Crush Them All (CTA): Guide & Tips
Hi crushers! The Computer Lounge team is pleased to offer you this Crush Them All guide, together with some suggestions from the veterans (or shall we say geeks ? ?).
Crush Them All is a tactical RPG, as well as a formidable idle, that will offer you several game modes, including both PvP (player versus player) and PvE (player versus environment).
Top tip: try using the Table of Contents on the left (top left on mobile) if you are looking for a specific paragraph!
1.0 Staging
Let's begin this Crush Them All guide by talking about the first game mode you and your Staging Team will come across: there are 10000 stages in this mode, with related bosses that guard every 50th stage of a serie, and whose strenght will progress with the increasing stage number.
That's not all!
From stage 600 on, the bosses you'll encounter every 100 stages will become vulnerable to only one element at once.
Said element will be, in order: water, earth, fire, light, dark, then again water, earth, fire... and so on...
| STAGE | VULNERABLE TO THE ELEMENT | |
| 600 | Water |  |
| 700 | Earth |  |
| 800 | Fire |  |
| 900 | Light |  |
| 1000 | Dark |  |
In this mode, your priority is to proceed quickly and smoothly. So...
A Rogue is what you are looking for! ?
Heroes with this Job (like our friend Luka) are really fast runners and can dodge attacks. They will give you twice as more gold for each enemy defeated and well... they're basically born for this mode! (Let's say that in PvP modes, they are not really THAT useful...) ?
Best early Staging Team: we recommend you to choose only one rogue for each element, also because too many heroes in this team might only get in the way. Generally, it's preferred to choose common ones to start with, as it makes it easier to find medals needed for their Evolution (see paragraph 1.3: Stars of the Crush Them All Guide).
If you however want to proceed without a Rogue, we suggest as an alternative to go for the related element: Sprout (earth), Tiny Dragon (fire), Bat (dark).
This Crush Them All guide suggested Staging Team: Luka, Pinky, Monki King, Hikari, Kasumi.
1.1 Prims and Ascension
In this Crush Them All guide we'll explain how to stage properly in the game.
To effectively deal with staging it may not be sufficient to have a strong team of rogues, as much "hardened" as they can be!
To progress, you will not only have to increase the heroes' level (spending gold coins mainly earned from the Village), but you'll have to take care of the hero's Prism Level too!
Ascending is the best way to earn prisms to invest on your heroes. You can ascend from the 130th** stage** and the Prism Level will affect your Daily Dungeons too (see tab in paragraph 1.4: Artifacts of of the Crush Them All Guide).
After Ascending, you have the chance to gain one of the sixteen rewards from the Ascension wheel. Ascend closer to your highest stage to unlock more rewards in the wheel!
Which heroes shall I invest prisms on?
Give your prisms to your Staging Team heroes only.
We suggest to start by investing all your prisms on Luka until Prism Lv. +700, then move your attention on your earth hero until +800, then on your fire hero until +900, light one to +1000, dark one to +1100 and so forth, by distancing each of them by 100 prisms.
The 100 prisms gap however, is a merely indicative figure and you will be able to set the optimum gap for every situation, with a bit of playing experience!
1.2 Personal Library
As you may have noticed, within the Ascending menu you can also check how many prisms you need to reach the next Player level and how much Orbs you'll earn after that.
Investing Orbs will give you very important bonuses to choose in accordance with your game style, which are to be added on top of the ones already provided by the Guild Library (see paragraph 2.0: Guild of this Crush Them All Guide).
1.3 Stars (Evolution and Awakening)
Other power indicators of our heroes are the yellow and purple stars, with the number of the former related to their Evolution and the latter to their Awakening.
- Evolution: x2 all stats effect. Evolve your heroes to 2-Stars to unlock the SP2, to 3- Stars to unlock the Ultimate and to 4-Stars to unlock the Aura (only Rare and Epic heroes).
• You can get medals from:
- Guild: Shop and by requesting to your mates
- Daily Dungeons (see paragraph 3.0 of the Crush Them All guide)
- Chests
- Awakening: x1.5 all stats effect. The number of these stars can't exceed those of the Evolution ones.
• To awaken you heroes you need Star Shard (Arena reward) and primary resources (Expeditions rewards).
Beginners shall start by giving their first 3 yellow stars to the five Staging Team heroes.
