FIFA 18 coins - how to earn FIFA coins quickly and get FIFA coins free in Ultimate Team

FIFA coins, ever-controversial, are your main means of acquirning new players and consumables in FIFA Ultimate team.

Affording you the ability to open packs, buy players outright on the Transfer Market, and even enter tournaments and challenges like the returning FUT Draft mode, acquiring and using FIFA coins is going to be a central part of what you do if you're getting into Ultimate Team.

You can, of course buy these coins with real money. Dedicated coin-selling sites are frowned upon by the community for a number of reasons, but you can purchase them directly in-game through FIFA Points - EA Sports term for what we call "money".

If you're here though, you probably don't want to do that - although of course there's no judgement if you do - and so this guide will be dedicated to explaining how to earn FIFA coins and get FIFA coins free in-game, with the best, fastest, and most efficient ways to earn grind them out.

How to earn FIFA coins in FIFA 18 Ultimate Team

Before we address what we feel to be the best ways to earn coins, it's worth quickly highlighting all the ways it's possible to do so. Here's how:

• Playing matches in Ultimate Team mode - The most obvious way to earn coins in FIFA is simply playing games of football. You'll earn around 400 coins for a win against a human opponent in FUT's online mode, give or take a few dozen depending on your performance. Keeping this up for a while will also see you earn significant rewards (around a thousand coins) for promotion and conquering your division, which involves winning a set number of games in online leagues.
• Coin boosts - Your post-match earnings can also be modified by coin boosts, which are unlocked with EA Football Club Credits. We know, another currency. It's fairly simple though, simply playing the game will unlock FCCs, which you can spend in the Football Club Catalogue by pressing R3/Right Stick and browsing from the menus. Different catalogue rewards unlock as you 'level up', which again requires you to simply keep on playing. Coin boosts vary, starting at a boost of 200 coins per game for a set period.
• Completing weekly challenges and tournaments - EA Sports kindly provide a roster of new tournaments and/or challenges every week in FIFA Ultimate Team, which normally boast some fairly decent coin rewards as a result. Check into the Tournaments section on the Ultimate Team menus every week to see what's new - but even standard tournaments have decent payouts of 500 coins or more for victory, on top of what you earn from winning games.
• Playing the Transfer Market - This method's probably seen more YouTube videos and blogs dedicated to it than any other, thanks to the irrefutable draw we all have to the idea of playing the market. If you fancy yourself a wheeling, dealing, definitely-not-Harry-Redknapp businessman, then there's a potential fortune to be earned from Transfer Market methods like 'sniping' undervalued players as soon as they hit the market and instantly reselling them, or mass-bidding on swathes of player cards in the hope of making marginal profit on each. We'll go into more detial on just how to do this below, as although there's quite literally no gameplay involved, it is indeed one of the fastest ways to earn coins in Ultimate Team.

The best, fastest ways to earn FIFA 18 coins free in Ultimate Team

Of the above there are, really, only two ways to effectively earn coins. Which one counts as 'best' really comes down to your own preferences as a player - would you rather play online matches (in the most efficient way possible, explained below), and earn coins a little slower, or spend hours playing the market, but earning coins at roughly twice the speed?

Whatever the preference, these are the two best ways to earn FIFA coins in FIFA 18 Ultimate Team:

Gameplay: 4,000 - 8,000 coins per hour

Matches, coins boosts, tournaments and rewards. It may sound a little uninventive, but the best way to earn coins that doesn't require you to pour hours into a virtual stock market is to simply play the game. There are caveats to that, of course, which make it much more efficient though:

• First, you'll want to apply your coin boosts acquired through the EA Football Club (press R3, head to the catalogue, unlock more through playing more and levelling up).
• Then, head to the Online Leagues, and get cracking. Not only will you earn at least 600 coins for a win with the boost activated - which takes about fifteen minutes factoring in team management and annoying pause-spam from your defeated opponents - but you'll also be working toward further rewards with Division promoton and victory. Rewards there get into the low thousands, meaning that, if you play well, you can pick up several thousand coins per hour.
• If you back yourself, the FUT Draft mode is another gameplay-based option, but with a 15,000 coin entry fee, you'll need to do sufficiently well to actually make the coins back (although you will pick up some packs along the way, too).

