NEW EVENT: At Last…Spider-Ham!

Finally!!  A new character release event, and it is Spider-Ham. Rejoice, pig lovers!  And other nice trolling event title from GL here I see. Yes, we have waited too long.  But is it worth it?

PROGRESSION:

This is hot dog collection grinder, requiring you to collect 4000 knuckle, chin and knee sandwiches. In exchange for picking up all those delicacies we get only five progress rewards, instead of the usual seven.  These are 25 raw ISO, seven crushing combos, an inventory slot and 200 vials.  Those vials seem to be missing a 0.  All adds up to just 75 ISO worth of prizes, the lowest we have seen for a month (daily flash events not included). SO not great on that front.  But more events and less prizes may

If you have a decent buff of x10, you should be able to finish this in three Great Runs or five decent attempts.  Gives us a Fanguide Event Score of 11, which is far better than the 3 scored by We Had a Deal, but really pretty poor.

There's nothing that can help you out, other than buffing up as best you can.


LEADERBOARD:

The Leaderboard is a hot dog collection GRIND.  Despite what it says at the top of the event screen, it’s not high score, it’s collection Grind.  Not enough players in my board yet to tell whether it truly is the promised 3000 players, or if it’s going to go over 10,000 again.

This is a genu(sw)ine new character release.  The grind will be on to win and the top spots get:

x3 Spider-Ham & 60 ISO for the top 3
x 1 Spider-Ham & 40 ISO for 04-10
Event Portal & 40 ISO for 11-100

Nice big band for that third range at least, and the next 300 players also get an event portal. So the leaderboard rewards look good for this – but ONLY IF the leaderboard is actually 3000 players.





BUFF SPIDERS:

A rare event with two Titans as buff cards, although the honour of highest goes to Legendary 2099 pig.  Buffs affect both the progression and leaderboard ranking.

Legendary Spider-Ham 2099 x 7
Legendary Pork Grind x 5
Titan Swiney Girl x 5
Titan Peter Parker x 4





PORTAL

This portal is ok. At 60 ISO, it is too expensive. At least the two Titans come at 4*, but it has an epic in it. 60 ISO for a chance at an epic is unacceptable.  AND - Lololol. Gwen again.  Maybe I will try and max out my 6^th one, just for fun.  Seriously though. Three pigs / two 4* Titans and two duff cards is great, but 60 ISO is 20 too many.

Go hog wild. Eat the hotdogs. Win a swine.

Yum yum.


- Goatmeat

DAILY FLASH: Arachnid Monday!

Another slight tweak to the Daily events, as the progression for this is reduced to 900 diamonds instead of 1000 and the final progression has been reduced from VIP to Event portal.  This reduces the total value down from to 142 to 107 ISO worth of progression, and an Event Score of 67, assuming you have a couple of buffs up your sleeve

LEADERBOARD

Leaderboard is 24-hour collection GRIND for severely reduced prizes, to fewer players at the top spots. This is ludicrously mean of GL. What is the point of nerfing this so hard?  Top 3 don’t even get two event portal pulls.

If you can be bothered to grind this instead of the pig event, you are playing for:

Top 3 – Event portal & 30 ISO (down from VIP & 65 ISO)
4–10 – Event Portal (down from VIP portal & 35 ISO for 4-25 players)
11-100 – Premium Portal Premium portal & 25 ISO

Not amused by that I’m afraid.


BUFFS:

Your buffs for today are changed from last week. Little shuffle around of the multipliers, and out goes Uncommon Last Stand, back comes Legendary Cosmic. Good, because I still need him.

Legendary Cindy Moon x7
Legendary Ultimate Jessica Drew x6
Legendary Cosmic x4
Legendary 1602 x3


PORTAL

The portal is  pretty cool. The best thing about the event.  A lot of not very common spiders in there, so that's good.


Conclusion: Why nerf it?