The classic approach ? then would imply to concetrate your efforts on a common hero (Spike, Skeleton Giant or Bat) so as not to scatter medals and resources around, at least initially. In any case... every Sunday is EPIC! Meaning that you will ALWAYS request medals for Rare or Epic heroes.
Anyway, this is just one of the many possible strategies, as such it's not mandatory, and it's not necessarily the best. A good alternative is in fact choosing to distribute your medals evenly among your heroes, in order to build more powerful Blitz teams (and, in this case, you'll have to take your time to evolve your heroes over the 3-Star so as not to have them all scattered among the Blitz levels).
The amazing thing of these games is maybe just that! Probably, no strategy is certifiable as the best one of all! It will be up to the player to decide which will be the way to go for him/her! ?
1.4 Artifacts
Artifacts will increase heroes' or Village stats. They are an absolute must and we suggest you to purchase at least four of these as to:
- Increase the Atk for all heroes
- Increase the Health for all heroes
- Reduce the Village production duration
- Reduce the cost to updgrade the Village
The artifacts, just like prisms, will also influence the Daily Dungeons, but this time will affect the Slay Bosses Events too (see paragraph 2.0: Guild in the Crush Them All Guide)!
| ARENA AND BLITZ | EVENT BOSSES | DUNGEONS | STAGING | ||
 | HERO STARS | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
 | RUNES | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
 | ARTIFACTS | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
 | PRISMS | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
 | GOLD LEVEL | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
1.5 Runes and Weapons
Runes are very precious items that you can bind to an hero's weapon to increase some of his personal stats.
There are several families and types of runes, contained in different Rune Chests, which are available during the differents week days in the Blitz Shop and in the Guild War Shop, as illustrated in the following table.
Click to enlarge
* Unique skill (ie. Freeze)/passive (ie. Anti Knock-back): you can check by the Hero Card you can open by selecting the related hero in the Collection
* Voodo Chest: only existed in the beta, whose runes have today converged in the Rune Chest and in the Epic Rune Chest (containing all the runes and available everyday in the Heroes Shop)
* Frenzy: hero's x2 attack and speed temporary status
All runes have one primary stat and a variable secondary stat number from 1 to 4. They also have:
- A Star number (from 1 to 6, that can't be changed) which will increase the primary stat and the slot capacity for secondary stats.
- A level that you can updgrade using Rune Dust, to increase the related stats and to unlock new ones.
The player will be required a certain Weapon level in order to use a rune on it, and that will depend on the rune Star Level (all detailed in the table below). To increase the weapon level, we'll need Weapon Catalysts and primary resources.
You may obtain:
- Weapon Catalysts: from Blitz and Expeditions or as Daily Challenges rewards
- Primary resources (relics and gems): from Expeditions
- Rune Dust: breaking Runes, from Expeditions, as Ascension wheel and challenges (daily and Guild) and by the Guild War Shop
We suggest you to equip runes of the same family in a set of 3 as to unlock the bonus set. The first set is normally given to a hero to increase his stats according to his role (ie: Damage runes to a dps, Vitality runes to a tank etc.) or to make up for his/her weak points you may have noticed during a battle.
You need Chisels (you can find through Expeditions) to unbind 3⭐+ runes from a weapon.
You will choose the following sets in accordance with the hero's role and the team strategy you have chosen, but most importantly, according to the experience you'll have gained in the meantime! ?
| STATS | RESOURCES | CATALYSTS | |||||
| Weapon level | Runes slots | Max rune star | Visual updgrade | Relics and Gems | Common | Rare | Epic |
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | - | - | - | - |
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 2 | - | - |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 50 | 4 | - | - |
| 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 200 | 8 | 1 | - |
| 5 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 600 | 16 | 2 | |
| 6 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1500 | 32 | 4 | 1 |
| 7 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 2500 | 64 | 8 | 3 |
| 8 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 3500 | 128 | 16 | 4 |
| 9 | 9 | 6 | 3 | 5000 | 256 | 32 | 8 |
| Tot | - | - | - | 13360 | 510 | 63 | 15 |
2.0 Guild: Slay Bosses and Guild Wars
CTA also offers the ability to become associate of a Guild, as long as the participants respect the social distancing regulations due to the Coronavirus and not form gatherings larger than 30 members. ✋?
Everyone can create a Guild from the first ascension, at the cost of 90 flooz.
However we suggest you to wait until you have the necessary experience before leading a Guild.
Guilds also offer you a Library, on top of your personal one, where you can invest the Guild Orbs you have obtained. There are two different Research Trees (Slayer and Rogue) that only a guild admin (R4+) can modify.
