Is the MTG Arena Mastery Pass Worth It?

Last updated on November 12, 2024

Ingenious Mastery | Illustration by Cristi Balanescu

The Mastery System. We talked about it a bit in our win resets and XP article, but we wanted to go a bit more in-depth. So, here we are!

Basically, it's a key aspect of MTGA's economy: an experience track that rewards you with stuff every time you level up, which happens every 1,000 XP. You earn XP by completing daily quests and winning games. There’s a free version that everyone gets called “Set Mastery” and a paid version that requires you to purchase an MTG Arena “Mastery Pass” to access.

Some Mastery Pass Context

Lich's Mastery | Illustration by Daarken

In early versions of Magic Arena, you could get five packs a week if you got the wins. Wizards brought in the weekly reset system and made some adjustments over time.

So, what does it look like now and should you get the mastery pass?

Is the MTG Arena Mastery Pass Worth It?

If you must have an answer right away, yes the mastery pass is worth it, though how often you play affects how much value the pass has for you.

Wizards tweaks what you can get with the Mastery Pass every time they release a new one. It’s obvious that they try to find a balance between not giving too much while still giving enough to entice players to spring for the Mastery Pass without feeling like they’re being cheated.

This can leave us non-whale players in a… weird spot. So, they knocked down the rewards without shaving anything off the price tag, but does the money or gems spent still cover the rewards offered? Let's see if the math makes sense, or if you should skip it this time around.

What’s In It For You

We all know that Wizards can push our buttons. If reddit is anything to go by, it seems like everything they do riles someone up. The Mastery Pass is no stranger to the peanut gallery, so save it for the comments, and let's jump into what you get, shall we?

Foundations Mastery

Set Mastery (Free)

Set mastery for Foundations has a final reward at level 72, with each level being 1,000 XP. There are 36 boosters and five Mastery Orbs to be won on this track.

Mastery Pass

Follow the Mastery Pass and you can earn:

• Zimone Avatar
• 20 packs (4xFDN, 4xDSK, 4xBLB, 4xOTJ, 4x MKM)
• 10 Foundations mythic rare individual card rewards
• uncommon ICRs for levels beyond 90
• Zimone sleeve
• Foundations exquisite sleeve
• 30 Mastery Orbs
• 15 Common card styles
• 10 Uncommon card styles
• 1 Player Draft token
• 4,000 gold
• 1,200 gems
• Desert Caracal companion
• Mountain companion
• Aether Tiger companion

Duskmourn: House of Horror Mastery

Set Mastery (Free)

The Duskmourn: House of Horror set mastery has a final reward at level 60, with each level being 1,000 XP. There are 24 boosters and five Mastery Orbs to be won on this track.

Mastery Pass

Go for the Mastery Pass and you can earn:

• Winter Avatar
• 20 packs (4xDSK 4xBLB, 4xOTJ, 4x MKM, 4x LCI)
• 10 Duskmourn mythic rare individual card rewards
• uncommon ICRs for levels beyond 61
• Nashi sleeve
• Duskmourn: House of Horror exquisite sleeve
• 30 Mastery Orbs
• 15 Common card styles
• 10 Uncommon card styles
• 1 Player Draft token
• 4,000 gold
• 1,200 gems
• Builder Beastie companion
• Raucous Beastie companion
• Merry Beastie companion

Gems, Gems, Gems: What Everything's Worth in the Mastery Pass

One important thing to note here is that cosmetics are a pretty subjective issue. Because of that, I'll leave cosmetics to a section of their own and give my final verdict without considering them. Don't worry if you like collecting cosmetics; I'll also assign a value to those in their own area.

I'm going to be using gems as a currency to keep things simple. Let’s start with gems and gold since these are the easiest to quantify. A similar unit of price makes it simple to compare cost and benefit.

I’ll give you two numbers: “cosmetics-are-valuable” vs. “cosmetics-ain’t-sh*t.”

Cosmetics Are Valuable

The easiest way to get a baseline for what things are worth is by looking at pack prices. Thankfully the first thing that we need is already done: how much packs are worth. Packs are simple since they’re worth a solid 200 gems.

For cosmetics, let's start with Mastery Orbs. These can be redeemed for card styles and avatars. Each color has five redeemable card styles with 1 common, 2 uncommon, 1 rare, and 1 mythic rare as well as a card sleeve for each color. But you get 5 Orbs as part of the basic Set Mastery, so let's discount the commons to make things easy. So that's a total of 10 uncommon, 5 rare, and 5 mythic card styles plus 5 sleeves to get.

