Marvel Rivals Starter Guide

A helpful guide for Marvel Rivals beginners to better understand the ins and outs of the game, including how the levels work, exploring different characters and play styles, and definitions of terms used throughout the game.

Overview

I’ve been playing a lot of Marvel Rivals (2024) lately, and one thing I’ve noticed is that it doesn’t do the greatest job of explaining much. There is a tutorial mode in the practice setting, but unlike most games, there doesn’t seem to be a glossary or explanation for a lot of the key components of the game, so I’ve picked up a lot through trial and error or looking up specific details for a better explanation. This is a compilation of the things I’ve learned and wished I’d known going into the game at the start. You start off by getting matched into a random level, and then you pick your character at the start of each match, so it’s really important to learn your character before you worry about actually accomplishing the mission of a level.

Helpful Tips

When you start out–especially if you aren’t used to this type of game–you don’t need to worry too much about the level objectives. Instead, try to focus on getting a feel for the various characters and narrow down a selection to focus on until you get the hang of things. There’s also a practice mode where you can play a standard match against bots, which is a lot less intense than playing against real people if you’re feeling intimidated by a real match while you’re still learning.

This game can be pretty flexible for different play styles, so the key is to figure out what works best for you. A character who others find tricky to play might click really well for you. There are also ways to modify things—I kept getting mixed up on the controls when I switched characters because of the way my brain works, so I ended up modifying the control assignments for a few characters within Settings to make them more consistent between characters according to my own instincts.

Characters

Notable Voice Actors include (listed in alphabetical order by last name): Laura Bailey as Black Widow, Troy Baker as Loki, Steve Blum as Venom and Wolverine, Ian James Corlett as Mister Fantastic (and NPC Bats the Ghost Dog), Yuri Lowenthal as Spider-Man, Nolan North as Rocket Raccoon, Liam O’Brien as Doctor Strange, Travis Willingham as Thor (and NPC Doctor Doom), Suzie Ywung as the Invisible Woman.

There are over 30 characters to choose from, with more planned to be added every so often. These characters are split up into three categories, Vanguard, Duelist, and Strategist. It’s a good idea to have a combination of these categories represented on your team.

Vanguard

Vanguards are like the tanks. They typically have about 3 or 4 times the amount of health as most of the other characters, and they each have either a shield or some way of healing themselves or otherwise extending their lives, so they’re able to take and dish out a lot of damage before they fall. As of this writing, this category includes: Bruce Banner/Hulk, Captain America, Doctor Strange, Groot, Magneto, Peni Parker, Thor, and Venom.

Duelists

Duelists are the standard fighters, designed to provide a lot of damage per second (DPS). They are the largest category in the game and have a variety of different skill sets included, such as melee, sniping, and flying abilities. This category currently consists of: Black Panther, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hela, Iron Fist, Iron Man, Magik, Mister Fantastic, Moon Knight, Namor, Psylocke, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Squirrel Girl, Star-Lord, Storm, The Punisher, Winter Soldier, and Wolverine.

Strategists

Strategists are support characters, with prominent abilities to heal or otherwise buff their team members. It’s advisable to have at least 1 Strategist at all times, and it doesn’t necessarily hurt to have as many as 3 on a team, as the majority of other characters have no way to heal themselves–and healing packs can be difficult to get to at times–so Strategists are often the lynchpin keeping their team alive. The current Strategists are: Adam Warlock, Cloak & Dagger, Invisible Woman, Jeff the Land Shark, Loki, Luna Snow, Mantis, and Rocket Raccoon.

Team-Ups

Characters are able to team up with certain other characters, which will be designated within their moves list. Generally, one character will provide a passive benefit to 1-2 other characters, who in most cases will trigger the benefit as needed, though this can vary based on the team-up. Some examples include Groot’s ability to carry either Rocket or Jeff on his shoulders, Venom temporarily imbuing Spider-Man or Peni Parker with symbiote tendrils, and Invisible Woman giving Mister Fantastic bonus health.

