40 minute long video with the very essentials being the first half and second half more advanced stuff!
Have your lunch with it

The story of the game is stablished within 70 years into the future, technology advanced in such a way that a simulation gameshow allows contestants to digitally fight to death to come out with a lot of money in their pockets. The Finals is currently the biggest gameshow of the world and the outside world or what sorounds and controls the simulation is a mistery since we are still uncovering secret messages beyond the walls and cinematics with double meanings.
You, as a contestant, must work together along 2 other contestants to find a cash box, in order to claim the money inside it you must take it to one of the cash out stations, just get close to it with the box or throw it to start the cash out, once the cash out starts you have 2 minutes to defend it.
Of course, other teams will want that cash out as well, in order for them to claim it they would have to steal it, by getting close to the cashbox and interacting with it for 7 seconds while the alarm runs to tell everybody that a steal is going on. In order to win the game your team has to have the most money by the end of time.

But what if I get wiped (killed) ?
If you get wiped you will turn into gold coins and drop a statue, this statue is essentially your only way to guarantee your team sticks along with you since a statue allows to be revived. This statue can be grabbed by your team and somewhere safe they can interact with it to revive you.
For the casual modes in case your team is not able to revive you you can force your own respawn once the timer ends; for the more competitive modes you have limited self-respawns, so work along with your team to complete the objective, not to get more kills and show off.

The Finals is a big project from a studio born from ex-developers of Dice, the same studio that brought Battlefield, a little lore drop for you: during the turmoil that was battlefield 2042 development a lot of old time staff left the team and most of them ended up doing their own studio and developing the concept of The Finals as early as early as mid 2020 along with their other project being that Arc Raiders (extraction pvp-pve third person shooter), that is just coming out by the time this guide comes out!

The Finals is special because the single pitch of it is how it allows contestants to modify the playground by destroying whole buildings along with incredible movement and shooting mechanics that all together allow for a very dynamic experience and scratches a single itch that is very hard to satisfy.
Maybe you already saw some of the classic destruction of Battlefield closer to something like Battlefield 1, where no building is safe from the eternal grasp of "♥♥♥♥ around and find out"; The Finals has improved on destruction a lot and allows the contestants to abuse all of the game's physics and quirks to make a really fun experience and a game with a lot of layers of complexity as the techniques and mechanics work at a deeper level than you might expect.

So stopping the glazing...
The game allows for an objective that can be moved around the whole map, destruction of whole buildings and even drowning your opponents in debris, altough...
If you are not very fond of destruction there are other options for play style, anywhere from a highly mobile assasin to a metal-head that destroys walls by smashing its head up to it (no brain damage).
This leads us to the next section of the guide which is the main classes of the game, or better known as builds.

Light, Medium and Heavy all work together to compliment each other and enable each other as for every build contributes to the arena in their own ways. The game will show you within the menu and in the practice range all of the toys that contestants can use, you are only allowed to bring 5 toys to the play ground though, so how can I know that these are the best toys available?

Each contestant will bring 1 specialization (main ability), 1 weapon and 3 gadgets at a time, and although you have the chance to bring a back-up plan with your reserve slots you will mostly have to depend on the main loadout you pick since counterplay is only allowed by how the contestant uses all of its available tools or how hard certain weapons and play styles can counter you.
Even though the game already provides you with a starting point as for playstyles and how to start learning a build, the more you play and understand the deeper flow of the game you will notice most of these suck ass; even though in theory they work together most usually in practice they don't.
I will give some suggestions for loadouts of my own and most used items but in the end is up to you to decide what works best and adapt to the game.
If i had to explain every single weapon, spec (short for specialization) and gadget we will be here a long time, I already elaborate it in the video guide so if you want more details, then again, refer to it. <3


Light can be many things but it boils down to a glass cannon and probably the hardest build to play in this game. In the grand theory of everything Light's DPS and use of specs and gadgets should make it very dominant, although the reality is that Light is bound to lose most 1on1 match ups unless it is the agressor and then the victim has to react and fight back. The ideal light play style relies on being unexpected and moving a lot in order to facilitate or confirm kills.
The main drawback is its low HP and this alone is the reason why many edgy lone wolfs will pick it, die first in the battle and then blame you for losing.



Medium strikes a perfect balance with having a bit of every build and yet nothing particular to diferentiate it other than boiling it down to a single support. In comparison to the other builds and what it offers for autonomy it could just be a blank slate and not be as mobile as Light nor as destructive as Heavy.
In contrast to the other builds though its play style is far more defined by its spec because Heal Beam will force it to stay behind and prevent dying as much, Dematerializer will force it to be a frontline and allow its team to be more aggresive or take great shrotcuts withouth wasting explosives and Turret will enable it to take greater control of an area and use it as a security camera.


Heavy is my favorite build simply because of the great potential it hides under all that muscle, arguably the most common way to play it is as a tank but I lean more into the gimmicky and fun ways to play it, particularly as a fat Light with a Flamethrower which works surprisingly well and people will still ask for nerfs to what is already the worst weapon of the game.
It's great size and ammount of HP makes it the very frontline of team engagements and by itself in can be easily weak and very reliant on its loadout to confirm kills even, despite having access to the most destructive loadouts in the entire arena there are a lot of drawbacks that force it to play along with its team discouraging it from being some sort of flank sub-class. I defy that, because I am up for a challenge.

