Four Daily Wins

Should I Buy the Mastery Pass? (Yes) (Maybe)

The Bottom Line: If you’re using the method prescribed in this guide, the Mastery Pass is worth its weight in gold gems. As a rule, as long as you’re hitting all of your experience goals (finishing all your quests before they fall off), you should be safe to purchase it as soon as it’s available and you have 3400 gems, but if you’re unsure, waiting until you are sure you’ll hit Level 40 is reasonable. If you don't draft, it may be preferable to be sure that you can complete the entire Track before you buy.

And do NOT, under any circumstances, buy the +10 levels option.

But Why?

First, a quick explanation on how Experience Points work.

When you start an account and each time a new set releases, your experience level will be set to 1. Leveling up requires 1,000 Experience Points (XP).

There are many ways to gain experience:

• The first 10 wins every day are each worth 25 XP. (1,750 per week)

• The first 15 wins every week are each worth 250 XP (3,750 per week)

• Each quest you complete is worth 500 XP. (3,500 per week)

• Occasionally, special events, codes, or messages from Wizards of the Coast might grant you bonus XP.

The first three items add up to a hard limit of 9,000 XP each week, worth 9 levels.

There are two progress trackers as you level up. The first one is called Set Mastery. It’s free, and gives you a small reward each level – either packs, gold, or cosmetics.

The second tracker is the Mastery Pass. It costs 3,400 Gems to unlock, and it’s retroactive going back to the release of the current set (meaning, even if you wait until you’re level 60 before you buy it, you’ll still get all the rewards you missed – it just has to be before the next set releases). 

You can spend an extra 2,000 gems to automatically advance 10 levels, but if you’re getting your four Daily Wins, you should not need to do that; to date, Arena has always ensured that it’s possible to achieve the maximum award level (which varies for each set) as long as you play consistently.

Now, before you go and tell all your friends they should be buying the Mastery Pass, hang on a second. Anyone who is only playing Limited formats should NOT get the Pass. Most of the rewards are useless to them. If you are only playing Constructed, I think it's still a good deal, but it's not as clear. 

So, what makes it a good deal? It’s just math.

The Mastery Pass costs 3,400 gems. For that price, as long as you complete the track, you’ll get:

·         1,200 Gems

·         4,000 Gold (worth approximately 600 gems)

·         1 Player Draft token (worth 1,500 gems) (still worth something if you don't play drafts, since you can enter the event and just take rares for your collection, but it's not as valuable for you)

We’re already very close to breaking even. But wait! There’s more:

·         20 packs of standard-legal sets

·         A bunch of cosmetics (irrelevant to this guide, but you might like them!)

One pack in your inventory has an expected value of 200 gems. If you add it all up, you’re getting around 5,400 gems’ worth of value for only 3,400. It’s a steal.