Coin Master Guide

Introduction

You’ve probably seen all the ads relating to Coin Master every time you go on Youtube or read some article online, but how many of you have actually gone and tried the game? Like a lot of other games nowadays, the simplicity of spinning a virtual slot machine belies a deeper, more complex mechanism that requires proper strategic thinking and rationalization in order to succeed. Well, as for how much you would actually need to think when playing Coin Master is wholly up to your personal experience, but this guide is meant to help you turn this seemingly brain-dead game into an even more passive experience. 

As you might have already guessed, the key gameplay element of Coin Master revolves around the slot machine mechanic. Every day, you get to spin the wheel a select number of times and gain action cards, which you can use to either gain loot, a chance to attack and raid other villages, as well as shields to protect your own. The goal here is to build your little Viking village into the strongest and richest one out there, and the way to do that is by consistently playing the slot machine, getting resources to develop your own village, and raiding weaker villages. For those of you who are completionists, there is also a collectible mechanic where you can aim to get as many card sets as possible.

Villages and Resources 

As you begin your journey into Coin Master, you will first see an empty plot of land. This is your village, and your primary objective in the game should be to develop it as best you can. Each village has a certain number of structures which you will be able to build and upgrade. The level of each structure is indicated by the number of stars, and once you have amassed enough of them, you will be able to move to the next island, where your next village will be located. 

Coins are the primary resource in this game, and you will likely use them most often to buy the upgrades for your village’s structures. You can earn it through various ways, the two most notable being attacks and raids.

Get to Know the Slot Machine Icons 

When you pull the slot machine for the first time, you will see a number of different icons. Each of these carry a specific function and we will go into what they do as well as how you can use them to your advantage. Here are some of the most notable icons you will encounter and what each of them do. 

The Hammer indicates an attack opportunity. This means that you can use this to attack other villages, which will be either those belonging to NPCs or your friends’ if you’re into multiplayer. Carrying out a successful attack will net you coins, and you will want as many of them as you can possibly get to develop your village quickly. Furthermore, if the person you’re attacking doesn’t have any Shields, you will be able to impede their progress as the structure you choose to attack will have its level downgraded by one. This means that the other person would have to spend resources to level it back up again. Do bear in mind that if your village is attacked by another player, you will experience some downtime before you can launch an attack of your own. This is because your village will need to first recover in order to go on an offensive.

Shields should be simple enough to understand; they guard and protect your village for a single turn. Shields don’t stop another player from attacking you, but it does keep them from destroying your structures, which will regress the overall development of your village. Players who attack someone with Shields active will also only earn a much smaller amount of coins than if they were to attack someone without them. You will only be able to have a maximum of 3 Shields at one time, and they will be automatically consumed each time another player chooses to attack you. While this does make it a little harder to strategize your actions, there are ways to indirectly conserve your Shields. More on that later on. 

As mentioned before, Shields help you suffer smaller losses. You should also note that the only way to reduce a Shield count is by attacking the village, so if you have a deeper hand at play, brute forcing your way through may be the path to take. 

The Pig’s Face is a fairly interesting mechanic compared to the rest of the options at your disposal. What it essentially does is that it allows you to steal coins from another village with rather significant returns. This village will either belong to a random NPC or a random player you’ve encountered with a substantial amount of coins in hand. There aren’t any noticeable risks involved (except maybe the animosity of the person you’re stealing from), it’s just relatively rare to even come across this option in the first place. So if you do manage to steal a sizable amount of coins from someone else, you can potentially force them into becoming the poorest player in the game. Whether it’s for spite (because it’s totally okay to be petty) or if you just want to mitigate your losses from failing to defend your village against an attack, the Pig’s Face is the perfect option to get some huge rewards with fairly little, if not totally negligible, risk. 

One thing about the Pig’s Face icon however, is that you will have only a certain number of chances to steal coins. As such, it’s imperative that you do not panic and tap blindly on the screen. You will be shown a total of 4 spots to dig from, with 1 of them holding a huge stash of coins, 2 others with a slightly smaller amount, and the last one being empty. It’s largely a game of chance, as with all the other aspects of this game. However, there are numerous ways you can use to make sure you get the maximum every time. More about this in a bit.

