Steal a Superpower Beginner Guide: What to Do First and How the Game Fits Together

Quick answer

Your first session is one short loop: open an ability pack for your first superpower, place cards on your base's holders so they earn cash while you play, fight through the first zone, level up a card, and defeat the first boss to open the next area.

Your first five steps

1. Open an ability pack. Packs are where superpowers come from, and your very first pack hands you your first ability card — a full power you can use right away.
2. Place cards on your base holders. Any card you are not fighting with goes on a holder in your base, where it starts earning cash for you straight away.
3. Fight through the first zone. Take your new power out and use it against enemies — and keep lifting weights at your bench, because trained strength is what lets you venture further and further out.
4. Level up a card. Leveling a card up unlocks its most powerful ability; our guide to leveling up cards walks through the system.
5. Defeat the first boss. The boss is the gate to the next area: beat it to open up new ground, crack open its loot chests and carry its packs home. If you would rather not walk in blind, our bosses guide covers how boss fights work.

Those five steps are the whole game in miniature: cash, upgrades, rarer cards and further areas all grow out of repeating that loop with a bigger collection each time.

What you see when you load in

The starting area does most of the orienting for you. Here is the first screen, spot by spot:

Your starting screen at a glance

Where on the screen

Top of the screen

What you will see

A heart reading 100 / 100

Where on the screen

Along the bottom

What you will see

A banner reading "Lift weights on your bench"

Where on the screen

Bottom-left corner

What you will see

0 Power, a Level 1 readout and a 0 / 100 progress bar

Where on the screen

Left edge

What you will see

An icon menu holding Rebirth, Shop, Upgrades, Abilities and Worlds

Where on the screen

Top right

What you will see

Settings and Codes

Where on the screen

On mobile

What you will see

On-screen MERGE 2 / MERGE 4 buttons

Where on the screen

Early in the run

What you will see

A "Welcome, Hero!" badge pops up

Your starting screen at a glance

Where on the screen	What you will see
Top of the screen	A heart reading 100 / 100
Along the bottom	A banner reading "Lift weights on your bench"
Bottom-left corner	0 Power, a Level 1 readout and a 0 / 100 progress bar
Left edge	An icon menu holding Rebirth, Shop, Upgrades, Abilities and Worlds
Top right	Settings and Codes
On mobile	On-screen MERGE 2 / MERGE 4 buttons
Early in the run	A "Welcome, Hero!" badge pops up

That bottom banner is the game pointing you at strength training: lifting weights is how you build the strength to venture further and further out.

The clip below opens on that exact first screen — the 100/100 heart, the "Lift weights on your bench" banner, the Level 1 bar and the left icon menu — and rolls into the first minutes of a new save.

How packs, fighting and your base fit together

Steal a Superpower ties its three halves together with one loop:

The loop of a Steal a Superpower run

1. 01

   Open a pack

   The game's main feature

   You get card packs by defeating bosses or redeeming codes, and every pack you open hands you ability cards.

2. 02

   Use the card

   Equip it or bank it

   Each card grants a unique superpower with its own set of moves — lightning, fire, frost, gravity, time, shadow, gold and more. Equip a card to fight with it, or put it in your base to generate cash.

3. 03

   Train and fight

   Strength opens distance

   Lifting weights trains your strength so you can venture further and further out, and the foes you defeat reward you with more packs.

4. 04

   Beat the Dominus boss

   A new area opens

   Defeating a Dominus boss opens the next area, and its loot chests and packs come home with you.

The packs you carried home open into more cards, so every trip out feeds the next one with a bigger collection.

Worth knowing as you loop

Your base earns while you fight

Cards placed on holders keep generating cash even while you are out fighting, so a card left at home is never doing nothing.

Packs are where your superpowers come from — opening them is the game's main feature, and our packs guide takes a closer look at the system. Fighting decides how far you reach: strength from the bench carries you deeper into each zone, defeated foes hand back more packs, and beating the Dominus boss is what opens the next area — the part our how to unlock areas guide covers in detail. Upgrades, trails and auras boost your Power, Health and speed along the way, which the upgrades guide breaks down.

Your base is the half that never stops working. Cards left on holders generate cash the entire time you are out fighting, so the collection pays you back either way — equipped in the zone, or parked at home earning. Our how to get cash guide covers the money side in more depth.

What each card is actually for

Every ability card has two uses, and both help a new run. Equipped, its superpower is a set of moves you can fight with immediately. Placed on a holder in your base, it generates cash — including while you are away in a zone. A simple habit for early runs: keep a power equipped for the fight, let the rest of the collection earn money at home, and level up the card you actually fight with, since leveling is what unlocks a card's most powerful ability. When you start wondering which powers deserve the slot, our best powers rundown compares the collection.

Codes: a free head start

Before the loop gets going, claim the free stuff. Codes give new players free temporary Potions and, now and then, extra Packs. The Potions come in two kinds worth knowing early: Luck Potions, which improve what you pull from packs, and Power Potions, which boost your strength in fights. A pack code is even better news — it is a free shot at another superpower for the collection.

The Codes icon at the top right of the screen opens the redemption window, and a result line confirms each reward. The working list changes as codes come and go, so grab the current ones — and the exact redemption steps — from our Steal a Superpower codes page before you start.

Where the loop leads

The first boss is the first gate, not the finish line. The game sets out long-run goals that give the repeating loop a direction:

• Complete the Index. Completing the Index earns permanent rewards for every rarity you collect; our Index guide follows the collection, and the card rarities guide breaks down the tiers you are chasing.
• Chain kill streaks. Chained kills add bonus multipliers and critical hits; see our kill streaks guide.
• Climb the leaderboards. They track Top Cash and Top Power; see our leaderboards guide.
• Look ahead to the endgame. The game's own challenge question — can you pull an Ancient card and beat Dominus Empyreus, the final boss? — is picked up by our Dominus Empyreus and Ancient cards guides.

None of that needs a decision on day one. Your first session only has to run the loop once — open a pack, park the spare cards on your holders, fight out with one power equipped, level it up, beat the first boss — and from there your base keeps earning while you plan the next trip out. When you want the full route, the noob to pro guide picks up where this one stops.