Transfer Market: 10,000+ coins per hour

Alright fine, if you insist on spending none of your time in Ultimate Team actually playing FIFA, here's how you can earn decidedly more coins than any other method, free of charge, at a decent speed. Mass bidding is the best method specifically, here's how to do it:

1. Find a player who's in-demand, but cheap enough to buy en masse within your current budget - Our advice is Premier League or La Liga players, and those who play in a rarely-filled position like left or right back, or centre forward. You're looking for a player whose demand exceeds the supply, but not to such an extent that you're forking out several million on a Team of the Year Suárez.
2. Find their average buy-it-now price - It's easier than eBay, just cycle throught the card's menus where it's handily displayed for you. Then calculate the amount you'd need to buy it for, if you were going to make a profit by selling it for the average buy-it-now price. How do you do that? Well, deduct the EA Tax (5 per cent, so multiply the buy-it-now average by 0.95 to find the after-tax price) and then aim for a couple of hundred coins below it.
3. Get bidding - Your aim now is to bid below the average buy-it-now price (with the EA tax factored in too), by just a couple of hundred coins difference at most. Remember, this is all about your profit margins; you'll need to buy and then re-sell at a least a couple of hundred coins' profit each time. Head to at least the third or fourth page of the Transfer Market list for that player when you search, as you want to be the first to bid on an item, as you're essentially hoping to catch the ones which slip through the net. It means you'll need to place a lot of bids - you'll probably get one in ten at best - but the upside is you can place a wave of bids on players, play a few games or head out to work or school, and come back to your market to see what you won.
4. Sell sell sell - Assuming you got lucky and won a few cheapos, it's time to immediately flip them on the market. If you're staying with the game and want to re-invest your earnings right away, set the listing for one hour and the buy-it-now price as dead on the average. If you're happy to wait, set it for four or more hours and a few hundred over the average (not too far over though, or you won't sell it and will waste your time).

FIFA Chemistry in FIFA 18 Ultimate Team is important. Very important.

In fact it turns out that finding the perfect combination of Individual Chemistry, Team Chemistry, and Chemistry Styles - three factors that we'll explain below - can set you up for a whopping total of 90 points increase in each player's attributes, averaging at about 10 points increased to each skill affected by a Chemistry Style modifier. That's roughly the equivalent of turning a Silver card into a Gold, or a standard Gold into a top-tier, in-form rare card.

At the same time, a low Chemistry rating can actually decrease the attributes of your players by a huge amount across the board - taking that Gold player down to a Silver instead.

The benefits and costs of getting Chemistry right or wrong are huge. But how does Chemistry actually work, what affects it, and how do you combine Individual Chemistry, Team Chemistry, and Chemistry Styles to get these massively boosted FUT players?

After a lot of pouring over stats, attributes, and little green chevrons by the community, EA Sports has finally revealed some numbers - we explain how it all works below in our guide to how to increase Chemistry in FIFA 18 Ultimate Team.

FIFA 18 Chemistry explained - Team Chemistry, Individual Chemistry, and how FUT Chemistry works

Understanding Chemistry in FUT can be a little daunting to begin with - especially when you start looking at the actual equations behind it. We're going to start right at the beginning for now, explaining what Chemistry is and the basics of how it works.

There are two types of Chemistry in FIFA Ultimate Team, which make up an overall Chemistry rating, plus the Chemistry Style modifiers which affect how they work. Here are the key terms:

• Individual Player Chemistry - Rated out of 10 for each player.
• Team Chemistry - Rated out of 100 for the entire team.
• Overall Chemistry - This is a hidden number, which comes from a combination of Individual Player Chemistry and Team Chemistry. A high Overall Chemistry will increase player attributes; a low Overall Chemistry will actually decrease them.
• Chemistry Styles - Modifiers which affect which stats are increased, and how much they're increased by, when you have a strong overall Chemistry.

Ultimately, the reason you want a high Player and Team Chemistry is because they increase or decrease your players' attributes when they get into a match by a potentially huge amount.

Interestingly however, Player Chemistry and Team Chemistry don't affect the attribute increase evenly. In fact, according to a post in which EA Sports finally revealed the numbers behind Chemistry last year, Player Chemistry accounts for 75% and Team Chemistry just 25% of a player's attribute increases. In other words, it's far more important that your Aubameyang card has the maximum 10 Player Chemistry than it is that your Team Chemistry totals 100 - although it does of course still help.

How does FIFA Chemistry work and how does it affect player stats?

With the basics out of the way, now we can get into more of the detail.

Whether or not a player's attributes change is determined by their hidden Overall Chemistry rating which, like Team Chemistry, is marked out of 100. If the Overall Chemistry rating is more than 50 out of 100, a player's attributes will increase. If it is below 50, they'll decrease, and if it's dead on 50 they'll stay the same. How much they increase or decrease by depends how far over or under 50 that player's Overall Chemistry is.

Unfortunately EA Sports hasn't revealed the exact figures for that, but generally it's a case of the higher the Overall Chemistry is, the greater the increase will be, with 100 Overall meaning a maximum increase (which grants 90 attribute points, spread across attributes according to the Chemistry Style attached).

Here's how to work out a player's Overall Chemistry:

• Multiply their Individual Player Chemistry by 10, and then by 0.75
• Multiply the Team Chemistry by 0.25
• Add the two results together

So for example, if I have Cristiano Ronaldo with a Player Chemistry of 9 and his Team Chemistry is 90, that would be 67.5 + 22.5, totaling an Overall Chemistry of 90 out of 100. So Ronaldo's attributes would increase by quite a lot - almost the maximum amount, in fact.

