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Street Fighter: Duelis probably not going to be what you expect when you first download it on Android or iOS. It’s not a fighting game, instead being more of a team-building RPG in the vein of AFK Arena. There are plenty of Hadoukens and Sonic Booms, but that’s where the similarity to its storied siblings ends.
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As with others in its genre, it’s a gacha-focused idle game in which you’ll need to get to grips with multiple systems of currencies, resources, and modes if you want the best team. This can be confusing, especially for beginners, so we’ve put together these tips and tricks to help.
Updated July 20, 2025 by Jerel Levy:If you’re looking for the perfect Street Fighter Duel guide to help get you through the beginning stages of the game and jumpstart your character training, you’ve come to the perfect guide. From how to start out in the game to an explanation of the mechanics, we provide Street Fighter Duel tips to get you going from the beginning. This Street Fighter Duel guide has been updated for formatting and readability, to ensure you’ll have the most robust guide possible to getting into this gacha title.
Your First Choice Is Preference
When you first start Street Fighter Duel, you’ll be faced witha choice between Ryu and Ken—the series' two main figureheads. This seems like it should be important, but in reality,it’s not that consequential. It’s more about who you’ll follow in the story beats.
When it comes to the gameplay side of things,both fighters are pretty low-tiercompared to what you will acquire early on in your journey. So, the best thing to do here is toside with who you prefer. Everyone knows Ken is the only right choice anyway.
Don’t Be Afraid To Level Your Fighters
The biggest Street Fighter Duel tip you’ll get is to start strengthening your roster of fighters. This will allow you totake on more difficult challenges, clear more of the story path, and battle other players in the PvP sections.
As well as a host of RPG-like stat increases, characters willgainnew skills, namely atlevels 21, 41, and 61.
You’ll need to expend thethree main resourcesyou acquire from battling and idling, namelyCash, Fighter EXP, and Breakstones.
The great thing about Duel is that you should never shy away from leveling your main roster up — byusing the Reset option in the Awaken menu, you may reduce trained fighters back to Level 1 at any time andrefund all the materials you’ve usedin the process to allocate elsewhere.
We’d recommend focusing only ona team of four fightersearly on. Soon you’llunlock a featurethat will give you access to high-level characters without the huge resource investment.
Ditch Your C-Tier Fighters, Awaken The Rest
To improve your fighters even further,you may Awaken them toincrease their tierto their maximum potential. For example, Ryu and Ken both start in B-tier, withthe maximum tier being SSS.
Requirements differ as you increase the rank, from being of the same Faction to being of the same tier or duplicates.
This essentiallycreates a ‘fodder’ loop from the fighters you obtain, meaning you’ll need to constantly improve other fighters upwards in order to makeyour main fightersbetter.
With thegreen C-tier fightersyou get, though,use the Dismiss optionto get loot and currency tospend in a special shop. They’re pretty pointless, although it might be worthkeeping one of each Faction aroundfor Bounties.
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Save Your Arcade Coins And Other Pull Currency
A classic feature in gacha games, the ‘pull’ mechanic ishow you obtain new fightersin Street Fighter: Dueland duplicates that you use to strengthen existing ones.
In Duel, this is accessed from the Draw screen. There arethree types of currencythat unlock pulls —Faction Coins, purchased from the Mall;Arcade Coins, earned from missions or bought; andHeart Gems, given from adding and interacting with friends.
Always save these until you have enough for ten pulls at onceso that you cantake advantage of ‘pity’ mechanics, such as guarantees on your next set of pulls.
You can alsostockpile them for when timed events appear, maximizing your chances of getting that limited edition character.
Unlock The Limit Break Feature
This is where the tip to only focus on four fighters comes into full effect.The Limit Break featureyou get sees yourfour strongest characters act as Monument Fighters, a kind of inspiration for all your other fighters to follow.
You’ll unlock it automatically byprogressing the story, so make this your early priority.
As you can see above, three Monument Fighters are at level 81, with Combat Guile lower at level 76.All the characters in the Limit Break have been promoted to level 76, the same level as Combat Guile.
By keeping your main four fightersroughly the same level, you’ll essentially keep your whole squad around the same strength.