Proficiency

Each character has a Proficiency tab with 4 objectives to reach, which will level up the character the more you play them. The first objective is always to play as the character for 60 minutes. The middle two objectives depend on the class–all Vanguards must block a certain amount of damage and get a certain number of Kills/KOs*, all Duelists must deal a certain amount of damage and get a certain number of Final Hits, and all Strategists must heal a certain amount and get a certain number of combined Kills/KOs and Assists* [* see Definitions section for more info on these]. The last objective is to use a move unique to that individual character in a specific way. If you pull up your stats in the middle of the game using the touchpad (for Playstation), there will be some sort of stat provided towards the bottom right that pertains to this proficiency to give you an idea during the match of how well you’re hitting that goal. Every time you hit one of the goals–like playing for 60 minutes as that character–you get points, and then the objective resets, allowing you to complete it over and over again.

When you acquire enough points, you rank up and get rewards. Everyone starts at the Agent rank and then moves to Knight, Captain, Centurion, and Lord. Knight rank gives you a character-specific spray that you can assign to that character within their respective Cosmetics section under the Heroes tab for access during a mission, Captain and Centurion give you unique “KO” prompt icons, and Lord gives you a special avatar for that character.

Picking Your Characters

It’s a good idea to try out different characters because you might be surprised which ones click with you and which ones you think you’ll like, but don’t. When you’re first starting out, though, you might want to focus on one character that makes sense to you for a while until you get the hang of things, because switching too often could end up confusing you due to every character having their own set of abilities. In order to see what each character’s abilities are, you can either go to the Heroes tab on the main menu, select the character, and toggle to Abilities, or if you’re in a match, you can pull it up at any time by holding the up directional button (NOTE: this is for PlayStation). It helps to review the abilities before playing the character since there isn’t a lot of spare time to check them during a match, so that option is better used as a refresher rather than a way to learn the move-set. Plus, the main menu option will show an example of each ability, which can be especially beneficial for characters whose moves might not function in the way you expect or require extra steps.

Each character has at least one main ability that has no cooldown but usually requires a reload, 2-3 special abilities that generally need a cooldown, and an Ultimate ability. Some characters have additional options, such as passive abilities or manually triggered team-up abilities, and character sets like Bruce Banner & Hulk and Cloak & Dagger have different abilities depending on which version you’re playing as at the time. Characters will also be designated with a difficulty rating of 1-5, though this is fairly subjective, so don’t be afraid to try out some of the higher-rated characters even if you’re new, because sometimes they vibe well with your personal playstyle from the start. However, there are a few that are particularly easy for newbies, like Scarlet Witch, Cloak & Dagger, The Punisher, and Squirrel Girl. You also might want to get familiar with a few characters from each category so that you’re able to alternate as needed based on how the mission is going and what your team needs. I’d recommend getting comfortable with at least one Strategist just so you always at least have a fallback to provide healing if your opponents are particularly aggressive and/or your team doesn’t have any other Strategists.

The game doesn’t really spell out much, so don’t be afraid to mess around with it to learn more. For example, Loki’s Ultimate allows you to temporarily transform into any other player currently on the playing field, but it’s easy to miss at first that this also gives you that other character’s Ultimate automatically as well, which could change your strategy on who to pick.

Levels

If you’re playing Quick Mode or Competitive, each round you play is one of three types of levels, randomly assigned, where you’ll team up with six players against an opposing team of six. Within these three level types, there are also a handful of location possibilities, but I won’t go into that part since they’re pretty straightforward, so long as you know what you’re supposed to do for each level type. Regardless of which type of level you’re assigned, the main mission is to get your team to trigger a certain area and to keep the enemy players away from it, though this takes different forms based on the specific level. Each level has spawn rooms where players will return to after they die and wait a 10-second cooldown unless they are revived by certain characters.

