Here are some things to think about before you start Merge & Blade.
If you’ve ever wondered what a mix of Tetris, Candy Crush, and Despot’s Game would be like, Merge & Blade, a quirky puzzle game with roguelike elements, is the answer. It might sound impossible, but there’s a lot to do as you grind your way through a sometimes brutal campaign. You can build an army, change your strategy in the middle of a battle, and make combo chains.
Don’t let the strange mix of mechanics scare you. All of this adds up to a well-rounded experience with enough moving parts to give fans of different types of music what they want. No matter how good you are at puzzles or how new you are to Merge & Blade, take a moment to get a head start on this game that combines many different types.
Plan Multiple Rounds Ahead
To get to the higher levels of Merge & Blade, you have to put more thought into how your teams are set up. Even though you can’t know which units you’ll be able to merge or which units will die in battle, there are steps you can take to make your team as predictable as possible.
Spend some time learning each unit’s strengths, weaknesses, and best place in the grid. Then, you’ll be able to start placing them so that they last as long as possible in battles and give you the most chances to merge them as you unlock new, more powerful units.
Swaps Are As Good As Gold
Is it best to use a swap now? During your time playing Merge & Blade, you’ll keep asking yourself this question. Even though swaps are easy, you only get a certain number of them in each level, so you’ll have to think a lot about when and where to use them.
You might want to move an injured unit out of the line of fire to keep them from dying. You might be waiting until the end of the battle to move a unit into a position that will make it easy to merge with it in the next round. No matter what you decide to do with your swaps, be smart and cheap.
Use Previews To See The Future
If swap is your most important strategic tool during a battle, then preview is your most important strategic tool before a battle. Previews are also limited to a certain number per level, but they let you see what units you’ll have to work with in the next turn.
Having this information lets you plan where to put your current units so that they can merge together as much as possible. Be careful, though, because if you use all of your previews too early in the round, you might miss out on making those last, important placements that set you up for higher-level merges.
Try Four-Unit Combos
Yeah, merging three units is cool, but have you ever tried merging four? Adding the extra unit to the merging may seem wasteful because it eliminates the possibility of using that unit in a future merge, but in exchange, you receive a full turn.
And in a game where the hardest parts come from being limited, any extras you can get out of the system are very valuable. Look for four-unit combos wherever you can, because you gain so much more than you lose.
Don’t Skimp On Recon
When you first try to buy recon, it might seem like a waste of 100 coins, but it can be a powerful tool that makes up for its recurring cost, especially as you move into more difficult rounds of Merge & Blade.
Recon lets you see what kind of enemies and how many there will be in the next battle. Each round, you have to pay 100 coins for this information. Buy it before you start merging your units, so you can decide if you want to merge all the way to ranged units, for example, or just stay with melee units.
Combo Merges Award Bonuses
If you felt like you were playing Tetris when you started dropping units into the grid from above, you’ll start to feel like you’re playing Candy Crush when they start falling together in chains.
When you hit the merge button with units on top, they fall down the grid and merge with their matches below. If you can make at least one of these combinations, you’ll get an extra swap. Swaps are very useful for making changes during a battle and can also be used to plan for the next round.
Use Siege Mode To Practice
Merge & Blade doesn’t have a creative mode, but once you beat level 3 of the campaign, you’ll be able to play in Challenge mode. It comes with two games: Retake the Town and Siege. In Siege, you can join forces and fight as long as you can.
The low-stakes nature of this game mode makes it ideal for perfecting your merge strategy and upgrade order outside of the context of the main campaign. Try out different ways to set up your front lines and when to use your swaps to get the most out of them. Then, go back to the campaign and breeze through that level you were having trouble with.
Be Careful About Backing Out
Players who don’t like to wait should know that all games in Challenge mode only last as long as you play them. All of your hard work in Siege or Retake the Town will be for naught if you don’t save your progress.
If you want to get better at Merge & Blade, stick to the campaign. It will save your progress up to the level in each stage. This works well for the most part because Siege and Retake the Town are good ways to improve your Funny Shooter 2 game and don’t really need to be saved anyway.
It’s Okay To Sacrifice Units
In your first few Merge & Blade games, you should expect to miss a lot of merges and have full grids. On many levels, you won’t be able to get a lineup to save your life, and that’s fine.
If you can afford to use in-battle swaps, you can make up for your mistakes by moving some of them into the line of fire to take the heat and make room for the next round. You can also save the health of your more important units by sacrificing the cannon fodder, so they can fight another round.
Spend Your Coins Wisely
Even though there is only one tab between them, unit upgrades and base upgrades are very different. Unit upgrades make your units’ base stats better, but base upgrades give you extra benefits, like increasing your total number of skips and letting you make a new, stronger unit.
Choosing which of these sets to spend your hard-earned coins on will be a big part of your strategy. You’ll want to try out different combinations of unit and base upgrades that give you strategically valuable units and give you the best chance of merging your way to them at all.
