The future is here. We can play a game where Lebron James can team up with Harley Quinn to fight Superman and Iron Giant. Multiversus is a platform fighting game with a focus on 2v2 team battles. The game features characters from DC Comics, Looney Toons, and more. The best part? It’s free to play.
For seemingly coming out of nowhere, Multiversus has garnered a lot of attention from the gaming community. Even popular streamers LIRIK and sodapoppin have taken a liking to it. From cross-play/cross-progression to ranked leaderboards and immense customization, it’s possible that Multiversus is one of the most inclusive games out there.
New players or veterans of the genre are bound to find something that appeals to them. And with the beta being open indefinitely, right now is the perfect time to become a Rank 1 Lebron player.
So, continue reading for the only Multiversus Beginner’s Guide you’ll ever need.
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How to Play Multiversus: Before the Fight
There are a few things to do before you start playing the game. We’ll start by covering some tips that’ll help you put your best foot forward and better your experience of an already amazing game!
Unlocking the Right Fighter
As with many free-to-play games, you don’t start out with everything unlocked. Luckily, you don’t need to pay any real money. Anything a player might need can be unlocked through the free currency, Gold. The only way to get more gold is to complete matches and level up your account. In my experience, grinding gold takes some time.
Fortunately, Player First Games provides a new player with starter missions that grant you around 2000 gold in total. Additionally, if you complete the tutorial, the developers reward you with Wonder Woman free of charge. Any Fighter unlock after that will cost you 2000–3000 gold.
With seventeen characters to choose from, it’s not easy to choose who you’ll pick up next. Don’t be like me and unlock someone you’ll never play again. I’m sorry, Lebron — it’s not you, it’s me.
Try any character for free in The Lab.
Thankfully, you don’t have to hope your gold isn’t wasted on a Fighter you thought you would like. Selecting The Lab in the main menu brings you to a training ground where you can pick any Fighter you want, even if you haven’t technically unlocked them yet.
Try some Fighters and read their attack and ability descriptions. Some attacks may look basic but have special qualities that make them amazing.
Choose whoever feels fun.
If you’re new to fighting games as a whole, don’t bother looking to see who’s the strongest. Pick the character that screams the most fun or is from your favorite show, then jump right in. You’ll have loads of fun playing who you want versus the most meta choice.
In a game like Multiversus, balancing patches will happen often and the strongest might become the average. Focus on having fun and the skills will come naturally.
The Right Perks for the Job
While perks aren’t something you need to worry about before your first match, they do have importance later on. Once you’ve chosen your Fighter, play a few matches and get a couple of levels.
When you’re done, go to the Collections tab and select the Fighter you’ve been playing. Here, you can see what you’ve unlocked and what perks you can equip so far. At first, each Fighter will unlock 5–6 normal perks and 2–3 signature perks.
The major difference is that normal perks change basic stats like damage and defenses. Everyone can equip these types of perks. In contrast, Signature perks are exclusive perks that change how abilities work or add new properties.
Both types of perks can strengthen certain playstyles and change how you play your Fighter. For instance, Wonder Woman’s Signature perk, Whip of Hephaestus, gives the tip of her whip powerful knockback rather than pulling enemies. Likewise, School Me Once can counter opponents who rely on projectiles by providing a shield against projectiles.
At Fighter Level 9, you’ll be able to “train” new perks that your Fighter wouldn’t normally have. What this means is that you can buy any perk in the game, permanently, for that particular Fighter. This allows you to mold your Fighter into any playstyle you want.
The only downside is that it cost 150 gold per perk you train, and you’ll have to do this for each Fighter. We recommend saving some gold and only unlocking perks you want or need. You can find perk training in the Fighter Overview within the Collections tab.
Unlock Triple Jump, Coffeezilla, and Tasmanian Trigonometry.
We’ll save you the Google search and say these three perks are extremely strong. Having just one of these perks can make a major difference in your matches.
Tas Trigonometry and Triple Jump are great for survivability and extending combos. A must have for aggressive playstyles. Likewise, Coffeezilla reduces ability cooldowns by 10%, making it a perfect choice for anyone. If you don’t know what perks to buy, you can’t go wrong with at least one of these, if not all.
Perks Stack!
In the 2v2 game mode, your team gains bonuses when you and your teammate have matching perks. Coffeezilla increases to 15%, Triple Jump gives an extra jump, and so on. Additionally, once your Fighter reaches a certain level, you unlock the ability to equip your teammates perks. So, get stackin!
Settings
Settings can make or break a game, and the developers at Player First Games know this. Being able to change buffer input frames is a godsend for me.
We recommend jumping in The Lab and look through all the settings. The optimal settings will always be subjective, so don’t feel pressured to change anything if the game already feels good to play. However, I will recommend looking at three settings that changed the game for me:
Lower Input Buffer Frames.
First, take a look at the input buffering setting. Input buffering saves the buttons you press within a short amount of time, then activates them. In other words, if you attack and press another button while attacking, your Fighter will perform that second action after your attack is done. If you press buttons too fast (like me) and find yourself attacking when you tried to dodge, try lowering the amount of buffer frames.
There’s a setting for Smash veterans.
If you come from Smash Bros. and want to try your hand at Multiversus, then you only need to press one button to copy Smash’s button mapping. Head on over to the controller button settings. Towards the top you’ll see a button dubbed “Legacy.”
Clicking that will change all controller buttons to match the default settings in Smash Bros. From there, you can change everything else to your liking.
Turn on mature language.
