mechs or weapons, consider how much it would cost using in-game currencies in the Gear Hub PLUS how much it costs to upgrade mechs or weapons to the natural rank you would have acquired in the Gear Hub. Buying a legendary rank 2 Disc Launcher 8 for $1.99 seems like a great deal until you realize you could have purchased it for Credits (basically free resource - see points above) and you would need to spend over 5,000 A-Coins to upgrade it back up to its natural rank 5.
Matchmaking[]
Matchmaking will pair you against players and bots that correspond to your most powerful mech or weapon. To get easier matches or a fair fight, try to:
- Have a balanced hanger of roughly equivalent ranks of mechs and weapons (avoid having one high rank weapon/mech in an overall lower rank hanger)
- Don't rush unlocking additional hanger slots. The more slots you unlock the harder game will be. With just 3 mechs in your hanger you can do almost everything (Except participate in Tournaments on a Free-For-All week but those are rife with SP Dropping so new player experience there is not great)
- If you've done these steps and you're mostly paired against challenging yet fairly matched opponents - don't upgrade anything! Upgrades are irreversible and you might end up with difficult or unfair matches. The best time to upgrade is after you've battled the same-powered opponents for a while, you learned how to easily deal with bots of that rank and battles get repetitive / easy / boring.
- If you're facing overpowered opponents and the bots' speed and aim accuracy is too challenging for you: replace your powerful mechs/weapons with lower rank mechs/weapons, ensure all your mechs have at least 1 weapon and all your unlocked hanger slots are populated, and play several quick matches. Matchmaking should adjust within a few games and give you a better play experience. If you're still struggling, remove powerful/legendary pilots and try again.