The Complete TFT Leveling Guide and Tips
TFT is a strategy game that is all about properly managing your resources to make the strongest team of units possible. Over the last five years, the game has been studied in the same way chess has been studied over centuries, which means there are timings and general rules that have been widely adopted and practiced by top players. This breakdown is brought to you by me, Mean Mister Kien, an NA Challenger player who has peaked at Rank 1.
Standard Tempo - Fast 8
The first rule is to not use money on rolling in the early game. Your goal is to only buy XP on the following intervals while making the best board with what has been offered to you. Most games, you won't roll even once until Stage 4. Your goal is to reach 50 gold as soon as possible so you can start collecting +5 interest each turn.
Stage | Level |
|---|---|
2-1 | Buy XP to hit Level 4 |
2-5 | Level 5 |
3-2 | Level 6 |
4-1 | Level 7 |
4-2 | Level 8 + Roll until stable* |
5-2 | Level 9 |
5-5 | Level 9 (if not earlier) |
6-1 | Level 9 (if neither of previous timings worked) |
If you forget the timings, the easiest thing to do is to just pull this screen up on your other monitor. The second easiest thing to do is to just always get to level 8 and have 50 gold before you decide to roll for your comp. As long as you pick an A or S tier comp and do this leveling curve every game, you will climb ranks. Everything else you could or couldn’t do is going to be relatively insignificant relative to whether or not you leveled and rolled at good timings.
With this tempo, there will be some games where you get stuck at level 8. That’s okay. You can’t win every game, but doing this will greatly reduce the number of games where you go 7th or 8th. In normal games, though, you will be able to get to 9 as long as you were able to make a stable board on level 8.
*What does stable mean? In theory there is a minimum number of rolls you can make in any given game that will allow you to either win fights or minimize losses on Stage 4 to save yourself some HP. Much of the finesse of TFT at the highest level is being able to properly identify this threshold -- a good rule of thumb, though, is you’ll want to upgrade all of your 1, 2, and 3 costs on Stage 4. It can be hard to upgrade all of your 4 costs on Stage 4, but ideally you want to be able to hit at least one or two.
What about level 10? You will not reach level 10 in most of your games. It's almost always going to be more efficient to roll on level 9 to try to upgrade your legendaries. You only push for level 10 if you get lucky and upgrade your legendaries early, or if it's an extremely high economy game (via encounter or augments).
Why is this standard? Because player damage scales in a way that makes Stage 4 and Stage 5 the most damaging when you lose. Combined with losing health in the early game, it’s here where people start to die off, so you want to make sure you are strong for these stages. It’s easier to play for wins early if you decide to roll on Stage 2 and Stage 3, but then you get out-scaled by people who save for Stage 4. Losing all five fights on Stage 2 might cost you the same amount of health as losing just two fights on Stage 4, for example. Level 8 is also the first good interval to roll for 4-cost units -- TFT has evolved in a way where the game is largely balanced around 4-costs and level 8 as its core.
So I shouldn’t ever roll or level at other timings? As a beginner (or even a lower ELO veteran player), I’d recommend you just stick with this. As you improve and watch streamers, you’ll notice they do sometimes level at different timings (usually earlier than I’ve listed) or even roll before Stage 4. You typically level earlier when you have excess gold or if you are trying to preserve a win streak. You might roll earlier because you need to start saving HP or because you are close to a lot of upgrades. There are always reasons to do it, but understand that it is simply easier to just stick your desired comp in your planner and save for Level 8 + 50 gold and then roll.
Reroll Tempo - 1-cost carry
This tempo is designed for players who are trying to build a board centered around 1-cost units.
Stage | Level |
|---|---|
2-X | Do not buy any EXP at all on this stage. Make 10 interest as fast as possible (selling even 2 and 3 cost units the comp might run). You will be Level 4 and have 40 or 50 gold against Krugs. Do not level to 5 - you can roll a bit if you're worried about losing, but you should be fine as long as you position your units on the right side. |
3-1 | You will be level 4 and should have 50-60 gold at this point. Roll until 32 gold and pick up all the 1-costs you need. |
3-X | Build your economy back up to 50g. Every turn now, you can “slow roll,” which means rolling excess gold above 50, until you 3-star your key units. |
4-1 | You typically need to roll down to 10 gold at this point (or even 0 gold) if you still haven’t upgraded your units to 3-stars. After that, you can push to level 6 and build up your economy again for the rest of the stage. |
4-2 | Most games, you'll be able to go straight to level 7 on this turn with at least 10g remaining. If you were unlucky with rolls, you'll need to try to save up to 50g before going for levels again. If your HP is low, you may need to push for level 7 on 4-5. |
5-1 | Go to level 8 if you haven't already. From here, if your comp has important 4-costs, you can roll for them, otherwise save to go to 9 on Stage 6. |
6-X | This tempo can often get stuck on Level 8 on this stage if the comp rounds out with 4-costs. If you have the money, it's good to push for level 9 either on 6-2 or 6-5. |
You roll mostly on Level 5 because it's the odds for hitting 1-costs. The key to this tempo is in understanding when you should continue to roll and when you should give up on a unit. This means knowing which units are core to your comp and which ones are replaceable or less important. It also means that sometimes you can be more aggressive at rolling past 50g (or even less) if you feel like you are close to an upgrade.
