Optimizing Free to Play (Codes Included)

How to get the most out of Magic the Gathering: Arena without paying much or anything at all.

Introduction

I've been playing Magic the Gathering since about 2008. Mostly casual until a year or two ago. I've been playing Arena not long after it came out of Beta. I have taken hiatuses from the game from time to time throughout the years.

I plan on uploading more guides. If you appreciate them, feel free to check out my stuff on my Moxfield[www.moxfield.com]. I make guides there as well and post my EDH, Modern, Pioneer, and Pauper decklists once they're finished.

This guide is not for learning to play the game or its rules or a guide to choosing a format to dedicate to. Use this to understand the economy of Arena to help benefit yourself without paying much at all.

It's fine to spend money on the game if you feel like it is worth it to you but don't think you're required to either. You may not be able to free to play Standard or Alchemy very easily (at first, it'll take time to be able to keep up since it rotates) but you should be able to work towards a Historic or Explorer deck fairly easily through playing with the cards and packs given for free and following tips in the guide.

Daily Quests

Every day at 4 AM CST (Central Standard Time) you will get a new "quest." You can have up to 3 at any given time so if you don't play for four days after clearing yours out, you'll have technically missed out on a daily quest.

They always reward 500 experience for the Mastery (essentially a battle pass) and either 500 or 750 gold. Some people like to re-roll the 500 ones to try and get the 750 gold challenges. The 750 challenges are not harder than the 500 ones but require more to finish.
Example would be like:

• 500 gold quest asks you to play 25 lands or cast 20 spells that are blue or black
  
• 750 gold quest asks you to play 40 lands or cast 30 spells that are blue or black

So if you're willing to play for longer, it's worth rerolling these for the extra 250 gold. You get one re-roll a day and there is no method to get more.


Optimally, if you really want to get the most out of this game, you should be doing your daily quests as much as possible. If you don't have time one day, don't sweat it. Just try to make sure you always have one quest slot open before 4 AM CST so you can get the next quest.

Daily and Weekly Wins

Every day you can be rewarded for up to 15 wins. Depending on how many wins you've gotten you'll get a different reward. Some wins reward a card, which is at least a Standard legal Uncommon but has a 7% chance to be Rare or a 4% chance to be a Mythic Rare.

• Win 1: 250 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 2: 100 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 3: 100 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 4: 100 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 5: 1 Card & 25 XP
  
• Win 6: 50 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 7: 1 Card & 25 XP
  
• Win 8: 50 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 9: 1 Card & 25 XP
  
• Win 10: 50 Gold & 25 XP
  
• Win 11: 1 Card
  
• Win 12: 25
  
• Win 13:1 Card
  
• Win 14: 25 Gold
  
• Win 15: 1 Card

Generally speaking, it's worth it to log in, win 4 times and then not worrying about winning any specific amount after that. 4 wins will get you 100 XP and 550 Gold, and after that the rewards start to diminish to less than what is worth the effort. If you just happen to want to or have the time to keep playing and coincidentally winning, then there's nothing wrong with that.

For optimizing time on a busy day though, try to just get 4 wins.

Every Sunday around reset time, you'll get another challenge near your daily quests and daily wins. These are the wins you get throughout the week. It goes up to 15 wins and each win gives you 250 XP. While that doesn't directly contribute to your Gold count, it does help your Mastery Pass whether you bought it or not. Finishing these 15 wins per week is about 3.75 levels on the Mastery Pass.

Wildcards and Deckbuilding

Wildcards are the reliable way to get the cards you're looking for your deck.

Use online resources like MTGDecks[mtgdecks.net], MTGGoldfish[www.mtggoldfish.com], or Untapped gg[mtga.untapped.gg] to find out what decks do well in the format of your choice. You can see the metagame share a deck has in percentages, see decklists that have recently put up results, and so on.

You can also build a deck on Arena without crafting the cards and when you're done and save the deck, you can see how many wildcards you need to be able to craft the deck entirely.


To get wildcards, you have to open packs.
Every pack will complete one section of the wheel shown here.


Every 6 packs will complete the Rare and Uncommon wildcard wheel. Sometimes, after completing the wheel for a Rare wildcard, you will begin a wheel that when finished, will reward a Mythic Rare wildcard instead. There is also a chance that cards you open in a pack could be a wildcard instead of a normal card in its place. Sometimes you will open a pack and get a Common or Uncommon wildcard, sometimes you will open a pack and get no Rare or Mythic Rare card but instead a wildcard of the replaced card's rarity.

