Beginner's Guide

**Introduction to Squad Alpha for beginners**
Squad Alpha is a third-person, top-down strategic action shooter in which you play as your chosen Agent and challenge yourself in a variety of game modes. In each mode, you stand against the criminal underworld as you attempt to complete special objectives in exchange for rewards, experience points (in some modes) and/or progression.

## Controls

To move your Agent, drag your finger on any side of the screen convenient for you to manipulate the virtual joystick, and your Agent will move in the direction you pull the joystick. When you release a finger the Agent can shoot or throw an explosive weapon if there are enemies in range of a selected weapon. The Agent automatically fires at the nearest enemy within range and in line of sight (most explosives can hit enemies without line if sight) if not moving.

Each Agent has their own powerful Ultimate skill which is unlocked at Agent level 10. The Ultimate is charged by hitting enemies and receiving damage. Once fully charged, it can be utilized by tapping the ultimate icon to the left (right-handed mode) or to the right (left-handed mode) above the loadout. Some Agents’ ultimate skills require players to select a teleport location, so you will also need to do more taps on the screen after activating the Ultimate. The charge of the ultimate is not lost if you have been defeated and selected revive option. The position of the Ultimate button can be adjusted in the game settings with a check-mark on the left-handed option.

Above the Agent’s head, there is a health bar that displays Health Points (HP) in numbers as well as with a green bar. The green color bar is all HP your Agent has left at the moment, and a yellow bar on top of the green one - gained shield (additional health). A defeated enemy may drop a health buff - collecting one will add some HP to the green bar if it isn’t full.

During gameplay, there is a weapon loadout at the bottom of the screen. After one weapon’s ammo is empty, the next weapon in the loadout will become active. However, you can choose the next weapon manually by simply tapping the gun’s icon. The current active weapon can be changed despite the ammo status (fully charged, half empty, etc.). By tapping and holding a weapon’s icon you will force reload the weapon.

Agents, as well as weapons and gear, can only be changed while not in active gameplay. Go to the Inventory tab to the left of the main World tab. Under the currently selected Agent stand press on Agents button to see other characters unlocked. Press the Select button to choose another Agent for the active loadout.

In the main Inventory tab, there are three tabs below the selected loadout: Weapons, Resources, and Gear. In the Weapons tab, there are all collected guns that can be viewed, equipped, upgraded, compared or scrapped. The Resources tab displays all collected resources, and the Gear tab contains all crafted gear pieces that can be equipped. To equip a weapon or gear, tap the item and select the Equip option. You can also drag and drop them into the loadout.

## Workshop

Accessible through the Inventory tab, the workshop is used to craft, upgrade, transform or scrap certain resources: upgrade limit break parts, agent cards, chips, craft gear and tools. Each craft, reassembly, and disassembly gives workshop experience that is needed to level up the workshop. As your level increases, you gain access to more blueprints and you unlock better odds of crafting high rarity gear.

### Salvage

Every weapon in the game can be salvaged but not crafted. To salvage any gun, open the Inventory tab and tap on the Salvage button on the right under the loadout. Salvaging weapons gives scrap, a bullet token and a chip (from higher rarity guns). If a weapon was upgraded, all used resources can also be retained, though it will cost gems to do so. All items that carry a gem cost can be selected or deselected depending on whether players want to spend gems or lose the item(s).

There is no weapon craft feature in Squad Alpha. Weapons can be only obtained as rewards from enemy drops or chests. There is no weapon craft feature anywhere in the game.

## Game Modes

There are six different gameplay modes. The main objective of every mode is to defeat all enemies and/or a boss. Each mode has different reward structures, and some have additional objectives (i.e. bomb defuse skirmish) and quests (complete within a certain time, collect an amount of a specific resource, kill enemies with a specific weapon, etc.). Missions and Rifts have a timer which is displayed under the mode name.

 Missions | Operations
 Expeditions
 Skirmish
 Global
 Rifts | 8

## Chests

On the World tab you can see three chest slots. There are four types of chest that can be opened either with gems instantly or for free after a certain waiting time. These chests are obtained once a Campaign level, Hell level or Hunt has been completed. You will be given three options: to open the chest immediately (for gems or in some cases by watching an advert), claim (if you have a free chest slot)/replace (if all chest slots are full) and next, which discards the chest. It should be noted that Hell levels cannot be played unless there is a free chest slot. Other reward chests in the game do not require waiting time to be opened.

Chests use a level system that is based either on Campaign/Hell/Hunt level where it was obtained, or in the case of weapon chests, the highest enemy level that you have defeated across Campaign and Hunt. Chest level and rarity dictate reward amounts that will drop from it, as well as the rarity of particular items. Rewards from chests can be boosted by watching an advert, or at the click of a button if VIP membership is active. The boost doubles the amount of a single random resource, or increases a single item’s rarity by one rarity level. Players can view possible chest rewards by tapping on chest icons that are displayed prior to entering a level.

## Base

Through the Global tab you can access your Base - the squad headquarters where players can take a break from battling enemies, open blueprints, build items, customise rooms, admire collected trophies, and print cash, tickets, and gems! To get items for the base decoration you need Blueprint Tokens that can be obtained from Operations, Expeditions, Daily Contracts, and Elite Pass rewards. Each base item requires hammers to build. These can be obtained as rewards from various Mission types.

