Mastery
“You have earned your first Mastery Point! Masteries are abilities that can be trained by level-80 characters with access to expansion content.
— In-game description
The Mastery system is an account-wide progression system for level 80 characters that provides players with account-wide benefits such as gliding, mounts, fishing, etc. The mastery system interface is accessed through the bottom left tab of the hero panel, and is divided into regional sections: Central Tyria mastery tracks, Heart of Thorns mastery tracks, Path of Fire mastery tracks, Icebrood Saga mastery tracks, End of Dragons mastery tracks, and Secrets of the Obscure mastery tracks.
Each mastery is permanently acquired through the following process, further detailed below: 1: Select a mastery to train, earn enough experience to fill the progress yellow bar. 2: Earn enough mastery points. 3: Spend your mastery points to permanently acquire the trained mastery for your account.
See Mastery point unlocks for a full list of all the mastery points in the game. There are far more mastery points than are needed to acquire all masteries.
Unlocking the mastery system and its region sections[edit]

(1) Total amount of spent mastery points,
(2) Current regional section,
(3) Current mastery track,
(4) Number of available (unspent) mastery points for this region section,
(5) Permanently acquired masteries,
(6) The mastery currently being trained, and the progress experience bar (full),
(7) Number of mastery points needed to permanently acquire the mastery after it is fully trained.
The mastery system is unlocked when a character on the account reaches level 80 and the account owns an expansion. When both are true, the mastery system unlocks by giving access to the Central Tyria region section.
To unlock the other region sections, the player must own their pertaining expansion and unlock any mastery track inside that region section. Some tracks are easily unlocked by completing that expansion's early story chapters:
- Heart of Thorns Act 1: Torn from the Sky, unlocks the Gliding track.
- Path of Fire Act 1: Sparking the Flame, unlocks the Raptor mount track.
- The Icebrood Saga Episode 1 (Whisper in the Dark): Silence, unlocks the Raven Attunement track.
- End of Dragons Act 1: Old Friends, unlocks the Fishing track.
- Secrets of the Obscure Act 1: Hell Breaks Loose, unlocks the Heart of the Obscure Research and Flight Training tracks.
Other ways to unlock a mastery track include unlocking a mount, or entering specific maps, or even killing a raid boss in Heart of Thorns raids. Check the section Mastery track to see how to unlock a specific mastery track.
Acquiring a mastery[edit]
To acquire a mastery, players will need to select one to start training it, earn enough experience to fully train it, and then spend mastery points to acquire it.
Training a mastery[edit]
To train a mastery, players simply need to access the mastery system interface and select a mastery. If the player does not manually select a mastery, the game will automatically start training the first mastery available.
Once the player is training a mastery from a region, all experience earned in that region (except experience gained from levelling crafting disciplines) will go towards progressing that selected mastery and their experience bar will change to track the current progress.
Moving to a different region will automatically swap to the respective mastery track for that region. Gliding masteries can only be trained in Heart of Thorns and season 3 maps, raptor masteries can only be trained in Path of Fire and season 4 maps, and so on.
Players can switch their mastery in training without losing any progress (experience gained) on it.
Once a mastery has been fully trained, the experience bar will start blinking and the mastery can be unlocked using mastery points. If a player does not have enough mastery points to unlock the mastery, additional experience gained in that region will spill over to the next available untrained mastery track (or a player can select the next track to train manually).
Mastery Points[edit]
Mastery points are a currency used for acquiring masteries. As players progress through the game, they will earn mastery points. These points are stored in the player's account permanently once obtained (even if the player has not unlocked the mastery system yet).
All mastery points are earned by completing achievements. Most of these require communing with Mastery Insights found in the open world. Other sources include completing certain story chapters or steps, earning silver or gold rewards on adventures, unlocking mounts, etc. Achievements can be filtered to show only those that give mastery points or mastery points belonging to a specific region.
Each mastery region has its own type of mastery point, easily discernible by color (green for Heart of Thorns, purple for Path of Fire, etc.). Masteries can only be acquired by using mastery points of their corresponding region. For instance, the Gliding mastery can only be acquired with Heart of Thorns mastery points, the Raptor mount mastery can only be acquired with Path of Fire mastery points, and so on.
See Mastery point unlocks for a full list of all the mastery points in the game. There are far more mastery points than are needed to acquire all masteries.
All acquired masteries are available to all characters in the account, regardless of their level (except Spectral Aid which is only active for level 80 characters).
While training a mastery, the icon for that mastery appears in the bottom right corner of the screen, to the right of the experience bar. If no track is currently selected, the icon area will be blank. If all Mastery Tracks are completed, the spirit shard icon will be shown instead.
To the left of the experience bar, the total number of mastery points spent will be displayed, referred to as your "Mastery rank".
Mastery track[edit]
Mastery tracks are split into sections; each section has a separate set of mastery points earned by playing its content, which can only be spent on the respective masteries. Before masteries from a given track within a section (such as gliding) can be trained, the entire track must be unlocked by completing a certain task.
