Introduction

In Mobile Strike there are over 100 different type of materials that you can collect in different ways and that you can use to manufacture gear (or equipment) for your commander. The gear can give you valuable boosts for most of the different activities in the game.

How to Manufacture Gear

In the Armory there is a possibility to Manufacture gear. There is a large list of recipes for Helmets, Body Armor, Foot Armor, Weapons and Accessories. There are also options to select the gear associated with a special event, or the Economic gear associated with a specific boost. To be able to manufacture gear you need to have at least the required amount of each of the materials (but it is good to be careful with manufacturing gear with materials of mixed quality, more about that below), a required amount of coin and a minimum required level for your Commander. Manufacturing does not happen instantaneous and the more expensive gear can take quite some time (quite simple gear already takes days). You only see the time required once you start the manufacturing process. By default the highest quality of each of the required materials is used, if you want to change this to a lower level (e.g. when you want to manufacture an all blue gear and not waste one golden material) you can change the materials in the final screen before starting the manufacturing process.

How the Boosts Work

Your commander needs to be equipped with gear for the corresponding boosts to work. When exactly the commander should be equipped with the gear depends on the type of boost. For Research, Construction, Troop Training, Trap Training, Manufacturing the commander should be equipped with the corresponding gear at the moment you start the activity. Afterwards you can change your commander's gear. For combat, troop load, gathering boosts the commander should be equipped with gear during the activity. One example where this goes wrong a lot is that players gathering on a resource tile with their commander (which I personally do not do because he can easily be taken) and later change their commander's gear, which potentially results in resource tiles not being depleted. The boosts of commander skill points work in the same way.

Gear for Each Activity

Beginners sometimes make the mistake of working on only one gear set that they use for various activities, but you should have a specialized gear set for each activity. The minimum you need is a gear set for Research, a set for Construction and one (defensive) Combat gear set. Later you will also work on gear sets for each attacking Combat type (i.e. Tactical attack set, Armored Vehicle attack set, Infantry attack set) and gear sets for Manufacturing, Troop Training, Trap Training and fighting Rebels. In the Data menu there is a Boost Types overview that gives a set of best and available gear for each boost type, useful when deciding on specific gear you might want to build. There is also a Gear overview with all available gear including pre composed gear sets for a number of activities.

Often you not only change your equipment but also respecify your Commander Skill points before an activity. It is crucial you take full effort to get maximum boost for each activity, whether that is Research or Infantry Attack.

Speed Boosts vs Time Reduction Boosts

For Research and Construction there is currently gear available that offer competing boosts, possibly this will also be available for other activities later. On the one end there is a boost that increases the speed of the activity, on the other end there is a boost that reduces a fixed amount of time.

The way speed up boosts work are that they increase the speed with a certain percentage, it is best illustrated by an example. If you have a 100% research speed boost, you research twice as fast as you would without any boost, meaning that the research time of a certain project is cut in half. The first 100% offers more time reduction than the second, if you have 200% research speed boost you have one third of the original time, and if you have 300% research speed boost you have one quarter of the original time left. The formula is Actual Time = ( 100 / (100 + speed up boost) ) x Original Time.

The Time Reduction boosts deduct time from the Original Time before applying any research speed boost, so the formula to calculate the Actual Time becomes: Actual Time = ( 100 / (100 + speed up boost) ) x ( Original Time – Time Deducted). Illustrated by an example, if you have a zero percent research speed boost (which is incidentally impossible) and a 2 hour Research Time Reduction, a 5 hour research project would only take 3 hours. If you have a 100% research speed boosts and a 2 hour Research Time Reduction, a 10 hour research project would take 4 hours. In the second example the effect of the 2 hour Research Time Reduction is only one hour from the original time.

With the explanation above it should be clear that for longer research and construction projects it is much better to have a speed boosts instead of time reduction boost. When the original time of a research project becomes 30 days, deducting a few hours is inferior to even a few percent increase in research speed. If you have both research speed and research time reduction gear for certain gear slots you might check beforehand and you will soon find out what is best.

