With the PlayStation 5 release of Spider-Man: Miles Morales including a remastered version of the base game, which is also available on PC, there’s never been a better excuse to return to the open world of Marvel’s Spider-Man. If you’re looking to really test your spider skills, the toughest are the challenges set up by a bad guy known as the Taskmaster. Supposedly used to test Spider-Man’s abilities in an elaborate attempt to defeat him, these mini-games offer an important reward: Challenge Tokens — a currency used for some of Spidey’s equipment upgrades and new suit purchases. That means you’ll want to complete the Taskmaster’s jobs, and what’s more, you’ll want to be good at them.
Taskmaster Challenges have three tiers: Amazing (bronze), Spectacular (silver), and Ultimate (gold). The Amazing tier earns you one token, the Spectacular rewards two, and you get a total of three tokens for achieving Ultimate. This means doing well can reward you with a bunch of key tokens at once. Getting those Golds is a serious undertaking though, requiring pitch-perfect fighting and swinging on Spider-Man’s part. We’ve put together some tips and tricks for completing each of the Taskmaster’s challenge types so you can shortcut the grind to Gold and get your upgrades quicker.
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Speed is always key
The one most important criterion on which you’re judged in Taskmaster Challenges is speed. Whether you’re beating down enemies, stealthing through a hideout, chasing drones, or defusing bombs, it’s all about how fast you can finish the task. Other elements play into your score as well, but your primary goal should be finishing each one as fast as you can.
Bring the right loadouts for the job
Each of the challenges you face in Spider-Man falls into a specific category, and requires different sets of skills. For the Combat and Stealth challenges, in particular, it’s possible to customize Spider-Man’s loadout to give you the best possible chances of success. We talked about in our combat, suits, and mods guide how equipping certain mods and powers, like the Stealth Suit’s Blur ability or any of the damage-focused suit powers, can give you a serious edge in completing challenges. Often the difference between Amazing or Spectacular ranks, or Spectacular and Ultimate, is just a few points — so equip an awesome suit power and crash through the barrier.
Get some tokens and come back
You don’t need Gold on every single challenge to buy all the Spider suits, mods, and equipment upgrades available in Marvel’s Spider-Man, but you do need it on a bunch of them. As we covered in our Marvel’s Spider-Man review, there are lots of suits and upgrades to buy, after all. You’ll get major advantages for completing different Taskmaster Challenges as you level up and buy new upgrades. As mentioned above, having a combat-specific suit or an upgraded favorite gadget can give you a serious edge, so if you find yourself having a tough time, quit and come back. There are a bunch out there — some being easier than others — but you can go back and finish them after completing Spider-Man’s story. It pays to work through challenges a few times, especially if it involves swinging. Getting familiar with the part of the city where a challenge takes place and finding the best way to get around can help you get a win, even if your swinging skills aren’t quite Spider-like. Preparation helps! So take your time.
Bomb Challenges
Prioritize your targets
We mentioned before that Taskmaster Challenges are all about speed and Bomb Challenges fit the mold. For each one, you’ll have multiple bombs to defuse as fast as you can. The first thing you’ll need to do is identify the closest bomb and the best path to get there. You’ll need to get to each one as quickly as possible, so keeping swings relatively low is key. Most importantly, start planning a route that’s quickest to each bomb, and don’t be afraid to redo the challenge a few times to try different options. Those Challenge tokens are worth the extra effort.
Bomb runs are all about accurate landings
While both Bomb Challenges and Drone Challenges are about speedy swinging, they’re also both about different forms of accuracy. One of the places where you can lose time defusing bombs is in actually getting to the locations. Swinging too high as you come in or landing too far away from a bomb can slow you down just enough to miss the gold medal. Spidey tends to roll with momentum or bounce onto objects that can mess with your ability to grab a bomb and throw it as soon as you land. You really need to stick the landings as you come in. Try landing as close as possible to a bomb so you can quickly grab it as soon as you hit the ground. You’ll also want to avoid launching yourself too high since coming down from a swing arc can take a long time. Precise landings will save you precious seconds.
Wail on the webs when destroying bombs
There’s a quick and not very obvious way to snag extra points on bomb runs. Whenever you throw a bomb, hit the web button as fast as you can to fire as many webs as possible at it. Just pound away on that trigger to get the highest score as fast as you can. Each hit scores a few extra points though speed is the deciding factor, but every little bit helps.
