10 Tips & Tricks for Starting Star Trek: Legends

Star Trek: Legends is the first Star Trek game to come out in nearly three years. The game itself plays similarly to games like Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes and DC Legends—only with one major difference. As this game is part of Apple Arcade, you won’t find any energy meters limiting how much you can play or microtransactions hoping to drain every last dollar out of your wallet. Sound interesting? Well, here some things to know before you get started.

Don’t Roll the Gatcha Until You Finish the Story

Like many similar mobile titles there is a gatcha system in Star Trek: Legends where you are able to summon Star Trek’s greatest heroes and villains (and a fair amount of no-name nobodies) to join your crew thanks to the Nexus (as seen in Star Trek: Generations). You may be tempted to summon a character every time you have enough “orbs” to do so. However, this would be a huge mistake.

When the game begins, there is almost no one to summon in the gatcha other than random useless crew members and the three officers you get as part of the tutorial—Burnham, Bones, and Worf. As you play through the story, more and more characters will be unlocked in the gatcha—with the full spread available once you finish the sixth chapter. Simply put, save your orbs until the character(s) you want are available. And don’t worry about filling out your roster, there are more than a few ways to get characters that don’t involve the gatcha.

Your Best Team for Completing the Story

When it comes to completing the story, the trick is building the best team you can from the crewmembers you A) unlock naturally as part of the plot, B) unlock from completing achievements, and C) unlock from completing limited-time “Operation” events that you can only try five times per day. Here’s the team that got me through the game at launch (the first six episodes).

Leonard McCoy – Healer

The game really throws you a bone (pun intended) by giving you McCoy right out of the gate. While he may be the second most common when it comes to rarity, he’s the best doctor in the game. Period. He can heal one character for most of their HP and give a massive defense boost to the entire party. But the best item in his kit is the “Tri-Ox Hypospray” which can be used first turn and boosts both attack and morale—which is ungodly powerful when paired with…

William Riker – DPS

Riker is a character you get early on (in the first episode or two) just by going through the story. Now, I don’t know if he is the best DPS in the game but until I find someone else who can attack all enemies turn one, he’s not leaving my party. And as he is a bit slower in the turn order than McCoy he can be buffed before his first turn so that he wipes out the entire enemy side in one shot. Even after that his normal attack can one-shot any individual target that isn’t a boss. And with the McCoy morale boost, he will often attack alongside the other characters when they attack.

Worf – Tank

Like McCoy, you get Worf within your first few minutes of the game. And while there are better tanks you can get in the gatcha—Captain Pike and Odo are arguably better and the Borg Queen certainly is—he got me through the whole story mode no trouble. He has a taunt skill which is incredibly useful given that McCoy can only heal one person at a time. He also has a counterattack skill (though I never unlocked it due to the fact I felt he was more useful spending his turns attacking). His ultimate skill (which can only be used from the third turn on), “Klingon Fury,” is a boss-killer of epic proportions—though you’d be surprised how few times battle lasted long enough for me to use it.

Geordi La Forge – Support

While you don’t get him in the story, Geordi can be unlocked by completing the “Event: Welcome Event” Operation series. (If the welcome event no longer exists by the time you pick up the game, then it might be time to break the “don’t use the gatcha” rule once Geordi appears in it. The good news is that the odds are you’ll get him within the first 10 pulls from the Engineer gatcha.)

Geordi is a beast. He can create cover for party members to hide behind—like, say, a taunting Worf. More than that, on the second turn he can create a shield that doubles or triples the entire party’s HP while also increasing morale (which in turn increases the likelihood of random team-up attacks occurring).

Of the four character’s I’ve recommended here, Geordi will likely be the last you unlock. While you’re working to unlock him, any other character can take his slot—the McCoy, Worf, Riker, trinity is solid all on its own. I personally kept Burnham and Data in that slot till I got Geordi—though feel free to experiment with any of the dozens of other characters you’ll get for free.

Equip Your Main Team with Gear

Each character can equip a phaser, padd, tricorder, and communicator—along with two nexus particles. These boost the characters’ various stats. They can be bought from the in-game shop (for a nominal fee). Make sure your main party has them equipped.

Level Up the Gear That Boosts the Abilities of Each Person

The equipment and nexus particles you obtain can be leveled up with items you gather from story missions and shuttle missions. However, don’t just upgrade at random. Each boosts different stats and not all characters use the same stats. For example, Riker attacks with the attack stat. Thus, leveling up his phaser is the most important as it boosts attack. Geordi, on the other hand, attacks with the tech stat. So for him, leveling up the tricorder is most important. The same basic rule of thumb holds true for Nexus particles—but hold off on upgrading these until epic or legendary ones appear in Quark’s shop.

Assign Your Bridge Crew

As you progress through the game, you will be able to assign people to various stations on the bridge. Each person on the bridge has some skill that buffs the entire away team when you do missions. Some of these will only work on certain types of characters (Klingons or Borg) while others work on all away team members. Mix and match to find the best support for your party. (Oh and don’t worry. Even if a character has a job on the bridge, they can still go on away missions without any loss in the overall stat bonuses.)

Send People on Shuttle Missions Whenever You Can

Not only does this level them up, it gets you rare items to level up skills and equipment.

Save Your Bio-gels For New Characters

Bio-gels are largely useless on your main party—they will level up quickly on their own. Save the gels for when you want to quickly level up a new character to put into your main party.

Character Rarity Doesn’t Matter, Skills Do

Kahn is the highest level of rarity. Riker is two levels of rarity lower. Can Kahn wipe out an entire opposing force on the first turn? Nope. I rest my case.

Getting Morale Up is Better than Giving Morale Down

While giving four morale downs causes and enemy to retreat from battle, it’s faster to just kill them. And as giving your landing party morale makes it so that they randomly do team up attacks, enemies drop even faster.

There Are Glitches, Tons of Glitches

While fun, this game is a buggy one—at least on the iPad I bought brand new last year. Sometimes I haven’t been able to select locations on the landing party map (I needed to sync a controller to select my next location). Other times, some of the graphics didn’t show up leaving me with white boxes instead of icons. My daily PVP rewards haven’t been awarded to me for the past several days—with the game acting like I’ve already gotten them. More than once, two menus have opened at once requiring me to restart the game to make them go away. And I can’t count the number of times I’ve wanted to equip an item and the game simply won’t bring up the menu to let me do so. The good news is that in battle, things have been glitch free. But I won’t pretend I haven’t been getting more and more frustrated with the bugs.

Star Trek: Legends was released for Apple Arcade on April 2, 2021.