Aside from the icons listed above, you can also get additional spins, as well as coins. The former requires you to get the Energy icon 3 times in a row, but the latter will be awarded to you just by spinning the slot machine. The number of coins you get will largely be determined by the combination on the slot machine, with 3 Coin icons in a row netting you the biggest amount.

Spin Mechanics 

You will get 5 spins every hour, which caps out at 50. However, the spins do continue to accumulate past that, so nothing gets wasted. It’s just not explicitly displayed. There are various ways to get extra spins in the game, the most prominent being just buying them from the shop. However, if you are an F2P enthusiast, there are other methods you can employ as well. 

Lastly, it is advisable to check how many coins you actually have before you spin the slot machine. This is because your own village is just as likely to be attacked each time you attack another person’s village, provided you don’t have any shields up. With no coins at your disposal, you will find yourself locked into a particular village with no way to proceed. Naturally, we want to avoid that, and as such, it is wise to always check your available coins before doing anything else.

Maximizing Progress for F2P or Low-Tier Spenders 

Linking to your Social Media Account 

Coin Master at its core is a F2P game, meaning you can actually progress in the game without having to spend any actual money. The downside to that is your progress will be much slower compared to players who do financially invest in the game. To even the odds a little, you can choose to link your social media account such as Facebook to the game. This not only acts as your save data, keeping your progress intact if you ever lose your account for whatever reason, it also comes with many perks such as coins and extra spins. 

But there’s more. If you enjoy playing socially, connecting to Facebook will also help to facilitate a more convenient way of communication to more experienced players through Facebook groups, which you can use to trade card sets with to complete a collection quickly. You can also send gifts such as coins and spins to each other, which will help speed up your progress in-game.

How to Buy Chests 

For those of you who don’t mind parting with a few bucks, you may also consider visiting the in-game store to buy chests. Chests unlock cards, which we have mentioned is important for getting rewards. So if you’re in need of that specific card to get the Rhino, or even if you’re out for a few extra spins, this may be the option for you. You can also get chests through Raids, but the chances of that happening are abysmally low.

There are 3 types of chests: Wooden, Golden and Magical, arranged in that order of ascending cost. A more expensive chest will net you more cards, thus helping you complete a set much quicker. The chests will also gradually become more expensive as you level up, so we suggest spending while you’re still under level 50. Try getting the Wooden ones first, since they’re the cheapest option. Once you start getting duplicates, you can shift your focus towards more expensive chests, or go on Facebook to see if anyone is willing to trade. 

There are certain “tactics” you can find online vis-a-vis buying chests if you scour hard enough. There are a number of users who have claimed that they don’t work, while others say they do, so take it with a grain of salt. What it is is essentially you will be keeping track of your chest contents in an attempt to calculate your overall ‘luck’ probability. For example, if the last card from the last chest you opened was only a 1-2 star card, it won’t be likely for you to get good cards on the next draw, so you may want to opt for the Wooden chest in order to cut your losses. In contrast, if your last card was a high rarity card, you could buy the Magical chest, since the algorithm is seemingly in your favor for the time being. Again, we wouldn’t call this a cheat or anything like that, since it doesn’t look like it works for everyone, so don’t take it too seriously.

In an ideal situation, you should be buying chests most often during the Cards Boom events, which net you more cards per chest. Be sure to keep an eye out for them.

Staying Ahead of the Competition

So now that you’ve gotten your feet into Coin Master, what can you actually do to stay ahead of the rat race? Well, you can start by saving your spins. Initially, you will be allowed to make 1x or 3x spins, which essentially increases the stakes as well as the rewards in exchange for spin attempts. Once you’ve crossed the 200 spin mark, you will be able to make 5x bets. There will be subsequent increases as you make more spins, which tops off at 50x.

While you may be inclined to think that the higher the stakes, the more significant your losses will be. And you’re not wrong. That’s why we suggest you use this Super Betting feature conservatively. If you’re comfortable with it, maybe stick to the 25x bets instead. A single win from that will be more than enough to make up for any losses you may have sustained.