Okay, this didn’t exactly change the game for me, but there isn’t any harm in turning it on. I’ve yet to hear anyone curse someone out. But I hold out hope for when I hear Bugs Bunny say, “Eh, screw you, doc”.
Mechanics You Should Know When Learning How to Play Multiversus
Stop! Before we continue, I want you to complete the advanced tutorial. If you’re a visual learner or a hands-on learner, doing the advanced tutorial might help you understand the next section. Learning, practicing, and implementing gameplay mechanics is what separates average players from skilled players.
Higher skilled players weave these mechanics within their gameplay to cover weaknesses or highlight strengths. By the end of this section, you’ll gain an understanding of how and when to use these mechanics to your advantage.
Dodging
Dodging is an important tool to know and learn if you want to do well in Multiversus. On the surface level, dodging lets you avoid an enemy attack. This is amazing, as you can deny opponents from setting up combos or avoid unnecessary damage. However, you can’t just press dodge and avoid all damage. Dodges give a very small window of invincibility. It will be up to you to learn how to properly time your dodges.
Besides avoiding damage, dodging has other uses during the fight. Any decent player will use dodges to extend or set up combos. In this game, you can attack directly out of a dodge, allowing you to mix up your attacks and catch opponents by surprise. Likewise, at higher percentages enemies start to go flying with a single punch — you can use dodges to catch up and continue beating them.
Smash Bros. vets beware — teching or break falling isn’t a mechanic in this game. That isn’t to say the developers won’t add it later, but for now, don’t worry about it.
Recovery
Speaking of falling, recovering from getting knocked off the stage is one of the most important skills you can learn. No matter how good you are, you will get knocked off the stage at some point. Knowing how to get back safely could be the difference between a loss or a win.
Whenever you’re off stage or in the air, you have six options to get back to safety. Two jumps, two air dodges, and two special abilities as shown in the gif above. Not to mention these options reset when you touch the stage again. That also means when you touch a wall or the side of the stage. This leaves you with multiple options to not get knocked out.
So, don’t be afraid of flying off the stage or jumping in after someone. You’ll make it back safely…probably.
Knockback Influence
At the time of writing, the knockback influence tutorial can’t be finished due to a small oversight. As a result, I feel it’s good idea to explain knockback influence (K.I.). Smash Bros. players will recognize this mechanic as D.I., or directional input. Whatever you call it, knockback influence is incredibly important, as it can be the difference between life or death.
Whenever you get hit, your character will typically go in the direction they were hit from. As the name suggests, you can influence the direction in which you get knocked back. While you fly across the screen, tilt your left stick (or whatever you use to move) in the direction you want to go.
You’ll notice that your flight path is slightly adjusted in the direction you input. At the right damage percentages, it can make the difference between being knocked out or surviving by the skin of your teeth.
Additionally, you can use K.I. to get out of a long combo. If you find yourself stuck in a never-ending attack, tilt your left stick in the opposite direction of your opponent’s attack. Eventually, you’ll move past them, giving yourself a chance to escape.
Armor/Armor Break
Armor is a more advanced mechanic to learn and implement in your gameplay. In Multiversus, armor can be gained through specific Fighter attacks and abilities. You’ll know when someone has armor by a little shield above their head.
When active, armor allows you to ignore a single attack, which prevents damage and knockback. Armor is perfect for opponents that like to engage with a single attack followed by the rest of their combo, such as Batman. If you armor through the first attack, this gives you a small opening to strike.
However, using armor requires some game knowledge on your part. As you play, you’ll learn what Fighters have multi-hit attacks and what Fighters have armor breaking attacks.
For instance, some attacks, like Finn’s neutral aerial, have a purple glow that means they break armor on the first hit. Knowing what attacks can break armor prevents you from being punished or allows you to punish someone trying to armor through attacks.
Fast Falling
Fast falling is something that many new players look past. It can actually help you in achieving better combos or avoiding attacks. Fast falling is anytime you pull down on the left stick while in the air. When done correctly, your Fighter will fall to the ground faster.
Pretty self-explanatory. What they don’t tell you is that you can use fast falling to set up combos easier. When used correctly, players can use an air attack while fast falling then immediately hit the ground and use ground attacks to continue the beating.
To do this follow this button order:
Jump > Air Attack > Immediately after, Fast Fall > Ground Attack > Repeat.
After enough practice, your combos can look something like this:
Some Tips Before You Go
Before you set out to practice, we want to impart some advice. The following three tips are some things to keep in mind as you play. They aren’t super important, but they might help you get better.
Use the bot in The Lab for practice.
Fighting game pros aren’t just naturally good at the games they play. Sure, it may look that way, but they got to that point from hours upon hours of practice. Instead of learning combos in a real match, hit up The Lab and practice there. You can change to bot to act any way you want and change its damage percent, which allows you to practice any scenario.
Stick to a learning a few Fighters.
Sticking to 2–3 Fighters will make learning the game 10x easier. Every Fighter should play differently and spreading your focus on too many Fighters might confuse you. Your muscle memory might start a Harley Quinn combo when you’re playing Superman. Not to mention it takes a hot minute to unlock Fighter perks.
Limit test! Don’t be afraid to play extremely aggressive and make stupid plays. You can only learn from mistakes and it will benefit you in the long run.
Join the High Ground
That wraps up everything that we feel is important for someone to learn how to play Multiversus. Fighting games are a constant learning experience so strive to learn more. If you think we missed something, leave a comment! Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter for more gaming guides like this.
Happy gaming!
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