Penguins Store Pack Buying Guide

Excellent info. Definitely changed my mind on the "Max Basics, then commons, etc" ideology.

For my friends and myself, that's exactly the idea it revolved around. Even after years of ME3MP, we should've known better, but, well, I guess it made us feel better. 

Either way, Premium Pack surfing for me from here on out.

I would highly recommend new players to buy heavily into basic packs. Not only can they advance the levels of common characters, they get a lot of consumables, like Cobra RPG, first aid, revives, etc., which the NEVER/RARELY seem to use but need to.

If you purchase credits, then throw in some Premium packs. Just do not underestimate the value of basic packs. There are several gold viable common characters.

People act like maxing commons is a chore. I think I maxed mine after about 20 or so hours of playing bronze, roughly a week of casual playing for me. Play those characters and l2p. Once you get good and level some characters, move on to silver. The "process" isn't difficult or much of a grind. Ultra-rare's aren't all that at lvl 1, and I prefer common/uncommons at 10 over and UR lvl 1. Higher levels of skill upgrades are what can make you or break you. That and weapons. Bioware needs to find a solution to the crappy weapon situation. AR's suck. All of them.

Yep, nailed it. In fact I'd might go further and state that you should skip the uncommon packs altogether.

Unlike in Mass Effect 3, none of the damage-boosting mods are uncommons - they're all rares. In addition, several of the common weapons are underwhelming as well - I think the only real decent one is the Raptor.

In addition, weapon damage level scaling has been changed from Mass Effect 3. There's only a 20% difference between a rare at level 1 and level 10, and for ultra rares the difference is only 15%, compared to the 25% scaling in ME3. So buying premium packs until you get some good rare weapons and each of the barrel mods is an even better strategy than before.

In summary: Don't buy uncommon packs for the weapons - buy them for the characters instead. Kroguard, Salarian infiltrator, and Asari adept are all powerful characters.

Hmm that's very interesting, thanks for the info.

Even though I have done exactly that and I would argue that it was kind of a smart decision since I have played mostly Gold anyway, I believe the Uncommon characters are too of a deal good to pass (except perhaps for the Krogan Engineer).

Overall the Uncommon characters are better than the Rare ones and arguably on par with the Ultra Rare ones. It is a good idea particularly for beginners to try to unlock them.

There are some very very good common and uncommon characters. Slap a good gun on them (good luck with that) and you're pretty much ready for Gold.

Ah that's a very good point. I think I lucked out on uncommon characters to start with, so I forgot to consider that possibility.

Watch again, because i specifically mentioned buying advanced packs if you want the uncommon characters or weapons/weapon mods. I dont, so i skip them.

You specifically said if your goal is to jump to Gold straight off the bat you're gonna want to buy Premium packs. That is misleading as it depends on the weapon/kit you want to play. You can jump straight to Gold with manguard, a Charger and Juggernaut Shield, buying only Basic packs. Advanced packs are also better if you want to play with a fully automatic sniper rifle and/or one of the Uncommon kits. What you should have said, is if you want to jump straight to Gold with one of the (few viable) UR weapons, buy Premium packs. If you want to do so with a Rare weapon, you should buy Expert packs (same amount of Rares, more consumables.

Also maxing Basics/Advanced has the objective advantage of giving way more consumables early on, when you have none. So you basically wrapped up your personal taste as fact.

The hurricane, equalizer or talon 1 is better than a charger X. As is a vanquisher, dhan, piranha or several other rares/URs. You dont need to spend a lot to get one of these and then i stated you should then my basics. So yes you can do it with a vanguard with a charger, but youll have more success with better weapons imo. And if your opinion is different then thats fine, but this method has yielded me the best success so thats what ill communicate.

I buy all premiums and sometimes advanced when I only have that many creds remaining, since most of my favorite kits are silver.