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Spending Guide

In-game prices are high relative to what you receive. If you are going to spend, spend deliberately. The assessments below come from an experienced high-tier player and are opinions, not measurements — but they are consistent opinions from someone who has bought most of it.

The short version

  1. Buy late, not early. Passes and calendars pay out the same whether you buy on day one or the last day.
  2. Buy the Growth Pass and the Exploratory Pass — both are consistently good value.
  3. Buy the Super Monthly Card if you are active and long-term. It unlocks a second research queue.
  4. Buy the Hero and Beast Growth Plan calendars.
  5. Buy the Beast Weekly Card for the rapid-harvest fruits.
  6. Skip the blueprint pack, the standalone tech pass, the orange gear special, and the largest Lucky Wheel bundle.
  7. Never buy gems directly. Buy Chips on the official website — cheaper than in-game packs, and they never expire.
  8. Never request a store refund. It locks the account and can end in a ban — see Accounts, Servers and Support.

The timing rule that saves you money

Buy at the end of a pass or calendar period, not the start.

Calendars and passes pay the same rewards regardless of when in the cycle you buy. Waiting costs you nothing and gives you information: a better event may drop inside the same month, and you may prefer to put the money there.

The same logic applies to battle passes — complete the pass first, then buy it to unlock everything at once.

Worth buying — the core four

Growth Pass — a clear recommendation for everyone. The reward set justifies the price without qualification.

Exploratory Pass — bought every cycle by the player this guide draws on. Small money, strong contents: roughly 20 golden shards, 60 hours of speed-ups, substantial resources, gems, and skill books, all for completing daily tasks. Listed at over 10,000% nominal value.

Super Monthly Card — recommended for every active, long-term player. Two structural benefits rather than a reward pile: it unlocks a second research queue (see Tech Research), and it auto-assists alliance help requests while you are online, which is the only way to stop manually tapping them.

Hero Growth Plan and Beast Growth Plan calendars — around $30 each, which is real money, but the contents are things you will need continuously: hero shards, skill books, gear shards, recruitment shards, tomatoes, and — for the beast plan — the beast crystals that gate beast progression. Buy on the last day of the cycle.

Buying the Hero Growth Plan also makes several other packs redundant, since it covers most of the shards and skill books they contain.

Worth buying — situational

Beast Weekly Card — the rapid-harvest fruits alone are worth it if you are running the beast battlefield. See Beasts.

Hero Gear Special (weekly) — a large quantity of energy cores plus lucky chests at a low price. Energy cores are the red gear bottleneck, which makes this unusually efficient. See Hero Gear.

The second weekly special pack — good rewards for a low price; bought every week by the source player.

Daily Special — worth it for heroes at low star levels. Value drops sharply as star level rises, because you need to buy it repeatedly to move a single star.

VIP packs — the only route to maxing Guru, and they grant VIP buffs. Worth buying spread over time, at roughly weekly intervals, rather than in bulk. Their value falls away in the late game.

Low-price starter packs — worth it for new players: safe contents, low price, good starter rewards. Not worth it for established accounts. They return to the shop regularly, so there is no urgency.

Researcher Special — expensive, but a solid pack, and better value than the standalone tech pass.

Not worth buying

The blueprint pack. The worst-value pack in the game. Breakthrough blueprints are priced as though they were rare, but you can buy them in the trade shop with in-game currency. Hoard coins, buy them there.

The standalone tech pass. The elixir quantity does not justify the price, and the coins and speed-ups are equally thin. Shop packs offer more for less. If you want research materials, buy the Ultimate Alliance Duel battle pass instead — it is the better source. (The benchmark offered: a tech pass with 7,000 elixir, 30 million coins, 60 hours of speed-ups, and 1,500 gems would be an every-time buy. The real one is not close.)

The largest Lucky Wheel bundle. 100 spins for around $120 is poor value, and it gets worse as your heroes approach maxed. The smaller bundles are defensible; that one is not. Better to bank gems and spin with those. See Lucky Wheel.

Orange Gear Special. Everything in it is obtainable free within a normal week of play.

The third weekly pack. Redundant if you have the Beast Growth Plan.

The two hero packs that overlap the Hero Growth Plan. Buy the plan; skip these.

Gems bought directly. Almost every pack includes gems anyway. Buying them standalone is the least efficient purchase available.

Coins and packs bought in game. Buy Chips through the official website instead - they are cheaper than buying packs directly in game, they buy any in-game pack, and they never expire.

One warning: Chips are mailed to whichever character you were logged in as on the website. Log in as the right character before purchasing.

Hero Gear Advance Pack — neutral. Not a must-buy, not worthless; a reasonable energy core quantity.

The Armored Tricera question

An orange Warrior beast available through the Summer Revelry shop. One player reported needing to spend at least $300 during the event to obtain it, but that threshold is a single report and is not corroborated by the official announcement — do not treat it as a fixed price (BEST GUESS 039).

On the merits: worth it if you play at the highest tier and were spending in that event anyway. Not necessary for a casual player. A maxed legendary panther is very nearly the same beast — the Tricera's only unique feature is a counter-attack ability, plus marginally better maxed star stats. See Beasts.

Before you spend anything — the refund trap

Never request a refund through Google Play. The system detects it, locks your account, and converts the refunded amount into negative chips. You then have a limited window to buy enough chips to return to zero, or the account is frozen and banned.

If you have a genuine problem with a purchase, raise it with in-game Customer Service first. See Accounts, Servers and Support.

The broader honest take

The source player — who has spent well into four figures — recommends not spending on this game in its current state, and recommends starting as a free-to-play experience.

The reasoning: prices are high for what you get, new content is heavily pay-gated, and skins carry bonus stats that make cosmetics a power purchase. New heroes are often released behind a hero pass whose free track contains no shards for that hero at all — making the hero a paid unlock in practice.

If you spend anyway, the order that makes sense is:

  1. Super Monthly Card — permanent second research queue
  2. Growth Pass and Exploratory Pass — best value per dollar
  3. Hero Growth Plan — covers most other hero packs
  4. Hero Gear Special weekly — energy cores, the real bottleneck
  5. Beast Growth Plan and Beast Weekly Card, if you are invested in beasts

And skip everything else until you have a specific gap that a specific pack fills.

High power does not make you a good player. Experience and playtime do. That is a fair note to end on for anyone deciding whether to open their wallet.