1-cost reroll comps can be out-scaled by the end of the game if you aren’t able to supplement those boards with upgraded 4-costs and 5-costs. This tempo generally needs to be able to win most (if not all) fights on Stage 3 and Stage 4 to secure a strong finish.
Reroll Tempo - 2-cost carry
This tempo is designed for players who are trying to build a board centered around 2-cost units.
Stage | Level |
|---|---|
2-X | If you can be strong early, you can play to win and follow the Standard Tempo timings. If you are weak, you can just maximize money as much as possible (do not buy EXP) and rush to 50g. |
3-1 | Level to 5 at this point if you didn’t the previous turn to help beat Krugs. |
3-2 | Level to 6 and roll until you’ve upgraded your core 2-cost units. |
3-X | The rest of this stage, you should try to build your economy back up to 50g, and then from there slow roll down to 50g for your units. |
4-2 | By this point in the game, if you are low on HP and still not winning, you may need to roll down to 10g every turn until you are one away from your core units, and then roll until 0. If you have a lot of HP left, you can just roll down to 50g and take your time finding your units. |
5-2 | Ideally you can push to level 8 by this turn, but sometimes you’ll get stuck on level 7 for the rest of Stage 5 or even the entire game. |
6-X | You ideally want to push 9 at some point -- probably after you hit your 4-cost units, but if you can't build up the econ, you can just roll every turn for whatever upgrades you still need. |
2-cost reroll comps are usually best played from a strong opener. Well, I guess it’s more so that every single tempo prefers a strong opener -- it’s just that reroll comps sometimes trick people into forcing them even from bad spots (because they’re fun). But this is a comp that really needs to save HP on Stage 2 and 3 when possible because you’ll often take a lot of losses on Stage 4, and you can’t afford to lose all 3 of those stages.
Reroll Tempo - 3-cost carry
This tempo is designed for players building around a 3-cost carry. You’ll note that as the cost of the carry increases, it becomes more and more similar to how you might play a Standard Tempo. The timing for a 3-cost carry comp early on is the same as a Standard Tempo:
Stage | Level |
|---|---|
2-1 | Buy XP to hit Level 4 |
2-5 | Level 5 |
3-2 | Level 6 |
4-1 | Level 7 and roll for upgrades |
Once you hit level 7, you’ll want to roll until your upgrade your 3-costs. As this can be costly, you generally don’t want to commit to a 3-cost reroll comp unless you’ve been winning early or have already hit a lot of copies of the units you need just from the natural shops you’ve seen. Without those things being true, it’s probably better to push to level 8 and play a more standard tempo. That said, live your life. I’m not your boss.
Sometimes, while playing a standard tempo, you may find it better to try to cap around a 3-cost even if you've already leveled to 8. That's a fine option too if you hit a lot of copies of 3-costs on the rolldown (and it's not contested).
Fast 9 Tempo
This should be explanatory based on the name. This is best when you’re trying to play around legendaries and want to quickly push to level 9 to be able to cap your board. It’s a bit of a relic from older sets when the odds of hitting legendaries were higher at level 9. These days, though, it’s an extremely risky play to make without there being much payout for it.
Stage | Level |
|---|---|
2-X | Play strongest board + Save Money + HP |
3-X | Play strongest board + Save Money + HP |
4-2 | If you’re very rich, this is the first interval you can push level 9 (you want to have around 30-50 gold). |
4-5 | You can also push 9 on this turn. |
5-1 | Or push 9 on this turn, which is late, but can typically be done if you win streak through stage 2 and 3 |
The gist of it is that this is a direction to play when legendary units are excessively powerful and you have an opener that allows you to win streak. What you want to avoid is a situation where you reach level 9 with only one life left -- in those cases, you’d be expected to roll all of your gold in a single turn and make a strong board, which is an unreasonable ask for even Challenger players.
In general, I don’t recommend playing this tempo at all if you are looking to climb. It’s just a good thing to have in your back pocket when you’ve been winning but your desired Fast 8 comp is extremely contested. In these cases it can be hard to pivot your items to a different Fast 8 comp, so it may be more prudent to push towards level 9 and try to play around a legendary unit instead.
As you play and improve, you’ll learn other timings and adapt them to your own game. I would just urge you to not fall into “comfort” or doing things that make you “feel” better unless they’re backed by evidence or data. This is a game designed to make you feel uncomfortable at times -- say you lose nine fights in a row and are at low HP -- but you just have to ignore it. You only need 1 HP to win a game of TFT, and it will give you the same amount of LP gains as winning with 100 HP.
These are primary tempos you should know of when you are trying to climb, but if climbing is your only goal, then realistically you can just pick one and force comps that fit that tempo every single game. There have been many Challenger players who played only a single comp on their way up. If you want to improve as a player overall, you should learn all of these tempos and timings, and in the process you'll learn little nuances that can affect your playstyle and decision making.