If we take a look at Arena's Store, we can deduce that common card styles are set at 400 gems, uncommon styles are 600 gems, a rare card style costs 1,000 gems, and mythic styles come in at 1,200 gems. Card sleeves, on their high end, are 1,200 gems.

We've also just got regular old card styles on the Mastery track. 15 common and 10 uncommon, to be exact. Totaling both of them up gives us a worth of 35,000 gems. Trust my math. I'm an engineer.

Next up is an avatar and pets. Once again, the Store is our friend (relatively speaking). Pets are typically sold for up to 3,000 gems and avatars come in at 500 gems.

If we add all of the cosmetic stuff together, we've got a total of 44,500 gems worth of value. Of course, the value of cosmetics in MTGA's Store is wildly inflated. It's their biggest money-maker, after all. Either way, if you value cosmetics, the Mastery Pass is a good purchase.

Cosmetics-ain't-sh*t

With packs at 200 gems a pop, this means that 1,000 gold equals 200 gems as well since you can buy one pack for either amount. With 4,000 gold up for grabs on the track, that equals a total of 800 gems.

Moving on to the draft token, which allows you to enter a Player draft. These each have the same entry fee of 1,500 gems, so that's what the token is worth.

Circling back to the packs, we've got a total of 20 from the current rotation of Standard sets. Even if you get a pack you don't really want, they each contribute to your progress toward rare and mythic wildcards. Add all 20 packs up to their total and they're worth 4,000 gems.

Even if you've already completed previous sets, duplicate protection will kick in. Assuming you only open rare cards from the packs, you're rewarded with 20 gems per pack which would make them worth about 400 gems instead. This only applies if you've already collected every single rare and mythic from the previous sets, though.

Sticking with duplicate protection, this considers mythic rares worth a mere 40 gems. 10 mythic ICRs are then worth 400 gems.

Here's What the Mastery Pass is Worth

Final tally:

• Casual/new players: 7,900 gems
• Experienced players with a full collection: 4,300 gems

With the Mastery Pass costing 3,400 gems, it's well worth your investment whether you're a new player or a competitive one. Even if you don't value cosmetics.

So, if you complete the entire Mastery pass and max out the levels, yes, it is worth it. But that’s not necessarily reality, is it?

Nuances to Consider: Play Time, Experience, $$, and Competitiveness

Let’s say you’re like me. I don’t play ranked 99% of the time ‘cause I make too much jank to ever climb anywhere decent and I don’t really draft ‘cause I’m not very good at it. I spend just about all my time in the Standard play queue, play a couple of days a week, sometimes hit my 15 weekly wins, sometimes hit four daily wins, and skip daily quests on the regular. I spend most of my gold and gems on cosmetics with some events splashed in here and there. I also buy stuff—usually cosmetics or a cool bundle—every once in a while.

I finished the previous Mastery at level 46. So, if you’re anything like me, where do you land on the “is it worth it” scale?

The good news is that, even if you don’t get very far in Mastery levels and you don’t value cosmetics at all, you’ll hit the “break-even” point pretty early on. If you're a new player, you'll hit it at Level 17, which is totally accomplishable even if you don’t play that often. As a more experienced player with a full collection of previous sets, though, you'll hit it around Level 44.

When Is the End Date for the Mastery Pass? How Long Does it Last?

Set Masteries are available for the most recent Standard set, starting on the day the set is released and ending when the next set is released.

Example: for Murders at Karlov Manor, your set mastery pass expired on April 16, 2024, the date Outlaws of Thunder Junction came out on MTG Arena. At that point, Set Mastery started for Thunder Junction instead.

Should You Preorder the Mastery Pass?

The answer to whether or not you should preorder the Mastery Pass depends. You get a better deal if you preorder a given set's Mastery Pass, paying about $5 less. But you can only preorder the Mastery Pass with actual money, not gems, and only during the few weeks leading up to the Arena release of the set. If you buy the Mastery Pass with gems earned via drafting, then it’s not a great deal, $5 off or not.

Is It Worth It to Buy Mastery Levels?

Generally no, it's not worth it to buy Mastery levels. In case you weren't aware, you can spend an extra 2,000 gems (for a total of 5,400 gems) when you buy the Mastery Pass to start off with +10 levels, making each level worth about $1.

I’d say you’re better off spending your gems elsewhere, either for event entries or just buying packs since it's pretty easy to level up well past the breaking-even point with casual play.

Making the Best of the Pass

All right. You have to optimize your time if you want to get as many Mastery levels as you can, and I’m sure you don’t like to waste your time. I get that, I don’t like to waste my time either. Yet here I am doing all this Maths™.

