Marvel's Avengers: Here's How Gear And Cosmetics Work

Marvel's Avengers officially lands on September 4 for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One, and developer Crystal Dynamics has shared more details on how the games cosmetics, currencies, and Hero Challenge Cards will function.

Cosmetics

Players will be able to earn four types of cosmetics throughout Marvel's Avengers. Outfits are aesthetic-only costumes that feature no pay-to-win elements, emotes can be used to express the personalities of heroes, and takedowns allow for unique finishing animations on the battlefield. Nameplates show off your hero's stats and feature art that has been pulled from the vaults of Marvel history.

Vendors

To earn cosmetics and other gear, players will be able to visit one of several vendors who can be found in multiple locations in the game world. In addition to cosmetics, gear and rare resources can also be purchased with the Units currency and common resources. Players can find common, rare, and exotic resources in crates, dismantled artifacts, and as Faction Assignment rewards. Hero Challenge Card achievements and defeated enemies will also drop these rewards. These resources can then be spent at a Gear Vendor, whose inventory rotates through daily and weekly stock.

Units are described as an in-game digital currency with no real-world value, which can be found in strongboxes or earned as rewards when Faction Levels are increased. Patterns will also be rewarded through high-level crates, activities, Faction Missions, and increasing your Faction level. Once you have a pattern, you can use a fabrication machine to create a new outfit or nameplate.

Cosmetic Vendors only sell outfits, emotes, and nameplates, and all of these can be purchased with Units. Legendary Outfits will rotate weekly, while the rest of the stock will refresh daily.

Marketplace

Outside of vendors, players can also purchase cosmetic items such as outfits, emotes, nameplates, and takedowns from the Marketplace with credits. A hard currency, players can buy credits with real money. A basic 500-credit pack will cost you $5.00, with other packs increasing in size from 2,000 credits all the way up to 10,000 credits. Uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary items will rotate weekly and can be acquired with credits.

Hero Challenge Cards

Similar to a Battle Pass system employed in games such as Fortnite and Destiny 2, Hero Challenge Cards will reward players with resources, units, credits, and cosmetics for completing in-game challenges. Each Hero Challenge Card has 40 tiers of free and premium rewards, that include:

• Rare Resource Bundle: Nanotubes, Nanites, Plasma, Catalyst
• Resource Bundle: Fragments & Upgrade Modules
• Upgrade Module Bundles: Upgrade Modules
• Exotic Resource Bundle: Polychoron & Uru
• Units
• Credits
• Hero Nameplates
• Team Nameplates
• Emotes
• Takedowns
• Outfits

On launch day, premium Hero Challenge Card rewards for each of the six starting heroes will be active, with post-launch heroes such as Hawkeye, Spider-Man (On PlayStation), and more also receiving an introductory premium reward period. Outside of the launch window, activating premium rewards will cost players 1,000 credits. According to Crystal Dynamics, these rewards have a value of over 12,500 credits, and more of this currency can be earned once the premium rewards have been activated. If all challenges on your Hero Challenge Card are met, your activation fee will be refunded.

Hero Challenge Cards do not rotate and will not be retired, with premium rewards having no time limit once activated in case players want to spend time focusing on a specific hero before moving on to the next one. A "Skip" function can be purchased to move through tiers more quickly.

For more on Marvel's Avengers, don't forget to check out our launch guide, which explains pre-order early access, and the day-one 18GB patch that all players will have to download.