Marvel's Midnight Suns: beginner tips to build an unstoppable superhero team

Midnight Suns has a lot of strategic layers to it, so finding the right tactics isn't easy

Marvel’s Midnight Suns is a bit of a complex strategy game. With so many resources, facilities, and heroes to juggle, you might not know what to prioritize, or what the best strategies are when you’re out on the battlefield. We’re stepping in to give you some handy tips that will aid you in the early game. We’ll tell you what cool things you should be looking out for, some useful strategies to employ, and even some hidden bonuses you might not be aware of.

If you’re looking for some more specific guides, then check out our walkthroughs for the Hunter challenge mission, and Nico Minoru challenge mission.

Pet the dog

You should obviously be doing this regardless of the bonuses you get – dogs should always be pet when the option is available – but there’s added incentive in this game, as your demon dog Charlie has hidden stats. Firstly, your Arcane Knowledge level is increased slightly every time you pet them, making incremental progress towards some powerful character buff, but Charlie also has their own friendship level. Leveling this up make Charlie more powerful in combat, which is perfect for the Moon Trials hidden on the Abbey grounds.

Befriend the heroes

You can build friendship XP with every hero in the game, and doing so will unlock special scenes with them where you grow your bond. These are nice scenes for each character, but they have gameplay bonuses too. Each character gets passive abilities that level up as your friendship with them increases, but there is also a team friendship stat, that is based on your bond with everyone on the team. Increasing this will give you great bonuses like powerful team-up attacks.

Essence hunting

You’ll need essence to upgrade almost everything in the game. Upgrading abilities costs one of three types of essence, as does crafting items and abilities from scratch. It’s not too hard to get a hold of, but you should always do a quick loop of the Abbey every day to get some extra. Little glowing orbs will appear on the floor all over the place, picking them up will give you a small amount of essence. There’s even a chance to get credits or gloss too.

Explore the Abbey grounds

The Abbey is quite a big interior area, but you’ll be surprised at just how much there is to find elsewhere on the grounds. You’ll have a massive area to explore, and throughout the game, you’ll start to unlock more abilities that you can use to open hidden paths and reveal the Abbey’s many secrets. These have a lot of tangible gameplay bonuses as well as offering a deeper look into the game’s story.

Revisit opened chests

The chests dotted around the Abbey grounds are full of cool cosmetic regards for The Hunter, other heroes, and your bedroom. They require Arcane Keys to open, but you’ll usually have more than you know what to do with. This is because chests will refill their inventories after a certain number of days. It’s not an exact science, but as you might expect the higher-tier the chest, the longer it takes to refill. Still, make sure you’re checking the high-tier chests every now and then to get more rewards.

Lean into a hero’s strengths

When it comes to putting a hero’s deck together, you’re a little spoiled for choice. Thankfully, things aren’t too complicated, with just eight slots for each hero, but when you’re confronted with so many powerful abilities, it’s hard to know what you choose.

While you can build a hero however you want, it’s best to lean into what they do best, which you can determine by looking at their default deck. For example, Captain Marvel is all about building up her power and drawing the enemy’s attention before going Binary and unleashing ludicrously powerful attacks. Magik, meanwhile, manipulated the enemy’s position and uses the environment to her advantage.

Leaning into these themes will make a strong and cohesive deck that will play well with other heroes.

Quick, quick, quick

Abilities have lots of different effects, but one you’ll learn to love is Quick. This effect means that playing the card won’t use up one of your limited card plays as long as you get a KO with it. By default you can only play three cards each turn, so using Quick cards will allow you to attack several extra times.

Since you need to land a KO for it to take effect, they’re best for taking out the weaker minion-type enemies that always die in one hit. That might not seem like the best, but the scratch damage they deal out can quickly add up if you don’t take them out.

Building Heroism

Heroism is the main resource you need to generate in battle, as that’s what lets you unleash your most powerful abilities and attacks. It’s always good to prioritize this early on and build up a backlog, but it isn’t always possible. You need to ensure that you have a good mix of cards in each hero’s deck that will let you build this power up. Ideally, you shouldn’t have any more than three heroic cards in a hero’s deck, otherwise, you’ll be constantly stuck drawing unusable cards.

Standard attacks typically only generate one Heroism, so it’s best to throw some skill cards in there too as they can generate two or three in a single move.

Always block

When you’re facing off against a big boss supervillain, you may be tempted to go all-out with your best attacks, but this isn’t always the right idea. You should build up some powerful strikes, of course, but it’s often better to play defensively in these scenarios.

Block is vital for this, as it stops your heroes from losing health, and can quickly snowball if you have the right heroes. It’s no surprise that Captain America is by far the best at this, as his abilities let him give tonnes of block to himself while dishing a little out to his allies too. What’s more is the cards that generate block will also generate a lot of Heroism, meaning you can land those crucial strikes all the sooner.

Focus on your objective

It may sound obvious, but it’s easy to get distracted with so much going on. When you’re being battered by a huge wave of enemies, it can be tempting to waste turns thinning out the numbers before targeting your objective. There are some cases where this is smart, but most of the time you should get to your goal as fast as possible.

If you’re recovering an artifact or preventing a helicopter from escaping, they won’t stick around forever. You don’t want to waste your limited turn-count battering baddies. Similarly, in most scenarios where you’re fighting a supervillain, you’ll only need to defeat the supervillain to complete the mission. Taking out minions will stop them from chipping away at your health, but it won’t get you any closer to victory.