- Goatmeat

NEW EVENT: Jackpot

Another Fanguide-prompted event!  So, of course, we like the idea of this – leaderboard only for big prizes is great. We would have preferred a 24-hour event, since there are no other rewards on offer, and we would have preferred more players to be able to win big. But it’s still a good idea, and the three days gives everyone a chance to get a couple of runs in, so it makes sense. More importantly, it is something different - but even more importantly are the fatal flaws of the Mysterio glitch and 10,000+ player leaderboard.


LEADERBOARD:

The text says it is all about Rings, but it is not – this is another Distance BLITZer

It means there are two distance events on at the same time. That's six in two weeks?  Distance is the new Enemy (pun intended).

A leaderboard-only event with big rewards is cool. Only giving them to 3 people is not so cool. Even worse, is the fact that this is another broken leaderboard event, with at least 10,000 players in it. SO the intention was to give the top prizes to 0.1% of players, but it is more like 0.03%. Which is shocking.

Top prizes:

1 – 500 ISO
2 – 250 ISO
3 – 125 ISO



The rest of the players in the top 3000 get a handful of consumables and vials, but the vast majority of people will receive nothing at all.




BUFFS:

Sadly, this is another pay-to-win event, with no portal and the highest buff, by huge margin, is available only as purchase. No portal.  Really not cool.  I just got the pop-up (of course) £23 for 3 Dusk. This no-portal-pay-only buffing has to stop.  I get that the company want to make money, but put the buffs in a portal and up for sale so people have the option. There has to be a portal too, even if the % is really low, because no one likes pay to win.  It’s what shady companies do, not supposedly legit ones.

The huge flaw with this event though, is that it contains many Mysterio bosses, and is therefore possible to glitch it. Everything we have said above is completely undermined by this flaw.  The fact that the x8 buff can only be obtained through cash purchase, and still cannot guarantee a win,. because people cheating with the Mysterio glitch will steal it from them.  This is very troubling, as the developers well know of the Mysterio glitch, yet they have made a pay-to-play event winnable by the cheats. Very shady.

In conclusion – yeah, love the idea of huge prizes for a leaderboard only run….but the rest of it really hasn’t worked out too well.  One for the glitches, exclusively.

- Goatmeat

DAILY FLASH: Sinister Thursday!

 


The nerfing of the progression rewards in these daily events continues, with this one down from 34 raw ISO to just 4, but the rest of the rewards are intact - slot premium and VIP portal.

Big difference is the objective has been reduced from 20,000 to just 8000 rings to collect, so although the prizes have come down, they are much easier to obtain. Good news for many I expect. 

Total of 120 ISO worth of progression prizes and a handful of half-decent runs to complete, gives this a Fanguide Event Score of 13. Not very good really, but not *too* bad.

There is also an expanded second-tier prize here, increased from 21 players to 31, which is a good move. Top ‘board prizes today are:

1–3 - Titan portal
4 -35 - VIP portal
36-150 – Premium portal

The leaderboard is a BLITZ most-in-one-run event. Woo hoo!   Actual joy.


BUFFS:

Your buffs for today are:

Legendary Ghost x 10
Rare Bullet Points x 6
Epic Secret War x 4
Epic Battle Damage x 2

Really like how they are rolling the buffs across these events and between events. Much much better. Pulls from the portals are becoming less and less redundant now, which is how it should be.

The most effective way to compete in this event is to lead with MJ or Swiney-G and stack your highest buffs behind them, try not to die.

Four Ghosts will get you 40 per ring, three Ghosts and MJ lead will get you 90 per ring.  Even any +1 Ring spider will get you 60, still more than four Ghost.  So always sacrifice a buff to make space for a ring combo Spidey.


PORTAL

The portal for this has a better amount of spiders in it, even if three of them are epics and a rare. Good luck getting some Ghosts. It probably wont happen and you'll be shelling 30 ISOs for epic Secret War, but hey ho, have fun.

A reasonably decent event. Strangely managing to take things backwards and forwards at the same time.  Good stuff though. You can see their little brains working!


