All Sections

Splatoon 2 (Nintendo Switch) Tips and Tricks: Getting started

Whether you’re planning on diving back into Inkopolis or this is your first time in the big city, there’s plenty to see, do and splat around town. Here are a few helpful hints to ensure that your inkling is ready to rumble from the get-go.

Read next: Nintendo Switch Review

The race to level 4

A simple note to start but once you’ve dropped into Inkopolis Square for the first time head straight for the base of Deca Tower to start gaining experience.

Aside from the fact that you’ll be diving into the game’s bread and butter (with online play and its most prominent game type: Turf War), the sooner your inkling advances past level four (which you should be able to reach after less than ten matches) the sooner you can start customising their outfits and weapons.

Money, money, money

Splatoon 2 has not one, but three different forms of currency that you can accrue and spend within different places throughout the game. Here’s a rundown of where you’ll find each one and what they do.

Power Eggs

The most abundant form of currency in the world of Splatoon 2 are orange orbs that look like soccer ball-sized pieces of roe called Power Eggs. You’ll accrue them by participating in almost any event within both the single-player campaign and multiplayer modes, and they can be spent on new shoes, tops, headgear and most importantly, new weapons.

Sardinum

These sardine-shaped metal extrusions serve as the primary means of souping up your ink-fueled arsenal and can be found throughout the single-player campaign (aka Hero Mode). Hero Mode’s hub-and-spoke level structure features a total of 37 Sardinium pieces which you can find be simply exploring as well as by defeating the five bosses that you’ll encounter along the way.

You can spend Sardinium at Sheldon’s Ammo Knight Enhancifier – the vending machine at Tentakeel Outpost near the training dummies where Marie first speaks to you.

Food Tickets

Turn around when you first enter Inkopolis Square and you’ll spot a food truck manned (prawned?) by Crusty Sean. Aside from offering up terrible crustacean-related puns, he also serves up tasty-looking food and drinks items that when consumed, boost the various abilities and stats tied to your inkling.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t take cash but rather, tickets, which can only be collected one of two ways. One method is to make sure that you break any crates and defeat enemies that you encounter throughout Hero Mode. Most of the time you’ll only find humble Power Eggs but occasionally you’ll land yourself a ticket.

The other method involves claiming the bonuses you rack up when playing the Salmon Run game mode; accessible by heading to the Grizzco office to the left of the Deca Tower entrance. Once you’ve accumulated a decent enough bonus this way, head to the window on the far left to request a bonus, which might include Food Tickets.

Hero Weapons in online multiplayer

Throughout Hero Mode arms specialist (as opposed to ARMS) Sheldon will loan you some of the game’s beefier ink-powered armaments, dubbed ‘Hero Weapons’ so that he can carry out research for him as you battle your way through the campaign. By lair 22 you will have unlocked all of the Hero variants of the game’s weapons but they’ll only be usable within the confines of Hero Mode.

Bringing your enhanced ink into online play requires extra effort. With the exception of lairs where the game forces you to use a specific weapon, you have to replay the entirety of Hero Mode with each individual Hero Weapon that you wish to unlock. Once you’ve completed Hero Mode again Sheldon will state that his research for your chosen pain-maker is ‘complete,’ after which you’ll be able to bring it into online multiplayer matches with you.

Total Turf War domination

Turf Wars are the principle multiplayer game type in Splatoon 2 so there are a few fundamentals worth locking down to ensure that your time spent inking up each stage is well utilised.

Learning the maps

If you want to really get competitive, just as any serious LoL, Overwatch, CoD or CounterStrike player will tell you, learning the layout of each map is the key to success. Some maps don’t grant access to the enemy team’s starting area, cutting you off from a great swathe of potentially inkable space, whilst otherwise play with levels far more readily than others, offering up potential vantage points for sniping, bombs or special weapons’ fire.

Ignoring enemies

The goal of Turf War is to cover as much of the ground as possible with your team’s coloured ink, rather than blasting away your adversaries, as is so often the case where guns and multiplayer games are concerned.

Instead, focus on covering as much ground with your inky weapon of choice as possible, as the path you forge will serve as the jumping off point for your teammates, along with providing an easy route to and from your spawn into battle.

Escaping the Lobby early

If ever you find yourself stuck waiting for that fifth, sixth or even seventh player to join in on Splatoon 2’s online experience, whilst there’s no ‘exit’ button, there is a way to push it into being, sort of.

Tapping out of Splatoon 2 (without closing it) by pressing the ‘home’ button and leaving it alone long enough will cause the game to ‘lose connection’ with its host, meaning you’ll be kicked out of the lobby, again free to find a new game type or explore the square’s biggest sights some more.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *