Beginner Guide/Sombra's Updated Optimal F2P Farming Guide

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Introduction

With the popularity of both the Star Wars universe and mobile games, SWGOH has seen an influx of new players. Naturally, some will be spending money but some will be playing for free. This guide will be a good starting point for those who are following the F2P model. While it will not be fully comprehensive, it should be enough to get you on the right path. While the HDB is a paid feature in the game, it is the single best purchase that a player new to the game can make. Because of this, there are players who buy the HDB, then follow a F2P path afterwords. Because of that, this guide will serve as both a F2P guide, but also an introduction to the HDB.

Joining a Guild

There are a few things that you should do ASAP once you start the game if you want to become a successful player. The HDB will unlock all of these features immediately, but without it, you will need to level your account. The single most important thing that you can do to ensure your ability to progress through this game is to join an active guild. Search around for somewhere that you belong, either on Reddit, Discord, or the SWGOH forums. If you can, find a guild with some veteran experience so that you can have some friends who can help you along the way. On top of that, once you unlock the ability to add allies, be sure to add some stronger accounts. In most game modes, you are allowed to borrow a toon from your allies in order to help you, and having the right allies can ensure that you can clear levels that are out of your GP range.

Raid Ready

The next thing that you should do that will benefit you in the long run is to get some teams that are ready for raids. If you join an active guild that runs raids as often as they can, you simply need one toon to participate in the event before you can get rewards. For example, a 5* toon is needed to participate in a Tier 5 raid. These rewards will help you grow your account as a whole, and they get better with higher tiers. Heroic raids, or raids requiring 7* toons, include shards for some important legendary toons, Han Solo, General Kenobi, and Darth Traya. In order for you to start getting these rewards as soon as possible, join a guild that is running raids that you can join in for rewards. As soon as you get a 7* toon, join a guild that runs full heroic raids. Once you get more toons, you will be able to contribute more to raids and get even better rewards.

Play on Your Schedule

One final, but simple, recommendation to help optimize your growth is to change your daily reset time to better benefit your schedule. You are able to change this twice a year, so be sure to change this to a time that you are comfortable with. Changing this will change the timing of most daily activities. Your squad arena payout will be 6 hours before your daily reset, and your fleet arena payout will be 5 hours before your daily reset. Most of the shipment tabs will also reset every 6 hours starting at your daily reset. Consider moving your daily reset to a time where you can actively climb before your arena payout, and also log on to see every shipment refresh. In higher ranks of arena, 10 ranks can be the difference between getting 100 gems or not, so it is important to be able to climb right before you get your reward.

Chasing the Meta

Before getting into the specifics of the guide, there is a point that should be addressed. This guide is not the most optimal path to the most meta teams. Just in the past year, this game has seen Malak, GAS, and the Galactic Legends--all of which drastically changed the meta. While chasing the meta is possible for a F2P player, it is not the wisest choice to start off your account by doing so. First, build a foundation from which you can work towards more lucrative toons. Look in the Journey Guide, find your favorite legendary toon, then build towards it.

The Free-To-Play Experience

Now we can talk about a question that has been asked probably more times than any other question regarding SWGOH. What team should I farm first? That is a loaded question, but I will attempt to unpack it and give you the most honest answer that I can.

The two answers to that question that I’ve heard a lot are Separatists and Phoenix Squadron. Phoenix has been the go-to answer for a long time, but as the meta has shifted, some players have recommended farming Separatists first. I will break down the pros and cons for both teams, but ultimately it is your decision on who to farm.

Phoenix Squadron

The Phoenix Squadron gives you the ability to unlock Grand Admiral Thawn and Emperor Palpatine. Both of these toons are great in an Empire team, complete with Tie Fighter Pilot, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Darth Vader. While there are plenty of other toons that can fit into this team, these are 3 toons that are not difficult to unlock and work well together. The Empire team has fallen out of meta for the most part, however, and climbing in your arena shard might prove to be difficult, both with Phoenix Squadron, and with the Empire.

