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The Expert Guide to SBC Crafting in FUT 21
How to grind your way from bronze packs to an Icon.
The word 'crafting' probably isn't one you immediately associate with football, but thanks to the popularity of Squad Building Challenges, it's become a very real part of Ultimate Team in the past few seasons. Essentially, it's possible to cycle unimportant players through various FIFA 21 upgrade SBCs repeatedly until you pack something with a high face value. You then use those high-value cards to 'craft' expensive SBC players that would otherwise cost lots of coins to unlock. For players who enjoy fiddling around in the menus and on the Companion apps, it's become something of a religion. Read on to join the congregation.
How SBC crafting works
SBC Crafting can be a good way to shore up your card collection
© EA
The goal with SBC crafting is to end up unlocking an expensive SBC player without having to spend hundreds of thousands of coins. You get to open a lot of packs along the way, too, so you may strike it lucky and pack a nice promo card or other usable player at some point on your journey.
The SBC players you unlock will depend on the time of year, but at the time of writing there's a very juicy Premier League Player of the Month Bruno Fernandes card available for a few more days. This requires two 84-rated squads, plus 85, 86, 87 and 88-rated squads to complete, with a few in-forms in there for good measure. Were you to buy fodder cards on the market from scratch, you would need nearly 1.2m coins to unlock him. By crafting with upgrade packs, the hope is you can do it for a lot cheaper.
The exact crafting method you use depends on the upgrade SBCs available, but the principle is always the same: you put unwanted cards into the upgrade SBC over and over again, recycling any duplicates or new unwanted cards, and you stick anything high-rated in your club until you have enough of those to complete one of the high-rated squads required for the player SBC you are crafting towards. For example, you might open dozens of League SBC packs and end up with a bunch of 84s and 85s, ideal for completing one of the lower-rated Bruno squads.
The best Squad Building Challenge upgrades
Squad Building Challenge upgrades can be potent if used correctly
© SBC-Crafting-FUT-2
To take maximum advantage of the crafting method, it's best to try it during a FUT promotion when there are extra, time-limited upgrade SBCs available.
The most recent example is Team of the Year, when league-specific upgrade SBCs were live for around a week covering the top five leagues. These allowed players to exchange a squad of common or rare gold players (with low chemistry requirements) for packs containing, for example, 12 gold Premier League players including three rares. Unwanted cards could then be cycled back into these packs.
Naturally the volume of players in your club dwindles as you cycle cards through the SBCs. However, each of the top leagues also has a matching League SBC, which requires you to submit full squads for each team in that league. Given the volume of league-specific cards being thrown out by these upgrade packs, it was possible to complete these League SBCs with reasonable efficiency while keeping the upgrade SBC recycling adventure going.
For maximum efficiency though, it's worth combining the above with the age-old Bronze Pack Method of grinding. BPM involves opening a large number of 400-coin bronze packs, keeping all the players, selling any managers or kits that have value, and discarding the rest. Any players that are from major leagues can then be used to help complete the League SBCs mentioned above, while the bulk of the worthless bronze players can be put into the basic Bronze Upgrade SBC, which kicks out two silver cards for each bronze squad submitted. Some of those silvers are useful for League SBCs too, while others can then be funnelled into the next upgrade SBC up the roster, giving you more gold commons. These then go into the main upgrade SBCs. It's the circle of life, FIFA style!
Selling off useless cards can be useful to generate funds
© EA
Let's break down the relevant SBC types:
- Bronze, Silver and Gold Upgrades - Located on the Upgrades tab of the SBC page, these are the all-year-round upgrade SBCs that let you exchange squads of bronze, silver and gold players for 2-3 of the next level up. For example, a squad of 11 silver players gets you three common golds.
- League SBCs - On the Leagues tab, EA has nerfed these SBCs heavily this year, removing special player item rewards and making most of the reward packs untradeable, but they are still worth completing over time as part of the grind. Watch out though, because these are now time-limited SBCs and often disappear after 90 days before being reposted with slightly updated requirements. Any component SBCs you have completed will then need to be completed afresh.
- Promo upgrade SBCs - During most promos, EA drops special time-limited SBCs that let you exchange squads for guaranteed rewards. This year we've seen SBCs that give out a guaranteed 82-88 rated player, 2x 81+ rated players, or a player pick for 4x 80+ rated players, among others. Requirements vary depending on the reward, and typically there's a sweet spot for crafters.
- SBC Players - The goal of your grind is to funnel high-end fodder (especially duplicates) into expensive player SBCs, including Player of the Month and Icons, which are often available in-game over a long period. Keep an eye out for exciting cards, and don't waste fodder just for the sake of it!
SBC crafting process step by step
Es ist nicht so kompliziert wie es aussieht
© EA
We've talked about most of the relevant methods and SBC types now, but it's worth explaining the process more painstakingly to illustrate the flow and how it feeds back into itself. So let's break down a typical crafting session. You can perform most of these steps either in-game or using the mobile or web FUT Companion app, although some small elements may be game or app-specific, in which case we'll make a note.