Combat Challenges
Go nuts on gadgets during combat challenges
Another one of the Taskmaster Challenges involves combat and just like the previous runs, speed is what you’ll be judged on. Avoiding damage is paramount, as is blasting enemies as quickly as you can. A good way to accomplish both those goals is to go hard on using your gadgets. Impact webs, trip line traps, and web bombs can quickly web up enemies. If you knock them into walls, they can be defeated instantly. Gadgets restore as you finish off enemies so don’t be afraid to use everything you’ve got. Since webbing enemies to structures is much faster than punching them, try relying on throws and environmental placement to eliminate guys quickly.
High health is essential for the win
Another way you’re judged in combat challenges is by Spidey’s health. Avoid taking hits to score the most points and ideally, you want to avoid taking any damage at all. This means dodging is paramount as you fight. Annihilate enemies as fast as you can but fight well so you don’t get hit. Prioritize eliminating enemies with guns and rockets as they’re usually easy to pin against walls with webs and they’re likely to give you the most problems.
Stealth Challenges
The trick to stealth is combo takedowns
When it comes to stealth challenges, you definitely want to knock it out with speed. What you’ll also find out is that the game is tracking your combos and higher combos mean a better score. In combat, the combo count refers to consecutive hits you’ve landed on enemies without taking damage. In stealth situations, combos are the number of guys you take down within a few seconds of one another. Basically, it means you want to chain your takedowns — don’t just knock out an enemy then move on to the next one. Instead, position yourself in a way that you can take out an enemy and quickly web strike over to another, repeating the process quickly. Chaining takedowns is tough because you need to keep from being spotted, and you’ll need to know which enemies are vulnerable and when. You get a higher score if you can get lots of guys more or less at once so keep your eyes open for opportunities to get enemies relatively close together.
Drones Challenges
Check your speed
The one Taskmaster Challenge where speed is less of a factor is the Drone Challenges. Chasing the drone too closely can ruin your chances of succeeding and more important than speed in these jobs is accuracy. Since you need to swing through the spy cameras the drone drops to grab them you’ll have to balance keeping up with the drone as much as possible but not without prioritizing information or accuracy.
Don’t swing too high
The Drone Challenge is another situation where overdoing it on swing height can work against you. Generally, you want to check your swings in the middle to propel you forward because high arcing swings can carry you too far past where you need to go. It can also cause you to float in the air for a long time resulting in lost ground and precious seconds. In fact, while you might spend most of the game using Swing Jumps (hitting X at the end of a swing) for speed and height, in Drone Challenges it’s actually a little easier to be accurate if you don’t jump in most swings. If you need to slow down use Point Launches to get your bearings and move forward with increased accuracy.
Keep your streak going
Drone challenges dish out bonuses based on streaks. In this case, it’s the number of cameras you snag without missing one. Obviously, you need to grab all the cameras for gold-level scores but you want to take care to check that you got them all on the first pass as this will rack up a combo that gives bonus points. Missing a camera and breaking a streak is usually a good enough reason to start a challenge over again.
Facing off against Taskmaster
As you’re completing his challenges, Taskmaster will eventually show up to face you directly on the map. He will come out of nowhere, so you need to be on your toes when this deadly merc decides to challenge you face to face. This happens two times: first after you complete five of his challenges, and the final time after finishing all 16 challenges. Taskmaster is one of the most difficult bosses in the game, maybe even harder than the story bosses. The first time you fight is a little easier, but the same advice applies to both.
First, dodging will be your best friend. Taskmaster is super aggressive and can drain your health in a matter of hits, so staying agile will keep you in the fight. Also, normal attacks will seldom land on him, but if you can perfectly dodge his attacks you can sneak in a few hits.
Don’t forget to use the environment to your advantage. You’ll need to use every trick in Spider-Man’s arsenal here, so look out for objects you can web up and throw at Taskmaster. It won’t hurt him much, but will open him up to a follow-up combo. If you run out of things to hurl at him, just take the fight somewhere else. He’ll chase you down so don’t feel limited to fighting wherever you are.
In terms of gadgets, the spider drones worked best for us. They can give you a moment to back off and use your focus to heal up. Speaking of which, that’s all you should be using your focus on for this fight.
Aside from blocking any direct attack, don’t bother trying to web up this boss. He will shrug off your shots like paper. This is a battle of attrition. If you stay defensive, time your dodges, and only go in when he’s vulnerable, you’ll come out on top.
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