The Vault is another way to get wildcards. When your Vault hits 100%, you will get 3 Uncommon wildcards, 2 Rare wildcards, and 1 Mythic Rare wildcard.
To get progress on your Vault, you have to get a 5th copy of a Common or Uncommon from the same set whether it's in a pack you bought to open or a card you picked in draft. It takes approximately 900 Commons or 300 Uncommons to complete the Vault to 100%. For 5th copies of Rares and Mythic Rares, you'll instead get gems. 20 Gems for a Rare and 40 Gems for a Mythic Rare.

Understanding What to Buy and When (Booster Packs, Drafting, Events)

Do not focus on obtaining cosmetics (avatars, pets, sleeves, card styles, etc.) This does not mean you cannot spend the gold you've earned on such things but if you're brand new, you'll be behind on trying to get cards you need by doing this. Wait until you've collected more cards before buying cosmetics.

New players likely will buy packs to grow their collection. If you're playing Standard, it's best to buy only Standard packs. If you play Historic it's best to buy numerous varieties of packs. If you play Explorer it's best to avoid spending any gold on packs that are only for Alchemy/Historic.

After opening 6 packs, you will finish a wheel that rewards you a Rare wildcard, this can be used once to craft any Rare card (not a playset, just one).

Or you could do Events to try and get some packs and turn your entry of gold into Gems (premium currency).

However, many Magic players will advocate drafting. If that does not interest you, skip past this next section and find out about other Events you can participate in.

DRAFTING
If you already play Magic in paper and understand draft well (or have learned it well from playing draft on Arena or MTGO), doing drafts can be very beneficial. They cost 5,000 to 10,000 gold to join.

Quick Drafts
Quick Drafts cost 5,000 gold to join in on and generally reward less due to the lower cost of entry.
They also don't have pick timers nor waiting for other players during the draft because it uses AI to simulate the draft experience.


Premier Drafts
Premier Drafts cost 10,000 gold to join in on and generally reward more due to the higher cost of entry. You can also redeem a Draft Token to enter a Premier Draft.
They do have pick timers and you'll have to match up with other players to start the draft.

Traditional Drafts
Traditional Drafts cost 10,000 gold to join in on and generally reward more due to the higher cost of entry. You can also redeem a Draft Token to enter a Premier Draft.
The difference between Premier and Traditional is that in Premier you play until you lose 3 times. In Traditional you play 3 games that are Best of 3. Your record afterwards determines your rewards. If you win all three, you get more slightly prizes than you would with max wins in Premier as well as Play-In Points for Qualifiers.


Phantom Drafts
Phantom Drafts are called such because you will not keep any of the cards you open from the draft. You will be rewarded based on your record though. These are usually best for practicing draft as their cost of entry is lower than other draft events, but some might still argue that Quick Drafts are only 2,500 more than a Phantom and you'll get cards alongside practice.



OTHER EVENTS
Have a deck in a format you enjoy? Do you feel like comfortable with it and have everything you need for it? Do a format event.
These have gotten a bit lesser in rewards recently but they still can give you decent rewards if you do well enough. Like most of the draft events, you play until you get 7 wins or 3 losses, whichever happens first.

>Insert your format here< Event
The cost of entry is 2,500 gold and can end up in grabbing some Play-In Points for Qualifiers if you get all 7 wins.


>Insert your format here< Traditional Event
Much how Traditional Drafts differ from the other draft events, Traditional Events are similar. You play 5 matches that are Best of 3 and your results determine your rewards. Generally you get better rewards due to the nature of the event and the entry fee being 5,000 gold.

Mastery Pass

Don't buy this! I mean if your goal is to optimize your collection without paying anything. If you can do well enough in events to earn enough Gems and have been keeping up with XP, you'll be fine to buy it if you want it.

It'll give you more booster packs, cosmetics (sleeves, pets, avatars, card styles), more Mastery Orbs for the reward tree that season (just enough for all the rewards if you buy it and complete it), and it'll kick back about 1,200 Gems of the 3,400 you spent on it. So you can't complete it and buy the next one without earning or buying Gems elsewhere.

I didn't bother buying the Mastery Passes until recently because I saved enough up from Gems I had earned.

If your goal is to not spend money at the start, don't buy this.

Ranked

Oh god, oh no. The dreaded ranking system of any computer game is enough to scare most people away. I get it. But it's a bit different here. You're essentially playing the game like you would any other way but now you're being rewarded for it.

Even if you don’t have an interest in playing Ranked much or at all, it’s worth playing a game or two every ranked season to get the rewards for being Bronze rank.

