You acquire wildcards from boosters and from the wildcard wheel.

The rare wildcard wheel changes to a mythic wildcard after every two rare wildcards and the cycle repeats again. The pattern is R-R-M-R-R.

The chances of getting rare and mythic wildcards from a booster are not disclosed, but the pity timer is set 24 boosters, i.e. you’re guaranteed to have a rare and a mythic wildcard in 24 boosters you open.

Without going into much more detail there is one general rule of thumb regarding wildcards:

Rare wildcards are the most valuable ones, don’t craft them until you’re sure you’ll be using this deck a lot and you’re certain of what you’re doing!

With the new RNA patch, if you have 4 rares or 4 mythics already, they are exchanged for a card of this rarity in that set. So if you have 4 copies of Venerated Loxodon from GRN you will get a random rare from this set that you don’t own yet, for example a Midnight Reaper. Once you have collected all 4 copies of all rare/mythic cards in a set, a 5th copy will be converted to 20/40 gems respectively.

For 5th copies of uncommons and commons you only receive 0.3% and 0.1% vault progress respectively

Do note, that ICR rewards and 5th copies or rares and mythics from limited formats are automatically converted to gems. This means that if you're planning on playing sealed or drafts a lot it would be better to play them first and open packs afterwards. However, that's taking min-maxing to the extreme.

The third component is the Individual Card Rewards (ICR). You may be awarded ICR for dailies and events. As you have possibly guessed from the two rules above, rare ICRs are the most valuable ones and events that provide a guaranteed source of those are invaluable to building your collection. The chances of ICRs upgrading for the latest patch can be found here.

The fourth component is the Vault that notably contains 1 mythic and 2 rare wildcards. It gets charged with copies of cards over 4th. You get 0.33% for each 5th copy of an uncommon an 0.11% for each copy of a common. 333 uncommons to get to 100%!

Once you reach 100% you can open the vault, but it's visible only when you have more than 100%, in the logs or using third-party tools covered in the corresponding section. The vault is due to be phased out in the future.

The fifth element is gold. You may receive the following possible daily gold rewards:

Note the diminishing returns. It’s always better to have consistent one to four wins every day rather than grinding 15 wins for 3 days a week.

The sixth component are the Gems, or the premium currency, it’s needed to enter some events and in the future, cosmetics. If you’re a 100% f2p player there are two ways to convert gold into gems. The first is to play the bo1 draft and the second is to get 5th copies of rares and mythic after completing the sets. Right now only Traditional Draft and Sealed Events are gems-only. However, those events are best suited for experienced players and have a good EV only if you have a high win rate.

MTGA economy is different for your depending on what you’re focusing on - constructed, limited or both.

If you’re playing constructed you want to focus on your dream deck in the future and grinding deck in the present. You will need to leverage the wildcards to construct your deck.

If you’re only interested in limited, it’s hardly possible to sustain it as f2p. You need to at least get your starting capital for the drafts and 70-80% winrate to truly go infinite in drafts. Some hardcore limited f2p MTGA players have a few accounts where they complete dailies every day to go for drafts, but that's not really recommended.

If you’re interested in both you will likely alternate between the two modes. It’s perfectly possible to grind the constructed modes and play an occasional draft or two with the gold you had accumulated. Winning twice daily for 30 days will get you more than 6 drafts as covered in the Farming gold section.

So, that’s all good and dandy, but how does that help us farm the gold and how do we construct our dream deck? And what is even a dream deck for a person who’s just starting out?