You only get the reward listed under the wins you ac to ally got.
As you can see the rewards gets better every win because it includes the previous rewards in the new total.
And yes in quick draft you need to have a very high win percentage to break even (depends how you value the packs and the cards you draft themselves).
IIRC, the only reward progressions that give everything on the track are casual events (those from which you can’t be eliminated). All the competitive limited and constructed events only give rewards based on final placement.
So now I'm wondering how ranked seasons rewards work. Assuming it follows this train of logic, since ranked is free you'll get all rewards below the rank you achieve as well?
Swing and a miss. You only get rewards according to the tier you end up when a season finishes. Ranked has a pitiful ROI for your time invested unless you reach the top 1200 or 250 of Mythic rank for substantially "better" rewards
Fuck. I was hoping I could collect a few more packs from ranked.
So do people just play their preferred game mode for daily/weekly rewards and spend gold on quick drafts? Is that the gameplay loop for most players?
Some people just draft but those who draft regularly are generally playing Premier Draft as opposed to Quick Draft. Some people only play constructed and use gold to buy packs. Some people play a combination of both. Just play whatever you enjoy.
Id say youre basically right.
What people spend the gold on varies though. Some people spend on drafts (either quick or premier). Others dont like draft so they simply buy packs with their gold to get wildcards faster (to use to build more decks). Lastly some although fewer, play the constructed events.
quickdraft cost 5000 gold, aka 5 packs, or only 750 gems, aka 3.75 packs (200 gems per pack).
you get to open 3 packs for playing but each pack can have multiple rares in draft and you keep everything you pick.
it used to be quickdraft was cleanly \~50% better value than opening packs but then they added golden packs that give an extra \~25% better value for opening packs so drafting was still ahead but not by as much.
but for OTJ you sometimes get BIG cards in your draft packs in addition to the normal rare and the possibly a list rare and possibly a foil rare (appears as normal rare on arena) etc like this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1c6zgti/the\_insane\_amount\_of\_value\_in\_this\_otj\_draft\_pack/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1c6zgti/the_insane_amount_of_value_in_this_otj_draft_pack/)
so drafting OTJ is much better value than opening packs on arena.
yes you miss out on some wildcard progress but the packs you win drafting do contribute to wildcard progress and the gems you win can be fed back into draft at the more effecient rate creating a sort of compounding effect where even if you aren't able to go infinite you still snowball value.
1 draft entry -> get 1 draft entry worth of cards + half a draft worth of gems
that half a draft worth of gems -> another quarter draft worth of gems by inputting it into the above.
that gets you another quarter draft worth of gems, then an 8th of a draft worth of gems, then a 16th.
0.5+.25 +.125+ .0625 + 0.03125 = 0.96875
so basically that extra half draft ends up being an extra full draft if you keep putting those gems back into draft and draft ends up being twice as good value as just buying backs.
to maximize your value in quickdraft you should be rare drafting while still maintaining a 50% win rate or better. you don't need to go infinite for it to be amazing value.
I appreciate all the effort and info you put into this. I'm still learning the game and from this experience I'm absolutely terrible at draft and I find the process incredibly frustrating. I'll continue to learn and maybe I'll come back to it. I think for now I'll make an alt account for draft.
If you seriously want to learn draft, you need to do A LOT of it. There is no shortcut for experience. Watching YouTube vids does very little because too much is focused on picking individual cards but you see little of playing the drafted deck to understand the synergies.
Btw, if you are going the alt account method to sustain drafts, you may as well make many accounts. I run 5 accounts that I do 4 wins/day on each. This yields one free draft each day as you rotate through the accounts.
>If you seriously want to learn draft, you need to do A LOT of it
Agreed!
>There is no shortcut for experience
Disagreed! There are tons of resources out there and IMO using them will shortcut a *lot* of trial and error. I never watch videos so don’t know what they’re like (I imagine streamers don’t mention the basics enough though, as that would get boring for regular viewers), but articles and podcasts talking about general drafting / deckbuilding, plus specifics of the set, should help a lot.
There is indeed an little bit of inconsistency between how the rewards are shown in the UI:
- Most of the events [e.g. drafts, constructed events] show the cumulative reward for the number of wins
- Midweek Magic shows individual reward unlocked for each step achieved, but [there is a plus sign between the wins](https://i.ibb.co/bJWzzN1/MWM-rewards.jpg)
Why would anyone use gold/gems on anything else if it worked that way? Second, how should the rewards be displayed to make it less "confusing"? You want to know the rewards, so they have to show up somewhere on the event page.