At the end of each Ranked season you'll get the following rewards:

• Bronze: 1 Pack
  
• Silver: 1 Pack, 500 Gold
  
• Gold: 2 Packs, 1000 Gold, 1 Card Style
  
• Platinum: 3 Packs, 1000 Gold, 2 Card Styles
  
• Diamond: 4 Packs, 1000 Gold, 2 Card Styles
  
• Mythic: 5 Packs, 1000 Gold, 2 Card Styles

So beyond getting to Gold is already pretty good.

You can play Ranked in Constructed formats either as Best of 1 or Best of 3. Most draft events themselves are already ranked so you don't have much of a choice there.

If you reach Gold in both Draft and Constructed Ranked, you'll get the rewards twice but only 1 Card Style still. This applies to the other ranks as well.

The top 250 players on the Mythic rank leaderboard will also qualify for the Qualifier weekend. To get that high, you have to keep playing as you can be pushed down the leaderboard by people who are playing more often and winning enough.

You never will go from Mythic to Diamond or Silver to Bronze by losing a ranked match. Once you've reached that tier, you're there. There's 4 tiers within that you can fluctuate between. Once the ranked season is over, every gets set back to a lower tier (Mythic players goes to like high Platinum I think).

Don't sweat about being Mythic every ranked season. Just play a few games, try to get the bonus rewards for getting to Gold or Platinum if you can, if not, don't sweat it! It'll help you learn along the way!

Extra Rewards (Codes Here Too)

Sometimes you can get a code from pre-constructed decks you buy in stores (hopefully a local game store and not a major retailer). Though, it has been quite some time since this was last true.

If you decide to participate in a Prerelease event in person, the pack with your promo card will have another card with a code on it. When you get home and use that code on Arena, you'll get 6 packs. So you get some paper cards and some digital ones too.

Codes are being phased out currently and now you'll get 3 packs of every set that releases on Arena for free (not sure how it works if you register after a set's release though!). You find this in your mailbox up in the upper right hand corner.

A great boost to get started with cards and wildcards are through these free packs. Luckily there are some older codes that should still work.

For older rewards that are still available here are some codes:

Free Packs:
PLAYM21
PlayTheros
PlayIkoria
PlayZendikar
PlayKaldheim
PlayStrixhaven
TryKaladesh
PlayWarSpark
PlayRavnica
PlayDND
PlayMID
PlayVOW
PlayNEO
PlayNEOAlchemy
PlaySNC
PlayAlchemyNewCapenna
PlayHBG
PlayDMU
PlayDMUAlchemy
PlayBRO


Cosmetics:
FNMAtHome
InformationIsPower
AlwaysFinishTheJob
ReadTheFinePrint
FunIsntFree
CrimeIsAnArtForm

If any of these do not work now, please leave a comment mentioning which one(s) exactly.

Another good way to get a jump on growing your collection is the Jump-In event. You should have 4 tokens to join this event for free. You get to pick from a random selection of packs and then a second pack based on the first pack you picked. You’ll get to keep all the cards from this event as well. Winning unlocks a random card. Everyone else you play against also only has their deck made up of the two packs they picked as well, so it’s a bit more even in terms of power level for new players.

Feedback

If something seems incorrect or if there's more information that needs to be included, please just leave a comment on the guide mentioning what is inaccurate or missing and I'll change it as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading, good luck and have fun.

[Rico]

All codes are dead now...

[Sabrina (She / They)]

Any updated advice for things now?

[Mysterious Stranger]

All codes are dead except for

PlayBro
and
PlayDMUAlchemy

[Racdauqs]

Most of the codes are probably expiring by now. They also have phased out codes in favor of log in to check your mail for the reward

[Abiik]

As of this morning, only codes I could get to work are
PlayDMUAlchemy
PlayBRO

[13lack Talon]

Good advise up until you hit a new monthly set release and Hasbro's PAY US gate kicks in. There's no way to keep up without buying. You can fight it but i promise you, that your wasting time. Fun game but the current owners suck-the-butt now.
Magic the Gathering ain't what it used to be; its a sad copy of Hearthstone when originally every card game tried to be them.

[Raptor]

This is really good advice, thanks!

[ejones2219]

None of the cosmetic codes worked for me

[SonOfKrypton]

anyone else getting bored of reading wall texts every time a fckn card drops?

[adriyansunpin]

thanks everybody a cpl of them worked for me so i say and text stank u all and bless u all for the rest of your lives! boo who ?