- Goatmeat

NEW EVENT: The Future Is Now 2

Another re-run of an old event, but – joy of joys – a genuine High Score Blitz 1000 player leaderboard!  Manageable progression!!  

Just got to hope there's no Mysterio glitch in here to ruin it.

PROGRESSION:

Progression rewards will get you just 13 raw ISO, but there’s an event and VIP portal, another slot, for the price of 24 bosses’ heads.  Nothing you can do to speed that up, but it’s not too many runs to get them all. Total ISO value of progression rewards is around 156, giving this event a Fanguide Score of 20.  Much lower than the two events they kicked the update off with, but still better than what we’ve been putting up with.

LEADERBOARD:

As mentioned, leaderboard is based on classic high score, competing for pretty weak top prizes. But if we get events like this every couple of days, instead of once a week then it more than makes up for it.

Highest score will be possible by stacking  our buffs as high as possible, then sacrifice one to lead with Madame Web. Unless you have four maxed Goblin, in which case you'd be better staying with him....I think.

Top spots get:

VIP Portal & 15 ISO for the top 2
Event Portal & 8 ISO for 04-25
VIP Portal and 50 ISO for 25-100





BUFF SPIDERS:

Buffs affect the leaderboard high score only:

Legendary 2099 x 7
Legendary Spider-Punk x 5
Titan Goblin x 4
Rare Scarlet Ben Reilly x 4




PORTAL

The portal contains a couple of Legendaries people have been asking for, and a Titan for 40 ISO. So not really too bad.  And for older players who probably sold him ages ago, a chance to get nostalgic with Rare Scarlet Ben – who would have been your favourite card at one point, right?

This is better!


- Goatmeat

NEW EVENT: We Had a Deal

Event number three of update ten, and things are not looking good, kids. This post one is going to make up for the very short one about the Daily Flash event today.

This is supposed to be an event where Silver Sable returns to the Sinister Six for unfinished business to defeat the spiders. Well, someone give us a call if they see her in there. Solus’ face and attacks are appearing for some of the bosses – yet, none are Silver Sable. The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

The little red banner just repeats the name of the event, which to be fair, is a lot more descriptive than they usually are.

Let’s see what’s inside this mess.

PROGRESSION:

Progression rewards for running 500,000 meters will award you with a grand total of 63 raw ISO, and that’s it. If you have a buff of x10, you will be able to do it in one Great Run. If not, it will take many more attempts than that.

This gets a Fanguide Event Score of just 3. The previous two events scored 42 and 32. No need to elaborate on how poor that is.

LEADERBOARD:

It’s a GRIND Leaderboard - again, of course - which appears to be restricted to the promised 3,000 players. That is something at least. We get offered vials for the top prizes for the first time ever. Not an auspicious occasion, unless the VIP portal suddenly changes to 10,000 vials a pull.

Between progression and leaderboard, there is nothing other than buffs you can do to increase your position. It's so boring, and the third distance grinder we've had this week.

Prizes are:
70 ISO & 30,000 vials for the top 3 places
50 ISO & 15,000 vials for 04-25
Premium Portal & 15 ISO for 25-100




 BUFF SPIDERS:

Buffs affect the progression and leaderboard placement.

Legendary Captain Spider x 6
Legendary Spider Punk x 5
Epic Battle Damage x 4
Epic Vanilla x 4




PORTAL

For this portal, the game reverts back to the terrible composition of just the four buffs, but costs an astronomical 40 ISO a go – to help fight for a grand prize of 70 ISO. Someone making the decisions on this must have failed maths class at school, as there is no point in pulling from the portal to compete in this event. The spiders in it are weak and have been around for ages. It includes two epics, which you are most likely to get. 40 ISO for Epics is not cool.

Needless to say, we are not enthused.  The least the developers need to do, to compensate for the car-crash state of the game, is to offer events that are worth slogging through the laggy glitches for. Something really great, as an apology for the unplayable update. But no. Just, no.


- Goatmeat

NEW EVENT: Girl Power

SMU marks International Women’s Day with a fine 48-hour precision ring grind event.


