Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Guide: Best Tips, Tricks And How To Unlock Every Character

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is now out. Nintendo’s Crossover fighter has 84 characters, over a hundred stages, over 900 tracks of music, and hundreds of items and character based assists and supports. This is without getting into a 25 hour long RPG like story mode thrown in on top, as well as the countless hours of fun that the multiplayer in the game will provide.

What I am trying to say is that there is a lot in this game—there’s no shame if you need help wrapping your head around it all. That’s where we come in with this guide.

BASIC TIPS AND TRICKS

If you’re new to Smash Bros., you need to pick a character with which you will learn the ropes. Pick Kirby. There is a reason Kirby is a popular character in Smash circles around newcomers, and the reason is he’s perfectly suited to people unfamiliar with the game’s mechanics. He gets a lot of aerial moves, which allows for recoveries, and his attacks hit hard. He’s a bit slow relative to some other characters in the game, but he’s perfect for starting out.

Do not get overwhelmed by the options. Sakurai is a madman, and this game is filled with a whole lot of options. Not just in terms of character and stages, but even in terms of setting your game up. Don’t get overwhelmed by it, don’t let it daunt you. If you’re starting out, stick to playing with Stock, and choose Battlefield as your stage. I also advise not turning items off, but setting their frequency to Low, which will reduce the madness a bit.

Work your way up against the CPU. You can start playing against random CPU opponents, but start setting them at CPU Level 1, and then bump the difficulty up a bit each time you win a game against them convincingly. This will help you get better at the game, and be better prepared for taking on human players.

Mess around. There are a lot of modes in the game—try Classic Mode, it’s like an Arcade Mode which is great to learn the ropes. World of Light is a 25 hour long adventure mode if you crave single player content. There’s a whole lot hiding here, poke around and don’t be afraid to experiment.

HOW TO UNLOCK CHARACTERS FASTER

There are 74 characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, but you only start out with 8 of them. These 8 are the original 8 characters in Super Smash Bros. On the Nintendo 64, and while they’re really varied and well balanced, they’re no good if you want to unlock your favorite character and play with them.

Unlocking 74 characters can take a while, so let’s talk about how you can speed this process up:

• The most basic way to do this is to play World of Light. World of Light is the game’s story mode, and it’s 25 hours long. Over the course of this mode, you unlock all characters in the game. Characters unlocked via World of Light are then available in every mode—but on the flip side, as noted already, this can take a while.
• Character unlocks occur once every 10 minutes if you just play the game. 
• You can manipulate this setting, however. There’s an easy way, just make sure to follow the steps below:
  1. Play a 10 minute game with an AI opponent. It does not matter whether you win or lose, but the game should be 10 minutes (it is recommended to make this a Timed game).
  2. A character unlock is initiated. Fight them. Again, whether or not you win is irrelevant (though if you do, congrats, you unlocked them)
  3. Quit the game, and restart it.
  4. Begin a new Versus Match with a second controller with 1 Stock. Use Player 2’s controller to immediately self destruct and end the game.
  5. A character unlock is initiated right away.
  6. Repeat the process