Everything You Need to Know About the Mastery Emporium on MTG Arena

You know, for a platform that’s been around for five or so years, MTG Arena doesn’t really see much in the way of grandiose improvements. Tweaks, sure. Adjustments here and there. Alchemy versions of cards from four Draft sets ago? Not sure who wanted that, but we got ‘em! And who can forget the standard 500-coin Daily Quest for casting 20 red and/or green spells when all I play is Dimir () control? Seems like those dailies are never going to improve.

This is all to say that Arena rarely changes on a grand scale, though there are small micro-fixes that make the client better over time. It’s easy to miss something like the Mastery Emporium, which is altogether a small, but useful quality-of-life change that makes the client just a wee bit better to use. It’s a change that happened mostly in the background, so I’ll clue you in on how it works.

What Is the Mastery Emporium on MTG Arena?

Jace, the Mind Sculptor | Illustration by Justin Gerard

The Mastery Emporium is a shop on the MTG Arena Store where you can purchase cosmetics using orbs you’ve acquired through the Mastery Pass. It’s the replacement for previous versions of the Mastery Tree, which worked very similarly.

There’s a difference between the Mastery Pass for a Magic set and the Mastery Emporium/Mastery Tree for that set. The Mastery Pass is the season pass associated with every major set release, which grants players a steady stream of rewards as they play during the duration of that set.

The Mastery Pass has two tiers, one that’s free-to-play and offers very minimal rewards, and one that you can purchase with gems to access more rewards as you play. Whether you pay for the Mastery Pass or not, you’ll receive the occasional green orb as a reward, which is the currency used in the Mastery Emporium.

The Emporium itself is just a separate shop with a bunch of cosmetics on display. The rewards you can unlock are nearly identical to what you’d get from previous Mastery Trees, the only difference being that you can choose from any rewards right away, instead of having to follow a set track or path to access different cosmetics. Previously, you’d have to spend 4-6 orbs on a certain path that ended with a mythic rare card style, whereas now you can just skip ahead and unlock any card style you want, as long as you have enough orbs. In other words, this new system eliminates the progression needed to reach the “better” rewards.

How Do You Find the Mastery Emporium?

Step 1: Find the Mastery Tab

Step 2: Click Spend Orbs

You can also use this screen to scroll through the Mastery Pass and see how close you are to unlocking your next orb.

Step 3: Welcome to the Emporium!

That’s it, a couple clicks and you’re there. From here you can scroll right and left to see what’s available.

Do You Need the Mastery Pass to Access the Mastery Emporium?

No, you can access the Mastery Emporium and redeem orbs without purchasing that season’s Mastery Pass. However, there are only five orbs available on the free-to-play track, which is only enough for a few cosmetics. There are another 32 orbs available if you pay to unlock the Mastery Pass, bringing the total to 37 orbs. That’s the exact number of orbs needed to purchase everything in the Emporium, but it also requires you to max out the Mastery Pass, which means playing quite consistently.

What Can You Get in the Mastery Emporium?

Past Mastery Trees and the latest Mastery Emporium are almost exclusively full of cosmetic items, including some combination of card sleeves, styles, and avatars.

Interestingly, the first iteration of the Mastery Emporium allowed players to unlock an actual card for their collections. Sorin Markov was made available on Arena for the first time as an Emporium reward. This cost two orbs and unlocked an entire playset of the card for use in Historic, Brawl, and Timeless.

Note that unlocking a card style for a card in the Emporium does not give you a copy of that card for your collection; it’s purely a cosmetic addition for the copies you already have.

Bloomburrow Mastery Emporium

Mastery Trees had a habit of changing slightly between MTG sets, so I’d anticipate small tweaks to the Mastery Emporium moving forward. For now, we only have the Bloomburrow Emporium to evaluate. Each of the following card sleeves costs two orbs, the card styles cost one orb, and the Sorin Markov playset costs two. Here’s a full list of unlockables for Bloomburrow:

• Elspeth, Sun's Champion Valley sleeve
• Jace, the Mind Sculptor Valley sleeve
• Domri, Anarch of Bolas Valley sleeve
• Nissa, Who Shakes the World Valley sleeve
• Liliana of the Dark Realms Valley Sleeve (this mistakenly says Liliana, Dreadhorde General on Arena).
• Sorin Markov playset
• Season of the Burrow style
• Season of the Bold style
• Season of Weaving style
• Season of Gathering style
• Season of Loss style
• Essence Channeler style
• Azure Beastbinder style
• Hearthborn Battler style
• Keen-Eyed Curator style
• Osteomancer Adept style
• Valley Questcaller style
• Valley Floodcaller style
• Valley Rotcaller style
• Valley Flamecaller style
• Valley Mightcaller style
• Lupinflower Village style
• Lilypad Village style
• Mudflat Village style
• Rockface Village style
• Oakhollow Village style
• Lifecreed Duo style
• Lightshell Duo style
• Bakersbane Duo style
• Glidedive Duo style
• Kindlespark Duo style

How Long Is the Mastery Emporium Available?

The Mastery Emporium is available from the release date of a new Standard set until the release of the following set. You can see the remaining time until the Emporium leaves on the screen where you spend your gems.

What Happens When a Set’s Mastery Emporium Leaves?

You can still use your orbs for that particular Mastery Tree/Emporium, but they don't carry over to the new one.

In the past, you could only access a previous set's Mastery Tree if you had unspent orbs for that set. You could still open that Mastery Tree and spend the orbs you had, even if the set's Mastery Pass already rotated. You could not, however, spend your existing orbs on the new set's Mastery Tree. I expect the Emporium will behave the same way.

Wrap Up

Liliana of the Dark Realms | Illustration by Javier Charro

That’s it on this new quality-of-life improvement to MTGA's old Mastery Tree system. Nothing to get too excited about here, but at the very least you can unlock some of the styles and sleeves you’re after much more efficiently, and free-to-play users actually have a means to get some of the more enticing rewards now.

Do you like this change overall? Anything you can think of that would further improve the Mastery system? Let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for making Draftsim your #1 stop for all things Magic!