All in One Strategy Guide
Here's my hit list. Tips and Suggestions on how to build this team using all these tools.
First and foremost, my one rule I have is I target my favorite player and go for him. Not the most economic solution, but one you will never regret. This can be a current NHL player, and we all have one. But if there's an Icon who you love a little more, then go for him. People wonder why the first player I always go for is Pat Lafontaine, not exactly Wayne or Mario, but playing with my favorite player growing up make this game so much better.
So we all know coins rule this game. But what's the most effective ways to get coins? Are there any secrets to this?
First off, yes there are plenty of ways to get coins. First off, play the game! What's the point if you're not going to grind out games cursing out EA's development team at 3am. But, you need to strategize how to play your games. Playing Draft Champions may be fun with a different team all the time but won't get you a very good ultimate team.
No, you need to check out the milestones and objectives. These are key to building your best team possible while having fun doing so.
Each day, you will be given a series of 5 minor challenges to complete that reset daily. They range from 5 goals, Play 1 Hut Challenge, 20 Shots, 20 Hits, 25 Passes, 1 Win, Complete 2 games, Buy Item from Auction, and Complete a Set. Each day Play 1 Hut Challenge will be one of them, and the other 4 are random. Each will get you 200-300 coins for a total of about 1000. If you complete them all for the day, you will also receive a Monthly Collectible to put towards the Set.
These challenges take 10 min to complete, give or take. Very easy to do in 1 to 2 games. If you are pressed for time, I'd recommend going to challenges and grinding out 2 games there quick. 1 or 2 min periods and after 2 you should have enough to finish for the day.
You can use any mode in the game to do so (with the exception of Draft Champions and Play a Friend) so have at it. Play at least 1 Challenge and get the rest through your favorite mode.
You will also see weekly rewards which reset weekly on Friday afternoon. Same thing applies to doing these, very very helpful to do so. Anywhere from 750 to 1250 coins per challenge and if you play more than once a week you should be getting these weekly too. Completing all weekly challenges results in a Monthly Collectible as well as an Icon Collectible. Definitely worth the grind. This is how you get 16 Icons to upgrade your Silver Icon players to Gold. Plus a lot of coins weekly just for playing.
NOTE: Every few weeks one of the weekly challenges is getting 3 daily rewards packs. So don't wait until Thursday each week to start your weekly challenges or you may not have enough time.
Now that we have some capital, lets spend it. But how? On packs? Certainly not unless you want to play the lottery, same odds. So, check out the auction market and get going.
However, to maximize your team, we're going to need to take a few things into account on how to spend our coins and what positions to aim for. This is very important, something most people don't plan for when building their team especially with NHL 20. One very important thing. You will have players you are building that are UNTRADABLE. You will receive rewards which the players will be UNTRADABLE.
What does that mean? Well, simply put once they are on your team they aren't leaving until you put them into a set once you no longer wish them to be on your roster. So remember, when asking who you should target, who should you build, remember you will be getting players at ALL positions that will be starting for you and be untradable.
Now, let's do the math. You ultimate team will have the following positions:
2 G 6 D and 12 FWDs.
That means you will have a lot of UT D and G since there's limited room on your roster to put them. What I recommend is concentrate on your FWDs with your coins and collectibles. Do not ignore you D, but in playing this year I've gotten 4 of my 6 D and both goalies from untradable reward packs. Build Chris Pronger (or buy), but I wouldn't waste coins or collectibles on a starting goalie. You will get them in packs, even as a beginner. Coins are better off saved for that 99 overall Ovi or Matthews. Or building 99 Mario or Wayne. Or any Master Icon to 99. And I say starting goalie, but next, we will talk about Synergy and how that effects your team.
Look over and come up with a few players you're going to want to scoop up. Pay attention as there can be many cards for the same player. As the season goes on, and players perform both in particular games and weekly, the receive cards with higher overall's than their base card. +1 every time they are released. New cards are released all week from Monday to Friday so keep an eye out if you see someone you want. However, I recommend aiming for players who have event cards or icon cards as they will have more and better synergies which I will get into now.
