i’ve been playing Magic: The Gathering Arena for a bit more than a year now, and i think i have a handle on how the economy works and how to get the most out of it. i’ve got a ton of wildcards, i can play almost any deck i want, and i’ve got a growing pile of both gems and gold.

note that the biggest asset you can bring to the game is patience. don’t try to get everything all at once. try not to spend your resources unless for drafting (and even then sparingly). you will be paying with time instead of money, but presumably you are playing the game precisely TO spend time on it, so think of it as being rewarded for playing a game you wanted to play anyway.

here’s my notes so far in case they help you understand where you should focus.

daily tasks

each day, you should get at least 4 wins. i tend to want to get 5 because of the ICR you can get at 5. here’s a list of gold and experience for the 15 wins that grant rewards in a day. as you can see on the list, after 4 wins you start to get minimal gold and you only get 25xp per win for all 15.

each day, you should re-roll (by clicking on it) one of your 500 gold quests. even if you’ve made some progress on it, you should still re-roll it. each re-roll gets you a chance to get a 750 gold quest instead, so it’s always worth re-rolling a 500 gold quest. some people say that you should try not to complete the 500 gold quests at all, unless you already have 3, because then you’ll have more than one opportunity to re-roll a 500 each day. i’m not sure that is worth the stress of having to be careful about which decks to play. never let the number of quests you have go above 2; if you have 3 on any given day, you need to finish one!

each day, you should check the store (or read reddit user hamboneraces’ daily posts to see what store deals are available). if any of these deals is available, you should buy it with gold, unless it’s the rare case of draft token being more effective to pay for with gems.

50 gold for 550 gold. (obviously a good deal)
gold for gems. (as long as i’ve been playing, this deal has never been in the store, so i wouldn’t hold my breath if i were you)
6750 gold for draft token. this is the better deal – take this if you can!
1350 gems for draft token. this is only a good price if the gold price is 9000. otherwise the gold price is better.
900 gold for a standard pack. i always buy these to up the wildcard tracks and also to increment my gold pack progress by 1. i rarely buy packs otherwise, so a lot of the time this is my only gold pack progress.

each day you should NOT open any packs for the current set! save those for after you are done drafting. you CAN open packs you’ve earned for past sets. those will give you good wildcard progress while you wait to be done with draft.

weekly tasks

each week, you should complete 15 wins. your first 15 wins each week will earn an additional 250 xp, so you definitely don’t want to leave this on the table (each level is 1000 xp, so each win is a quarter of a level)

each week, you should play midweek magic. even if it’s a BYO cards event, you should still try to do it. the prizes don’t knock your socks off, but it does give you two rare ICRs, and a card sleeve if you get all 3 wins. this doesn’t sound like much, but it does add up over time. (think about it: that’s 104 rare cards each year if you complete all the MWM events. they aren’t always useful rares, but they do save you some wildcards over time)

each week, you should be paying attention to what events are happening. you will likely want to draft and do MWM, but some of the other events might be fun, too, and sometimes there are interesting bundles in the store.

monthly tasks

each month is called a “season” in MTGA. by the end of each month, you should have your ranks as high as you can for ladder and for draft. i try to get at least platinum for ladder and gold for draft. silver is ok for draft, too, because it makes your next month rank easier to get. going higher than platinum in ladder is a grind, and will only get you one more pack at the end of the month – it’s generally not worth the effort. going higher than gold in draft usually is a result of a ton of drafting and/or really good luck. for me, it’s unusual to get up into gold, and i think my payoffs in draft are a bit better as a result.

drafting

drafting is a fun way to play the game, but it’s also the only want to convert gold in to gems. i think it’s the best way to play the game, and getting gems is the thing that will help you get ahead in the MTGA economy.

you’ll want to be drafting each month. i usually do quick draft and spend gold on it. this is better for practice and for getting to know the set, but the payoffs aren’t as good as premium draft.

i do save up draft tokens and use them sparingly on premium draft. you can pay 10k gold for premium, too, but a bad draft in premium feels worse than a bad draft in quick draft.

for drafting, you want to maximize your win rate, but more importantly, you just want to be finding 3400 gems for the mastery pass. the mastery gets you a ton of extra packs and some extra rare cards – it’s definitely worth getting the pass each set release as it will get you the most additional resources as possible. it’s tempting to think that you need a good win rate for draft to be worth it, but generally speaking you really just want to generate at least 3400 gems per season (or about 1700 gems per month). if you can do that, you won’t be “infinite” in the literal sense, but you’ll be gaining resources quite quickly and probably able to play as many drafts as you can stand.

for each release

each time a new set comes out, you’ve got 3 tasks to do:

get at least your 15 wins per week to max out the mastery track
use 3400 gems to buy the mastery pass for additional rewards
draft the new set at least 9-10 times

then, you’ll also want to do these things:

wait until you’re done drafting to open packs (usually should have ~50 by the time you’re done with the dailies and drafting)
craft as few wildcards as you can
try to keep at least 10k gold on hand for deals (ie, don’t spend any gold until you have enough to keep you above 10k gold in reserve)