If you are in a Guild you may join:
• Slay Bosses Event: players will fight against five different bosses which will ciclically alternate in each event season. At the beginning of every season, players will find a Crusher Chest in the Heroes Shop. This will contain the seasonal Crusher (a hero with x3 ATK, HP and DEF stats bonus in the event) and other heroes which are particularly effective against the same boss.
We suggest to lower the boss level if it's too strong for you and to make sure that you've selected a suitable team for the battle (using the "Team 1" button, on the left of "Battle") to avoid using your Staging Team.
Remember to listen the Grand Master's (Guild leader) suggestions as well.
• Guild Wars: in this mode every Guild has a Kingdom with its own Castle and six Forts (every Fort will give a 50% buff, to a Job or to an Element). There will be three phases: Planning, Fort Capture and Castle Attack. In all cases, rule number one for a novice is to listen to the Guild Master's directions.
During the planning, the Master will probably ask the members to:
- Focus on defending the Forts that will guarantee a double buff (Job + Element) to the heroes, during the final phase of the Castle Attack
- Avoid occupying important Forts spaces with weak teams and to reserve them to stronger guild members instead
And also, during the offensive phases:
- To prefer attacks to empty spaces rather than a defeat
- To Use all your available attacks, no matter what
Event Bosses and Crushers Chests List
| BOSS | CRUSHER | EPIC | RARE | RARE | RARE | RARE | |
 | FROSTWING |  Groovine |  Thorn |  Dark Wolf |  Oceana |  Robin Hood |  Krouki |
 | ASTROLAB |  Sorrow |  Scud |  Rufus | Krouki |  Monki Mortar |  Dark Hunter |
 | UNDEAD SAMURAI |  Furiosa |  Leaf Blade |  Dark Knight |  Gold Knight |  Magmus |  Chaos |
 | TWIN FACE |  Seraph |  Alda |  Kage | Dark Hunter |  Arcana |  Neko |
 | MAD KING |  Atlantus |  Onyx |  Pirato | Rufus |  Spyro |  Joan of Arc |
 | GUN LORD |  One Eye |  Kasumi |  Kasai |  Jasmine | Kage |  Luka |
3.0 PvE Modes: Dungeons and Expeditions
Daily Dungeons: that's first available PvE mode, very useful if you want to farm resources (needed to purchase artifacts) and medals (to evolve your heroes).
You'll receive a Dungeon Ticket every 20 minutes, you can accumulate up to an initial maximum of 3 (that may be increased in the personal/guild Library). From dungeon 16 on, you'll get 2 hero medals for each ticket.
Tip: stockpile some bonus Dungeon Ticket (obtained from the Ascension wheel, paragraph 1.1: Ascension) to use them during tournaments or events. ?
Expeditions: any mission in this mode will reward the player with a different primary resource type to use to awaken heroes or to updgrade their weapons.
Every player receives one rare (the one with a yellow border) and three common missions a day. Complete five common missions and you'll obtain an extra rare one.
Whilst editing your team, you may see that there are a recommended Job and an Element:
Select a hero that matches both to get a large bonus to your Team Score.
If a mission seems unprofitable or too difficult to complete, remeber you can change it every 60 minutes by pressing "Refresh" button .
We suggest you to choose short term (the min. is 1h) missions during the day and long term ones (max. 6h) when you have to stop playing or leave the game for a while.
To maximize your results, increase your heroes' stars and collect more heroes to increase your odds of finding missions where you'll get bonuses.
Crusades, here are your tips:
– Always keep Vlad in your team as he'll saveguarde your heroes' health (which won't regenerate automatically) after every battle
– Don't waste buffs to Crusade's Artifacts (rather, try to focus on Health buffs for your tanks and on Attack buffs for your DpS)
– Shape a well balanced team, ready for everything that might happen 😁⚔️
3.1 PvP Modes: Arena and Blitz
So here we arrived to the hot topic of every online game: PvP! ?
The two main PvP modes offered by Crush Them All (as of today) are:
• Arena: PvP par excellence. It is essential to farm Star Shards.
In this mode, you may choose an Arena Team that will automatically defend (Defenders) from enemy attacks and you'll also receive tickets to attack one between three enemy Arena Teams of your choice. Every consecutive victory will get a DMG Boost bonus to your next attack and some trophies you'll need in order to work your way into an upper League.
