Battle passes are rapidly becoming a staple of the games industry.
Whether you’re playing a game about cars hitting footballs, one about people with incredible building skills, or one about magical spells, you’ll likely have bought into one of these seasonal passes at some point.
They’re not all equal though, and figuring out which ones are worthwhile can be tough because of how they often obfuscate the value held within them.
The MTG Arena Mastery Pass is one of the trickiest to evaluate, so we’ve broken it all down for you.
What is the MTG Arena Mastery Pass?
The MTG Arena Mastery Pass is a thing you can buy for 3,400 gems that’ll give you extra bonuses the more you play during any given season.
It’s a way of rewarding players who are putting in absurd hours, and it gives you things like Wildcards, packs, gems, gold, and other little bits and bobs.
The question is whether or not it’s actually worth buying, and it’s not a simple answer. We really wish it was, but it depends on far more than just how much you’re going to be playing.
Read More: Find out how to never spend a penny in MTG Arena
Is the MTG Arena Mastery Pass worth buying?
So, on a very simple level, the answer is basically no. The Mastery Pass costs 3,400 gems, but you only get 1,200 gems from levelling up during it.
That means you can’t chain the passes together like you can with nearly every other pass of this kind in every other game.
You’ll get packs, gold, and cosmetics as you level up, which are good if you want them, but they tend to be older packs (for the paid version) which make sit less appealing if you’ve been grinding away for a while.
If you invest the gold into drafts and do well then you can win more gems, which sort of helps pay for the pass, but honestly, most of the time it feels as though the Mastery Pass isn’t really worth the number of gems you’re going to put into it. We recommend waiting to see where you are at the end of the season and deciding then if you think what you’ve earned is worth it, but it’s definitely not an essential purchase.
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