1) Open lots of bronze packs
Our journey begins with bronze packs. Always bronze packs. The goal is to open an absolute ton of them to fill up your club with bronze players. Go to the store and choose the 400-coin pack and rip it. Save all the players inside to your club, take a quick look for any valuable kits or managers (Dutch, Brazilian and French all sell) and then discard the leftovers. Repeat. Repeat repeat repeat. Pro tip: You can speed up this process slightly by switching apps on your phone as the pack animation plays, and then quickly switching back -- for some reason, switching focus away skips the animation and you're straight into the pack. With practice, you can open a large volume of these packs very quickly. Aim to have 800+ cards in your club by the time you stop ripping bronze packs. (Don't be afraid to store duplicate players on your 100-player Transfer List -- you can always bring them back in later when you start rinsing the upgrades.)
2) Run unwanted bronze players through silver upgrades
Now use the Silver Upgrade SBC to rinse all those bronze players who you won't be needing. Just make sure you avoid the major leagues (Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, etc) because you either want to use those cards in their respective League SBCs or you want to sell them. They will be the minority anyway, and you probably have absolutely loads of players from non-major leagues like the CSL, Korean, Japanese and Scandinavian leagues, so start with those. Use Squad Builder and select that league, then just dump all the bronzes in. Positions won't matter too much with the same league across all the cards. Get as many of these SBCs done as possible, then rip all the silver packs that have piled up in your store.
3) Run unwanted silvers through gold upgrades
Same deal here. Your silvers from earlier will all be untradeable, but if they are from major leagues then they will be useful for League SBCs, so again make sure to avoid putting those players into these upgrades. Absolutely everybody else though: in they go. You will end up with a small pile of gold upgrade packs, giving you common golds. Rip 'em.
4) League SBC sanity check
At this point, you probably have a bunch of different bronze, silver and gold common cards in your club, and it's a good opportunity to check on League SBC progress. Pop into the League section of the SBC menus and go through each major league SBC's club puzzles, using the Squad Builder to populate the SBC with any relevant players from that club. Hopefully you have a few that are nearing completion. If you find yourself 3-4 players short, buy the players to complete the SBC. You'll get a pack out of it, adding more cards to your club. And pay close attention to the SBC requirements -- some of the more difficult teams only require 5-6 players from that specific team.
5) Time for the promo upgrade packs
If promo upgrade SBCs are live, it's time for the fun bit! Usually at least one of the upgrade SBCs requires common gold players -- for example, the 82-88 guaranteed player. Put any coonlymmon golds that don't fit into League SBCs into the upgrade. Do the same for any duplicates or any gold cards that are for teams where you've already completed the relevant League SBC puzzle. Hopefully you will start hitting paydirt. Any decent fodder (83+ basically), send it to the club and keep it there for later. For everything else, look up the next more valuable upgrade SBC -- there's likely to be one that needs a bunch of rare golds -- and start funneling the players into there.
6) Recycle, rinse, repeat and reap the rewards
By now, hopefully you see how the pattern is meant to unfold. The idea is that once you build up enough momentum, the cycle of grinding bronze packs and upgrades starts to really kick out some good fodder and rewards. As long as you are efficient -- recycling duplicate cards wherever possible -- and put in the BPM time every now and then, the machine can really work for you over time. It doesn't require a huge amount of coins to start; the only requirement is to put in a lot of time opening the packs.
What to do with duplicates
Ever card has a use – even if it's a dupe
© EA
One final word on duplicates. There's nothing worse than opening a pack and receiving a duplicate untradeable card, especially when it is a high-value one. It's possible to back out of the reward screen without discarding the card and put the original one into an SBC, but if there's no suitable SBC available then you can end up stuck, torn between discarding the card or being unable to open any more packs until you've used it up.
First off, we'd always encourage you to put the card into an SBC if at all possible. But if not, then it may be a good candidate for Quick Sell Recovery. Available through the web and companion apps, Quick Sell Recovery does exactly what it says: it lets you recover a card you have quick-sold. You can do this up to five times per month, and it only costs you whatever the discard value was, so for untradeables that is zero coins. Just keep an eye on that calendar, because it sucks to lose out on a valuable untradeable because you lost track of time or ran out of recoveries.
The other thing to note about duplicate untradeables is that sometimes you may actually be using the original item in your team, complete with an expensive Chemistry Style! This presents a problem, should you wish to put it into an SBC. Fortunately, while you can't send either the original or the dupe to your transfer list, you can swap them around while the card is in your Unassigned pile on console. This isn't possible on the app, but if you're on console, choose "Swap With Duplicate Item In Club" and your Chem-Styled version will become Unassigned, while the dupe goes into your club, where it can be thrown into an SBC before you reclaim the original.
Now go forth and craft!
Get out there and make some powerful upgrades
© EA
So there we have it. If you follow our instructions, put the hours in, and make sure to focus on crafting when upgrade SBCs are live in the game, you can craft your way to expensive players you might otherwise never hope to acquire. Good luck avoiding dupes, and may all your silver upgrade packs be blessed with West Brom and Cadiz players.
