Upgrading from HQ14 to 15 – The Nova Trick

As previously mentioned in P&S – Player Guide – Sprint to HQ16, there is a trick to upgrading the Research Lab (Nova) before you beat Nova.

I get a lot of questions about this, so I thought a detailed post with screen shots would be worthwhile.

The Problem

Before you beat Nova, if you click on the Research Lab, it takes you to the “Heal Nova” screen, and there is no Upgrade button.

Once Nova has been fully healed (unlocked) after Story Chapter 10, when you click on Research Lab, you get an upgrade button:

If you are at HQ 14 trying to get to 15, the dependencies are Wall and Nova (Research Lab), and many people mistakenly believe that you have to unlock Nova (Story Chapter 10 / Campaign Chapter 10) before you reach HQ 15.

However, there is a simple trick which bypasses this requirement.

The Solution

1. Click on Headquarters, then Upgrade
   
2. On the Headquarters Upgrade screen, click the button next to “Research Lab”.
   
3. This takes you to the Research Lab (Nova) Upgrade screen.
   
4. Using “Consecutive Building Mode” takes you right back to this screen after each build – for example, if using speedups, you can get through all 14 levels fairly quickly.
   
   It took me 3 minutes and about 6 hours of speedups to get to Nova 14
   

Here is a final shot, showing my HQ upgrading to 15, although clearly, I haven’t completed Story Chapter 10 yet.

🙂