PROGRESSION:

Progression rewards will get you 55 raw ISO, an inventory slot and not one, but two VIP portals, giving a total ISO value of progression rewards of around 258.  All in exchange for 13,000 rings. Really nice.  Even if you only have x8 buff, it shouldn’t take you more than a few half-decent runs to complete.

This event scores 32 in our event analysis machine. The average score for last update was 18, so we are doing good. Keep with this GL.

LEADERBOARD:

This one is a GRIND Leaderboard. It says 3000 players, but the last event also said that, and had 10,000, so watch out.

Top prizes on the board are worth grinding for now they have changed up the VIP:

VIP Portal & 160 ISO for the top 3 places
VIP Portal & 90 ISO for 04-25
Premium portal & 45 ISO for 25-100

Whoever ends up in the top 25 this stands to get 4-6 VIP pulls with all the spoils you will reap, so the competition will be ON!











BUFF SPIDERS:

Buffs affect the progression / leaderboard, and are – of course, as it’s women’s day – all women - the Power Buff Girls. woo! (smh).  A pity May Parker couldn’t have been brought out instead of MJ and Felicity AGAIN, but never mind.

Titan MJ x5
Titan Felicity x 4
Legendary Gwen x 4
Legendary Silk x 2


PORTAL

There isn’t currently a portal for this one because the buff spiders are being sold in a deal.  That seems to be the new way of things, alternating a few portal events with a sale-deal. Business isn;t always pretty, despite the 'beautiful part' claim.

Hope you are all set. I have four Mary Janes and a decent stack of crushing combos, so I’ll see you at the top (though, no doubt you have more spare time then me, so maybe I’ll have that premium portal).

Have fun. Especially if you’re an International Woman. It’s your day!


- Goatmeat

Dusk Feature Video!

Check out this masterpiece by Fanguide member Vectorride! The first in a new series of Featured Upcoming Spider videos!

Please leave us a comment and subscribe to the video channel to see all the latest videos as they are released!

New VIP Portal

The VIP Portal has finally been updated to include all Titans and a whole load of new Legendaries!

Currently there are two Felicity, but expect one to change to Winter Spidey at some point.

Sneak Peek: Spider-Ham, Dusk & Hornet

Here are some more pictures of in-game ranking-up action from forthcoming characters Dusk, Hornet and the final Ham to finish the saga - Vanilla-Pig! (Spider-Ham, if you must)

Thank You ALL!

 The Amazing work of this team has paid off! Thank you for an AMAZING 1000 LIKES!

 For a special thanks, we have something very special lined up for you all next week, stay tuned and don’t miss out as we celebrate this truly special occasion!

 We will continue to give our absolute best, to bring you the latest and greatest news, info, guides, and more as we grow alongside this awesome community. It has truly been a blessing working alongside such capable, and determined players as those that make up the Fanguide Team, but none of it would be possible without all of YOUR support and motivation!

 - Kal


 Thanks for getting us to four figures guys!!

 This is a great milestone for us, at the right time - as we are working more closely with the developers to create a better, more responsive relationship between them and players.

 We are now in regular correspondence with them, helping them to make better improvements to the game. The only way we can do that is with this community, so we are grateful for your support.

 - Goatmeat

EVENT ANALYSIS: Forged of Iron

Late again with this, because update, but here it is! Our little summary of the first event of the new update…and it’s…..half good, half *shrugs*.

7 days to run 625,000 meters. Without buffs that’s 11 Great Runs, which is better than the last few week-longs. With buffs you can do it in a fraction of one, which is lovely. It’s a pretty standard run, has lots of different environments, mechtopus and goes a full length of around 55k meters. Unfortunately, the Grand Prize is just Iron Spider, who people have been getting from the VIP portal for months. Just because he has new card art, doesn’t mean he deserves his own event. He is a totally weak card anyway. So, compete for collection purposes.

