****************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************** 13 13 13 13 13 13 1313131 133 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13131313 13 13 1313131 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 13 313 13 13 131313 13 1313131 ****************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************** Bert's NHL13 Hockey Ultimate Guide ****************************************************************************** 1 ***** Version History 2 ***** Introduction 3 ***** Overview 4 ***** Getting Started 5 ***** Managing Your Team 6 ***** Hints and Tips 7 ***** Contact and Legal ****************************************************************************** 1 ***** Version History ****************************************************************************** Version 1.00 - Original Release - October 12, 2012 ****************************************************************************** 2 ***** Introduction ****************************************************************************** Thank you for reading Bert's NHL 13 Hockey Ultimate Guide. I am Bert, and I will walk you through just one of the games many modes. Since the games launch I have had the duty of helping a lot of my friends get through the initial hurdles of the Hockey Ultimate Team (here on referred to as HUT). As there is no decent information on the net to help hockey fans get started I have decided to impart my wisdom on to others. As the hockey lockout looms overhead many fans will turn to NHL 13 to get their fix. Hopefully this guide will save them weeks of grinding and possibly some money too. Please email me any suggestions you have for additions to the guide, as well if you notice an error I need to correct, you input will be appreciated. I am compiling a checklist for those hardcore collectors, but it is almost 5000 items large, and so it will be too large to include in this guide. ****************************************************************************** 3 ***** Overview ****************************************************************************** HUT is an online game mode. You must have an active internet connection to play games, trade, open packs or even look at your team. HUT is an extremely competitive game mode where you will be spending a lot of time battling other players in tournaments and single games. In HUT you begin by choosing your favorite NHL team, you then receive a starter pack of players. You next create your team with the players you have at your disposal. You then play games to get pucks. Pucks are the in game currency of NHL 13. Once in the HUT menu you can change your team or apply consumables by selecting MY TEAM. You can view your collection in MY COLLECTION. TEAM OF THE WEEK lets you view the best player made HUT team of the week and even challenge it. STORE lets you purchase packs with either pucks or real money. TRADING is where you acquire individual players or cards and sell your extras. STATS and EXTRAS just let you view your history of games, puck rewards, or delete your team (never do this). There are 4 standard game modes in PLAY GAME. ONLINE GAME is a 1v1 match against another human. PLAY A FRIEND lets you challenge buddies HUT teams. SINGLE PLAYER lets you face an AI controlled opponent. TOURNAMENTS is where you can challenge both single player or multi-player opponents in a 4 round single loss elimination bout. Occasionally PLAYOFFS will be available for big rewards. When playing games you will be in control of whichever player on your team holds the puck. Positioning is very important as well as the rules of hockey. If you don't know what off sides or icings are, you may be in trouble. For further information on hockey rules ask any Canadian or type in NHL rules on Google. ****************************************************************************** 4 ***** Getting Started ****************************************************************************** When you first join HUT you will pick your favorite team. If you don't have a favorite team or if you like multiple teams you have a big advantage. If you are a Vancouver Canucks fan, you are in for a hard ride. For some reason Canucks fans seem to dominate NHL 13 HUT and as such players like Henrik Sedin can cost upwards of 100,000 pucks. At 500-600 pucks for a high scoring win, don't expect to be working on the twins slap pass anytime in the foreseeable future. As such the opposite is true for teams like Florida where you can acquire star players for only a few thousand pucks. So keep this in mind when picking your team. Alright, so you got your team, your jerseys, a couple NHL players and about 2 dozen teenagers. Now, you just spent money on purchasing this title, but you are not done. Your team as it is right now will struggle on Rookie setting against the AI. You are going to make very little pucks and 80% of it will be going to contracts. Your team will get boring quick, and you won't be having any fun. So now go put $20 on your PSN wallet. Then go buy 10 Premium Gold Packs and 2 Gold Packs. That just got you 24 high end players, a handful of players from other leagues, and a crap ton or consumables. If you can't afford to buy packs, you will have to grind for them slowly. But know this, it will take you a month of playing 4 hours a day to earn enough pucks to buy this many packs. It is worth the $20. As you are opening packs you will have to assign cards. Assign all training cards to trade pile as you will need to make room for your other consumables. You can also send any doubles of players, jerseys, arenas or coaches to the trade pile. The last thing you may receive that you want to trade is team conversion cards for teams that are not your own. Assign all NHL players to your active roster and assign all other players to your collection. Go to MY TEAM and hit the Line Assistant button. It will set up your lines based on chemistry and stats. You may have to make a few minor tweaks to the roster. You definitely need to setup your shoot out order as it defaults to your first line. You can assign all of your unused players to your collection for now. You are now ready to play some hockey! Now you want to go to tournaments, pick single player, and do the rookie tournament. With your NHL team now half decent you should average 600 pucks a game, combined with the winnings you should net around 3000 pucks per tournament. This is the easiest and fastest way to get pucks at the moment. With all the contracts you received from your packs, you should be able to play 8 games no problem and with the pucks from selling your extra cards you can now buy another Premium Gold Pack. Repeat this process as much as possible. When you run out of contracts to apply you can buy individual contracts for players or purchase the 600 puck bronze pack, but that's a crapshoot. If you are close to purchasing a new pack, just swap out any expired players with active ones from your collection. If you are a hardcore fan of your team and want specific players on your roster, instead of purchasing Premium Gold Packs, trade for the players you want and buy bronze packs whenever you run out of contracts. It is always good to check the trades available for contracts as you can sometimes buy them for very cheap. After 10 