Welcome to the Marvel Snap realm!
In this guide we're answering questions about how to level up and collect cards in MARVEL SNAP.
MARVEL SNAP is now out of closed beta, and available on iOS, Android, and PC. If you're new to this universe, you might want to know what you're getting yourself into before downloading the newest card game from Hearthstone veterans that are Ben Brode and his team at Second Dinner. In this guide, we'll be answering some of the main questions players may have about how progression and card acquisition works in MARVEL SNAP.
Have other questions? Check out these guides:
In terms of card acquisition, MARVEL SNAP is very different from most other card games. Instead of opening booster packs, the way players collect cards is similar to a Battle Pass. Players move up the Collection Level, and in so doing earn cards and Variants, as well as other currencies that can help them acquire cards.
When you first start MARVEL SNAP, you get a clutch of starter cards and earn other, specific, cards as part of the Recruit Season. These cards are earned in the same order for every player, and do not take too much playtime to earn. The starter cards are:
The first cards you earn on the Collection Level are in this order:
The Recruit Season cards are in this order:
Once you've earned these cards, your card acquisition experience will get a lot more unique.
After the starters and Recruit Season cards, the rest of MARVEL SNAP's cards are grouped into five Series of cards. Players will first earn cards from Series 1, then, once they have all Series 1 cards, will start earning cards from Series 2. Once they have all Series 2 cards, they can starting earning cards from Series 3, 4 and 5. Within each Series, the order in which you earn these cards is effectively random.
As you rank up the Collection Level, you will also earn Boosters and Credits, which can help you both get more cards and continue moving up the Collection Road.
To move up the Collection Ladder, you must increase your Collection Level by upgrading the cosmetics of cards in your Collection. There are seven rarities through which to advance your card's art (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Ultra, Infinity). To increase your card's cosmetic rarity, you spend Boosters and Credits.
Boosters are a card-specific currency (Iron Man boosters can't be used on Captain America, for instance) that you earn by playing the game. To collect Boosters for a specific card, you put that card into a deck and play with it. You will only earn Boosters from post-game rewards for the cards that start in your deck. You can also earn random Boosters from the Collection Ladder and the Season Pass.
Credits are the currency that are earned by completing Daily Missions, or can be gained from the Season Pass and Collection Ladder. Credits, unlike Boosters, are not tied to any particular card and can be spent on a variety of things.
Each successive cosmetic rarity costs more Boosters and Credits for the upgrade, but rewards you with a bigger boost up the Collection Ladder:
Once you've upgraded your card to Infinity, it Splits and gives you two copies of that card, except the new version gains a unique art-filter. The new Split starts out at Common rarity, meaning you get to move it up the chain all over again (and, once it hits Infinity, it will Split and acquire an additional art style).
As you advance up the Collection Ladder, you earn cards, Variants, Boosters, Credits, and other cosmetic goodies. We will note that earning cards from Series 1 and 2 is significantly faster than earning cards from Series 3, 4, and 5 as they are lower on the Collection Level and chances to earn them are much more common.
MARVEL SNAP has a number of things for sale in the in-game shop, and many of them help you progress in your journey to collect more cards.
The Fast Upgrade shop resets every day, and is where you can exchange Credits for card-specific Boosters to upgrade that card. If you're one of those players who finds themselves drowning in Credits but lacking the right Boosters, this could be useful - our personal recommendation is to save your Credits for other uses. Only cards that you own will appear in the Fast Upgrade Shop.
The Credit shop is where you can buy Credits, in the amounts shown above. The first deal in the shop is 50 Credits for free - this is a daily offer that you should plan to pick up the first time you log into MARVEL SNAP every day (resets at 8 PM PT). It's like a log-in bonus, but with hoops that you get to jump through!
The Variant shop offers Daily Deals on different Variants of cards from your collection. A Variant is an alternate-art version of a card that can be played in place of the base-art card. Variants in the Variant shop are totally random, and the Variants in the shop reset every 24 hours (at 8 PM PT). Variants can be bought from the Variant shop for Gold, which is an in-game currency players can buy with real-world currency - although there are a few ways to earn Gold by playing. There are currently two rarities of Variant. Rare Variants can be earned from the Collection Ladder or bought from the Variant shop for 700 Gold. Super Rare Variants can only bought from the Variant shop, and cost 1200 Gold.
The Token Shop is MARVEL SNAP's solution to the problem of targeted card acquisition, and unlocks after you reach Collection Level 500. The Token Shop shows you one card that you haven't yet collected, and refreshes every eight hours. The currency used to buy cards from the Token Shop are Collector's Tokens, and the prices for a card in the Token Shop are as follows:
If you don't have the Tokens to buy a card you want, you can Pin it and the card won't change until you either buy it or Unpin it. After you buy a card, the Token Shop won't immediately refresh to a new card; you still have to wait until the regular refresh time to see a new card.
For a more in-depth look at the Token Shop, how it works and the various odds associated with it, see our dedicated guide to MARVEL SNAP's Token Shop.
Before we let you go, we've got to talk about a few more things that effect your progression journey in MARVEL SNAP: Daily Missions, and the Season Pass.
Every eight hours, you get two Daily Missions that you can complete to earn Credits: the easier ones reward you with 50 Credits, while the Hard Missions (which are generally a lot more persnickety) give you 100 Credits. Daily Missions also reward Season Pass XP. Your Missions log can hold up to 6 Missions maximum, so try not to go too long without clearing some missions. If you have some empty Mission slots, the game gives you the option to spend 120 Gold to refill those slots immediately, instead of waiting for the timed refill. For a more in-depth dissection, and a list of all Daily Missions in-game, see our dedicated Guide to Daily Missions.
Once you've finished the Recruit Season, you'll start your first true MARVEL SNAP season, and start your journey along that month's Season Pass.
