Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign Trophy Guide & Road Map

Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign
Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign Trophy Guide

Overview:

Estimated trophy difficulty: 2/10 (personal estimate) (Trophy Difficulty Rating)
Offline trophies: 12 (7, 4, 1)
Online trophies: 0
Approximate amount of time to 100%: 18-26 hours (personal estimate) (Estimated Time to 100%)
Minimum number of playthroughs: 1
Number of missable trophies: None
Glitched trophies: 1 - Fully Loaded in the PS3 version, glitched for me in a good way so see the Guide for details.
Does difficulty affect trophies?: No difficulty settings.
Do trophies stack?: Yes, the PS3 and PS4 versions of this game have separate lists
Do cheat codes disable trophies?: No Cheats available
Additional peripherals required?: No

Introduction:

Welcome to Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign! Based on the popular mobile game, Marvel Puzzle Quest, this console version is more of a long demo of the single player aspects of the mobile game. If you know your way around a match-3 game, there's nothing more you need to know about the gameplay other than character powers that can affect the battles. The one thing the console version has that the mobile doesn't is one exclusive character. At least it's something! The alliances and leaderboard based rewards are absent, making it a bit of a dull grind overall but unlocking new characters as you go keeps things interesting. It does have a multiplayer mode but none of the trophies pertain to that so we will skip over it. The road to 100% isn't that difficult and although some of the battles may be tough for those new to the game, you can easily keep trying or back out and farm easier battles to level up your characters to go back and own those pesky villains.

Walkthrough:

Step 1: Story Mode

When you start the game, it throws you right into the first battle so there's no question as to what to do first. Pick a team of your favourite 3 characters or 3 of the best characters and stick with them in order to level one of them up for the Maxed Out trophy and to make the battles easier. I recommend having at least one character that can stun enemies to make things a lot easier on you. Mainly, you need to watch out for the minion enemies called "Muscle" – you first encounter them in the "H.A.M.M.E.R." chapter during the Venom mission. They will spam high damage attack titles and then wipe your team out with a couple AoE attacks. Stun them as much as possible to make those battles a breeze. For my team, I used Modern Black Widow, Modern Storm and Marvel Now Thor on both consoles. Whomever you choose, you want to use a team that has powers that cover all 6 colors so no AP goes to waste.

Keep going through all the chapters, missions and battles with your main team until you've finally reached the end and unlocked the So Will I trophy.

At the end of this step, you will have unlocked:

Hero In Training
Just the Beginning
Unstable ISO-8
The Hunt
Thick As Thieves
ISO-8 Brotherhood
Prodigal Sun
So Will I

Step 2: Clean up

If you haven't unlocked any of the non-story related trophies yet, you will be doing that now by replaying battles. See the individual trophies for strategies concerning the ones you still need.

At the end of this step, you will have unlocked:

Maxed Out
Fully Loaded
The Ocho
Waterfall

[PST Would Like To Thank VazzVegas for this Roadmap]

Hero In Training

Defeat V.I.C.T.O.R.
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

You will get this after your first battle. It acts as a tutorial of sorts.
Just the Beginning

Complete "Prologue".
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

You will get this after you defeat 'Rags' in the last fight of the last mission called "Dark Avengers", which is in the chapter "H.A.M.M.E.R".
Unstable ISO-8

Complete "Unstable ISO-8".
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

There are only 17 battles in this chapter so it will be a lot quicker than the first one. The battles are a step up in difficulty though.
The Hunt

Complete "The Hunt".
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

This chapter isn’t as long and only has a few missions.
Thick As Thieves

Complete "Thick As Thieves".
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

This chapter also isn’t as long and goes by fairly quickly.
ISO-8 Brotherhood

Complete "ISO-8 Brotherhood".
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

This is a long one. There are many missions but only 5 battles per mission so at least it feels like you're progressing at a decent pace.
Prodigal Sun

Complete "Prodigal Sun".
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

Similar to the ISO-8 chapter so it feels slightly long. You're almost there!
Maxed Out

Hit a max level with any character.
The max level for characters is 300, which seems like a lot at first but I got this to pop near the end of the ISO-8 Brotherhood chapter. Just pick a good hero at the beginning, one that you have a decent amount of covers for and continue to use them for 90% of the battles and you will get this trophy before the end of your journey to 100%.
Fully Loaded

Collect 15 covers for any character.
This is very luck-based but can be gotten with time. Go for this one early or else you will be playing this game longer than you need to. Fewer characters are unlocked at the start so the covers you get will be only for them. The more characters you unlock by playing the story, the more spread out the covers you earn will be. You're also not guaranteed a cover after every battle which adds to the playtime.

For farming covers, I recommend the battles called "Goldilocks" or "Stop" in the "Juggernaut" mission of the "H.A.M.M.E.R." chapter. I recommend them because they has the least amount of things to skip and only 1 enemy which means you can win in 1-5 moves. Use a high level team (lvl 200+) that covers the rainbow and you’ll simply win with match damage. If you have low level characters at the time, just go with your best.

Glitch note:

This glitched on me in a good way on the PS3 version. I obtained 10 covers for Juggernaut and the trophy unlocked! I can definitely say that you should farm covers early on for at least a little bit to speed up your 100% completion time. For the PS4 version, I did get 10 covers for a couple characters with only two skills but didn't unlock the trophy. Due this, I can confirm that, for me at least, the beneficial glitch only works on the PS3 version.
The Ocho

Match an eight of a kind.

I used Thor a lot at the beginning and his yellow power will add green tiles to the board. What you could do is leave as many green tiles as possible before using his yellow power, and/or you could save up enough AP to use his yellow power 2 or even 3 times. 3 is probably overkill though. 1 or 2 should be enough once you have collected a few yellow covers to increase the amount of green tiles the power creates. The first few battles after the tutorial also don't have team-up titles which can increase the odds of getting it.
Waterfall

Get a 9 chain combo.

This is how I got it. This one is really luck-based but you should be able to get it pretty easily though at some point over the course of your playtime.

So Will I

Unlock Loki
Story Related. Cannot be missed.

Don't read on if you don't want to know who the console exclusive character is:

Loki auto-unlocks after you've completed the battle "Loose Ends' and the credits roll. First, Iron Patriot will unlock before the credits, while the end scene is playing then the end scene will replay a 2nd time and be modified to include Loki this time.