Convoy

For Convoy levels, there is a vehicle of some sort–such as a goat-drawn cart in Yggdrasil–which you and your team will either have to escort to a certain point or push back the escorting team. Which side you’re on is random, but it will be stated at the start. An easy way to tell if you missed it is if you’re immediately released from the opening spawn room, which indicates you’re on the team stopping the vehicle, or if you have to wait a while for the doors to open, which indicates you’re on the team escorting the vehicle. In Quick Match, you do this objective once, but in Competitive mode, you’ll switch sides and replay the same map from the opposite direction. In other words, if you’re on the escorting team in the first match, you’ll be on the opposing team the second time around, and vice versa.

The escorting team will always start off near the cart, while the opposing team will start off towards the goal, so as the mission progresses, the time it takes to return to the fight after dying is shorter for the escorting team at first but grows longer as they get closer to the goal, while the opposing team can take some time getting back to the fight at the start but will gradually take less and less time as the vehicle moves closer. This helps to balance out the needs of the team based on the mission progress. There are certain checkpoints along the path that, if reached, will give the escorting team extra time–at which point the spawn rooms for both teams shift to new locations. If the escorting team makes it all the way to the end, they win, but if they don’t make it by a certain timeframe, the opposing team wins.

In order to move the vehicle, the escorting team will need to have at least one person near the cart, and the more players they have surrounding it, the faster it will go. However, if the opposing team is also surrounding the cart, they can stop the progress, and even push it back if there are no escorting team players around. For example, if you’re on the escorting team and you’re able to take out several of the opposing team members in a short period of time and then group together around the cart, it can zoom through the area while the opposing team members make the long trek back, but if too many of your team die or get pushed back, the opposing team can reverse your progress and start moving the cart away from the next checkpoint or final goal. But if your team dominates the playing field so much that you all push forward and leave the vehicle behind, it won’t move as fast or could even stop altogether if no one stays back with it, so don’t forget to check in with the cart even if you’re doing well in general. Sometimes this part can be forgotten in the chaos of facing off against your opponents and trying to stay alive, but no matter how well or poorly your team is doing as a whole, the deciding factor of the mission is whether or not you successfully escorted or stopped the vehicle.

Domination

Domination matches mean there is a designated area in the middle of the map that both teams fight over for control. If one team is in the designated area long enough without the other team in the boundaries, they gain control, which triggers a progress bar to start, and if they can make it to 100% on the progress bar, they win that match. Control can change at any time, but once one team has control, they don’t need to stay in the area to retain control–it only shifts once the other team meets the requirements. Still, it’s best to keep one person in the area, or at least have eyes on the area, if your team has control and pushes the main fight back toward the enemy spawn room, because all it takes is one enemy player to sneak around to the area and seize control if no one notices. These levels are best two out of three, so there will always be at least two matches in a row of this type, and if you lose the first match, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t pull back a win in the long run.

Convergence

Convergences are sort of a mixture between the other two, or a convoy with extra steps. Like a convoy level, there is something one team needs to escort and the other will need to stop them. In this case, though, the escorting team will first need to get to a certain area and win control of it before the vehicle unlocks. It’s entirely possible that the opposing team could stop the escorting team before they can even get the vehicle unlocked, ending the match early, but if the escorting team unlocks the vehicle, they have a shorter journey to the goal line and fewer checkpoints compared to the convoy levels.

Definitions

Kills/KOs

There are two ways you can rack up Kills per game. One is getting the final hit, which will be indicated by a “KO” icon on the side of your screen, but you’ll also get credit in that column of the stats if you helped contribute to the player’s death by damaging them, even if you didn’t deal the final blow. These types of Kills have a more subtle icon, but it means that more than one player can get credit for a single Kill.

Assists

Since damaging an enemy can give you credit for a Kill, Assists instead indicates that you contributed to a player’s death in some other way, whether it’s healing/keeping alive your teammate while they attack the opponent or dealing some sort of status effect on the opponent that doesn’t hurt them, such as stunning or slowing them to give your teammates an advantage they need to finish them off. Strategists are the most likely to rack up Assists, but there are some other characters in other categories that can get Assists as well, such as if Hawkeye uses a concussive arrow. These will be indicated by a clasped hand icon.

