Tetris Blitz Fiscal Strategy: Tips for stacking your coins

If you’ve played Tetris Blitz, you know it’s just as easy to hate the game as it is to love it. The actual… tetrissing part is really fun. The constant, incessant pushing for microtransactions? Not so much.

In fact, it often feels like the entire game is designed to bleed you dry, first of virtual coins, then of real-life dollars/euros/won/baht. Everything in the game is so damn expensive, and you need to spend so many coins just to have a competitive score. It’s almost like Tetris Blitz was created by Electronic Arts, a company well known for stuffing its games with money-grubbing microtransactions that are practically necessary. Oh wait… it was.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to get around EA’s wallet-siphoning plans while keeping your real and in-game banks healthy. Here are the top tips for economizing every cent you get and turning your profits directly into high scores.

Pace the single player bots

The single player ladder isn’t exactly exciting, but it’s an obvious starting point for every player. You run up against a series of bots, beating their pre-set scores for cash. But if the ladder ever seemed unfairly stacked to you, that’s because the system is basically cheating.

You see, the first five opponents all have a set score for you to beat. This is the fair half. Typically this will run you up to about 175,000 points. And if you’re good enough at Tetris Blitz, you should be able to beat all these chumps with no powerups whatsoever, or maybe just one if you really need the help. Starting out this way can save you a lot of money.

After computer #5, the top-ranked “players” don’t have a set score. Instead, their scores are multiplied off of your current best, always putting their achievements out of reach! So if you beat opponent #5 with 380k, you can bet #4 will have a score of 520k, basically forcing you to fork out big bucks to beat him. But if you beat #5 with a score of just 180k, #4 will only top at around #230k, much more manageable!

In other words, only score the bare minimum necessary to each enemy in single player mode. By keeping your skills in check, your next challenger will have less insane requirements for advancing. And when you finally reach the last computer, you’ll only have to score around 500k… not something like 1.8 million!

Never miss your Bonus Blitz

This is going to sound obvious, but the Test Your Luck-style “Bonus Blitz” gameplay board is one of the easiest sources of revenue in Tetris Blitz. Every 4 hours you get a free spin at the wheel, with prizes ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 coins, plus a bunch of powerful bonus packs that include powerups and finishers.

But the board resets every 48 hours (two days), which means you get a maximum of 12 spins. That may not seem like a big deal, but the board is heavily weighted towards the crappier prizes. There are way more 1k slots than 5-digit payouts, and the random cursor seems to gravitate towards the cheap stuff first.

If you only redeem your Bonus Blitz once a day, you’ll probably only get two copies of the 1k prize. But if you collect as many of your 12 giveaways as possible, you’ll clear all the 1k and 4k prizes early on, meaning your second day spins are almost guaranteed to result in big money.

So do whatever it takes to use your spins every 4 hours. Set an alarm. Drink extra coffee. Pay your little sister to sign in for you. Don’t miss your chance!

Save cash for real features

It is very, very tempting to spend your hard-earned real world money on Tetris Blitz. Why wait hours for bonus spins when you could shell out $4.99 and buys tens or hundreds of thousands of coins?

But no matter how many coins you buy, you’re going to end up regretting it because it is insanely easy to burn through millions of coins. You could easily spend 50k coins per game on expensive powerups and finishers, and since each game only lasts about 3 minutes (including load screens), you could literally blow one million coins an hour by playing 20 games in a row. Then you’re stuck selling meth in shady back-alleys for Tetris money again!

If you really want to get ahead in Tetris Blitz and you really want to spend money on microtransactions, buy the in-game Upgrades instead. Purchase the extra Hold slot or the 3-piece Future Sight upgrade, which each give you permanent advantages. A second Hold means you have more control over what blocks you have available at any given time, and Future Sight means more advanced notice on upcoming tetriminos. No matter how much you play, these upgrades will always be around to help maximize your score. And the long-term cost savings means no more mugging people as they leave ATMs.

Challenge yourself… to challenges

Whether you’re grinding away at single player or besting your buddies in the Facebook or Xbox Live ladders, you’ve probably noticed the challenges that pop-up before each round. Some of them are things you’re trying to do anyway, like earning tons of points or piling on huge cascades. Others are more bizarre – like focusing on only getting 3-line clears.

It may seem like a waste of time, but you should always give these challenges a shot. They pay out extra coins, and some of the easiest challenges can land you 25k bucks if you play your cards tetriminos right.

90% of the challenges can be beaten without using any powerups or finishers, so it’s basically free money. And even if you do have to spend some cash, think about the payout. You might have to burn 15k on expensive powerups to meet your goal, but if the challenge reward is 50k, it’s worth the investment. Hell, you could fail nine times in a row and still make out all right if your fourth game nets you the prize. You’ll have spent 45k (15k set x3), but you’ll also be earning EXP and coins each round. In total, you’ll probably have an extra 15k you didn’t have before the challenge!

Test the tournament waters

As with all crippling and addictive gambling habits, the big money in Tetris Blitz is tied to high-stakes tournaments. Landing a podium spot in one of these events can easily bankroll your next twenty games, or set you on a path to winning more and more tournaments by burning each event’s prizes on new powerups.

But the risks are also high. You could spend 40k on entry alone, score a million points, then find out the top three players in the world scored two million points. Ouch.

So before you splurge, do a dummy run: enter the tournament with no powerups. You should still try your best, just for practice, but the real goal here is simply finishing the round. Once you bomb out of this test, you’ll be able to view the current tournament standings, giving you an idea of just how competitive the event really is. If the people at the top of the ladder have scores you could never beat, maybe you should sit this one out!

Of course, you should also enter tournaments as late as possible for the same reason. If you go into a Daily Blitz the minute it’s posted and take the #1 worldwide spot with 800k points, now everyone on Earth knows exactly what score they need to beat you. But if you burn an entry on reconnaissance, sit out all the action, and enter at the end, most players won’t be paying attention anymore. You might trump the #1 guy (who only scored 680k), but maybe he’s sleeping when you trounce him. By the time he wakes up in the morning, all the glory (and coins) will be yours, no contest.