Captain Tsubasa: Rivals is a hot new tap-to-earn game on Telegram, and with the license of a major soccer-themed anime brand behind it, a ton of players have signed up to play already. With some kind of TON-based airdrop coming in the future, the race is once again on to collect as much in-game currency as you can to boost any potential future payouts.
Of course, you can tap to earn balls (aka coins or points in other tap games), but like most of these games, the real way to increase your ball count is to buy upgrades, take part in the daily challenges, and complete some bonus tasks.
If you want to maximize your time ahead of the eventual airdrop, these tips will help you get the most balls as quickly as possible in Captain Tsubasa: Rivals on Telegram.
Expand your team
Captain Tsubasa Rivals is, effectively, a Hamster Kombat clone. But, the one thing it has going for it is that instead of buying random, crypto-related upgrades for your imaginary exchange, you can acquire and upgrade new players for your soccer team—a twist that’s quite fun.
Screenshots from Captain Tsubasa: Rivals. Image: Decrypt
It makes thematic sense, but what’s even better is that these players actually bring in a lot of passive income, even as you increase their levels. We’ve focused on getting as many players as possible, and now have a good amount of passive income coming in each day. Tapping barely seems worth it once you’ve juiced your passive income rate.
Do the daily combo—if you can
Captain Tsubasa’s daily combo functions just like the Hamster Kombat one: Each day, three upgrades out of the entire selection are picked to make up the combo, and if you upgrade or buy them all on that day, then you’ll net a huge ball bonus. In other words, you’ll get a massive in-game payout just for improving your team… which also boosts your passive income going forward.
Looking for the daily combo? Captain Tsubasa: Rivals won’t tell you, but we will—we’ve launched a daily combo guide for the game that we will be updating daily for the foreseeable future.
The caveat here is that some upgrades are locked behind referral goals, so if you don’t have any friends, then you might not be able to complete every combo. So do the ones you can, and don’t sweat about the ones you can’t.
Change the player you tap on
As far as we can tell, this is purely a cosmetic change and offers absolutely no gameplay advantage at all—so perhaps it’s debatable to call this a tip. However, you can change the player that you tap on by using the change button on the home page.
When you tap that button, you’ll be presented with a list of all the players you have unlocked so far, and can select one of them to become your player on the main screen instead of Tsubasa. It’s a purely cosmetic change, but I’ve found that changing it daily has kept things a little fresher than other games, where the home screen could look identical for months.
Ignore the tap increases
Like a lot of tap games, tapping isn’t all that profitable compared to boosting your passive income—and in Captain Tsubasa, the numbers very quickly don’t add up. You could spend some balls to upgrade how many you get for each tap via the multitap boost, and how many times you can tap in one sitting… or you could invest the same amount in a player or team upgrade and earn way more balls passively over time.
Even in the early game, the cost of one of those upgrades will easily pay for itself in little time, saving you the time and hassle of repetitively tapping your phone screen. Look, play however you please, but this move is all about efficiency.
Screenshots from Captain Tsubasa: Rivals. Image: Decrypt
Do the freebie tasks
A bit of a cheeky one here, but if you want a one-time influx of free balls, there’s a big list of social media-related tasks that give your rewards… but you don’t actually have to do a lot of them.
All the tasks that ask you to do something on Twitter (aka X) don’t actually verify whether you’ve done it. That means that you can click on the button for the task, which opens the Twitter app, then simply head back to Telegram and claim the reward. It’s free balls for a little bit of app-switching hassle.
You’ll need friends
While not as egregious as some other tap games, Captain Tsubasa: Rivals does lock some upgrade options behind referral totals, meaning if you don’t have some pals to invite to the game, then you won’t be able to unlock certain upgrades and players.
It’s not a major issue, as there’s still a good amount of upgrades you can access—but if you want to maximize your ball count, then you’ll need to coax at least a few friends into the game to help you unlock some of the key pieces for your soccer dynasty.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