MVP/SVP

At the end of each game, there is a Most Valuable Player (MVP) on the winning team and a Secondary Valuable Player (SVP) on the losing team. These are the players who are deemed to have performed the best through a combination of Kills, Assists, and other things like Damage Blocked.

Ace

There are two different uses of Ace in the game. If it pops up on your screen in the middle of a match, it means the entire opposing team has been killed in a short amount of time, and the announcer will also point out that your team got them all.

If you pull up your stats during the match, which can be done at any time by holding down the touch-pad button (NOTE: again, this is PlayStation specific) and see one of the players has an “Ace” indicator on their avatar, it means they are currently the best performer and the most likely to be MVP/SVP if the match were to end at this moment. This designation can change throughout the match.

Overtime

Overtime kicks in when the match is about to end–either the clock is running out in Convoy or Convergence, or one team is at 99% in Domination–but both teams are in the mission area. This allows the losing team one last shot at turning things around. If the winning team is able to kill or push back the losing team completely out of the mission area, they win, but if the losing team is able to gain control of the mission area, they could potentially win if they are able to meet the objective before losing control.

Seasons

Seasons are story arcs that last for a specific amount of time and introduce new characters, maps, and game features. The initial season was Season 0: Dooms’ Rise, which lasted from 12/6/2024 to 1/10/2025. From 1/10/2025 to 4/11/2025, the active story is Season 1: Eternal Night Falls.

Sprays

Sprays are a signature way of tagging the ground or walls. They primarily depict specific characters or seasons, but there are a couple that are more general.

Additional Info

Cues

There are certain cues that can help alert you to things throughout the match. The announcer gives constant updates on what needs to be done or how well the teams are doing to make it easy to keep track.

If an opponent triggers an Ultimate ability, they say a specific phrase loudly to warn you and your teammates of the danger, but if someone on your own team triggers their Ultimate, they use a different phrase at a quieter volume. This helps differentiate between the two so that you don’t panic unnecessarily when the attack is coming from your side. For example, if Squirrel Girl does her Ultimate, she’ll yell, “Squirrel Stampede!” if she’s on the opposing team, but she’ll exclaim, “My friends are here!” if she’s a teammate. If a Strategist is hurt, even if it’s not by much, they’ll say a key phrase to get their teammate’s attention in case they’re being ambushed by the enemy.

Additionally, an opponent’s Ultimate will generally be indicated with an exclamation mark icon to help you know where it is located–even if it’s blocked from view–to help you avoid it if possible.

Missions and Achievements

In addition to individual character proficiency, there are also more generic missions that unlock from time to time. Some are daily, and some are challenges that are added from time to time. These could be things like completing 3 matches or accomplishing a certain number of Assists or Kills. Finishing these missions gives you points to spend on costumes, sprays, and other items.

If you don’t like one or more of the mission objectives, you can use a Refresh to change it to something else. You get up to 3 Refreshes at a time, which will replenish after a set amount of time.

There is also an Achievements tab under your profile that has a variety of objectives in different categories that are available from the start and can only be completed once. This gives an incentive to play as different characters since some of the objectives are character-specific.

Highlights and History

At the end of each match, you can see the Highlight for any member of your team, including yourself, by clicking on their character. The highlight is that player’s best moment in the entire match. You can also view the stats for both teams from this page the same way you would during the match. If you want to look back on the stats for prior matches, there is a History tab within your profile, and it will also let you replay a video of the entire match, though there doesn’t appear to be a way to view only the Highlights from this tab.

And there you have it! Let us know on our Discord if you’re also enjoying playing Marvel Rivals.

Check Us Out On Patreon

Love Nerd Union? Consider supporting us over on Patreon. You’ll get access to early access articles, commercial-free video essays, online discussions and more. Plus, you will be directly responsible for supporting journalism in a field that’s currently being overwhelmed by clickbait focused sites. Supporting us keeps the lights on but it also sets a standard to sites in our field about fair wage practices, citing sources, debunking unconfirmed sources, and helps us investigate stories better.

About Author