If you want to start FIFA 18 Ultimate Team on the right foot, follow our tips and suggestions about how you should start off playing this game. Welcome to our FIFA 18 Starting Guide.
FIFA 18 Starting Guide
Introduction to our guide
For those who play or have played previous versions of FIFA Ultimate Team, there’s always that positive feeling that everything will start again. You’ll finally have the chance to start over from scratch, equally with others, knowing that you won’t make the same mistakes again. Everything now has to be perfect for you to be able to reach higher glory, sooner and long-lasting. Read on if you are prepared to rocket ahead of the pack or if you’re going to have another false start.
For those who are playing FUT for the first time, by reading this guide you are preparing yourself for the problems you may face. After all, Ultimate Team players are not so different to one another. Some are better traders; some control the players better on the field, but everyone has to be good club managers.
Every club who has wishes of being successful has to create a base of sustainability. You have to do things at the right time. The beginning of FIFA 18 Ultimate Team is the single most important moment of the game.
Here’s our check-list on the ten things to do at the start of FIFA 18 Ultimate Team – the perfect way:
1 Prepare yourself
2 Start as soon as possible
3 Customize your club
4 Sell all your cards
5 Collect even more coins
6 Start Trading
7 Hire Managers
8 Buy Contracts
9 Form your Team
10 Play
Prepare Yourself
What to do before starting FIFA 18?
Before starting the season you have to prepare yourself. You have to plan it.
The first thing to do is try to get to know the game. Is there anyone who has ever won a chess match without knowing the rules? Probably not. FUT 18 is a game like any other and it has (many) rules. The truth is you don’t need to know all of them, but the more you know the better the chances are of you being even more successful.
If it’s the first time you’re playing FUT, try learning some of the basics on our website as it is the biggest information spot about the game. It will be easier to follow our tips if you already have some knowledge. If you’ve played FUT 17 or a previous version, you will be looking forward to seeing what has changed and what is new.
In the planning stage it is good to know your own expectations. It may seem unnecessary and even too theoretical but all of us should take a couple of minutes to idealize what we want for our club. Do we want one or more teams? Is our objective to have the best players or do we want to try unknown ones? Are we going to stick with regular players or are we going to enhance them to the IF versions? Will we focus on the FUT Championor will we play just for fun? Are we going to play with bronze, silver, gold or all of them? How much time will we play? Will we buy packs? How many coins will we need?
The more questions you can answer equals the better your approach to the game. The fulfillment of the tasks listed above will give you an edge to your approach that will equal enhanced results.
Start as Soon as Possible
FIFA 18 early access and other options
The sooner you start FIFA 18 Ultimate Team, your chances are greater of being successful. This is due to the beginning of the game being the most important time.
With the passage of time the market will tend to become more and more stable. If you know what you’re doing you’ll get a good head start. It’s just a question of knowing how to identify the opportunities and being able to predict how the market is going to develop.
Your profit won’t just reflect in coins. If you do everything earlier, you will have bigger chances of forming a superior team compared to the competition and with that potentially win more games, which means more coins. With more coins you’ll build a better team and so on.
Starting early is the first step towards success, so how do you do it? Simple, we’ll show you with the various alternatives at your disposal.
1 Play the Beta and the Demo
There are so many things to do when the game is launched and time is so short. If you want to be familiar with the game, follow these tips to improve your chances to be chosen to the FIFA 18 Beta and play the FIFA 18 Demo that will be released two weeks before the game’s release date. AS you probably already know, the progress will not carryover to the final game but the experience will.
