I've been playing Babble Royale a lot the past few days, because I was engineered in a lab to love this game. I'm not the best player in the world by any means, but I have cracked the MMR and Total Wins leaderboards a few times, and I'm currently rocking a 38% first place rate (that's 6 times the expected 1-in-16). What's more, while I'm a casual Scrabble player, I haven't sat around memorizing dictionaries-- most of my wins come from what I think are good, solid fundamentals. What I'm getting at is that this "strategy guide" doesn't come from thin air.
Probably the best way to improve at the game would be to play it a bunch, memorize which two-letter words it allows, learn common "hooks" that allow you to latch onto words, and so on. I can't write much about that, though. I can write about the next-best thing, though: Here are five ways you can get better in Babble Royale, right now.
(The obvious disclaimer applies: I'm just a girl on the internet; these tips will only make you behave more like me, because that's what I know how to write; they might conflict with the advice of other good players or even better players, et cetera.)
1. Pre-place your kill words before bombing
This is an easy one. You know when you're in this position:
Since you're a super genius you see you have a kill if you use a bomb, then play ADOBE / WE.. Well, you don't have to bomb, then type the letters OBE like a doofus. In a situation like this, you can pre-place the letters OBE, then quickly press 1 (or whatever number your bomb is in) plus SPACE.
This is such a small thing, but it's a huge advantage. Babble Royale is a game where, for the most part, if you can eliminate your opponent, they can eliminate you (more on that later). Giving them no time to counterattack is a way of breaking this symmetry.
2. Value multipliers highly
Look, most of this game is not about the points. My focus in this game is about what area I'm controlling, and if the Q I'm treating as a shield wall lines up on a point multiplier, it's not my doing. That being said, I've noticed that I prioritize dropping near big multipliers more than other people. I do this because doing so gets you money, which can be exchanged for goods and services, as the meme goes. An early AX or ZA on a high multiplier, or even an early HA or PA, can get you money right away, and you basically paid no opportunity cost.
You should still value early S and bomb powerups-- S tiles and bombs win games. Just consider whether you need that S now or could manage with it later.
3. Have a plan for the more meddlesome letters
Babble Royale gives you a lot of credit for frequently emptying your hand. Especially in the beginning of the game, my goal is to throw my tiles on the board as quickly as I can in a mad rush for powerups and money. J, X, and Q are obstacles to this-- if left unchecked, they threaten to reduce your virtual maximum hand size AND turn off your ability to refresh your rack by hitting zero tiles. That's why I actively think about how to get rid of my big-girl letters when I draw them. Poor Q, for example, only has a handful of realistic ways to get rid of it: QI, QUA, SUQ, or some other Scrabbly endeavor, so I'm not going to lay down my I willy-nilly.
This goes double for C and V, the antagonists of Babble Royale. In the current dictionary, there are no valid two-letter words that contain a C or V. As a result, when you draw a C or V, Babble Royale becomes an RPG, and they are your first side quest. If your last two letters are V and E, instead of impulsively dropping your last E wherever you can, maybe save it. You might be able to make VIE, VEE, EVE, or AVE-- and if not, you weren't going anywhere. Conserve your ability to make plays until you have more information-- to put it more bluntly, wait and give yourself the opportunity to draw out of your situation.
Other valid plans include "recycle" and "overload". Often if I have two big-girl letters that don't mesh nicely with each other, like C and J, I'll plan on overloading. (Free bonus tip: Try to overload right before you're about to get a new tile-- it makes you a juicy target for less time.)
4. Readjust your vowel priorities
Not all vowels are created equal.
E is god-tier. Silent E in particular does so much work in this game. You can kill people from a surprising distance by tacking an E on their word; you can tack an E your word and get out of a clumped area without bombing; you can play JA on your HAT and then extend your HAT to HATE, getting rid of that J while making your escape. Non-silent Es are nuts, too-- it's just a common letter. Additionally, EE is basically everywhere, and a word on its own in the current dictionary. What I'm getting at is that it's very difficult to have too many E's.
A and O also get an A-grade. They're common vowels, and they're good outlets for your trickier consonants (AX, OX, JA, JO, ZA, and ZO, to name a few). Again, it's hard to have too many of them-- OOs are all over the three- and four-letter words, and you can always chain AAs or OOs if you find yourself flush with them.
I is a good letter, too-- better Scrabble pros might recognize it from the famous ripe-for-bingos rack AEINRST. That being said, it's easy to amass three or four I's and not have space to get rid of them. I basically always want one, and I usually value the first I over the first O. But if I have multiple O and I tiles, all else being equal, I'm wont to play DIN over DON, for example. In fact, I often find myself aggressively getting rid of Is and still having enough.
U gets the short end of the stick. It's usable, but it does not have the broad appeal of E. I want between zero and one most of the time, and will play my tiles accordingly. I will almost always play DUN over DIN or DON or DEN.
TLDR: In a vacuum, try to have multiple Es, As, and Os, in about that order; try to have one I; try to ditch U.
5. Ask who has the bomb privilege
Bombs are good. One of the ways to win in Babble Royale is to exploit the bomb's range to make your bombs good against your opponent, and bad against you.
Let me show you what I mean. Remember this situation?
Let's say both of you have OBE and a bomb in hand. Which one of you can get the kill? Well, the bomb's radius is a 5x5 square with the corners cut off:
, so in this case you can both bomb to destroy the V, then play OBE (pre-placing your letters, of course). So the kill goes to whoever notices faster.
Now let's say you're blue in this situation, and both of you have RIS for ARISE or ARISES. Who gets the kill?
In this case, red can't blow up the T blocking ARISE, but blue can bomb the T and play ARISES. This means that red has to either draw another word (they can bomb to play ATONE or ATHLETE) or skeedaddle.
As people get better at the game, identifying who has the privilege of bombing productively will only get more important. When you and your opponents both know the three-letter words, if you’ve both played to develop good racks, the only difference between you is your position in space. Being able to identify whether your position in space is defensible is really important.
