Advice for the new Marvel Heroes player

Today, some tips for those new to Marvel Heroes.  Just some various bits of advice I've picked up during my time playing.

• Getting heroes to certain milestones gives you a bonus to xp on all your heroes.  The first hero you get to level 60 increases xp earned by 30%, the second by another 20, then 15 more for 3, etc up to a maximum of 200%.  So getting your first hero to level 60 will make leveling a second one that much faster.

• There is no way to delete your starting hero and pick another one.  If you decide you just can't stand the hero you picked and must try again, you can create a new account and pick a new hero that way.  All the starting heroes are at least decent, and it doesn't take long to earn enough eternity splinters to buy a new one, so I recommend sticking it out in that situation.

• In general you're best off either maxing out a power or putting just a single point in it.  At level 60 you can put 20 points in a power, and you have 162 points available if you've done all the story quests.  Also, your starting powers have 1 point each in them to begin with.  So that means you can max out 8 powers and have enough additional points to put 1 each in around 6 others.

• Every hero has both active and passive powers.  Passive powers give an always on benefit, so it's nearly always worth it to put at least 1 point in each passive you have access to.  

• Every hero has a way to apply the weakness and vulnerability debuffs to enemies.  Weakness decreases the damage they deal by 10%, vulnerability increases damage they take by 10%.  Often theses debuffs are attached to one of your attacks.  It's worth seeing which powers apply them.  Often it's worth putting a single point in these powers even if you aren't interested in them for damage so that you can apply those debuffs.

• Enemies drop orbs a lot.  Red are health, blue are spirit (mana), purple give both.  Green are xp.  Orbs do disappear if you don't grab them quickly, especially the xp orbs.  Saving civilians often gets you a bunch of bonus xp orbs.  For example, click on the hostages in the prologue bank heist mission to free them and get a bunch of bonus xp.

• Orange instance portals are treasure rooms.  Every zone map has two active at any time.  Inside will be some champion level enemies and a chest containing xp orbs and some loot.

• Gear you don't need should be donated to the vendors in the chapter hubs (Avengers Tower, the X-Mansion, or SHIELD Helicarrier).  Vendors level up from donations, up to a level of 20, offering more and better options with each level.  I recommend focusing on the crafter first, as that has ways to upgrade your blue gear to purple fairly cheap, and needs to be level 10 for you to make use of costume cores once you reach level 30.  Next, level up the enchanter, who lets you use runes to enchant your gear.  Mostly enchanting is a thing to do at max level, but you will get an uru item and a couple of runes as a login gift pretty early on.  You can use those to create the Seer's Brilliance runeword which gives you an xp bonus and some bonus health.

• Gear can grant a power at a certain rank, or it can increase your current rank in a power by a certain amount.  Gear that grants a power will set your level in that power to that particular rank unless you already have a higher rank in it.  This happens even with 0 points spent in the power.  This is a great way to test out powers without having to spend points in them.  Gear that increases your current rank adds additional points to that power on top of what you've spent in it.  You must have at least 1 point spent in the power though.  If you have 0 points in a power, gear that increase rank will have no effect.