You get a bunch of slots for free, andcan unlock up to 80 using the Gems you acquire. This should solve any teambuilding issues you have when the going gets rough!
Try to adda balance of different Factionsto your Limit Break roster, as you never know when you’ll need to change things up.
Also, you’re able to remove a Fighter from the Limit Break at any time. However,that slot will go into a 24-hour cooldownbefore you can add a new Fighter to it.
Pay Attention To Factions And Synergy
Street Fighter: Duel hasan elemental Faction structure, with each fighter assigned to a different group. There arefive in total: the three base Factions ofFire,Wind, andThunder, thenMasterandInfernal.
They operate on a rock-paper-scissors basiswhen it comes to battles. Fire beats Wind, Wind beats Thunder, and Thunder beats Fire. Infernal and Master negate each other.
If you build your team right, you’ll not onlybe stronger against teams of an opposing Factionbut alsogain some great buffs.Aim fora 4-2 split between the three base Factions, use Master to help out in reaching bonuses, and augment the support positions with Infernal.
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Experiment With Fighters And Team Comps
Another reason to play around with your team comps is totake advantage of different Fighter roles. For example, Zangief is a Tank, while Elena is a Support, and Blanka is Balanced.
This affects their battlefield position,which can be key to surviving the more difficult rounds.
A Tank will always face the enemy directly, on the right of your team of four.A Support will always stay in the backlinein position three.Your fourth (on the far left) is a sub, who can either pop in and help with combos or join the fray when one of your team falls.
Even within these groups,there are even more subgroups.Fighter Type determines whether a character focuses on Agility, Tech, or Power.
Fighting Style offers differences in the buffs a character gets to certain stats.Experiment with different lineups and positioningto get the best out of your Fighters' abilities, stats, and synergies.
As an example,ace fighter Chun-Liis aWind-based Agility Assassin,with the Military Combat fighting style. This means she is great against Thunder teams, often attacks first, and gains a +25 boost to ATK.
Add Friends And Join Guilds
As with a lot of gacha games,you’re encouraged to make friends and join groups known as guilds. The game incentivizes this by offering different types of currencies forinteracting with other real players, andmany of the daily, weekly, and challenge quests will require it.
It doesn’t really matter who you addin the end. Sure, you could reserve your slots for actual friends, but ultimately they’re justpassive tools in the great resource-generating machine. Fill up the list fast, and you can start reaping the rewards.
The same goes for guilds, although here, you’ll want tojoin one that’s pretty activeto maximize the rewards and chances of completing tasks. The Guild screenranks groups on activity, with a higher score being more desirable in this regard.
Search for friends by name by going toAdd > Players > typing the name in the box in the bottom left corner.
Make Sure To Do All Timed Tasks And Claim Freebies
This one is another no-brainer for anyone familiar with gacha games.You’ll be bombarded with free gifts, whether daily claims from the Mall or through special events thatgive rewards for completing tasks.
Make sureyour daily habitbecomes about doing these first and foremost, as you’ll often get enough resources to boost a fighter level or two anda chance at even more pulls.
You’ll often get rewards that come with a time on them,such as a Pile of Cash showing ‘8hr’. When you use them from your Bag, you’ll get that many hours' worth of idle accumulation.
So, say you earn 323 Cash per minute idling; you’llget 155,040 Cash(eight hours equals 480 minutes, multiplied by 323) when you use it. It’s good to keep these items anduse them on a ‘rainy day’— when you run out of content to do.
Leave Street Fighter Duel Running Overnight
If there’s one thing gacha games do well, it’srun you into a roadblock relatively early. In Duel, this is when you don’t have the resources to level your Fighters,and therefore can’t progress with the content.
It can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you’re caught in the psychological loop of ‘need to do more, quickly.’
As you can’t buy progress in this game — Fighter EXP is the one thing no amount of money can buy —the best thing to do is just idle.
That’s the point of the game, after all. And what better time is there to idle than when you’re sleeping?Pop your phone on charge, turn the volume off in the menu, dim the phone’s screen, and leave the game running. You’llwake up to a ton of resourcesto help kickstart your day.
