This absolutely needs to be the beginning of this guide as afterwards, we will have sections broken down for each material

This game is a mobile game first and foremost. Shocking! I know!

But with that comes some caveats that are not well communicated without doing your own homework.

Steam TOS, Gaben Blessed, strictly forbids ads in games hosted on their platform. Sonic Rumble has a suite of features that are only enabled by ads, and with this port they have instead of giving PC players an alternative means to do the same things, just completely removed those features. So, if you're wanting to minmax what you can out of this silly party platformer and the onslaught of microtransactions within, you will need to boot this game outside of the PC version. Ads are also disabled on the Google Play PC version

So this guide, in essence, will be primarily informative to the people who started playing on PC that just wouldn't know about any of these other things

...and the PC version seems to not support automatic billing as Rumble Plus is another feature not to be found


With each billing cycle, you get 15 Red Rings

• 5 x Omni Fragments
  
• 7500 x Rings
  
• 1600 x XP to all active passes
  
• 3 additional spins at the Daily Claw Machine

• The ring cap triples to 48,000, and the recovery rate similarly triples to reflect this
  
• You get an additional 25% of rings at the end of a match that does count towards your ring limit
  
• The Ring Claw Machine has its price cut in half from one million rings to 500,000
  
• The bonus bank feature that allows you to still score XP on the season pass once the season pass is complete. The XP scored in this way can be redeemed for a seasonal Score Bonus at the start of the next season for every 30,000 XP with the Score Bonus being randomly rolled, up to a max of 20 rolls before XP is no longer applicable

You also get the ability to earn even more XP for watching ads on platforms with that enabled up to twice per day


This isn't meant to be a commercial or sales pitch as it is meant to be purely informational. I do not wish to direct you on how to spend your real money as much as I seek to share what I had to learn on my own so that you can best utilize what's available to you

If you were like me and wondering if another part of the shop would unlock later, I regret to inform you that empty space in the shop is meant to be for this subscription

This is probably the easiest section in that after you acquire your choice of skin, the return on investment for score bonuses is marginal between your choices at best

You will want to get things on sale whenever possible, but beyond that there's no right or wrong answer as to how best to spend your Red Rings on skins and buddies for Score Bonuses so long as you are buying them during the typical sales

You will NOT want to spend your Red Rings on Wrenches in most cases. We'll get into why when talking about them, but for this section understand the return on investment is abysmal compared to getting any skin or buddy, who in turn lets you more freely use Wrenches

If you MUST get skins and buddies not on sale, here's a breakdown with the math to show for it so you too can figure out what it's worth to you. Trying to include Skills included in bundles will create a lot of deviation that isn't as easily quantifiable.


Standalone rare skins are approximations as they're only available as bundles as of the time of writing this guide. Second row doesn't take into account the bonuses in the bundle.¹ The third row after is a guess made by comparing epic skin bundles and applying the difference as the contents of the epic bundles to standalone skin is comparable to what the rare skin bundles include as a bonus, assuming that should standalone rare skins be sold for Red Rings that the value of the additional items in the bundle are about as equal.² Should this guide not be updated in the event a stand alone rare skin had been introduced, mathematically speaking anything above 66 Red Rings (10%/66 = ~0.1515 Bonus Score per Red Ring) would be a worse value than epic not on sale, while anything 66 Red Rings and below for just a rare skin is a better value

Compared to sales with some estimations made based off existing discounts on bundles


The Riders bundles are your best value; followed by Epic skins respectively compared to your other options on and off sale; followed by every flavor of Buddy under the sun and Legendary skins typically being one of the worse values for Score Bonus. Generally speaking, it would be advised to potentially save the Riders bundles to fill out the seasonal punch card, despite being the best value at the time of writing this guide


Likewise, there's not a great way to earn Red Rings as the premium currency for the shop. Aside from the drip feed of event missions, passes, leveling your emblem, advancing through the leagues, and clearing stage challenges; once you reach a certain stride with regular rings may you start to see another flow of Red Rings via the Ring Claw Machine

You're also able to spend money on various offers to get Red Rings

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None. Play to earn or pay. ARGUABLY anything that gives regular rings to eventually play the Ring Claw Machine

The not-so-premium currency, Skill Stars are given out a bit more like candy

The game does give you a bonus score for having more Skills, leveling them, and then using those Skills in a match. The impact of this is arguably marginal in the face of the utility Skills grant you to win your matches.

