Whilst Clash Royale is a free game there is no doubt that to progress as fast you have to pay to win. Whether it’s buying the battle pass of the game (Pass Royale) or spending more money to buy legendary chests, it becomes apparent quickly to any experienced player that the most effective way to go up the rankings and get more trophies in Clash Royale is to pay money, as opposed to playing the game more, meaning that Clash Royale is pay to win and in this article, I will outline exactly how much of a difference spending money can make.
Playing Without Paying to Win
There are plenty of people who can enjoy the game without having to spend a single sliver of money. However, once someone starts getting into the midgame where they are trying to collect all the different cards the game starts to slow down. This is the part of the game where opponents are using net decks or decks with troops and spells that are simply a higher level requiring significantly more skill to be able to defeat.
No matter how good a player is, if they play level nine barbarians and the opponent plays level eleven or twelve barbarians the positioning and timing won’t ever matter because the opponent always wins. This is where it can start getting frustrating as it feels like the player is doing everything they can to progress but it just isn’t enough to win matches. This is the point where a lot of people either stop playing or move to pay to win buying at least the battle pass so that they can get on the fast track to getting more and better resources.
What Pay to Win Gives
As soon as you start putting money into Clash Royale you immediately start having a better experience, for example, buying the battle pass allows you to have unlimited entries for special challenges which grant extra rewards, and queue chests unlock automatically which allows the player to open more chests more often.
Then as the player progresses through the battle pass they receive ten thousand coins every few levels along with common, rare, and epic wild cards which allow the player to get more of any card they want. Another early unlock is a Book of Books which instantly adds all the cards required for an upgrade, meaning that someone could use wild cards on an epic card like the prince to get them to level nine and then immediately use the Book of Books to get enough to go to level ten. Whereas for a player that doesn’t want to spend any money upgrading an epic card takes a long time having to wait for silver and gold chests to unlock and hope they receive the card or are lucky enough to get a few wild cards.
Other than the battle pass, a player can buy gems which allow them to participate in more challenges such as the Grand Challenge which awards twenty-two thousand coins and one thousand-one hundred cards for winning, something that a pay-to-win player has a higher chance of gaining, as they already have an edge with more cards to aid them.
There is also the shop where you can buy more gold to upgrade your troops and spells, and where you can buy unique chests that free-to-play players could only dream of opening, like a Fortune Chest, or a Legendary King’s Chest, which are both filled with exceptionally valuable cards. To make it even easier if someone paying money in Clash Royale wants a specific card and doesn’t want to open chests and has no wild cards there is also the part of the shop that sells specific cards for coins which rotates every day.
How to Have Fun Without Paying
Whilst Clash Royale heavily incentivizes paying money into the game, it is still possible to play for free and have a good time. It will just be a slightly different player experience where they find themselves waiting a lot more, and having to be careful about what they upgrade using their gold as sparingly as possible so that they can buy the troops or spells they need from the shop.
It would also be best to focus on a select few cards to upgrade, ones that are commonly used in decks such as Zap and Canon both of which are common cards and can be obtained a lot more often than epics, allowing the player to have a better chance of climbing up the ranks and fighting opponents with similar levelled cards.
Overall, Clash Royale is pay-to-win, but if the player gives it enough time and has enough skill they can grow to be a formidable opponent without having to spend anything, and beat those that have spent thousands.
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