Farming the Phoenix Squadron is not difficult. There are 6 available members: Sabine is available through a hard node, Hera and Ezra are available in cantina battles, Chopper is up for sale in the cantina battle store, Kanan can be found in the squad arena store, and Zeb is found in the galactic war store. Hera and Ezra are both available in the Fleet Arena store as well. As you will soon discover, hard node toons are a pain to unlock. Due to the nature of this, the team you will most likely develop is Hera, Chopper, Ezra, Kanan, and Zeb.

Phoenix Squadron is a great early game team. They are easy to farm, are available early on, and their mechanics are pretty easy to understand. Do to their protection regeneration, they are great for galactic war. They are also a required team for doing well in light side Hoth territory battles. However, that is about where the utility ends. They aren’t great in raids, can be beat by several other teams in PVP, and PS mirror matches are mind-numbing.

One thing to note when selecting your initial team is your options for your initial fleet. Phoenix Squadron is split between two ships, the Ghost and the Phantom II. Both are rebel ships and fit well with Admiral Ackbar’s rebel fleet. This fleet does give you the option to pursue Thrawn’s Chimera, which requires some other rebel ships such as Biggs and Wedge. Your ship’s GP is a combination of your ship GP and your pilot’s GP, so to be competitive you must level both your ship and pilot. As mentioned above, Phoenix Squad does not have much use at high gear levels, so some players are reluctant to continue gearing their PS just for the ships.

Overall, the PS is a viable option to start with, but there is an argument that they aren’t the most optimal choice when starting a new account.

Separatists

In the opposite corner, we have the Separatists. Composed of your prequel dark side toons, you have a couple sub-factions within the larger umbrella: droids and Geonosians. All of these can work together, are quite viable at higher levels and end-game content. Due to their involvement in end-game content such as unlocking Padme, General Anakin Skywalker and dark side geo territory battles, there is no need to hold back when gearing these toons.

Early on, these toons are some of the first that you have access to. Geonosian Soldier is available in the very first cantina battle, and Count Dooku is available in both light side and dark side hard nodes. Poggle the Lesser is in the GW store, Nute Gunray is in the squad arena store, and Magna is available later in cantina battles. After you unlock these five, you can choose between several more to fill needs that you have. There are tanks, attackers, supports, and leaders for you to farm over time. Eventually, you can flesh them out into three solid squads, the Geos, droids, and the rest of the separatists.

A common path on this side is to unlock Padme once you get 5 Separatists geared up. Then, you can pivot into a Galactic Republic squad featuring Padme, Ahsoka, Jedi Knight Anakin, and then two more flexible spots, such as General Kenobi, one of the clones, or R2D2/C3PO. This team can do well for you, especially if you are able to get it early in your shard. It can counter the Sith Empire teams that you may encounter, and is also a good candidate for your first relics.

Eventually, you can use your Padme team, and your Seperatists to unlock GAS as your next major power spike. Even with meta shifts over time, I can’t imagine that GAS will fall out of the meta any time soon. If you choose to go this route, I would advise taking the time to build up your clones to use with the Shaak Ti that is required for the GAS event.

As far as ships go, there aren’t a ton of options early on. Three of the Geos have have their own ships: Spy, Soldier, and Sun Fac. There are some more options, including a capital ship, but those are mostly available later on. All three ships can be found in the GW store and the fleet arena store. The three Geo ships work extremely well together, however, so you don’t need a lot more than that to get things going. Just with this fleet, you can take on other fleets that are well above your GP. If you are looking to expand your fleet, you can also farm Vulture Droid from hard nodes to increase your Separatist synergy. As you can do with your squad, you can pivot your fleet into a Grand Republic fleet. This fleet is needed for the GAS event, so keep that in mind.