Why make the Economic Research and Construction time Reduction gear? You might not have materials (yet) to make Research and Construction speed boost gear, or they might even not be available. It might be nice to fast track through some smaller research projects and especially construction. If you encounter the extreme situation that you want to change all your buildings outside the city walls to another resource, for example because you realize you cannot keep up food production with your troops food consumption no matter how many farms you build, you will benefit from a full construction time reduction gear to fast track through the smaller levels. Besides that, these gears are cheap to make coin wise, you might have plenty of materials if you are an active resource gatherer and the materials have little (except for the Troop Queue gear, which in my opinion is by far the most useful of the Economic gear currently available.)

Finding Materials

It is not easy to find materials. In the Data menu there is an overview of all Materials, with for each Material the location where I have found it so far (tiles, gifts, crates, rebels etc). This should help you focus your efforts.

Quality Levels and Combining

There are six quality levels, indicated by colors, the same for materials and gears. If you use all materials of the same quality level you are guaranteed you also get the equipment of the same quality level, if you use materials of mixed quality levels the game indicates a chance (e.g. 70% purple, 30% gold) you will get a gear of certain quality level. In the Armory you can combine materials (4 of one level to 1 of one level higher). If you have plenty of materials you might combine them to gold, but I find it better to only combine to green or blue first and only if I know I am going to craft certain gear possibly combine the required materials higher. My motivation is that in some situations I will not be able to manufacture with all gold materials, and I typically prefer to craft with all blue, rather than 3 blue and one gold.

Waiting for the right Materials and Gambling

Two of the more difficult decisions when manufacturing gear is whether to wait until you have enough of the quality level 6 or gold materials to craft with all gold materials, and if you do not, whether to gamble or for example craft with all purple, or blue or even all green materials.

There is no one answer that fits all situations. I tend to look a several of the following factors in deciding what to do.

How fast does the boost of the gear decline with declining quality level. With most basic gear this is declining quite slow, typically often a level 3 or green gear gives still half of the boost that a level 6 or gold gear gives. If you for example consider the Engineer's Hammers for Construction Speed boost, you can craft 2 lvl 3 Hammers for only 1/32th of what you would need for one gold Hammer, which give the same boost. In such a situation I tend to craft the lower level gear first if I lack the materials for better ones. In Game of War, and what might also happen in Mobile Strike with newer gear, the boost is declining a lot faster, for new gear in Game of War the boost of lvl 5 gear is often only half if the boost of the lvl 6 gear, which is for me a reason to aim for gold gear more.

Besides buying packs and gathering for the Economic Gear materials there are no easy ways to get specific materials, and especially those related to specific events might be hard to come by. I also look at how likely it will be that I get gold materials within a reasonable amount of time. In Mobile Strike that seems to be quite difficult, if you are not a (big) spender, a reason to settle for lower quality earlier.

The necessity to have gear. Since you are likely nonstop researching and constructing, having good boosts is giving great benefit early on. If I do not have any gear for an activity, I am more likely to settle for lower quality first. Similar as with construction and research you need at least one good combat set and it is better to how something of lower quality than nothing at all.

I do not often gamble when manufacturing in this game. The situation in which I do gamble is if I have decided not to wait for gold for one of the above reasons and I have a large amount of gold materials of one or two, but obviously not all, of the required materials. In this case I tend to do use the gold as I see it as a cheap way to have a chance of having gold gear. I use a material I have a lot of to compensate for the fact I have not much of another material.

Mods

After crafting gear, do not forget about the mods. They are not available for all activities (yet), but for those that they are available for, mostly combat, the mods still give large boosts often comparable to the gear itself.

Common Mistakes

There are two common mistakes that are being made, which can both prove very costly, as materials are in general difficult to come by, so expensive to waste.

One mistake is making what you currently can make instead of planning to make what you really need. Often it is better to wait until your commander level is higher (a lot of the good material is only available for commander level 50), you have more materials or you have more coin.

Another mistake is not paying attention to material levels. Players manufacture something with a mix of lvl 1 to lvl 4 or even 5 or 6 mats and end up with useless piece of lvl 1 gear. Manufacturing anything of mixed quality level materials should be a very conscious choice.

Conclusion

I hope the above gives you some guidelines what to craft and when to craft or wait for better materials. If you have any questions or tips to share, let us know.

Contributed by: GamesGuide on May 2, 2016