2 FUT 18 Web and Companion Apps
If you are a returning player it’s impossible to miss an opportunity of starting your season earlier. The FUT 18 Web App will be available from September 19, exclusively to the FUT 17 players who have created a Security Question and Answer on FUT console before August 1, 2017. It’s this that defines the beginning of the game with the start of the market, for those who don’t want to lose terrain. YOU have to be there. You’ll receive a starter pack and some welcome packs based only upon your FUT 17 gaming activity. During the first days Daily Gifts will also be offered, so the sooner you start the more you could win. Don’t forget to access your Apps every day. Each day you miss, it is one pack less you get. In the beginning, you’ll need all the cards you can get to start your first investments. If you haven’t bought the game, join the FUT 18 Web App. You will have free access to it until the game release date. There are too many benefits at stake not to.
3 EA and Origin Access
If you’re willing to gain a head start on the competition at all costs you could invest in an EA Access, if you have a XBox One, or Origin Access, if you play on PC. You won’t take advantage of the market seeing as how FUT 18 Web App will already be up and running (unless you’re a first time player), but you’ll be one of the first to collect coins from matches. If you’re a good player, you could achieve the most precious victories of the season. If you want to know more regarding EA Access, please click here.
4 Special Editions
Special editions of FIFA 18 come with a few gifts that will boost your season start. The Ronaldo and the ICON editions give you one or two 15k Jumbo Premium Gold Packs per week, over 20 weeks, and also players on loan. The best of all is that you can start claiming these offers right in the FUT 18 early access.
5 Buying FIFA Points
If money isn’t a problem for you, there’s a much simpler way of obtaining coins for your first investments: buying FIFA Points. If there is any right moment to do this it’s in the beginning of the game. The chances of getting a good regular card are the same, but their prices will go up one to two weeks later when there is more cash flow in the market and the Prices Ranges go up. At this stage of the season, you never should buy packs with coins. That’s why there are so many people buying FIFA Points and why the market is so unbalanced on its first days of life.
6 Game Release
If you didn’t follow any of the first five alternatives for a good start, at least try to be active when the game is released. Worse than not being able to anticipate the competition is to allow yourself to get overcome by the majority. This is the time that more than 60% of the gamers start playing. They are not just random players. Many of them are newcomers, eager to play but immature enough to drown the market with valuable cards at low-cost prices. You have to be there to seize these opportunities. And have to be active as long as possible while it’s easy to buy and sell at great profit margins. That’s why it’s also important to start before this date to have time to study the market and be ready to attack it.
If you didn’t start early enough or if you just discovered the wonders of Ultimate Team mid-season, don’t worry because you’ll have the chance to build a good club. Not as great, but still good.
Customize Your Club
Give an identity to your club
When starting the game for the first time, you’ll be asked to maintain the name of your club (exclusive to returning players) or if you choose to pick another one. If you choose to abdicate your antiquity will be reset. Insert the name you chose but have in mind you can’t change it without the right item from the EASFC catalogue or through the Objectives. You only have one try and even so it requires that you have reached the level 20 of experience XP which you may not have. Pay special attention to this step. You want a perfect club and just remember, more haste less speed. If you need help to pick a new club name, check our suggestions here.
This year, before you start playing with your team, there are a few steps that allow you to customize your team a bit more:
✅ To choose the nationality of the best player from your starter pack;
✅ To choose a player on loan;
✅ To choose the main and the alternative kits;
✅ To choose the badge of your club.
More details about these first steps can be found here.
Sell all your cards
Start FIFA 18 from the beginning
After inserting your club name you’ll be gifted with some packs. The first, a Starter Pack, consisted of 34 cards, mostly bronze. This pack, besides enough players to start playing, possesses also everything your club needs to start: at least one stadium, one ball, one badge and two kits (home and away). All the cards of this first pack are untradeable, which means that you can not sell them.
Your FUT 17 gaming activity is also worth cards. Most of the 12 cards in each pack will be gold, for which these offers assume particular importance in the start of your club. You’ll be rewarded too with all players packs, each one with 4 bronze players cards, 4 silver players cards and 4 gold players cards (at least one rare).