Before you start saving up for the cooler looking, character exclusive Skills, do look at the generic Skills as you will find yourself able to not only quickly fill out your loadouts, but perhaps get a cheaper version to utilize at first so you can then double up the effect, have the Skill for another game mode with the quick switch feature, etc. Particular highlights are the Guard and Dodge Roll Skills as you can see character exclusive invulnerability Skills before seeing those two, and each are only 500 Skill Stars for what is effectively the same thing in some cases; a third of the cost of any of the character exclusive Skills at 1500. You will find these Skills tucked away in the Skill shop when you go to look at all Skills

There's a lot of ins and outs on Skills that we're not going to complicate this guide with. We're going to advise that you spend your Skill Stars to level your Skills in a way that enables you to play your games comfortably. If you find yourself using particular Skills often, level them to where you effectively have the reduced recharge time (including the bonus level you get for using the quick switch feature). Do check out the limited time offers and determine if you would use that Skill before you save for it, and after you fill out your loadout.


YARRRRGGGGG! JOIN A CREW! Or make your own! Throughout each week are events for crews to accumulate scores and earn some precious booty. You will absolutely have an easier time hitting these goals and rewards with an active crew of players, though it's not impossible for a single player to grind and reach a few of these; the clash of crews will only be available by having at least a few members. Most notably, Skill Stars are the highlighted reward for these endeavors, though this won't be the only time the crew feature is mentioned.

By participating in leagues with regular gameplay, you can also be awarded variable amounts of Skill Stars based on how you placed in the end results rankings

First time players will likely notice that by reaching certain milestones with their grades on each stage, they'll be rewarded with fair sums of Skill Stars. These are great to start with, but this is a one and done deal

The Ring Claw Machine is also able to spit out Skill Stars as prizes

The daily grade meter will reward 100 Skill Stars early on

You're also able to spend money on Skill Stars with various offers. This is, arguably, the most pay to win the game gets concerning individual matches

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The very reason that inspired me to make this guide was the 'Treasure Hunt' feature of crews, because the PC version does have a prompt for this but this is an ad feature, so you can effectively drive yourself crazy for something that just isn't there. By watching a single ad, you're able to help accumulate a pool of Skill Stars for everyone who participated to get the next day. This is at a rate of five Skill Stars per crew member who watched an ad. It's something if you're by your lonesome, and decent with an active crew

The home screen will randomly have a little chest with the prompt to watch an ad to earn loot. We'll call this the 'Mini-Claw Machine' as it shares the same animation as the Daily Claw Machine. You can get small amounts of Skill Stars from this typically, but there is a chance to get larger amounts. So far, I have gotten as much as 200 in one pull

Medals are used to unlock stage challenges, which is a way for you to be able to play a stage without having to play a traditional match. You can treat them as practice outside of the one time opportunity per challenge they present to earn Red Rings

Medals can also be used to promote stage challenges. This helps to not only unlock rewards on their own tract, but to also eventually unlock hard mode versions of these challenges for an additional opportunity to earn Red Rings

They come in Bronze, Silver, and Gold varieties, and stage promotions typically require the same or higher tiered medals as you progress, with Bronze being used to unlock them

You will want to unlock as many stages as soon as possible. Each stage has conditions before they can be promoted that are not possible to do outside of regular matches. This means this feature has a layer of RNG to it, and so the greater chances you give yourself to advance, the better. Bronze Medals will be your most sought medal throughout this process ironically, and should be saved so that you unlock every stage challenge available before using them to promote ones that you do have unlocked. After that, it's quite literally promoting every stage as soon as you can, or to whatever preference you may have if you're seeking to unlock hard modes


You will get medals by simply playing and leveling the various seasonal passes. While premium passes will give you more medals, you will still get medals for free

Raffle events also have medals as a part of their prize pool

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After exhausting all regular raffle pulls, you can get one additional raffle pull by watching an ad

Omni Fragments are given out liberally in very small amounts

Ideally you save them to immediately get the one Legendary Pirate Shadow skin for 300 fragments as soon as possible; not because it's Shadow per se but because this is by and large the greatest exchange rate in the game for Omni Fragments into Score Bonus. After that, Legendary skins are still your best value being worth more than double the Score Bonus as an Epic skin is at just double the cost of Omni Fragments, then Epic, so on and so forth.

But most importantly, Omni Fragments do expire at the end of each season, and so they invoke the golden rule of "pop 'em, don't drop 'em." Spend each and every Omni Fragment that you can at the end of each season before they expire; regular skin fragments do not expire.

Do not spend Omni Fragments on skins you get as rewards for emblem ranks and stage promotions. They will not change over to another fragment type, and will instead be converted into Rings. Similarly, the current skin fragments promoted through the daily ring deal and claw machine will also not change over into another one


The Daily Claw Machine can give these out

Raffles also have them as apart of their prize pool

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You can get four additional Daily Claw Machine plays by watching an ad for each one after the amount you typically get

Raffles allow you to make another pull by watching an ad after expending all of your regular ones

Rings are a great noob trap! You earn them in large amounts, but there are some tricks to how you should be spending them early on

DO NOT SPEND THEM ON TUNING UP SKINS AND BUDDIES. This is something you should only be doing late game as the return on investment, as detailed with Wrenches, is very poor for your Score Bonus

