Howdy,

We didn’t communicate the full scope of how Mastery Passes work, including one very important element: we will give out free XP and XP from events.

Here’s two free levels: LevelUp

We built this free XP into the level design, but we didn’t tell you about it. Whoops. In the vein of telling you very important things, we will also be putting XP on various events. And, we’ll be handing out more of both of these kinds of XP as our data lets us see how actual progression is working. Basically, we want to make the multi-month lifespan of a release a rewarding long-term experience. Hence, the additional XP across the set.

Between XP codes and events, players will be able to earn a minimum of 15 levels worth of additional XP on top of what they receive from Daily Quests and Win rewards. A few more clarifications:

Late-Season Play & Purchase

The Mastery Passes were built for late-set player fun, hence more events later in the set cycle that give out XP. If you're not sure how far you'll get this set, that's okay! You can decide whether to pick up the pass until the very end, and still get the same amount of value as picking it up early in the set.

Mastery XP Through Quests

Leveling and Mastery was built around play. While you will earn some XP for your first three Daily Wins, the bulk of the XP will be received by completing quests. Previously, players could only earn pack rewards by winning games, and we wanted to move more towards play than winning. Now we want players to get their hands on the system and play around with it before deciding if (and if so, where) we should make changes. Again, while we hope you enjoy what it already has to offer, we’re ready to go through some iterations to make sure the rewards and experience feels right for our players.

Reaching Level 100

We intended the Mastery Pass to provide a scaling reward based on the amount you play. The current track’s rewards are designed to mainly peak at level 80 with the following levels providing a ramp down in value. But, from your feedback, it’s clear that we made a system that doesn’t feel great. And it feels even worse when the most obvious way to keep up is to buy levels.

We actually don’t want most players to buy levels. So, we’re going to pull out the purchasing of levels with our release at the end of this month. We want folks to have an option to get our best deal by spreading it over time. We put the level purchase in to give players the option to get those last few levels they want. But, that has clearly made things feel worse.

Yes, that means we are removing an option, but, since our goal is providing a great deal for your play, we are going to put more ways to get XP in than we originally planned. This will likely start with more events that provide XP, and we’ll expand it to other options as we see how things play out. We’ll continue these changes to make sure we get both the balance, and more importantly the experience, of Mastery Passes to the right place.

Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate it. We want to make sure the Mastery Pass is a fun and engaging system for all types of players. We will continue working towards making MTG Arena the best game it can be. Keep the feedback coming!

- Chris Cao