The reason why we’re advocating for you to save your spins is because you won’t necessarily see any substantial progress by doing single spins. With a large spin capacity at your disposal, you can likely jump entire levels in a single playthrough than if you were to grind endlessly minute after minute. This, in our opinion, is a much better use of time and is a more efficient way to play.

Aside from the spins, you can also enhance your gameplay with the help of Pets. Each Pet has a different utility, and you can only have one active at any one time. You can obtain Pets by leveling up, but sometimes you may also need to complete a card collection set. The most notable Pets include:

Rhino – helps defend your village from an attack when you don’t have any shields

Tiger – bolsters your attacks on other villages, and gives you increased rewards, even against villages protected by a shield

Foxy – digs up the fourth hole in a raid, ensuring you get a perfect raid each time

As you use your Pets more frequently, they become more and more proficient at their jobs, in turn giving you a bigger advantage as time progresses. Do bear in mind that for your Pet to be active, it needs to be fed. There are a few ways to get Pet food. You can opt to wait for the game to give you one free serving every day, but that isn’t the most sustainable method, as your Pet will very likely go hungry before that. That said, you can stave off the effects of hunger by making your Pet go dormant whenever you’re out of food. Aside from that, your only real option is by either purchasing it from the store, or spamming events that reward Pet food. You technically can get them from the slot machine as well, but we wouldn’t count on that happening too frequently.

Tips and Tricks

Getting Extra Chances to Spin the Slot Machine

Each day, you will get a total of 5 chances to spin the slot machine, which may be a little lacking for some of you. But fret not. There is a way to get free spins indefinitely. Here are the steps you will need to follow:

Soon as you open the game, kill it by restarting your phone or closing it through the task manager.

Go to your time and date settings and advance the clock by one day. Say you’re playing the game on Monday, just move the clock forward to Tuesday.

You have now gotten an additional 5 spins for free.

Using this method, you can continuously skip ahead day after day for more spins each time. So if you feel as though you need some extra spins, we encourage you to try this out.

Be persistent, but also opportunistic

To properly optimize your gameplay, you want to take advantage of everything the game has to offer. This means that you should be aiming to get your Daily Bonus as soon as you login each day, and also check all the gifts you received from friends since you last logged out.

Aside from that, you also want to be strategic with the events you actively take part in. Not every event will be equally rewarding, but fortunately they all come in droves. Be sure to check the requirements for each event and determine for yourself whether it’s worth making an effort to complete them before you go out of your way to do them.

Spend big

We’ve taught you the importance of getting coins, but what’s just as important is using them up. See, when you have a lot of coins at your disposal, you are very likely to be selected for raids, and when another player attacks you, they have more to gain as well. So instead of having all that coin saved up just to be stolen away, it would probably be in your best interest to use as much of it as you can right away. You can use it to upgrade your village, or even to buy chests. Point is, don’t save if you don’t want to have a giant bullseye painted on your back.

The 2-finger trick

Now, if you haven’t unlocked Foxy yet, or don’t have the capacity to activate it for a raid, there is still one trick you can do to get all the loot. This is the notorious 2-finger trick, which works when you’ve used up 2 of the 3 digging chances and were able to get treasure on both of them. At this point, with one remaining chance at your disposal and 2 spots to choose from, the odds of you finding treasure a third time become 50-50. To use the 2-finger trick, simply tap and hold down on both spots at the same time. This will glitch the system into digging out the hole that contains the treasure, earning you a perfect raid in return. Of course, for this to work, your fingers have to tap both holes at the exact same time, and you will also need to have succeeded in your first 2 digging attempts.

Know Thy Enemy

If you’re ever given the option to attack someone else, there is one tip you can use to determine if you should launch an attack on them or not, and that’s to check if they have a lot of burning buildings. As you should already know by now, attacking someone who has Shields active isn’t exactly the most rewarding endeavor. That is why your ideal opponent should be someone who is vulnerable and unprotected. Someone who is actively deterring attacks will likely have their villages in pristine shape and condition, while someone who doesn’t have any Shields would probably have suffered consecutive attacks and have their village structures on fire. Ruthless as it may sound, this is how you weed out potential targets, and if you don’t mind losing a few friendships, go ahead and hit the final nail on the coffin.