As I will point out later, one of your highest priorities should be completing tier 3 of the Ship Ability Materials fleet challenge so that you can start farming zetas. You need Grand Moff Tarkin’s capital ship to be at 5* to complete this challenge, which requires 4 dark side ships to be at 4* or higher. If you need another dark side ship, Tie Fighter is an easy farm in the fleet hard nodes or in the fleet arena store. Once you have 5* Executrix, you need 5 ships that are 5* or above to complete the Zeta mat challenge. Another recommendation for an early ship is Ahsoka Tano’s fighter for an easy early farm.

This is the current path that I am following on my F2P account and it has been going well for me.

Economy

I would recommend spending your cystals on energy refreshes for the first 50 levels. This will let you focus on getting your initial squad built up so that you can compete in squad arena. Once you hit lvl 50, you can start investing in mods and that can give you another competitive advantage. Your largest source of crystals will be the arenas, so investing in your main squad will provide you with a greater payout. Once you hit level 50 or so, I would start to pivot into building other squads with your crystals.

The way I personally did this was to use my crystals to purchase some shards for some key toons that you won’t be able to unlock for some time. One example of this is Shaak Ti. Shaak is the leader of one of the best squads around. Shaak Ti-led clones are one of the best PVP teams available without any legendary toons and can do unholy amounts of damage in raids. What benefits us is that Shaak is able to be unlocked at two stars and is quite useful at that point. She is available to farm at one of the last stages of the fleet battle hard nodes, but she also shows up in the first shipment tab where you can buy her shards in increments of 4/8/12/16. I would not recommend farming a toon to 7* this way, but sometimes a quick unlock can be vastly beneficial to you. Some other toons that I consider to be in this category would be Enfys Nest and B1 Battle Droid.

Once you get to a later point and a steady income of crystals, where you spend your crystals is up to you. It all depends on what you determine to be worth the cost. The majority of what I spend my crystals on nowadays are gear pieces when I am close to unlocking a new legendary toon but need one last push to get complete the encounter. You can always use them to refresh your energy or buy more attempts as you are farming. As you will discover, there is no worse feeling then being so close to finishing a farm and having the last 10 or so shards take forever.

The Hyperdrive Bundle

So you bought the hyperdrive bundle. This can put you at a huge advantage if you are in a new arena shard, but if you don’t utilize it, it could end up hurting you in the long run. Overall, I think that the HDB is the single most efficient purchase that you can make in this game. Before we talk about how to use the bundle, we should talk about what it contains.

To Infinity and Beyond

To use the terms of the bundle, the first thing you gain is “activity access”. Most notably, this boosts you straight to level 85, unlocking almost every feature in the game, including grand arena championships and the journey guide. This also unlocks all light side, dark side, cantina, and mod battle stages and the penultimate challenge tiers. As far as the battles go, you can instantly sim stages 1-8, but stage 9 must be completed first. You can also sim the first 5 tiers of both challenges and fleet challenges, but the highest tier must be completed. With some investment, your Bastilla-led Jedi team should be able to auto each of the challenges. While all of this is of great value, the most important thing to realize is that this unlocks the zeta mat challenge for you. You should be completing this every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday to get your guaranteed 6 zeta mats a week.

The next thing the bundle contains is 65 5* toons. Among these toons are the Phoenix Squadron, Rebels, Empire, Jedi, Resistance, First Order, Clones, Sith, Nightsisters, and some Bounty Hunters. All of this allows you to unlock 5* Thrawn, Emperor Palpatine, Grand Master Yoda, and BB-8 as soon as you buy the bundle. Because of this, you are also about halfway to 7* each of these toons if you decide to farm up the teams. They also give you some basic squads that you will be able to use in GAC, but this also means that every single account that bought the HDB will also have these teams.

Additionally, the bundle gives you 16 ships. The 3 basic capital ships and 13 other ships at 5*. With these ships you can then unlock the further tiers of the capital ships, up to 5*. Among these ships are 4 rebel ships, and 3/4 of the current bounty hunter ships. The BH ships are required to unlock the Millennium Falcon, so if you choose to go that route, you have a good head start.