Instead, buy the limited time fragments in the limited offers first. This is because this is a limited opportunity to acquire said skin for the Score Bonus

After that, start buying all of the common buddies. This is mostly because of the wall of RNG they can hide behind, and they give you a rather large pool to put your wrenches into

Then you'll want to buy every single uncommon player skin, or the avatar skins, as you can

and finally, after buying every buddy and skin available, save your rings for the Ring Claw Machine so you can get materials to help your Score Bonus or some seasonal Score Bonuses


Play the game. Sweet Mountain Ring Battle in particular you can get absurd amounts of rings towards the end of the round, but really just playing the game earns you rings. Listing off all of the ways you can earn additional rings would be a little redundant

You do not earn rings from stage challenges

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The 'Mini-Claw Machine' can give rings. If you're really lucky, it can give significant amounts. I have, so far, gotten as much as 30000 in one pull



Raffles allow you to make another pull by watching an ad after expending all of your regular ones

Four additional Daily Claw Machine plays can be earned by watching ads for each spin after your regular amount of plays

Skin fragments for skins already obtained will be converted into rings at an exchange rate of 100 per fragment

Expired Omni Fragments will automatically be exchanged for 1000 rings per skin fragment

Common player skins from the Daily Claw Machine will be converted to 1000 rings if it is a duplicate of a skin already obtained

Wrenches are also given out pretty regularly

YOU DO NOT NEED TO LEVEL UP YOUR EQUIPPED SKIN FOR ANYTHING!

This is, by and large, one of the most poorly communicated things in the game. That the level and Score Bonus of your equipped skin and buddy does not at all matter. Your cumulative collection is what matters. Unless your Score Bonus is high and you want to show that off with a legendary skin at the beginning of a round, the only thing your skin does is being your character and the unique skills you can use

There is also a misconception that the rarity of the skin you spend Wrenches on matters. It does not. 100 Wrenches will always be a Score Bonus of 1%. You should spend all of your Wrenches as soon as possible, starting with higher rarities only if you happen to have that many and then lower rarities any time you have 100 Wrenches, or however many as soon as you're able to spend them. This is because, again, Wrenches only have an exchange rate of 1% for every hundred used, so saving them for anything is actually very inefficient. You only spend Wrenches on higher rarities if you happen to be given a lot of them at once or if it's literally the only thing you can spend Wrenches on. Some special skins and buddies may not follow the same rules

DO NOT SPEND RINGS ON LEVEL UPS IF YOU'RE ABLE TO LEVEL UP ANYTHING ELSE WITHOUT RINGS


Crew Score rewards

Season pass rewards

Event pass rewards

Emblem rewards

Stage promotions

Raffle prize

Special event missions

Rouge's Treasure Horde

Ring Claw Machine

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The 'Mini-Claw Machine' that randomly appears on the home screen may give small amounts of Wrenches

Raffles allow you to make another pull by watching an ad after expending all of your regular ones

Characters do have their own poses and animations if you ever leave those blank. Some of them are flashier than any of the ones you can equip at this time

The skins you see that are possibly available do not reflect everything in the game, just what you're able to get at the time

Some skins and buddies have come back. You never know for sure, but don't panic if you miss an opportunity

In the interests of neutrality and not trying to be an infomercial, I really didn't want to talk about the cash money prices within the guide itself. Especially as I would be inclined to agree with a lot of the very vocal outcry that the microtransactions in the game are questionable or aggressive, in addition to a few things like the battle passes to be cash only and no ability to simply use red rings. The math would also get exponentially complicated if I were to try and breakdown 'cash value' of red rings into score bonus if I wanted to be silly amounts of detailed, which I would do as indicated by this comment and the handful of edits I keep making to the guide to try and make the guide even more readable and easy to understand (thanks three years of reading announcements and understanding how to highlight key parts of information). Though, I would probably opt for a single conversion for simplicity

Cash / Red Ring amount = Approximate Cash Value per Red Ring. Then, Approx Cash Value (being Red Rings x Approx Cash Value per Red Ring) / Score Bonus = Approx Cash Value per Score Bonus. Best value ~$100 USD/1700 red rings = ~$0.06 per red ring, which would make the Riders bundle (75 x $0.06 = $4.50)/15% = ~$0.30 per percentage of Score Bonus and non-sale legendary (999 x $0.06 = ~$59.94)/120% = ~$0.50 per percentage of Score Bonus IF my sleep deprivation isn't somehow screwing with my ability to figure out what formula this would all be, the denominator/dividing number being the unit we want to be at X per one. Or a another formula using the Score Bonus per Red Ring, Cash Value per Red Ring/Score Bonus per Red Ring. $0.06/0.2 = ~$0.30 and $0.06/0.1201 = ~$0.50 respectively. GOD, IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I FLEXED WORD MATH, so I hope that's correct