There are seven Leagues:
- Beginner I: check out its End of Season reward as you will be given 20 Star Shards ?
- Bronze I-III: respectively x30, x40, x50
- Silver I-III: x60, x70, x80
- Gold I-III: x100, x200, x300
- Platinum I-III: x400, x500, x600
- Diamond I-III: x700, x800, x900
- Legendary I-III: x1000, x1100, x1200... such a humble reward ?
• Blitz: One of the best sources of weapon catalysts! This mode is divided in three levels and will demand great skill (which goes beyond the brute force we used in the Arena ?) in order to deal with several teams.
As of today, there are nine editions for nine Blitz Heroes: Frost Queen, Clawdette, Necromancer, Namida, Paladin, Vlad, TNT, Manta and Hooky. You'll find each of them in the Blitz Chest and it'll get you a + 20% trophies bonus during the related event.
Blitz levels are:
- The Princess Promenade: only from 1 to 3 stars heroes allowed
- Abyssal Dragon's Cave: from 3 to 5 stars heroes
- The Warlord Coliseum: from 5 to 7 stars
At the beginning of the event every player will receive 100 Blitz Tickets and one free attack for every hero. Then, every six hours, all the heroes will receive one free attack (you can't accumulate over two) and 40 tickets at each day reset.
In this mode you will again get to choose one out of three opponents to fight with and after winning 4 consecutive battles you will increase your Blitz Level and Score Multiplier.
The best approach to this mode is to organise well balanced teams (see following paragraph 3.2 of the Crush Them All Guide), to make a wise usage of your stars (paragraphs 1.3 and 3.2 of this Crush Them All guide), to include the Blitz Hero in your first team (that is your most used team) and to maximize the trophies with the Score Multiplier and by spending tickets in the best possible way.
If you think you got chances of losing a battle, try to fight against teams with common heroes and that seem to be unbalanced.
3.2 Best PvP Team
The succes of a good Arena Team (but the same is valid for a good PvP team in general) depends first of all on the heroes that you can count on.
Let's start with the basics:
- There's no such thing like an all time best team, and the player should compose the optimal one according to various factors, like: the game mode he's playing, the buff and the opponent's team
- Try to always max up the slots in the Arena
- Use heroes with seasonal buff whenever possible
- Use runes (see paragraph 1.5 of the Crush Them All Guide) on weapons belonging to heroes which may benefit from the set bonus
- Form a well balanced team: make sure tanks, dps, buffs, debuffs and cc, are all in and do not choose only heroes with the same Element or Job in the team!
An effective (and typical) strategy is to have a front line with three Barbarians (together with Knights: allegedly the best tanks of the game) or two Barbarians plus a Knight or a Samurai (dps), properly powered up to hold the enemies and let the allies in the back lines (which may deliver range attacks, ideally assisted by a Support) dump every possible shot! ?
Exploit combos and bonus: for example, during his event, you can include in your Blitz Team Necromancer who summons skeletons against the enemy, Merlinus, who heals your frontlines, and Circe, who turn enemy's heroes against him too... your opponent will see a descending army on him and he won't even have the time to say:
Following on from what we said in paragraph 1.3 (Stars), we'll reveal to you the two main ways to compose the first Arena Team for beginners:
A) Classical way: reserve your medals (in any case, not on Sunday see paragraph 1.3 of the Crush Them All Guide) and resources on some performant common heroes to make your first team stronger in a reasonably quick time.
In this case, you'll choose: Spike (common Barbarian tank), Skeleton Giant (common Barbarian semi dps tank) and Bat (commom Magician dps) accompanied by other heroes for whom it's not too difficult to get medals for, like Dragon Bot (common Gunner dps), Dark Hunter (Ranger dps, purchasable in the Arena Shop) and Scud (Gunner aoe dps, Astrolab Crusher Chest).
B) The princess' patient approach: start by forming a first Arena Team with two very excellents tanks, Chaos (you'll get from the Undead Samurai Crusher Chest) and Spartaco, and a good CC like Atlantus (Lancer, **Mad King Crusher Chest**) in the front line and back lines with Dark Hunter and Scud (Astrolab Crusher Chest) and Vlad (Support healer, Blitz Shop) with a minimum of 3 Evolution stars and 2 Awakening each, and Magicians/Gunners/Rangers (to power up in a second moment), possibly chosen in accordance with the suggestions in the following paragraph.