PROGRESSION:

For your troubles you will progress through 35 raw ISO, Inventory slot, a Premium and VIP portal, plus other bits for a grand total of 151 ISO worth of prizes. The last Update ended at an average of 158 ISO value per event. So this is alright in terms of that, depending how valuable portals are to you. Even VIP could be worth just 500 vials to some people. The difficulty to reward ratio is good on this one, even without any buffs – giving it a Fanguide Event Score of 42. The average score for last update was 18, which is pretty poor. Only two Events scored higher than this one, so in that regard we are off to a good start.

LEADERBOARD:

It’s a Grind Leaderboard, of course. Another full week – although they seem to have been going quiet for a few days in the middle, then picking back up on last day again. 1 – 3 - Legendary iron Spider x 3 & 210 ISO 4 – 25 Event Portal and 130 ISO 26 – 100 – Event Portal & 35 ISO Big drop off of ISO reward there.

BUFF SPIDERS:

Buffs affect the progression and leaderboard

Titan MJ x 4
Legendary Miles Pig x 6
Legendary Cyborg x 5
Rare Spider Knight x 3

PORTAL

Spiders in this portal are just 2*, which in our book is totally unacceptable. 4* for Titans, 3* for Legendaries. This should not have been changed. We have no sense of humour over this, so encourage you NOT to pull from this portal, or any portal with just 2* cards. Unless you really really want those buff spiders to make progression easier, or you are going to settle down for a long grind.

But again, remember – all you’re competing for is 210 ISO and 3 1* cards you may not really be interested in. So make sure you don’t spend too much, or it won’t be a worthwhile 7-day grind. Have fun though.

Update 10 / SMU 2.0 is here.

WEEEOO!!

Goatmeat

VIDEO: Sneak Peek - Hornet

An exclusive little look at the upcoming Hornet character, in action, in-game, in SMU Update 10!

FLASH EVENT: Webhead Wednesday

A little late, but thought I’d post it anyway – a little guide to this week’s Webhead Wednesday.

As with yesterday’s Combos event, they have increased the distance required to complete this event. Previously it was 70,000m webswing, this week it is 87,000.

 Sadly, the final VIP progression seems to have been nerfed to a Premium – but that looks like an error to us, as all other rewards are the same – 25 raw ISO, Inventory slot, vial style and superscore. We are going to get confirmation on this. (EDIT: we got confirmation, it IS supposed to be a Premium)

LEADERBOARD

Leaderboard is a GRINDER, and the map is an infinite distance run. This was the level with the airship in the way. It has now been politely moved to the side, so you can merrily swing past it into infinity. Not quite the fix we had in mind when we were told it had been addressed. But nevermind. It’s a grinder, so it doesn’t matter.

Top 3 places get 80 ISO 4-25 get 50 ISO As always with these Dailies, the buff spiders affect the progression and Leaderboard.



BUFF SPIDERS

Highest buff goes to a Rare again.

Legendary Gwen x 4
Legendary Uncle Ben x 3
Legendary Vanilla x 2
Rare Spindia x 6




PORTAL

 Again, another slightly uninspiring portal, even if I do love Gwen and Anya.


 - Goatmeat

Important Update 10 Info!

So update 10 has finally launched and there are some key notes we must go over!

First of all there are a TON of problems you are all having, that are actually just lag with the game. This is due to the fact that both versions of the game launched at the same time, so there are massive amounts of additional data packs and player data being downloaded from GL servers. Things like the inability to claim prizes and buy items, or see leaderboards and get awarded iso for missions or other things, are all due to this lag! This will be over VERY SHORTLY as player downloads begin to die down and we can resume to normal gameplay, in which case you need to know the follow:

To run in the previously named "Unlimited Mode" style daily leaderboard, you must enter story mode and run a BOSS FIGHT mission. After you defeat the initial boss, a normal run will resume and you can compete for a daily spot on the normal daily leaderboard. You CANNOT compete on the daily board with other story missions that are NOT boss fights.

The VIP portal is now back to being a paid only feature, for new players this may be a shock, but this is how the portal was always set up in the game before, it was placed in game free to avoid a bug that was there before, but now that bug is fixed and this is how VIP is SUPPOSE to be.