As soon as you’ve opened all your packs, this is when the game really starts. Seeing as how this is when you’ll have to make your first decisions. You were given the minimal conditions to create your club and you’ll have to know how to manage it with what you have. This is where most players make their first mistakes, sometimes deadly. They start playing and after seven games they can’t progress because the game rewards are insufficient to buy contracts. They stay stuck since they started with zero coins they don’t have a way to pay for them. This is an obstacle almost every player can’t overcome.
To avoid this happening we advise the players to remain calm and to leave those first games for later. You can start playing after you’ve finished all the stages in the check-list. First, you have to make your club self-sufficient, and that is done with coins. This is the first great step: transforming all you have at your disposal in coins. As little as it is we need something to later transform it into more. You can choose to take another path but we suggest this one: sell all the cards you received, except obviously the untradeable ones. You can use these ones to complete the first SBCs. But it doesn’t mean you have to do it at sale prices. Although time is money you don’t want to stay with your actives for stuck long, verify if there isn’t any valuable card you could sell for superior price than expected. This procedure will also allow you to make a team from scratch. Many gamers eventually build a team around one or two players that they get in a pack. Why should you do that if, by the same amount of coins, you can build a team without any limitations?!
Collect even more coins
You will need all the coins you can get
The cards you’ve sold are already good enough for a good start but if you can gather some more coins your growth in the game will be even faster. That’s why it’s important for you to waste no possibilities.
✅ EASFC Catalogue Items
Start by going to the EASFC catalogue and exchange your credits for coin boosts. As soon as you play your first matches you’ll receive a fundamental bonus to your clubs financial health. Each item can only be redeemed once. Try to have the coin boost active in your first match. You can buy at once all the items your XP level allow you to buy. The system will make the management and will guarantee that you will receive the bonus in every match until the items expire. Don’t forget to redeem the Increased Transfer List Size and the Increased Transfer Targets Pile Size items as soon as possible, because they will allow you to up your volume of trading. Another catalogue items you should purchase are balls and kits. Many people don’t know, but these have high discard values which mean you can make some more coins with them.
✅ Objectives
Especially at this stage, you should take advantage of everything that is free like Objective rewards. A few minutes should be enough to make a few coins.
✅ Trade Coins
If you have FUT 17 coins or another platform, try to find someone who’s interested in trading for FUT 18 coins. It won’t be easy and you’ll certainly be doing it for a disadvantageous ratio, but at least it’ll be worth some more coins for your first investment.
Start Trading
Make coins to build the team you want
Now that you’ve already got some coins it’s time to start multiplying them. You should start with safe investments but always leaving some coins aside in case anything goes wrong. Don’t worry about starting slow. You have a whole season ahead of you. The first sales are always the harder to make but as you become richer you’ll have to reinvest most of what you earned but always leave some coins aside to buy your first cards. If you started playing in the beginning and its working great and after two days you’ve gathered enough to build your team. But never stop trading: it’s part of the game so you should do it from the first to the last day.
There are variations in the market in the early days of the game. If this is the time you join the game it’s convenient that you know them.
First, it’s important to understand that in the first days of the market, which coincides with the first days of the Web App, the market is really scarce. In this time, it is really difficult to find good deals because all the gamers have experience from the previous years and because the cash flow in the market is too low. They are all waiting for the FIFA Points release and the first matches. It’s normal to see big players like Messi and Ronaldo being sold well above the maximum Price Range. Their price isn’t superior because there is no one with enough money to buy them. If you’re one of the lucky few to receive one of these players in a pack, which is highly unlikely, do not sell them. In a few weeks they’ll be worth several times as much and you can capitalize on your asset. This effect includes all other cards although the variation will be a lot inferior. All of them start at a much lower price and in just a few days the prices spike. This is more visible with cards that start costing more than 10 thousand coins. Until the end of the game the price gradually lows, with some fluctuation due to special TOTW, TOTY, TOTS, transfer market, game updates, etc… It’s because of this initial effect of money shortage that it’s important to attack the market as soon as possible.