Which attributes increase, and the maximum amount they can increase by, is determined by Chemistry Styles, which we explain - along with which positions they suit best - in our FIFA 18 Chemistry Styles guide.

Worth bearing in mind at this point, too, is that Chemistry ratings are calculated at the start of a match, and are thus unaffected by any substitutions, formations, or general team management changes made after the match starts.

How much does Chemistry increase or decrease player attributes by?

The exact numbers aren't clear, but we do know the following:

• The maximum increase, if a player has 100 Team Chemistry and 10 Individual Chemistry, is a total 90 attribute points, spread out according to the player's Chemistry Style (even if they just have the Basic one, it's still spread across specific attributes).
• The maximum decrease, if a player as 0 Team Chemistry and 0 Individual Chemistry, is a decrease of 25 points in every attribute.
• Attributes start increasing at 5 Individual Chemistry, and decreasing at 3 Individual Chemistry, staying the same at 4. It's not entirely clear, at this point, how the hidden Overall Chemistry players into that.

How to increase Chemistry in FIFA Ultimate Team

Individual Player Chemistry and Team Chemistry are both increased in similar ways, with a variety of factors raising or lowering their ratings. For maximum results you'll want to get 10 and 100 in both respectively, so here's a list of all the elements which can increase Chemistry ratings in FIFA 17:

• Player Position - A player's position, marked under their card, will show up as either red, orange, or green. Red means they're totally out of position, reducing both Player and Team Chemistry. Orange means they're partially out of position, decreasing Player and Team Chemistry. Green means they're in their preferred position, increasing Player and Team Chemistry.
• Player Links - Indicated by the coloured lines between players, these will show up as either red, orange, or green again. This time, it's what the two linked players have in common (out of club, league, and nationality) that dictates the colour of the link. Red means nothing in common, decreasing Player and Team Chemistry. Orange means one thing in common, increasing Player and Team Chemistry - note that this is different to the outcome of an orange player position indicator. Green means two or more qualities in common, increasing Player and Team Chemistry by more than orange. The real outcome, however, is determined by all of the links from a player: see red as -1, orange as +1, and green as +2. Totalling up all the links, you'll want to end up positive for that player to gain a Chemistry boost from them.
• Manager - Similarly to player links, Manager nationality and league (but not club) has an impact on both Player and Team Chemistry. Each player which shares either a league or nationality link with the manager will receive a Chemistry boost, as shown by the small green Tie icon on their card.
• Loyalty - Players who have played 10 or more matches for your Club will receive a loyalty bonus, increasing their Player Chemistry by 1. This is indicated by the green shield icon on their card.

It's worth noting that although all of these factors affect both Team and Player Chemistry, it's still possible to have a high Team Chemistry and a lower Individual Player Chemistry for a certain player.

That's because the amount of Team Chemistry you'll generate from the factors above can total up to well over the 100 required to max it out - it only takes a full set of orange links between players, for instance, to hit 100 Team Chemistry, so adding in some green links means you could stick a goalkeeper up front and still hit the 100 mark with relative ease.

Looking for more on FIFA 18? We've gathered all our individual guides together in our main FIFA 18 tips and guide hub, and if you're playing the game's campaign-like story mode, we have a full Journey: Hunter Returns walkthrough. There are also lists of FIFA 18 wonderkids and the best young players, FIFA 18 player ratings, the best strikers, best wingers, best midfielders, best defenders and best goalkeepers. Elsewhere, we have details on five star skillers and skill moves listed, how to score free kicks, penalties and set pieces, and the FIFA 18 best players by position. Fan of Ultimate Team? we look at FIFA 18 Chemistry explained, the new January 2018 and original OTW Ones to Watch cards, along with best Chemistry Styles for each position, and finally how to earn FIFA Coins quickly and for free.

Here's an example featuring Okazaki - the standard buy-it-now price seems to be around 600 coins, but scroll further to the right and you'll find plenty of cards starting at around 350 with no bidders. Mass-bid the minimum 350, or if you want to be safer, around 450, on as many Okazaki cards as you can, and eventually one might go through.

The more you bid on, the more chance you have of winning some cheap cards. Then list them all on the market again starting at 600 coins with the same buy-it-now, or just over if you want to be greedy and try your luck.

As we said before, with earning coins in genral it's really a matter of preference, but a combination of the two is really the ultimate process. Starting out, for instance, you won't have enough coins to mass-buy - playing games with the method above will earn you a decent amount relatively quickly (and easily), and you can then reinvest your earnings from those games into mass-buying, whilst playing more games to earn more.

Coins, much like real money, do nothing when they sit still. One way or another you want to invest them - and even buying players who've had a great real-world week of football ahead of the new Team of the Week announcement is a good way to do so, as you can predict a spike in their own value - rather than leaving coins to sit doing nothing in your account. A combination of the two methods, in our opinion, is the ultimate way to success.