The alliances are back with battleground events, right now the LAG is causing alot of problems with connecting, but the events and your access to alliances will resume to normal and should all be working properly very shortly.

There are new portal layouts that simply show the older tiers for each available portal. We do not know yet if this is a bug or intended, but we are working to have it removed, as it can cause players to accidently buy a lower level tier portal, make sure you are only buying from the highest level portal you have, the lower levels just have less spiders, no different spiders.

There are a few more things we will cover in just a bit, but for now, lets just wait and be patient while everyone updates, and then we can all play!

SMU Update 10 Preview

We are so very close to perhaps the most significant update in the history of the game, in terms of make-or-break player satisfaction, and the types of changes being implemented.  Let’s just say that it is time to clear space off your devices, take those safety screen-shots of your full team, ISO and vial counts, consumables hoards and rank-up stashes.
We're going to give you some of the details of the update here, but stay tuned to the Fanguide YouTube channel to see Kal bring you one more exclusive reveal later today.
Over the last few weeks, the Fanguide have been in deep conversation with the Executive Producers of SMU, discussing our (and your) opinions of the state of the game and our hopes for the future of it.  The development team requested our detailed ideas, so we presented them with a 16-page document relating to Events exclusively, though our discussions have covered many aspects of the game.  This document initiated a very fruitful discussion, the results of which you have been playing in-game for the last couple of weeks.

During these discussions, we learned that the new development team understand many of the player’s frustrations with the game, and they have been working extremely hard on understanding the mechanics of the game, to stabilise it, and to allow them to develop it from a new platform which they have complete control over.  Not only that, but they are also life-long fans of Spider-Man, and want to do justice to the character and rich story-lines which have drawn them to the game, as much as you.

Which brings us neatly to Update 10.  The double figure update.

It’s going to bring some changes, some of which will be revealed here, some of which we have promised to leave as surprises for you to find once you update, but some more of which, Kal will be revealing to you in his video shortly.

The biggest question you may all have concerns the apparently missing Unlimited Mode.  It is true, it will no longer have a place of its own on the homescreen, but that does not mean that it is gone. In fact, it could be an improvement to the previous version, and address several complaints that have been raised in the past. 

There is no longer one button press to enter Unlimited, because there is no longer just one route to take to the Daily Leaderboard.

The Daily Leaderboard now sits behind the Issue missions.  It still exists, will still have prizes, and we have been told that fixes have been made so that Spiders may return!  However, that does not mean they will always be there for prizes.

Unlimited Mode and the Issues combine to increase the replay value and the number of possibilities for you to play different levels and configurations for the same competition.

*exactly* how this will manifest, we do not quite know, but are very excited to find out.

The Issue Missions themselves will still require you to reach necessary multipliers to be able to enter them.

Within each Mission of the issues, there will be greater rewards than the previous ISO and XP awarded, the medals will be making a functional return here, and each mission will have its own Leaderboard - currently set to bragging rights only, but there are plans to change this in the future.

That's over a hundred missions, a hundred leaderboards - and potentially, a hundred bragging rights.

The development team have assured us that they are aware of tons of improvements they could do on the competitive aspect of the new map.  They invite us to send them our feedback on all aspects of this update, to help them refine and improve the game.

The team have a wealth of ideas to implement in future updates, and they will continue to improve the game on regular basis.  They highlighted to us just how difficult it can be to release a big change without some compromises. They are already aware that one cost to this update has been the time you have waited for it to appear, so they have cut many aspects they wanted to introduce, in order to get this update out sooner.

They have also assured us that the list of bugs they have squashed in this update is too long to mention, but they have addressed loads, with more to be fixed in Update 11 (which means many will remain for now, unfortunately), but they have assigned coders specifically to deal with these problems.

But how ‘soon’ is ‘sooner’

Sooner than you think.

Load up those web-shooters folks, because when it drops we have a feeling this party’s gonna be swinging



- Goatmeat