In this case, you'll purposely mantain your heroes below the fourth star for a while to obtain victories, at first in the Blitz Level 1-3, and then moving all heroes togethers to the next level. Repeat this strategy for every subsequent Blitz level.
3.3 Best PvP Heroes
As we all know, in life, the nitty gritty of how to do everything is... luck! To use heroes you need to HAVE heroes, to have heroes... you (also) need luck ! ?
Let's begin with the premise that if you already have one or both Legendary Heroes - Angelica and Ornok - you don't probably need to read this Crush Them All guide... ?
With the aforementioned premise in mind, we took care of classyfing some of the most dangerous PvP heroes, and in the following table you may find their names and mugshots. ☠️ ⚠️
| IF | YOU | SEE | ONE | OF | THEM | RUN | AWAY | SAVE | YOURSELF |
 Leaf Blade | Dark Hunter | Scud | Seraph | Alda |  Valkyrie |  Vlad |  Thorn |  Trickster |  Namida |
Heroes that also deserve a honorable mention are: Gladiator (*cultural moment*: nomen omen), Spike, Atlantus, Akwa, Furiosa (maybe the only one knight also good as a dps), One Eye (only one rogue worth something in pvp), Thor, Skeleton Giant, Pirato, Monki Mortar, Frost Queen, Spark, Xak, Merlinus, Circe and Kage.
Anyway, like in every strategic game, a lot of the heroes' potential deeply depends on the player's ability to know how to use it. Every hero has in fact a wide range of personalization, a strong point and a role. While it's true, for example, that Rogues leave something to be desired in PvP, they can show their best in the PvE! Even the same hero, if placed in a team without a strategy, may not help leading to the desired outcome.
4.0 Shops
In this game, there is a nice variety of Shops.
We suggest you to spend...
Heroes Shop: initially, focus on Crusher Chests and don't buy Fortune Chest only for the daily Epic Hero. Medals for this hero will in fact be given only from the fifth consecutive purchase of this same chest. Percentages normally range as follows: Common hero (90%), 1º Rare hero (50 medals, 50%), 2º Rare hero (30 medals, 30%), Epic hero (20%)
Items Shop: avoid to spend flooz in this shop (see paragraph 5.1)
Arena Shop: start by unlocking Dark Hunter (and continue to spend your Arena Coin on him afterwards) and Monki King, keep then a couple of 2x Prism for the x2 Prism event
Blitz Shop: start by unlocking Merlinus, Kasai and Thor, then you'll invest your Blitz Coin mainly in Rune Chests (Viking, Nature and Assassin at first) and Weapon Catalysts Rare
Crusade Shop: give them all to Shelly (think about it as a long term investment). Materials are allowed up until the second week of playing (you'll thank me later, when you'll realise you'll be prepared for the Legendary League of the Arena) ✋😊
Guild Shop: follow the standard daily distribution scheme: 10 times on the Common hero, 5 times on the Rare one (except in special cases, such as a XP Potion on the Grand Master's request).
Guild War Shop: mainly Rune Dust
5.0 How to Earn Flooz
Flooz are the currency of this game, as such they are used to pay... But don't despair, because it's possible to earn about 4000 flooz a month completely for free, only by nerding a little. Gold Chests and x2 flooz events are the best ways to earn flooz, there are then daily and guild challenges, dungeons, blitz tier rewards, and daily login rewards every fifth consecutive day of access (so keep up with that streak!).
Lucky Spin
Give a go at the Lucky Spin with a Lucky Token to win flooz (or Chest Lucky Spin, containing medals for Monki Roboti ?).
Always choose Elite mode (x3 Tokens) to triple your rewards and try to hit the jackpot! ?
5.1 How to Spend Flooz
We suggest that beginners spend flooz to buy Team Slots and Crusher Chests, but, overall, we suggest you to NOT spend them to buy gold or x2 prisms, except in special cases like an imminent expiry of a challenge or the closure of a ranking, but in any case: carefully.
6.0 Novice Tournament and some other tips...
The Key concepts of this mode are: Ascension (at Stage 130), Princess Dream (that will be a nightmare for your opponents) and, if that wasn't enough, Time Jump as the coup de grace. ?
In summary:
... we do like Crush Them All a lot! ?
And to us it seems like a constantly evolving game that leaves ample room to the strategic fantasy of the individual player.
We hope that this Crush Them All guide has been helpful to you, and if you do have question or doubt, please don't hesitate to write us a comment below! ?