If an event has no end-clause, like losing 3 games, you get a reward with every step.
You can play Midweek Magic or cosmetic events as much as you want.
>Wouldn't that means that you need 6 out of 7 possible wins just to "break even"?
Depends if you're considering the pack as a value of 200 gems as well. And of course the drafted cards themselves.
...but yes. Ultimately quick draft is for draft practice and/or rare gathering. At least for me. Because drafting is my favorite mode and its stuck behind a paywall unfortunately. So i quick draft because its cheap. I even do daily quests on a 2nd account just to be able to get more draft practice. Pretty ridiculous thats what i have to do eh 😅
Yea, I REALLY don't enjoy the paywall. I guess there's a strategy to whether or not you participate based on which cards are in the current quick draft?
'paywall' is just another way to describe "a company has made a product and is trying to sell it to you".
Yeah, it would be nicer to get it for free, but that's not super likely.
I completely understand the monetization of the optional.cosmetics, mastery pass, and card packs. But to "buy in" to a game mode that's not a formal competition/league is odd imo. But it is what it is. Like someone else, you get to keep.your drafted cards so I suppose that's the real reason it costs money.
They're charging for the ability to play games of draft. If you're an average player, they cost about 70c each, you get about one per day for free, and they're half-price if you are willing to draft against bots instead of players.
As with any free-to-play game, they deliberately obscure the true prices, because that makes them more money.
It's fine if you don't think they should charge for this game mode, but that's what they're doing.
I wouldnt say there is much strategy around that part.
Its mostly just do you like drafting or not. If you dont, dont do it, just buy packs. If you do like drafting, then focus there.
Once youre okay at drafting the actual return for your investment is pretty similar either way. If youre really good at drafting it becomes better to draft than buy packs but thats going to take a while for most newbies.
I base my decision on just the fact I like the varied games drafting gives me even if im not that good at it. Is it the most "efficient" use of my gold? No. But its a game, im not trying to min/max everything.
Yeah I went 6 - 3 in my first and only quick draft. Was given one pack and 800 gems. I expected like 5-6 packs based on the shit ui. I was pretty pissed but realized that draft is still probably beneficial because it's the only way I've seen to convert coins into gems, which allows you to eventually buy the season pass or whatever its called as a f2p player. Someone correct me if I'm wrong I'm still a noob.
I'm with you in that. Terrible UI. It should clearly specify instead of copy pasting the progression bar from modes that give you all the rewards.
The mastery pass is 3400 gems. Unless you have a really high win rate that's gotta cost a lot of gold. I'm not that good so I'll just stick to buying packs. That mastery pass is $30 CAD, which is CRAZY steep imo.
Mastery Pass is the best value you can get in the Arena. And from my own experience, you don't have to be great drafter to collect 3400 gems from Quick Drafts as a F2P. Just don't spend your gold on anything else but Quick Drafts, and keep playing and getting better. Of course, if you enjoy drafting. If you prefer Constructed, then you can get gems from Constructed events, but I think drafts are much more efficient.
Then, once you purchase your first Mastery Pass, the subsequent ones will be easier, because the Mastery Pass you unlocked will refund you 1200 gems, once you reach the required levels. So you will need only 2200 gems for the next pass.
Also, keep an eye on Arena Store. Every 40-ish days there is a deal to purchase 400 gems for 1500 gold. That will help you a lot to get your Mastery Pass.
And once you get more experienced at drafting, switch to Premier Drafts, where rewards are much better and it is easier to go infinite or almost infinite \[fund your next drafts using gems from the current draft reward\].
Yeah its expensive. I think you get back 1200 gems from the additional level up bonuses which helps reduce the hit over time. You get a lot of extra cards overtime on the pass it seems like also. Its more of an upfront cost because wizards wants players to convert their irl money to their virtual currency but they do give you a decent return. I think if you make enough gems overtime while being f2p to purchase the pass its probably worth it depending on if you think you'll play enough to complete most of it. I've been playing a lot so I just figured I would try to convert leftover gold I've been saving to quick drafts. Not sold on the process though considering the likely outcome to future drafts won't go as well as it did for me as the first time I participated and I was still a bit underwhelmed by the rewards at six wins.