BEHOLD LAS VEGAS

Currently we have 9 maps with more to come in the future, the most important thing to learn about maps is how to traverse it and the layout so you can plan out routes and not run into the wrong wall and fall off the map.
Another part of dominating maps is knowing how to use destruction in order to make it difficult for everyone else to steal the cash out or destroy cover, I already mentioned that the arena can be destroyed and modified, but there are also other cool things that you can do with all of the elements the arena provides like explosive cannisters, healing pools, wrecking balls and plants!!!!!!!!

It's not a joke, every single prop within the arena helps out with moving around and modifying the arena itself, for example the cranes in maps like Monaco and Skyway Stadium have hanging wrecking balls that can be used to destroy the zone if you get to the top of the crane; or you can just use it as a tall bridge...

The main elements of the arena are contained within cans and barrels of funky colors that when activated or thrown out can have an inmediate impact within the game, most of these have direct equivalents as gadgets and so they can be very useful to have extra explosive power or to counter opponents by zoning them out or disabling them with glitch leaving them vulnerable.
All of these objects can be found in the arena randomly spread and in bulk if you catch them falling from the hangung cubes, damage the cube first and you will get lots of free barrels! Just don't stand right where they fall and try grabbing them before they touch ground so they don't activate on you
I really encourage you to check out goo and experiment with it since it is the most overpowered element of the arena <3

Appart from carriables other things you might find are there to help you move around or destroy a little bit more, in some maps there are walls and bridges that can be pulled up and down with the press of a button that connects it (and also shooting them or explosions activate them if they reach the button), most maps will include zip lines and jump pads that will help on long distances and to get to high positions quickly. Just remember that all of these things can be accessed by anyone in the match and most of these things don't have a direct way to counter them unlike carriables which can be wasted out or hoarded and cranes and zip lines that can be destroyed.

Again, I'm a broken record, there is a lot just to the basics of the game that i can cover in a single guide, I intentonally skip topics like meta-game, tech, and movement because it is better understood within the video that actually shows how to do it, please watch it!

Apart from that other important details that must be known about the game is that it is updated weekly, be it to just update the store, fix something or do balance changes that usually happen every 3 weeks. Most usually when a new season comes around it is the best time to play since we will have new toys and perhaps maps, we also get regular events, limited time modes and even other events like clip highlights, twitch drops and Majors events which all about it can be found within the main website and the announcements of the official discord.

New players usually have to grind for the VR currency (the one maxed out in image) in order to unlock more gadgets, weapons, sights and a couple other things. VR is usually aquired easier when you perform better on games, and the only items that cost notably more than others are the items just added within the current season.

The other 2 currencies are Season Pass Tokens and Multibucks respectively, the tokens are aquired through playtime, so no matter how bad you perform as long as you play games you can get an average of 2 tokens per 10 minute game and can be used in the legacy battle passes which need to be purchased with Multibucks in order to start grinding them.
Multibucks are the premium paid currency of the game which allows you to get cosmetics or gift them even!

In the topic of multibucks, you might stumble upon the mode of World Tour, which will provide a rank based on performance points that you have to stack up and with certain milestones that will give cosmetics and multibucks, just so its clear, you get the ammount stated within the rank, it does not stack with the last ones, once you are past the multibuck rewards and start getting the cosmetic ones all of them will be given out as the new season beggins, this includes casual and ranked rewards as well.

• As a heavy main since open beta I really recomend everyone to get intimate with the movement system and abuse it since there is a lot of tech that will bring you a great advantage and people just don't know about it or doesn't use it enough, stuff as simple as window climbing to quickly climb buildings or even sliding and bunny hoping does maintain momentum. Even some people go as far as to tag the game as a movement shooter, and even I don't do that as a quake player lol.
  
• Getting good at aiming is the golden standard of shooter games to get better but game sense here has a greater impact and that is why the highly mobile lights and unexpected strats are far superior than being a human aimbot, again, I'm a long time Heavy main that plays mostly gimmicks. Even some people at the top have godlike aim but dogwater game sense and that makes them really vulnerable to unexpected strats, off-meta and stupid moves like just getting rushed.
  
• The game has a lot of layers of complexity that go from simple TTK differences to specific interactions within elements of the arena or physics that people just don't know of. Common example of this are smoke grenades which can easily be countered by spot on explosives that move the grenade projectile itself and half-clears the smoke, or goo that people usually consider as solid walls but are really easy to break through as reinforcements particularly with explosions. As an MGL32 main you can tell why I would bring fire, goo, and gas in the same loadout despite most people only using one at a time and even ignoring the carriables.
  
• More about the complexity of the game, every shot, every step and every surface destroyed is processed server side, this means that things such as peekers advantage, janky hurtboxes and janky interactions are all real and everyone in the servers suffers them. Learning even just how physics of elements like goo work will allow you to lift up debris, pass through walls and even flying. A lot of tech and jank to a well polished game that I encourage you to learn and abuse whenever possible to surprise the enemy.
  
• The best way to get better at the game is probably being a coordinated team and understanding each and every single aspect of the game, sometimes it will feel like an RPS game and other times it will be an unmovable object that meets the unstopabble force. Playing MGL32 has made me a lot more analytic and understand the game with other eyes since it benefits more from not having direct vision of enemy and predicting a lot, which some times leads to trying to counter the counter by predicting your enemy 3 steps ahead forcing them to change entirely and still lose.

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