Your base will have a prestige score that is calculated by adding up the prestige values of your rarest built base items. The higher your prestige score, the more gameplay bonuses you unlock. Building base items also rewards base experience, which feeds into the base levelling system. Increasing base level unlocks new blueprint rarities, increases odds of rarer pulls, and unlocks more rooms - more space for making up your perfect home.

## Rifts

The first competitive mode in Squad Alpha is Seasonal Rifts which were added to the game in December 2021. Seasons last for 19 days in which you can challenge your skills and try clearing the highest floor. Your record will be put on the leaderboard visible to all players. You might see some cheaters on the board from time to time but by the end of a season, the leaderboards are always cleared.

Depending on the number of players participating in Rifts and your record floor and completion time you can be placed in one of the leagues and get its rewards by the end of the season.

All rift floors are the same for every player, so this mode remains identical for everyone and is a matter of fair competition with others using your skill, weapons, and gear. It is possible to complete high floors with significantly lower CP than the majority of players due to an ideal combo of gear perks, weapon attributes, and Agent used.

## Tips and tricks

1. When salvaging, tapping the weapon icons with the different color backgrounds selects all of that kind of weapons. For example, tapping the grey weapon icon will select all grey weapons.
2. You can force reload a weapon by tapping and holding it for a split second.
3. When rolling dice, tap anywhere on the screen multiple times to speed up the selection box choosing your random item for you.
4. After completing a level, instead of walking to the exit elevator, the pause button turns into a fast forward button which immediately ends the level.
5. If the fast forward button does not appear fast enough for your liking, then if the level is completed you can tap the pause button and then tap the complete button to finish the level.
6. When looking at weapons/gears there’s a small icon next to the lock button which if tapped will take you directly to the salvage/disassemble screen.
7. Double tapping a weapon/gear will immediately open the information window for it.
8. When rerolling an attribute, the question mark at the top left of the box produces a list of the range of values for any attributes that you can reroll.
9. If you like you can equip 4 of the same kind of weapon regardless of their grade (except for legendary). For example, you can equip 3 extinctions and a plague. Legendary weapons with the same name cannot be equipped in one loadout!
10. You can force your agent to not shoot while in the teleporter in rifts by tapping and holding the joystick in a single spot.
11. When swapping weapons there are sparkles of the color corresponding to the grade of your weapon. Legendary weapons have purple sparkles.
12. If you need to adjust optimization settings, start any battle, pause, open settings and then disable the Best quality option (disables some small animations that don’t affect gameplay) and try lowering the Frame rate. This should help improve the game’s performance on your device.

Clearing hunts above recommended cp is easily possible by leashing the attention of only one enemy at a time and taking 4 shotguns such as 4 energy shotguns, 4 R9-0, 4 Gallo or a mix of all of these. Pump-action and double barrel are not recommended for now due to the fact that the former has the largest spread and the latter will be on cd most of the time. An important note when applying the stutter-stepping mechanic to shoot faster with shotguns is that Doubleshot will not come out as the doubled shot is based on the fire rate of the shotgun itself so when you stutter step to shooting faster you are cutting the time at which Doubleshot can come out, too short. This is the tradeoff when shooting faster with shotguns.

All activities in the workshop (with the exception of reassembling) will grant the same ratio of XP per cash, this is 1 XP per 100 cash. Technically while disassembling only gives 25 XP, the XP when making any gear is also 25 XP so the ratio cost of 5000 to 50 checks out. The only activity which is not recommended is reassembling parts and gear of the grey and green variety and blue gear due to the expensive cost for minimal return. Recommended activities to level up the workshop are creating gear, crafting tools, and crafting, for now, green parts (blue parts are much more expensive and the high cost with a random probability of any part doesn’t lend itself well when you try and get a specific part). Don’t be tempted to reassemble parts for that final part that you need as the part is completely random and you will have spent cash and other parts of the same rarity (which were costly in the first place) for a very likely subpar outcome.

While rerolling attributes is fun and random, this is an activity that should be left until later in the game when you have most of your gear in good shape. This is because gear can largely determine your loadout from what you currently have. For example, a recharging perk on the wrist will allow you to take 3 grenades and a single ar since recharging will essentially ignore the longer cd that ARs have because all you have to do is throw a grenade, have it connect with an enemy and the cd of a non-grenade weapon is reset. A good strategy with recharging is to have a bullet or so left in the ar at which point you throw a grenade to reset the cd on your ar, very useful when the other 2 grenades are on cd so you aren’t left standing around with every weapon on cd.

The end goal for a strong loadout is finding a good AR with ammo and grenades with dmg on hit, bleed, and stun (perhaps spread out on multiple grenades), with a Dynamic drone along with a Bombastic wrist and head with a Vampiric body. The loadout will typically look like 1 or 2 ARs with 3 or 2 grenades with of course maxed limit break 3 on the ARs using Colt Bro. While there are more non-standard builds, this is the most commonly used as it’s an easy one to get up and running.

When salvaging weapons it’s always recommended to save everything because every part and tool is invaluable, there is never a time when you will not have a use for them.