It’s because of this initial effect of money shortage that it’s important to attack the market as soon as possible. If you get rich fast enough to still catch the season of low prices you’ll have your future in the game guaranteed.
For your first investments we recommend your first cards to cost between 150 and 300 coins that you can sell with a profit of about 50%. The risk is really low and you will be avoiding the Price Ranges restrictions. The consumables are usually excellent targets for this end because you can store as many as you want. Remember that it’s very important to have coins or cards on hold. This can hamper your success.
Start by studying the market. Tread carefully, especially in the first days of the market, you shouldn’t restrict to selling and buying the cards in a certain schedule. The trading should be continuous.
Buy low, sell higher. That’s the magic formula to become rich. You just need to study the prices carefully. As soon as your staff and consumable cards have given you a profit bigger than 30k coins, you can then try widening your trading to players and spend some of those coins on the remaining things on our check-list.
Hire Managers
Ensure the sustainability of your team
Now that you have some coins it’s time to make the first investment for the exclusive satisfaction of your club. The managers and the contracts should be the first, because they normally represent small investments.
Managers are the most important staff in FIFA 18 Ultimate Team and it’s easy to understand why. They can be the solution to a problem you should manage with extreme caution: contracts. These are the only consumables you are forced to buy to be able to play. Due to its strategic position in the game they tend to be extremely expensive. These are so expensive that a lot of people can’t gather enough coins to support them. More importantly than getting cheap contracts is guaranteeing it affects capacity to the max. This is thanks to managers in your club.
Most of the gold managers contributes with a raised percentage on all contracts: the rare gold with 3% and the non-rare with 1%. The silver rare manager also contribute with 2%. You can hire managers so that the sum of your percentages equals 50%. This means that when applying a contract card to a player the number of games on the card will be added 50%. In a long-term step this will be extremely beneficial and in the short-term it will guarantee your match prizes to be superior than your spent contracts. The sustainability of your team will be guaranteed.
Despite that, all of your first actions in the game must be thought out and with caution. Buying managers must be done the cleverest possible way. Always choose the cheapest and for example check to see if there aren’t three non-rare gold managers cheaper than a rare golden one. The only thing that is important is hitting that 50% bonus at the cheapest possible price. So later, when building your team to beneficiate the chemistry that you’ll have to concern over buying a manager that has a nationality or a league best fitted amongst the players you want. Most of these cards are more expensive in the beginning and you should weight if you should wait a few more until their prices drop or not. As reference, the 50% of bonus can be reached with an investment of 12,000 coins, which will save you 40 coins per game.
Buy Contract Cards
If you plan to play…
As we’ve told you, the contract cards have an important strategic role. If a player is injured or physically tired, you can put him in the bench or in the reserves until he recovers instead on applying an injury card or a fitness card. That however is not valid when a player is without contracts. The only way of making him play again is by applying a contract card. This has to be done. Period.
That’s why it makes perfect sense to buy contracts as soon as possible, especially if you plan to play the Weekend League.
With the 50% bonus the managers offer you and with cheap contracts, you won’t ever need to think if the game prize is enough to cover your costs.
Form Your Team
You need to plan what you will be doing next
Now that the house is clean you can finally begin building your dream team. That is why it is good to plan what you’re doing. After all, this is the task that is going to cut a bigger slice out of your budget.
You probably already have an idea of the players you want to play with it’s convenient at least, unless you’re a squad building expert, between this there’s a common element. In FUT 18 it’s not enough to gather a good group of players. You need to have a good mesh between them. In other words, good chemistry. Preferably players with the same nationality or at least that play in the same league. If they play in the same club you may not even need to put them next to their other teammates.
