Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel: Economy System Guide & Tips for Beginners

Since I’m seeing a lot of bad reviews saying that “It’s not the Yu-Gi-Oh! I remember!”, I believe a disclaimer has to be made. Yu-Gi-Oh! has existed for many, many years, and a lot of new mechanics and effects have been implemented and long combos/OTKs exist, just like any other TCG. The Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon Decks everyone remember from the 2000s are no longer viable, but you can play highly competitive Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon Decks with up-to-date mechanics. At the time of this review, the last boost to these Decks happened in October-December 2021.

Hello there and welcome to this informative guide. Here I’ll only give some starting information and tips to encourage players to play the game and understand the economy from the perspective of a F2P player.

I believe talking about the main currency is a right way to start. With Gems you can open Packs and other goodies in the Shop. You get Gems by leveling your Account, completing Missions, leveling the Duel Pass, and buying them with money.

As a new player, you’ll get A LOT of Gems thanks to the Beginner Missions. Don’t spend them right away, even if you get to the 10K Gem cap. You’ll be able to collect exceeding Gems from the Gifts button.

The first thing you should buy with these Gems is the Duel Pass, which costs 600 Gems. This is a typical Battle Pass with a nice twist: You’ll get your 600 Gems back while leveling through it. With the Duel Pass, you’ll get a high value of resources and goodies, and you should always save 600 Gems in your account for the Duel Pass.

There’s three Normal Packs available in the Shop: Two timed ones and the Master Pack. Never buy from the Master Pack, since it has every single card available and it’s practically impossible to get what you want.

Secret Packs are your main source of cards, but at first you won’t be able to see them in the Shop. These Packs include all of the cards from a specific archetype, with some fillers. For example, the Cosmic Mechanical Entities Secret Pack include Krawlers, Mekk-Knights and Knightmares. You need to unlock them. I’ll explain how this works in the Card Crafting section.

The Bonus Pack is a nice filler Pack which can only be opened by spending Tickets. You get these tickets from playing Duels or completing Missions. Open them when you have them, they’re free!

Depends on you. If you’re interested in the archetype, you can get a lot of useful cards at once for 500 Gems. The downside is that you only get one copy of each card, and that is the reason why they can be bought three times. The good thing is that you’ll also unlock the Secret Pack for said archetype, since you’ll get SR and UR cards.

Card Crafting is what makes Master Duel a nice F2P game in my opinion. You’ll be able to craft any specific card you want if you have the Crafting Points (CP) available.

Crafting Points are divided by Rarity (N, R, SR and UR, just like the cards). For example, If you want to craft an UR card, you’ll only spend UR Crafting Points. These Crafting Points are obtained by leveling the Duel Pass, completing Missions and dismantling cards you don’t need. It’s very intuitive.

It costs 30 CP to craft any card, regardless of rarity, and dismantling a card will give you 10 CP. So normally, you’ll dismantle three cards to craft one.

The exception to this are Glossy and Royal-Finished cards, which are cosmetics effects for your cards. If you dismantle a Glossy card you’ll get 15 CP, and a Royal-Finished card will give you 30 CP. There’s a chance to get these special cards when opening Packs or crafting them.

But you won’t always have enough CP to craft the cards you need. When that happens, your only solution will be to open Packs. So, which one do you need to open?

The first answer to that question is “Not the Master Pack“. The second one will be answered by the cards themselves. Let’s say we want to craft a Cyber Dragon Deck from scratch. Where do I begin? Let’s search for a card of that Deck, in this case, Cyber Dragon Nova. There’s a nice button at the bottom of the selected card titled “How to Obtain” which tells you which Pack has the card.

As you can see, you can get Cyber Dragon Nova from the Pearlescent Cyber Dragons Secret Pack. As I said in the Secret Packs section, Secret Packs include all the cards from a specific archetype. So now that we know that we can get all the Cyber Dragon related cards from this Secret Pack, we only need to unlock it.

To unlock a Secret Pack, you simply need to craft a SR or UR card from the Secret Pack you want to unlock. Doing this we force the Secret Pack to appear in the Shop for 24 hours and you can start pulling from it. After 24 hours, the Secret Pack will vanish from the Shop and you’ll need to unlock it again.

*Note: This is not the only way to unlock Secret Packs, but it’s the easiest. You can also unlock Secret Packs when you get SR or UR cards from other Packs or clearing the Solo Campaigns.

• Buy the Duel Pass with your starting Gems. It has an insane value and you only need to Duel other players to level through it, no specific missions or anything. Remember that the Duel Pass will give you back the 600 Gems you used to buy it, so always save 600 Gems to get the Duel Pass!
• Clear the Solo Campaigns. They give you Starter Decks, Gems, Account XP and help you progress through the Beginner Missions.
• Read the cards. Take your time, turn times are long so you have time to read what your opponent effects do. Never attack going blind.
• Research on your own. As a new player, search for archetypes or playstyles you’d enjoy. Watch videos and read about them to decide what it’s fun for you. In my case, I went for Cyber Dragons since they were my favourite back in the day, and I made a competitive Deck with the initial resources the game gave me in the second day.
• When pulling from Packs, always pull 10 Packs at once. There are SR and UR guarantees pulling this way. This is written in the Details > Important Notes section on every Pack.
• Plan your resources carefully. Keep an eye on your CPs. You know that crafting one card cost 30 CP and dismantling a basic foil card gives you 10. Do math, use the calculator. Plan what you can craft and you cannot, which card has priority and which card doesn’t. Save CPs to unlock a Secret Pack and spend the Gems you need in those 24 hours.
• Don’t get discouraged when your opponent throws at you a 3 minute combo in the first turn and OTK’s you on your first ever Ranked match. Everyone has been there. Learn about cards which negates the effects of your opponent’s and plan to get them. Again, research on your own and watch videos about how to use or how to fight certain Decks. For me, one of the best things of Yu-Gi-Oh! is the theorycrafting.
• Losing doesn’t mean your Deck doesn’t work. Strategy is very different from luck, and in TCG games you always need luck. If you have a bad hand and your opponent don’t, it’s not your fault. It happens.