PLAYER AND TEAM SYNERGY
So now that we have an idea on how to build our team by position and a few players we want to target, how do I choose who to fill out my roster?
***Note I am only going to refer to gold cards going forward. If you want to play with Silver and Bronze players in your lineup (outside your backup goalie) you probably are not going to finish to well and enjoy this game. Since the backup goalie does not play, and the silver and bronze have more synergies, at first I recommend using a bronze goalie for a backup to fill out any missing synergies.***
Each card has at least 1 synergy. Cards with 1 synergy are referred to as base cards. The more synergies the card has, the better (and more expensive on the market) a card is. Primetime, Team of the Week, Event, and Icon player cards have more than 1 type of synergy, and usually more than 1 point towards that type. The goal here is to have players with the same synergy so once you have enough points of it on your active roster it will activate and then your attributes will increase.
So view your team and hit the button to view your synergies and this will show you which ones you have and how many more you will need to activate the synery. They will also show you what players have which ones, in case you are removing one from your lineup. If you remove that player from your lineup it will remove those synergy points too and possibly deactivate the synergy.
There are two types of synergies. Player and Team Synergies. When activated, player synergies apply to just the players who have that same Synergy. Team Synergies, when activated, apply attribute increases to everyone on your team regardless if the player has the synergy or not. Its also why the require more synergy points to activate them.
As the season goes on, the Event and Master Icon Upgrades receive more and more synergies. At start of year you may have an event player with 1X and 1 TK, and by end an event player has 4 X, 4 TK, 4 TN, 4 WC. Just keep that in mind later in the year it will be easier to get more of the synergies.
Taking all this into account, I recommend building team synergies first. Much more improvement.
QUICKTIP - Use your backup goal position to balance out your synergies.
QUICKTIP - Your roster also has a coach. As year goes on you will get many of them in packs, but if you need a quick team synergy to finish off, find one on the market that will finish it for you. Bronze gives you 1, Silver 2, and Gold 3 of the team synergy. All are available and out there, though only 1 per coach card.
Another suggestion would be when filling out your roster, your 4th FWD line and 3rd DEF pair should be players used to give you more of the synergies you want to activate. Reason being is that when playing, you play most of the game with your top 3 (mostly 2) FWD lines and top 2 DEF pairs. Not losing much putting lower overall players in the back of your lineup while activating team syerngies.
Note you will not see the attribute increase on the player's card itself. Just going to have to add up mentally. Or.....wait for it....
What is that? Well, that is a website you should most definitely use. Its a complete database of all the cards in the game. It allows you to view and search for them, show what their attributes will be with synergies, and allows you to login and save your team.
QUICKTIP - Looking for advice on your lineup? Put your team in and use the team link to show others and ask for (maybe a site like reddit for instance).
Its a very good site to use to find player cards with the synergies you want. Helps you plan out a game of attack when building your team.
- Remember this is supposed to be fun. Targeting your favorite players is ok.
- Always play your daily objectives. 1K coins and a Monthly Collectible are worth it.
- Same goes for Weekly Objectives. Only you receive about 5K in coin, 1 Monthly Collectible and 1 Icon Collectible.
- Save cards in your collection for the "Complete 1 set" daily objective instead of doing all your sets immediately.
- Milestones are a great way to get bulk Icon Collectibles, and give your team some direction when you want to choose what modes to play.
- Try to play all 3 modes (Challenges, Squad Battles, and Rivals) weekly to maximize rewards.
- Build your FWDs with Coins/Collectibles for most part.
- Never buy starting goalies. Backup goalies should only be bought to fill out Team Synergies.
- Use 4th FWD line and 3rd DEF pairing to balance out synergies.
- Aim to build Team Synergies over Player Synergies.
- Use NHL HUT Builder . Period.