How to get the most out of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s weekly events

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate ran its first in-game Spirit Board event over the weekend of Dec. 14-17. The event’s theme was characters who wear glasses, and included powerful spirits offered on a regular schedule as well as increased gold rewards for collecting these new spirits.

The next event, scheduled to run from Dec. 21-24, will feature Fire Emblem characters. Now that we’ve seen how one works, these are some ideas about how to leverage these events, which will continue to occur weekly, to get the most unlockable goodies.

How events work in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Two of the 10 slots on the Spirit Board are reserved at all times for event spirits when each event is active. The event rotation, in the eyewear campaign’s case, was a limited spirit set of special characters with added glasses.

It’s pretty easy to add everybody in the weekly event to your spirit collection, because two of the spirits on your Spirit Board will always be selected from among the spirits on this limited list. While most of the spirits on the list are novice- or advanced-quality, there will be two ace-quality and two legend-quality spirits featured in each event. This makes it easier to specifically target the spirits you need, while also enjoying the bonus gold.

Each of the the four higher-quality spirits are also available twice a day at scheduled times for a full hour. Spirits usually disappear when you lose a fight against them on the Spirit Board, and the only way to get a second shot is to use a rematch item. But these spirits will return to the board if you fail to defeat them. You can keep trying, over and over, until the hour is up.

A banner will appear at the lower-right of the screen on the Spirits Mode menu advertising the event on the Wednesday before the event starts, and will let you know which spirits will be available, as well as the specific times the ace and legendary spirits will be active.

Nintendo via Polygon

This is a good opportunity for players who normally have trouble with the harder fights in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to get their hands on some legendary spirits. Try the fight a few times, adjust your spirit loadout or try a different fighter, and if something is still giving you trouble, you can figure out which kind of battle item will give you the edge you need, and hopefully earn or buy one.

One of the legendary spirits during the first event was Star Fox’s James McCloud, for example. This fight was a one-on-one battle with an aggressive Fox, who gained increased defense, attack and movement speed once he got past 50-percent damage.

The problem I had with him was that he would often get a final smash early in the fight — one of the ways the game ramps up the difficulty for computer-controlled legendary characters is to give them fast charge times for their final smash — and then he’d get a second one before I could finish him off or get a final smash of my own. I ultimately used a “Slow FS Charging” item to stop that from happening, and I was able to beat him pretty easily.

Improved currency rewards

The other big draw for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Spirit Board events are the improved rewards for winning fights against event spirits. This is the reason I have five of those James McCloud spirits now.

The Smash spirits games operate on sort of a gacha-style system with multiple currencies. The two main currencies are spirit points (SP) and gold. SP is used to purchase items and spirits from the shops you unlock in the World of Light campaign, and you can use SP to buy a second shot at the spinning shield minigame you have to win to capture Spirit Board spirits. It also costs some SP to level up your Spirits with snacks or to combine lower-tier spirits into more powerful ones through the summoning system.

Nintendo via Polygon

Gold is used to continue a Classic Mode run when you die and purchase items in the shop under the pink Vault tab of the main menu. This shop sells unlockable music tracks and Mii fighter costumes, as well as spirits and items. You get relatively small amounts of gold from the World of Light adventure mode and Spirit Board, although there are some chests that contain larger amounts of gold on the campaign map. Some achievements will also award you a bunch of gold in the early hours of the game.

But you’re going to need a lot of gold if you want to unlock all the music tracks and costumes.

Gold is awarded for multiplayer battles — you get more of it for winning, and still more if there are multiple players in your game — as well as completing Classic Mode. A non-event legendary from the Spirit Board awarded me only 29 gold, to give you an idea of how rare the currency can be.

But the glasses event awarded more lump-sum gold than I’ve seen for any other activity. I earned 528 gold for beating the ace-tier event Spirits and a whopping 1,514 for beating the legends. The novice and advanced event spirits awarded 50 and 100 gold respectively, but you can win those fights in seconds with a powerful spirit loadout.

Online battles are the most lucrative regular activity for earning this currency, outside of the weekly events. Winning a three-stock, one-versus-one match awarded me 492 gold, and losing paid around 100 gold. You might be pretty set for gold if you often play online, but the event with increased gold was the easiest way to grind out the currency you will need compared to any other activity. There’s no comparison.

The upcoming Fire Emblem event will be giving boosted SP, and it should be the most efficient way to build up a big reserve of that currency, as well.

Buying a second shot at an ace-tier spirit in the Spirit Board shield minigame costs 1,200 SP and a second shot at a Legend costs 4,000. It costs 2,800 SP to combine spirit cores to summon a Legend-tier spirit, and it costs 10,000 SP to buy one from one of the shops. Spend some time grinding the Spirit Board during the next event or future events with similar rewards if you find yourself spending a lot of SP while unlocking spirits.

Events will occur every weekend, and the increased rewards will likely alternate between boosting these currencies. If you’re reading this after the Fire Emblem event, or if you’re bummed out about missing the glasses event, there will almost certainly be an event with a similar reward structure sometime soon. Don’t despair.

If you’re going to grind spirits, do it during an event

It can be hard to find a specific character with nearly 1,300 spirits in the game. Events are a good opportunity to add specific spirits to your collection, and to build up your collection of spirits from featured franchises, since characters get a stat bonus when using spirits from their game universe.

If you’re having a hard time getting legendaries, it’s easier to get them during an event, because they return to the Spirit Board if you fail the battle during their scheduled appearance. You can spend a lot of matches hoping to get lucky in the hour you know the spirits will be available.

And events boost rewards, so pay attention to the events to see when the currency you need will be boosted if you want your grinding to be as efficient as possible.

If you want to collect every music track or Mii skin, or splash around a lot of SP in the World of Light shops, checking out these weekly events is the best way to make that happen.