Marvel Ultimate Allliance 3 is a fun dungeon crawler-style game with great co-op play. Four players can join together with their iconic Marvel heroes to duke it out in familiar locales against infamous foes.

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While the game is relatively easy to pick up and play it also has some surprising depth and complexity. The story mode is only the beginning of this fun game and players will find that the endgame requires quite a bit of skill and thought to get into.

10 Explore

Unless you’re blitzing the mission for a specific reason it’s in your best interest to take a moment to explore. Even a few minutes to check those dead ends for ISO-8s, Infinity Rifts, or to unlock characters can be well worth your time.

This isn’t to say you should scour every inch of the map as that can take way too long, but just be willing to take a slight detour here and there to snag some goodies before beating the level.

9 Synergy Attacks Are Key

This isn’t fully explained in the game, but for the players who learn to fully harness the power of synergy attacks will find they have a powerful tool for the harder fights. Some characters have abilities that can be combined with the abilities of other characters to form a much more powerful attack.

When putting teams together it’s important to have teammates who can synergize with each other to boost these attacks for greater effect. It’s worth it to spend some time going over a fan-made chart or table to understand which characters would best complement each other's attacks.

8 Throw Stuff Strategically

Often times in certain battles the enemy will drop random items when they’re defeated that can be thrown for various effects. Sometimes the effect is instantaneous and other times they require a bit of charging before they’ll do anything.

It’s important to learn what these items do when thrown, which enemies are susceptible to their effects, and when is the best time to use them. If it creates a massive explosion and there’s only one enemy on the screen it’s best to save it for when you're facing a group.

7 Level Up Those Outside Your Main Team

It can be tempting to get tunnel vision on your favorite characters in your main team and forget about all the others. This may get you through most of the story mode, but when you start tackling Infinity Trials or get to the harder bosses you’ll find yourself wishing you’d built up other characters.

Related: Marvel Ultimate Alliance: How To Level Up Fast

Take some time to blitz through a few missions with some of those secondary characters or attach a few ISO-8s to them. You’ll be glad you did when you come across a difficult fight they’re ideally suited for.

6 Have Situational Teams

Speaking of which it’s important to mentally organize your characters into situational teams that can tackle different tasks effectively. Knowing which team can handle which Infinity Trial can turn what would be a grueling grind into a more manageable task.

It’s also helpful to have teams of heroes that are uniquely suited to tackling certain bosses. This can minimize a lot of headaches and allow you to farm areas for maximum effect.

5 Build Teams Around Team Bonuses

A good way to build your teams is to ensure they complement each other through team bonuses. Every character belongs to multiple teams or categories that provide bonuses when another member of that category is on the team.

Related: Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: How To Unlock All Characters

For instance Hulk and Iron Man are members of the Original Avengers, Big Brains, and Avengers. So they get those three team stat bonuses when they fight together. It’s better to ensure every member of your squad has a few team bonuses on them rather than prioritizing two heroes. Having heroes like Wasp or Thor join the fight with Iron Man and Hulk would trigger some impressive bonuses.

4 Go Ultimate When The Boss Is Staggered

Every hero has a special power known as an Ultimate that can be triggered to deal impressive damage and status effects. These ultimates can be triggered simultaneously across all characters on the team for some truly impressive results, especially if they synergize.

When facing tough bosses it’s best to hold off on using these powers until the enemy is about to or has become staggered, this can be seen when their purple meter is low. Waiting for this moment allows you to get the most bang for your buck as the boss will be especially vulnerable to powerful attacks like this.

3 Experiment With ISO-8s & Upgrades

The final way to edge your character’s stats just a little higher is to assign them ISO-8s and unlocking upgrades. ISO-8 use can become a little complicated as you start to deconstruct them to craft stronger ones, either get your hands dirty messing around with cheaper ISO-8s to learn what you're doing or follow a guide.

Upgrades are also important and every player has their own strategy for how to maximize their efficiency when buying upgrades. Generally, it’s best to stick to a lot of cheap ones in the beginning and then spread out to more powerful, more expensive ones once you have a farming team up and running and can see what perks would be most helpful to your main teams.

2 Learn The Patterns & Weaknesses

It’s amazing how many players reach the endgame and still don’t fully understand the patterns and weaknesses of the bosses. Every boss attack has a set pattern they follow and you can minimize the damage to your characters by learning to dodge those attacks.

It’s also important to pay attention to items that drop, what the enemies’ weaknesses are and take advantage of those variables. You might get away with random button mashing in the beginning, but the latter part of the game requires serious strategy and thought to get through.

1 Grind Infinity Trials

This is the endgame, the meat of it all and what every player strives for. Once you’ve beaten the short story mode your days will be spent grinding out Infinity Trials to unlock characters, boost stats, and build an impressive team of heroes.

So it’s important to build teams of heroes around the varying trials, farm ISO-8s, hunt for Rifts, and everything you’ll have hopefully learned to do from playing the story mode. This is where your skills are truly tested, so be ready for it.

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