The Season Pass is another way to gain in-game currency, and has three versions: Free, Premium, and Premium+. The Free Season Pass contains an assortment of Credits, Boosters, and Gold, as well as a Variant. The Premium Season Pass (9.99 USD) has a new card and exclusive cosmetics, on top of everything in the Free Season Pass. Premium+ (14.99 USD) boosts players up ten levels from their current level on the Season Pass.
The Season Pass card is exclusive to the Premium Season Pass for that Season, and can be picked up by purchasing the Premium Season Pass. The Season Pass card is added to Series 3 - eight weeks after first becoming available in the Season Pass, spending the interim Season in Series 5. For instance, the Season Pass card for Symbiote Invasion (Miles Morales), was added to Series 3 at the beginning of the December 2022 Season.
The Season Pass is fifty levels, climbed by completing Daily Missions and Weekly Season Chapter Missions for Season XP. The Chapters unlock every week (but can be completed retroactively, if you *for some reason* missed the first two weeks), giving you new Missions to complete to climb the Season Pass.
Seasons last four or five weeks, and usually start (and end) at 8 PM PT on the first Monday of the month. The current season, Symbiote Invasion, ends on November 7th at 8 PM PT, so you have about three weeks to complete its Season Pass.
Now that you've got the low-down, it's time to get out there and start building your collection!
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If you're one of those players who finds themselves drowning in Credits but lacking the right Boosters …
Even if you think you are in this group for now, it will quickly turn around as your collection level increases. Credits are the limiting factor on progression unless you dump your entire life savings into the game, so the Fast Upgrade shop is a big trap, a terrible waste of credits. If you want more boosters for a specific card, just use that card and you'll get plenty of them.
And yet this particular case seems to be far more layered than that. I've seen this particular advice a lot and have already had this argument several times, so care to tell me how I'm supposed to get more boosters over credits if I'm just casually playing a few games here and there, while mainly sticking to completing my daily/weeky missions? Hardly anything beyond that, time constraints let's say.
Even with using the shop upgrade several times I remain close to 4k credits, but no spare boosters. And for higher rarities it does take a lot more of them. If I haven't, my Collection Level would've been a lot lower, which in turn means having far fewer cards at my disposal. All the people telling me the same thing as you have stated above are pretty much the ones who've been playing dozens and dozens of games daily, which is a far different reality and a vastly different set of conditions.
Also there are a lot of cards you may never want to use past a certain rank, especially of the starter category. There is no casual mode or any other mode in Snap currently where you can play with such cards or even go to complete missions. Or at least it's not the kind of risks to take until you get to the guaranteed ranked floor level of 100 for Infinite, and how many players realistically will in these early weeks?
As I said, credits are the limiting factor unless you've spent a lot of money on the game, which you obviously have if you are sitting on that many credits with no boosters to use them on.
The other factor I mentioned was time (meaning number of games played). If you simply haven't played enough to gain the boosters needed, then you aren't yet to the point more experienced players are talking about, where credits matter far more than boosters. If you keep playing, you will get there eventually.
It's none of my business why you would spend so much money on a game you hardly ever play. My advice was more for people trying to keep their spending in check while actually playing the game.
I certainly did not see you mention "time" in the post I replied to? At least not in the way I meant it, and which is another limited resource I was referring to. I haven't spent any money, but as I only happen to play 5-6 daily games on average so far, I have already run into the issues of having too many credits and too few boosters at my disposal. And the advice given was not particularly helpful, because, you know, there is a credit cap of 5k that you cannot go above.
There is simply no getting ever to that point dedicated players keep talking about, unless your involvement with the game goes beyond casual and moderate. The advice itself is fair, it just fails to account for a sizable part of the audience. Could've used a couple buts or ifs, which is what we tried to lean towards in the guide.
This looks quite P2W and predatory. No targeted acquisition, real money hidden behind two different currencies, buying missions for for real money…
I really don't think it's that bad. The point of completely "random" (actually the cards are split in 3 pre-defined pools. Once you got every card from a pool you move on to the next one, to ensure that you can atleast have access to the base archetypes) card rewards is that everyone is supposed to have a different collection, which encourages experimentation with the tools you have, because you can't just netdeck for the most part.
Though the devs did announce a soft way to get the few cards you really want, without completely destroying this idea.
Another important thing to mention here is that the matchmaking also takes your collection level into account. So you are never going to play against someone who has access to way more cards than you. So I'd say there is no way where paying gets you a advantage over your opponent, besides that higher pool cards aren't better than the lower pool ones and especially the season pass cards have been mostly mediocre at best.
Also as a anecdote: I've been playing for 4 months, without spending a penny, and got every collectible card in the game so far.
I have mixed feelings so far. The number of currencies, tracks, and mission types is overwhelming at first, and if I didn’t know better I’d think this was a 3-year-old game that had slowly grown to be way more complex than it can handle. And the basic paid tier is $10/month, when I like to aim for $5/month in a game I’m enjoying.
On the other hand, I don’t think the system is too predatory. You earn most things through play, and all money can do is speed you along a little. I think I’d call this less predatory than a system like Hearthstone, where you can always pay to get that next legendary you want. And it isn’t too hard to find people on Reddit *begging* to pay money for targeted acquisition, so it feels like the designers intentionally chose a system that leaves money on the table. (On the other hand, everyone also seems to hate that lack of control. I’m not far enough along to have my own opinion.)
I was definitely in the boat of "I'd love to just buy cards" but the current system feels good enough. Pacing on unlocks has been alright, but I do know that players later on talk about it slowing down so if I end up in that realm, maybe I won't be as happy.
I've only ever bought a battle pass, never felt like I needed to be buying a ton of gold bars to have fun with the game - Hearthstone's Runestones on the other hand...
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