or so Rookie Tournament wins you will have an excellent grasp on the game and you can now go do anything, just have fun. ****************************************************************************** 5 ***** Managing Your Team ****************************************************************************** Players last forever, but they can get injured, run out of contract, or receive training. The items to heal, apply contracts and training, are called consumables. You gain these items from packs or by trading for them. You will deal a lot with contracts as all 20 players on your active roster need time on their contracts. When creating your team you need to be aware of a variety things. Position, style of play, stats, contract time, injury, fatigue, and current team. All of these except fatigue can be altered with consumables. Skaters fatigue regenerates when they are not on the ice, and is always replenished after each game. Goalies receive fatigue if they are the goalie during a loss. The goalie fatigue gives the goalie -1 to all stats for each point of fatigue they have. To remove goalie fatigue they just need to be swapped with the backup goalie and they will restore fatigue at a rate of 1 per game. Injured players can be injured in 3 areas. Arms, legs, and torso. Each injury is giving a number representing the amount of games that player needs to sit in the scratched roster before being healed. You can use healing items to reduce the number of games required. Each player has a contract. You need all 20 players on your roster to have time on their contract in order to play a game. You can acquire contracts from packs or trading. This will take up the bulk of your pucks. Stats cover 5 areas that are all self-explanatory. The players rating is a combination of average stats and how well they play their position/style. You can adjust stats in 2 ways. First is through captaincy. You can have 1 Captain and 2 Assistants on your team. Your Captain gets +2 to all stats and Assistants get +1. You assign Captains and Assistants by using the consumable card you acquire from packs or trading. Second id through training. Training gives your player a big boost but it only last one game. They are best saved for multi-player tournaments or sold for pucks. Each player has a different style of play. When organizing your lines, you generally want all the players on that line to have different play styles. A SNP-PLY-PWF is a lot better then a GRN-GRN-PLY. It is good to also keep this in mind when assigning players to special teams. This also affects chemistry. Each player has a position that they prefer. They will perform best if they are in their desired position. This also affects chemistry. You can change a players preferred position by using the appropriate consumable. Chemistry affects your team greatly and it can often be better to put a lower stat player with good chemistry in a line over a better rated player. You can change players teams by using the change team consumable. Chemistry is also affected by position and style of play. Goalies have a huge affect on defensemen. You can use the Line Assistant feature, but it is far from perfect and you will need to make adjustments later. You can save different line combinations and try them out to see what works best for you. ****************************************************************************** 6 ***** Hints and Tips ****************************************************************************** Never use Quick Sell. You can always get more out of a card by trading it. If you find yourself running in with the puck with your defensemen a lot, try using OFD as they will have a better chance of scoring. Your goalie is your most important player. It is the most noticeable upgrade over any player. Don't forget your coach! You can assign one coach to your team. If you don't have a coach you can purchase them for as little as 50 pucks! Only trade duplicates. Tournaments have all kinds of different requirements. Often "x" players from "y" team or "y" league. Tournaments give bonus pucks upon completion. It is always more profitable to do a tournament over an individual game. Buy packs! I know its expensive, but it is the best way to get players. Don't have enough pucks to renew enough contracts to play a game? Don't trade your collection away, go play nhl moments live and earn pucks! Having trouble scoring? That's because the AI is insanely smart and even on Rookie goalies can achieve faster then light speed and glove a slap pass shot through the crease on their stick side. The best scoring chances come from making the goalie move, fake shot then release when goalie is moving. one timer from offensive zone face off win, and rebounds. Wrap a rounds do not work on high rated goalies, but are effective against under 80 rated goalies. Wrist shots go in more then slap shots. Pass the puck! The AI has difficulties intercepting passes, but they can pick your pocket like your not even there. Hit lots. This is an easy way to force turn overs. Be careful not to take penalties though as they cost you pucks. It costs you even more if they score. Don't spend too much time cycling the puck against AI opponents. Their goalies are more likely to let in the garbage shots then the nice setups. On the PK? Go offense as the AI will send their 3 forwards deep giving you lots of space to get break a ways or odd man rushes. Checking is very difficult to learn. At first trust the AI to control your defensemen. They will almost always perform better then you. Also if you see your human opponent switch to a defensemen go crash the net, you will beat them there 9/10 times as the defensemen are so difficult to control. Can't find your back up goalie? You have to click quick swap on your goalie in order to see your back up. Try not to get frustrated. There have been times when I have lost games 0-1 and I had 40+ shots and 30+ hits with 10 shots against me and no hits. No the opponent isn't cheating, its that sometimes in NHL 13 a 15 year old OHL kid moves faster then the speed of light and can catch better then the entire MLB combined. You will also notice when playing against minor teams that for some reason your superstars with high 90's skating ability cant keep up with a 60 rated WHL defensemen. Just take a deep breath and be thankful that in real life Tie Domi's kid can't outrun Mason Raymond. Contracts, your going to be buying a lot of these. If you have to buy them individually, you don't want to be taking a loss, so here is a chart for you. Even if you play the worst game of hockey in your life, you will still get 350 pucks. So over 20 players to break even at your worst each game on a contract is worth 17.5 pucks. As such this is how much you can spend on a contract before taking a loss. 6 - 100 7 - 100 8 - 100 9 - 150 10 - 150 12 - 200 20 - 350 25 - 400 30 - 500 50 - 800 80 - 1300 ****************************************************************************** 7 ***** Contact and Legal ****************************************************************************** email me at humenick@hotmail.com This may be not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of copyright. Copyright 2012 Brad Humenick ******************************************************************************