But chemistry is not the only thing you have to have in mind when selecting players. You should also have in mind their characteristics. For every position verifies the attributes that you value more in your style of play and certify that the players have those attributes. Having a team with a good rating will be useless if you won’t be able to take advantage of your player’s skills and if they don’t fit your style of play. Each player is unique, so you will need to find the right players for your team. Don’t look for players like you were used to do. First, you should analyse which stats are most important to you in FIFA 18 and then pick good players in these stats. In case you already chose the formation you’ll be playing with, be careful when picking players whose positions won’t be adaptable. For example: if it’s in a 4-1-2-1-2 (2) you’ll be playing, avoid buying players that are RM/LM/RW/LW/RF/LF.
If you want to have a good team in the shortest time possible you’ll have to buy with intelligence. Most importantly in the beginning, if you make the wrong decision, you may be mortgaging your future. Now that you’ve saved up some coins, try starting to fill places in your squad with medium players that will serve as substitutes or reserves in the future. Every time your balance allows, buy a first team player. One by one you’ll form your team. This way, you’ll have time to analyse the behaviour in the market for your next purchase and you’ll be able to buy good players at lower prices. The best way to do this is using the ‘Concept Squads‘. Idealize the team you want to build and set the order of your purchases according to how well the players link with teammates in each stage of your team building. If you started playing at the start of the FUT 18 Web App, then you’ll have 15 days to form your first team.
Play
The easiest part of all
The moment for searching for glory in the field is finally here. If you’ve followed all the tips we left here, you can relax because your club has everything it needs to succeed. Just to be sure, it’s convenient to rehearse before challenging powerful adversaries. This is because winning games is an excellent way of winning coins but losing doesn’t work as well.
Even if you’ve played other modes in FIFA 18, you should test out Ultimate Team in single player mode. The game is slightly different and you’ll want to be prepared to not waste game prize coins. You’ll have the chance to test the players and your mesh with the formation and the team, but most importantly you’ll have the opportunity to adapt to a new FIFA. Don’t forget to turn on the ‘Trainer’ feature, which will teach you to play in-game. As soon as you see that you are not learning nothing more, turn it off. You need to practice but don’t play too many matches. It’s just that the match prizes are superior on online mode and in the beginning every coin counts.
You should start by playing the easiest tournaments before going to the TOTW challenges and one or two single players seasons with low difficult level. At this time, try to avoid friendly matches or friendly seasons because they are not rewarded. It’s a good time to use your first players, the ones you got in the starter pack and that cannot be sold. Since they are mostly bronze players, these easy games are perfect to them. Use them until their contracts expire. It is a smart way to get familiar with the game play without pressure, to avoid expenses and also to save a few coins from match rewards. As soon as their contracts end, you will need to buy another players. Use them until they keep with only one contract, go to the transfer market and try to trade them for the same player with more contracts at the same price. Another good strategy is to use players on loan, specially in your first on line matches. You don’t have to spend on contracts and you will give more quality to your team. What’s the point of saving them for later if it is now that you need to save every coin you can? With their quality, they will help you to win more matches which means earn more coins.
In Draft you don’t use consumables. Not even contracts. You don’t even need a squad to play. You only need 15k coins. It may looks a lot for who is starting but, if you feel confident that you can win a few rounds and if the market is buying, this is no doubt a good investment. However, if you are at least a decent player, you can’t miss the Weekend League. It’s the game mode that will reward you better.
When we start playing all we want is to keep a nice history. We try to stay invincible for as long as possible but we forget that sooner or later the bad results will appear and the wins-draws-losses registry will become less and less important. This desire to want everything to be perfect in the beginning does not fit with what we want for the team in the long term. Leave these worries aside and focus on the game play. Details like chemistry and styles might be left for later.
Whatever you do never forfeit. Even if you’re being humiliated. Keep playing because if you quit your %DNF will lower from your 1.00 initial to values that will penalize the amount of coins you receive as a prize at the end of each game. In that case, you will be ruining the sustainability that you have conquered.
Follow our tips closely to have a good FIFA 18 starting.