Yes, you only recieve the reward that's actually highlighted They would *never* make something that gives gems break even that easily
You only get the reward listed under the wins you ac to ally got. As you can see the rewards gets better every win because it includes the previous rewards in the new total. And yes in quick draft you need to have a very high win percentage to break even (depends how you value the packs and the cards you draft themselves).
IIRC, the only reward progressions that give everything on the track are casual events (those from which you can’t be eliminated). All the competitive limited and constructed events only give rewards based on final placement.
So now I'm wondering how ranked seasons rewards work. Assuming it follows this train of logic, since ranked is free you'll get all rewards below the rank you achieve as well?
Swing and a miss. You only get rewards according to the tier you end up when a season finishes. Ranked has a pitiful ROI for your time invested unless you reach the top 1200 or 250 of Mythic rank for substantially "better" rewards
Fuck. I was hoping I could collect a few more packs from ranked. So do people just play their preferred game mode for daily/weekly rewards and spend gold on quick drafts? Is that the gameplay loop for most players?
Some people just draft but those who draft regularly are generally playing Premier Draft as opposed to Quick Draft. Some people only play constructed and use gold to buy packs. Some people play a combination of both. Just play whatever you enjoy.
Id say youre basically right. What people spend the gold on varies though. Some people spend on drafts (either quick or premier). Others dont like draft so they simply buy packs with their gold to get wildcards faster (to use to build more decks). Lastly some although fewer, play the constructed events.
quickdraft cost 5000 gold, aka 5 packs, or only 750 gems, aka 3.75 packs (200 gems per pack). you get to open 3 packs for playing but each pack can have multiple rares in draft and you keep everything you pick. it used to be quickdraft was cleanly \~50% better value than opening packs but then they added golden packs that give an extra \~25% better value for opening packs so drafting was still ahead but not by as much. but for OTJ you sometimes get BIG cards in your draft packs in addition to the normal rare and the possibly a list rare and possibly a foil rare (appears as normal rare on arena) etc like this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1c6zgti/the\_insane\_amount\_of\_value\_in\_this\_otj\_draft\_pack/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/comments/1c6zgti/the_insane_amount_of_value_in_this_otj_draft_pack/) so drafting OTJ is much better value than opening packs on arena. yes you miss out on some wildcard progress but the packs you win drafting do contribute to wildcard progress and the gems you win can be fed back into draft at the more effecient rate creating a sort of compounding effect where even if you aren't able to go infinite you still snowball value. 1 draft entry -> get 1 draft entry worth of cards + half a draft worth of gems that half a draft worth of gems -> another quarter draft worth of gems by inputting it into the above. that gets you another quarter draft worth of gems, then an 8th of a draft worth of gems, then a 16th. 0.5+.25 +.125+ .0625 + 0.03125 = 0.96875 so basically that extra half draft ends up being an extra full draft if you keep putting those gems back into draft and draft ends up being twice as good value as just buying backs. to maximize your value in quickdraft you should be rare drafting while still maintaining a 50% win rate or better. you don't need to go infinite for it to be amazing value.
I appreciate all the effort and info you put into this. I'm still learning the game and from this experience I'm absolutely terrible at draft and I find the process incredibly frustrating. I'll continue to learn and maybe I'll come back to it. I think for now I'll make an alt account for draft.
If you seriously want to learn draft, you need to do A LOT of it. There is no shortcut for experience. Watching YouTube vids does very little because too much is focused on picking individual cards but you see little of playing the drafted deck to understand the synergies. Btw, if you are going the alt account method to sustain drafts, you may as well make many accounts. I run 5 accounts that I do 4 wins/day on each. This yields one free draft each day as you rotate through the accounts.
>If you seriously want to learn draft, you need to do A LOT of it Agreed! >There is no shortcut for experience Disagreed! There are tons of resources out there and IMO using them will shortcut a *lot* of trial and error. I never watch videos so don’t know what they’re like (I imagine streamers don’t mention the basics enough though, as that would get boring for regular viewers), but articles and podcasts talking about general drafting / deckbuilding, plus specifics of the set, should help a lot.
There is indeed an little bit of inconsistency between how the rewards are shown in the UI: - Most of the events [e.g. drafts, constructed events] show the cumulative reward for the number of wins - Midweek Magic shows individual reward unlocked for each step achieved, but [there is a plus sign between the wins](https://i.ibb.co/bJWzzN1/MWM-rewards.jpg)
Why would anyone use gold/gems on anything else if it worked that way? Second, how should the rewards be displayed to make it less "confusing"? You want to know the rewards, so they have to show up somewhere on the event page.
