Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: Tips & Tricks for Beginners

Try Out a Bunch of Different Teams

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 provides a diverse cast of characters to play as, each of which function incredibly different in terms of attack power and abilities. Needless to say, with so many different characters to choose from, you’ll need to do a lot of experimentation to try everyone out.

It’s a good idea to consistently try out different party compositions, especially when you unlock a new character. Your party can function a lot differently depending on the characters you choose.

For example, Magneto is a semi-ranged character whose abilities let him pull in groups of enemies together, making him perfect to team up with a melee-focused hero like the Hulk, who can then charge in and obliterate the group.

On the other hand, you have a hero like Ghost Rider who has abilities and attacks that hit a large area, and can easily be paired with any ranged character, as they’ll have powerful wide-reaching Synergy attacks.

The good news is that Ultimate Alliance 3 constantly throws checkpoints at you, giving you plentiful opportunities to change out your party and get other characters leveled up.

Grind in the Infinity Trials

Like we just said, there are a lot of heroes in Ultimate Alliance 3, and if you don’t use someone for a while you’ll find them pretty under-leveled. Luckily, the game gives you quite a few opportunities to make up for that.

The primary way of quickly leveling up characters is in Infinity Trials, short challenges that you can take on through a separate menu. These trials add on unique rules and features to make things more difficult or different, like making it so that only abilities cause damage or that your health constantly depletes.

All of these trials are great ways to level up characters, but specifically the Wave trials have you taking down 100-200 enemies. These serve for fantastic experience, especially if you take on a high-level one and couple high-level characters with a lower one.

Additionally, you’ll earn XP cubes from a ton of different Infinity Trials, letting you grant even more experience to your under-leveled heroes.

Don’t Forget About Blocking

Battles in Ultimate Alliance 3 can get real hectic real fast, and you’ll need to utilize your defensive options just as much as your offensive ones. With how many crazy attacks bosses have you’ll definitely be using your dodge the most, done by pressing L + a direction. However, make sure you don’t forget about your ability to block either.

Oftentimes, enemy’s attacks will have a huge area of effect or be so fast that it’s impossible to avoid. In these times you’ll need to block in order to minimize the damage you take.

It can be easy to simply dodge around the battlefield as much as possible, but there’s a reason the block exists so don’t forget about it. Obviously not taking damage is preferable, but the difference between success and failure can be blocking.

Upgrade Your ISO-8s

ISO-8s are a feature you’ll unlock after the first couple of chapters, letting you equip your characters with crystals to boost their stats or implement unique effects. Two chapters after that you’ll unlock the ability to upgrade your ISOs through the Lab in the menu, and since you’re so far in the game it’s easy to just ignore that ability.

However, you should definitely take the time to upgrade the ISOs you equip, even if it’s a little cumbersome to wade through the menus. If you take the time to equip proper ISOs you can really strengthen your characters, like equipping crystals that boost ethereal damage (Mastery) on a character like Captain Marvel.

Past that, when you upgrade an ISO to level 5, you’ll get the chance to evolve them into a higher-level ISO, increasing the bonuses even more. Needless to say, if you take the time you can really provide some great stat boosts for characters.

Save Up Extreme Attacks During Boss Battles

Boss battles present the biggest challenge in Ultimate Alliance 3, and as you get further in the game they’ll get harder and harder. You’ll need every advantage you can get to come out on top, and one of your best ones is Extreme attacks.

As you fight, an orange gauge will build up around your character’s portrait representing your Extreme attack. When multiple characters have an Extreme attack ready they can launch them at the same time for an Ultimate Alliance Extreme, causing ridiculous amounts of destruction and damage.

Rather than just launching Extremes willy-nilly you’re better off saving them up, and making sure to launch them at just the right time. Ideally you want to do it right when the boss’ stagger gauge is about to break, as it’ll help finish off the gauge and each character can see through their attack while the boss is staggered, causing maximum damage.

If you launch the attacks to late they might cause less damage, or the boss could move helping them to avoid the attack entirely.

Use Synergy Attacks as Much as Possible

Character abilities have a diverse array of effects, but you can widen that diversity even more by using Synergy Attacks, having two heroes combine their abilities. This can be something like Spider-Man shooting webs at Captain America’s shield to make them bounce off and cause AoE damage, or Iron Man and Captain Marvel combining their lasers.

If you’re in single-player, Synergy Attacks are easily done by holding down ZR and then choosing which ability to use, as the game will dynamically adjust to which heroes are nearby.

You should honestly try to use Synergy attacks whenever possible, as they don’t expend any more EP than usual and generally cause more damage over a wider area. You can, of course, use a mix of regular abilities and Synergy, but there’s no downside whatsoever to using the latter, so feel free to go crazy.

Purchase all the Upgrades and Skills You Can

Character development plays a big part in the combat of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, and you’ll want to keep on top of any and all upgrades. This comes in two different varieties; strengthening individual character’s skills and using the Alliance Enhancement system.

First off, each character will earn AP whenever they level up, which you can then sink into strengthening their four different abilities. As you level up the abilities you’ll increase their damage, area-of-effect, duration, etc. As enemies get more powerful you’ll want to power up your abilities to keep up.

On the other side you have Alliance Enhancement, a grid of stat enhancement that take effect on your entire party. You access Alliance Enhancement by going to the Lab option from the menu, and you’ll see a huge grid with different nodes. To purchase nodes you’ll need Enhancement Points, which you earn whenever a hero levels up, any hero. You’ll also need credits, but the game liberally showers you with those.

These nods will boost stats like Master, Vitality, and Durability, or give you enhancements like increasing melee damage by 3 percent. You should be popping into Alliance Enhancement the entire time you’re playing Ultimate Alliance 3, and there’s no reason for you to hang onto points, just spend them when you have them.

Considering the enhancements apply to your entire team, this is the best way to power up everyone quickly.

Make sure to stick with Twinfinite for more helpful info on the game, or you can head on over to our extensive Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 guide wiki. You can check out more of our guides down below:

• How to Change Characters
• How to Level Up Fast
• How to Play Splitscreen & Online Co-Op Multiplayer
• How to Unlock Costumes & Change Outfits