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Welcome to Four Daily Wins, your one stop reference for how to get the most bang for your buck in the Magic: The Gathering Arena Free to Play Experience.
Getting Started
NOTE: This version of the guide was written in November 2024, shortly after the release of Magic Foundations. Some of this information may be outdated by the time you see it.
Play through the tutorial. When it’s done, you’ll receive 5 decks’ worth of cards.
Complete one branch of the Color Challenge. It doesn’t matter which one. You can also complete the others if you like, and you should do so if you’re still learning the basics of how to play, but the rewards aren’t worth the time you’ll spend (a few common and uncommon wild cards plus some cosmetics).
Complete Sparky’s Challenge using your choice of preconstructed deck.
You’ll notice new icons on the Home screen.
Go to the Inbox in the top right corner. Click through the messages and hit the Claim button wherever appropriate. You will receive some number of packs and many individual cards.
Determine which non-Alchemy set was released most recently (the set that is currently being promoted by the client and is the dominant draft format). Do not open the packs from that set. If you wait, it will be easier for you to collect that set in the long run. For more information about this, see the entry on when and how to open packs in your inventory. If you do not intend to draft, you can ignore this, and safely open all of your packs. There is no need to save the latest set.
You can open the packs from older sets.
Play the Starter Deck Duel event (this is the only thing you’re allowed to do if you’re a new player, but if you’re already familiar with Arena, this won’t be available to you).
Use the rare cards you earned from playing the previous events and from the packs you opened to either upgrade an existing deck, or create an all-new one.
Around this time, you may be prompted to buy a Booster Pack with gold you’ve earned. Don’t do it. It’s rarely a good idea to spend currency on packs.
Play Sparky Ranked until you complete Tier 1. Along the way, you’ll earn Jump In! tokens. Learn more about them here.[SA3]
After you’ve completed Spark Rank, you can either play Alchemy (the only unlocked format) until you reach Bronze rank and unlock the rest of the formats, earning a few free packs along the way, or you can go through the Settings menu to unlock all play modes manually. I don’t recommend this if you’re still learning the game, but if you already know the game and are just learning Arena, it should be safe to skip the rest of the tutorial.
Congratulations! You are ready to journey into the wild and start building your collection. I’ve tried to design this guide so that you can browse the entries in any order, but if you’d like some additional guidance, I’d recommend Gold, Gems, and Other Currencies and What formats should I play.
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