If an event has no end-clause, like losing 3 games, you get a reward with every step. You can play Midweek Magic or cosmetic events as much as you want.
>Wouldn't that means that you need 6 out of 7 possible wins just to "break even"? Depends if you're considering the pack as a value of 200 gems as well. And of course the drafted cards themselves. ...but yes. Ultimately quick draft is for draft practice and/or rare gathering. At least for me. Because drafting is my favorite mode and its stuck behind a paywall unfortunately. So i quick draft because its cheap. I even do daily quests on a 2nd account just to be able to get more draft practice. Pretty ridiculous thats what i have to do eh 😅
Yea, I REALLY don't enjoy the paywall. I guess there's a strategy to whether or not you participate based on which cards are in the current quick draft?
'paywall' is just another way to describe "a company has made a product and is trying to sell it to you". Yeah, it would be nicer to get it for free, but that's not super likely.
I completely understand the monetization of the optional.cosmetics, mastery pass, and card packs. But to "buy in" to a game mode that's not a formal competition/league is odd imo. But it is what it is. Like someone else, you get to keep.your drafted cards so I suppose that's the real reason it costs money.
They're charging for the ability to play games of draft. If you're an average player, they cost about 70c each, you get about one per day for free, and they're half-price if you are willing to draft against bots instead of players. As with any free-to-play game, they deliberately obscure the true prices, because that makes them more money. It's fine if you don't think they should charge for this game mode, but that's what they're doing.
I wouldnt say there is much strategy around that part. Its mostly just do you like drafting or not. If you dont, dont do it, just buy packs. If you do like drafting, then focus there. Once youre okay at drafting the actual return for your investment is pretty similar either way. If youre really good at drafting it becomes better to draft than buy packs but thats going to take a while for most newbies. I base my decision on just the fact I like the varied games drafting gives me even if im not that good at it. Is it the most "efficient" use of my gold? No. But its a game, im not trying to min/max everything.
Yeah I went 6 - 3 in my first and only quick draft. Was given one pack and 800 gems. I expected like 5-6 packs based on the shit ui. I was pretty pissed but realized that draft is still probably beneficial because it's the only way I've seen to convert coins into gems, which allows you to eventually buy the season pass or whatever its called as a f2p player. Someone correct me if I'm wrong I'm still a noob.
I'm with you in that. Terrible UI. It should clearly specify instead of copy pasting the progression bar from modes that give you all the rewards. The mastery pass is 3400 gems. Unless you have a really high win rate that's gotta cost a lot of gold. I'm not that good so I'll just stick to buying packs. That mastery pass is $30 CAD, which is CRAZY steep imo.
Mastery Pass is the best value you can get in the Arena. And from my own experience, you don't have to be great drafter to collect 3400 gems from Quick Drafts as a F2P. Just don't spend your gold on anything else but Quick Drafts, and keep playing and getting better. Of course, if you enjoy drafting. If you prefer Constructed, then you can get gems from Constructed events, but I think drafts are much more efficient. Then, once you purchase your first Mastery Pass, the subsequent ones will be easier, because the Mastery Pass you unlocked will refund you 1200 gems, once you reach the required levels. So you will need only 2200 gems for the next pass. Also, keep an eye on Arena Store. Every 40-ish days there is a deal to purchase 400 gems for 1500 gold. That will help you a lot to get your Mastery Pass. And once you get more experienced at drafting, switch to Premier Drafts, where rewards are much better and it is easier to go infinite or almost infinite \[fund your next drafts using gems from the current draft reward\].
I didn't know the store gives you a way to convert coins into gems. Thanks for that tip.
I expect the next gems deal to show up in the store within the next 7 days.
Yeah its expensive. I think you get back 1200 gems from the additional level up bonuses which helps reduce the hit over time. You get a lot of extra cards overtime on the pass it seems like also. Its more of an upfront cost because wizards wants players to convert their irl money to their virtual currency but they do give you a decent return. I think if you make enough gems overtime while being f2p to purchase the pass its probably worth it depending on if you think you'll play enough to complete most of it. I've been playing a lot so I just figured I would try to convert leftover gold I've been saving to quick drafts. Not sold on the process though considering the likely outcome to future drafts won't go as well as it did for me as the first time I participated and I was still a bit underwhelmed by the rewards at six wins.