Saying that you need to play to your strengths is one thing, but what about Arena’s built-in options for optimization? The Mastery system is built to reward you in certain ways, so let’s talk about playing to those strengths.

Optimizing Your Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Daily quests, daily wins, and weekly wins. This is the literal and figurative gold mine. We talked about these separately, so I’ll spare you the dirty little details and keep it simple.

Either finish one quest every day or finish all three quests every three days. Re-roll the 500-gold quests you get (once a day) but don’t re-roll the 750-gold ones. The first four wins of the day reward the most gold, but you get Mastery XP up to the first 10 daily wins. Try to max your weekly wins (these reset every Sunday).

Events are the next key part. Some events reward Mastery XP, so it pays to keep an eye on these so that you know what to jump on. The Workshop event series started rewarding players with the “Haversack of Favor” on their first win after the first three events finished, which was basically just a fancy way of saying “we randomized the three possible reward options so you get either 500 XP, 500 gold, or an ICR.” Some other notable events of the past that rewarded XP were the Worlds Showcase, the Planeswalker Momir, and Standard Shakeup.

If you’re competitive, you’ll have a much better time and likely max out, just because to be competitive you generally have to win on the regular which levels you up. You can still max out without being a competitive player, it just takes more effort. You kind of have to maximize your time, which isn’t always the most fun thing to do. F2P faces similar “problems,” if you can call them that. But since the break-even point is so low, even F2P casual players can turn a profit with the Mastery Pass.

Some other good news is that you don’t have to buy the Mastery Pass before you know whether or not it’ll end up being worth it for you. You can wait until you’ve hit whatever milestone you want to hit before you get the Pass, and you’ll get all of the rewards up to the level you’re at when you do. Because there’s a free Set Mastery track set up alongside the Mastery Pass track, your level reflects both.

You can (theoretically) wait until the very last second before the next Set Mastery comes out to get the next set’s Mastery Pass, and you won’t miss out on anything. I’d suggest not playing it that close, though. Maybe get it a few days before.

Mastery Orbs

Quick note: Mastery Orbs can be redeemed for card styles and sleeves in the Mastery Emporium. That is all, carry on.

The Mastery Emporium is a simple section of the Arena store in which mastery orbs are the only accepted currency. Mastery orbs are digital items that are redeemable in MTGA's emporium. When you get a mastery orb, you see a little notification in the “Mastery” section on your in-game menu.

Somehow Bloomburrow was the first set in years without a mastery tree, a missed opportunity if you ask me. Previously, mastery trees required you to spend orbs to go down a certain track for the card style you want.

Mastery Orbs are a little more forgiving than the other items you get with the mastery pass, in a sense. If you have any unspent Orbs from the previous set when the new one moves in, you have until that Set Mastery is over to spend them. For example, while you can’t earn any more of the last set's Mastery XP or rewards, you can still spend any unspent Mastery Orbs that you had already earned up until the next set releases on MTGA. Conversely, you’re no longer able to earn XP or redeem orbs for any older Set Masteries.

More good news time! Rewards don’t go away when a new set Mastery comes along. You keep all the stuff that you earned. Also, draft tokens don’t expire. I’ve seen a couple of questions about that and we’re still getting Draft tokens. In theory, you’ll have those tokens forever if you don’t use them.

Who is the Mastery Pass For?

The person who benefits most from a Master Pass is a player that plays every day, completes their daily quests, and finishes with at least four wins each day. More importantly, where do you fall on that scale?

The Mastery Pass rewards make it worth what you pay for it and keep it in a good spot in terms of F2P being viable.

For a player who plays once a week, it’s probably not worth it. Even if you value the cosmetics, you might be better off saving up your gold and gems for packs, cosmetics from the store’s daily deals, or (even better) events to make you more gold or gems.

And then, lying in the middle, are players like me. Do you play every few days, sometimes every day, but not usually for very long? Your daily quests don’t get to top off at three too often but sometimes they do, and you sometimes finish your first four daily wins and all 15 weekly wins. If you fall here, the Mastery Pass is probably worth it. You may want to hold off until near the end of the Mastery to see what level you land at just in case. I have no self-control so I don’t do that, but that’s me and along with being bad at math, I’m also not good with my money. It’s a winning combo, really.

Level Up and Out

Fervent Mastery | Illustration by Sean Sevestre

And that’s just about it. Hopefully, I was able to shed some light on Set Mastery and the Mastery Pass and you know more now than you did before. What’s your take on how this set's rewards? Are you mad about it, or do you think that people are overreacting? Drop us a comment and let us know!

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