Marvel's Avengers is a superhero game that blends fast-combat and thrilling set-piece moments with complex character progression that has similar shades to games like Destiny and The Division. Throughout the campaign, you'll play as many of Marvel's most iconic characters and steadily advance their gear and power in combat. Once you have finished the campaign, you'll open up the larger endgame of Marvel's Avengers, which not only expands on the different activities in the game, but it also reveals what's to come in the adventures ahead.
In this quick explainer, we lay out what you can expect to find in the endgame portion of Marvel's Avengers. Once the Avengers have assembled, it will quickly become apparent that it was only the first step in taking out AIM's influence across the world, and you need to make the most of your time to take on some of the more daring challenges in the game. We've made sure to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, so you won't be at risk of ruining what's to come in the story.
For more on Marvel's Avengers, including editor Phil Hornshaw's thoughts on the game's current state, be sure to check out his impressions of the game so far, leading up to GameSpot's full review.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Once the main story campaign is finished, you'll need to level up and outfit your heroes with new gear to take on many of the new challenges that have opened up. Generally speaking, you'll likely finish the campaign at around Level 15 for your heroes. As it turns out, you'll be nowhere near the end of progression for your character. As of launch time, the current max character level is 50, while the gear power level, which the missions that your heroes can undertake, is 150. This may seem like a daunting prospect to work towards, but you'll be able to gain a solid stream of loot by completing the new missions and events that are now open in the post-game.
For starters, you'll want to decide which Avenger should be your focus. By committing to a particular character, you'll make more significant strides in the endgame without dividing up your time between the six characters. Also, be sure to clear out any outstanding side-missions from the campaign, such as the HARM VR missions and the various war zone and drop zone levels. Once those are out of the way, you'll advance to the more challenging variants of those missions and some totally new ones. Along with that, you should also take advantage of the different daily and weekly missions from the SHIELD and Inhumans factions located within the Chimera and Anthill outposts, respectively.
The New Activities
While new campaign missions will eventually come to the game, most post-game content comes in the form of the drop zone, war zone, faction, iconic (character-specific), and hive missions. These missions range from standard objective-based challenges, which can be repeated on higher difficulties for better loot chances. While they are similar to the campaign missions, they're also more tuned for multiplayer, which make them much more challenging to tackle if you tend to play solo (although you'll have your AI companions to back you up, at least). When you check in with faction leaders on the Chimera and in the Ant Hill, you can also pick up daily missions where you face off against old bosses like the Abomination and Taskmaster, who are now more powerful than they were in the campaign. While these were available during the campaign, the power level required to complete them made them too daunting of a task, and they should be a lot more manageable now.
Along with these activities, the post-game also opens up totally new missions focusing on Vaults and Hives. The Vaults are special missions that only open up once you find hidden SHIELD caches in other missions. Once you do, these will open the path to Vault missions where you can battle through legions of elite enemies to unlock a massive trove of loot for your character. Along with that, there are also Hive and Mega Hive missions, which will have you fight through a gauntlet of enemies and complete multiple objectives with your particular squad of heroes.
The biggest challenge to face in Avengers is the Secret Lab mission, which is only available for a limited time every week. These excursions are essentially raids, which will send a team of players online to fight through a dungeon filled with the game's most challenging enemies, along with some light puzzle-solving. It's the most elite challenge to face in Avengers, and only players who are close enough to the 150 power level can gain access to the missions. So if you want to take part in these challenges, you'll need to work your way through various missions.
Use Those Resources
Hopefully, you haven't been using too many of those resources and materials picked up throughout the campaign. While they can be useful for short term power boosts for your gear, these items are best spent in the endgame. Throughout the campaign, you'll unlock access to different vendors, such as Roy (Model-G) in the Chimera, to buy resources and pieces of gear from. This can be very useful when trying to break the different power level thresholds in Avengers, which can halt the endgame's progress. Once you feel you've hit a snag in your progression, feel free to invest in some new gear and materials for your character to get over the hump.The endgame is also where managing your hero's gear will become even more critical for success. Towards the mid-to-late portion of the campaign, you'll begin to acquire artifacts, which offer power boosts and special stats. In the post-game, you can have up to three artifacts at once, one major and two minor. It can be worthwhile boosting your artifacts that have special stats bonuses, especially if they have some valuable elemental properties like cosmic damage or Pym Particle procs, as these can be a massive help during a fight.
Expand Your Mastery And Experiment With Your Hero
Throughout the story campaign, you'll no doubt be used to seeing the skill menu for each character, where you can buy buffs and skill upgrades for your chosen hero. Once you reach the post-game, you'll be taking advantage of the third skill menu with the more powerful buffs for your character. After unlocking it once you reach level 15, you can add skill points to the mastery tree, which offers particular stat boosts to your character's key attributes. These can come in the form of increasing a skill's effectiveness or even adding more energy to your intrinsic meter. Once you reach level 50, you should be able to max out the entire skill menu.
This also presents a great opportunity to experiment with your chosen hero. While the campaign was much more defined in terms of progression, you'll try out more unique skill combinations and attributes during the post-game. You'll be presented with different opportunities and more ways to advance your characters, and during this period of the game, it can lead to some surprising results.