Finally, the bundle contains oodles and oodles of resources. Ability mats, gear, currency. It might seem like a lot of resources, but it is easy to blow through it all. It costs around 6 million credits to level up a toon from 1-85, but the majority of that cost is leveling 80 to 85. Fortunately, you now have 65 toons that are all sitting at 80 just waiting to be leveled up! Your new toons will also have level 5 abilities across the board, so you should have enough ability materials to max out several toons, but I would hold off on committing your omega ability mats before you are ready to all in on a team.

Unlimited Power... Now what?

So now that you have unlocked your bundle, your goal is to distinguish yourself from other HDB players. This will allow you to climb to the top of both of your shards. There are a few ways you can do this—I will list a few but ultimately, you are on a choose-your-own-adventure. The first thing you should do is finish your challenges and get to farming zetas. After that, you can take whatever path you want.

As I mentioned earlier, the meta is always shifting. Teams will come and go. The meta will change, and the counter meta will shift with it as well. That being said, you can chase the meta if you so choose. The latest meta toons have been both the Revans ±Malak, GAS and his clones, and now the Galactic Legends. If I had to make a recommendation for a single legendary toon, I would encourage you to get Jedi Knight Revan. He will increase your game across all game modes, from raids to TB to GAC. Plus, the only toons that you need to gear a ton for his event will be the toons that you use on his team (Jolee, Bastilla). I would avoid chasing after GAS or the GL initially because the bar for them is extremely high. You will spend your resources gearing teams to end up only having a couple of teams that are GAC-ready. They are gamechangers, but I would recommend utilizing your roster to get some legendary toons that are within your grasp.

Within your new collection, you have the toons needed for GMY, Thrawn, Palpatine, BB-8, and through BB-8, Jedi Training Rey. If you follow the Empire thread as well, you can pick up R2D2 to make a pretty decent Resistance team. These toons require lower gear levels than their newer counterparts. They aren’t the new, shiny toons that are around, but they can still do well for you and can even counter some meta teams. One benefit of going along this path is that you will utilize the GP that you already have instead of letting it weigh them down. When you get to competing in GAC, you will be in a division based on your GP, so if you have a highly focused roster and a lower GP, you should smash any competition in your way.

On top of your teams that you are building up, you need to build up your fleet as well. In my opinion, the single greatest addition you can make to your fleet is to farm Hounds Tooth and Bossk. Hounds Tooth is available with Jango Fett in the Light Side hard node 8-4, and Bossk is available in Dark Side hard node 9-B. Bossk’s node might prove to be difficult for you to 3-star initially, but if you add someone with a strong toon, you can easily do it. Use their toon as your ally, then use your Nightsisters. As long as you save your revive for right before ending the battle so that you can end with all your toons alive. Both Bossk and HT are only found on hard nodes, so I would recommend starting as soon as you can. Once you get both of those, HT should be able to carry you through the rest of the fleet battles so you can start farming other toons.

In Conclusion

This game is a lot of fun if you play on your own terms and with a guild full of people that are active and fun. There is a lot of negativity surrounding the game, but I think it is still worth getting into if you have some time on your hands.

If you are interested in purchasing the Hyperdrive Bundle and are reading this before you do, I would recommend starting a new account instead of buying it on an older account. Being in a new shard will help you get better rewards early on. The HDB also does not simply give you enough shards to get to 5*, it brings your toon directly up to 5*. So if you have already farmed a toon up to 4*, you will get no further benefit from those extra shards.

I truly hope that this guide is able to help you to become the best player that you can be. I love this game and have enjoyed the time I have invested in it. If you ever have any other questions or if you need help with other factors in the game, feel free to join our discord server and I am more than willing to help answer any questions that you may have!

See you on the holotables

Special thanks to my guildmate Rich for helping me write this guide!