Category / Track | Total | Unlock requirement |
---|---|---|
Central Tyria | 49 | Any expansion |
Pact Commander | 19 | Unlock a mastery track from another category or earn a central Tyria mastery point at level 80. |
Legendary Crafting | 19 | Unlock a mastery track from another category or earn a central Tyria mastery point at level 80. |
Fractal Attunement | 11 | Unlock a mastery track from another category or earn a central Tyria mastery point at level 80. |
Heart of Thorns | 144 | ![]() |
Gliding | 31 | Complete the story chapter Torn from the Sky. |
Itzel Lore | 31 | Complete the story chapter Torn from the Sky. |
Exalted Lore | 19 | Enter Auric Basin. |
Nuhoch Lore | 31 | Enter Tangled Depths. |
Raids | 8 | Kill a boss in the Forsaken Thicket or Bastion of the Penitent raids. |
Ancient Magics | 24 | Enter Bloodstone Fen or Ember Bay. ![]() |
Path of Fire | 110 | ![]() |
Raptor Mount | 10 | Unlock the raptor by saving Seeker's Village during the story chapter Sparking the Flame. |
Springer Mount | 14 | Purchase the springer from the Highjump Ranch task vendor in the Desert Highlands. |
Skimmer Mount | 22 | Purchase the skimmer from the Skimmer Ranch task vendor in the Elon Riverlands. |
Jackal Mount | 14 | Purchase the jackal from the Sand Jackal Run task vendor in the Desolation. |
Griffon Mount | 12 | Unlock the griffon by completing the Path of Fire story and the Open Skies collections. |
Roller Beetle Mount | 12 | Unlock the roller beetle by entering the Domain of Kourna and completing its collections. ![]() |
Skyscale Mount | 12 | Unlock the skyscale by completing the War Eternal story and the subsequent collections. ![]() |
Crystal Champion | 14 | Enter any Living World Season 4 zone. ![]() |
Icebrood Saga | 63 | ![]() ![]() |
Raven Attunement | 6 | Complete the story chapter Silence, enter Bjora Marches or gain an Icebrood Saga mastery point from strike mission achievements. |
Resilience Essence Manipulation | 7 | Unlock Raven's Light in the Raven Attunement track. |
Valor Essence Manipulation | 7 | Unlock Raven's Light in the Raven Attunement track. |
Vigilance Essence Manipulation | 7 | Unlock Raven's Light in the Raven Attunement track. |
United Legions Waystation Synchronization | 16 | Enter Drizzlewood Coast. |
Dragon Slayer | 20 | Complete the story chapter Tidings and Misgivings. |
End of Dragons | 89 | ![]() |
Fishing | 20 | Complete the story chapter Old Friends. |
Skiff Piloting | 14 | Purchase the skiff from the Hall Director Soohee task vendor in Seitung Province. |
Jade Bots | 15 | Complete the story chapter The Scenic Route. |
Arborstone Revitalization | 20 | Complete the story chapter Fallout. |
Turtle Mount | 20 | Unlock the siege turtle by acquiring a Turtle Egg and completing the subsequent collections. |
Secrets of the Obscure | 59 | ![]() |
Heart of the Obscure Research | 20 | Unlock the Heart of the Obscure during the story chapter Hell Breaks Loose. |
Flight Training | 25 | Complete the story chapter Hell Breaks Loose. |
Astral Ward | 14 | Complete the story chapter The Missing Facet. |
Fourth mastery line | 0 | To be released in future releases. |
Total | 514 |
Excess experience and Spirit Shards[edit]
Experience earned at level 80 is never wasted. In the following circumstances, experience earned will go towards a 254,000 experience repeatable track to gain 1 Spirit Shard when completed, like a normal level up reward.[1]
- Level 80 players on an account that has not purchased any expansion and thus has not yet unlocked the mastery system.
- Level 80 player with the mastery system unlocked but all masteries fully trained. This includes:
- tracks trained and acquired.
- tracks trained but not acquired.
Tracks that have not yet been unlocked don't count. For example, a player who has fully trained the Raptor mastery track and has no other Path of Fire mastery track unlocked will start earning Spirit Shards in Path of Fire and Season 4 maps.
Gallery[edit]
Notes[edit]
- A total of 188,580,158 experience is required to reach mastery rank 514, including the 4,860,359 necessary to reach level 80.
- The mastery point system was introduced with Heart of Thorns, and requires an expansion.
- The hero panel to change your current mastery cannot be opened by clicking on the experience bar while in combat; the current mastery can, however, be changed at any time in the hero panel if it's opened previously or by any other means.
- Almost all obtained Masteries are active regardless of level. That means even a Level 2 character can glide if Glider Basics has already been unlocked on a Level 80 character on the same account.
- Spectral Aid only becomes active at level 80.
- Experience acquired in a region will only contribute to the masteries of that region:
- Central Tyria regions (core game), Southsun Cove, and Living World Season 2 regions will contribute to Central Tyria Mastery experience.
- Heart of Thorns and Living World Season 3 regions will contribute to Heart of Thorns Mastery experience.
- Path of Fire and Living World Season 4 regions will contribute to Path of Fire Mastery experience.
- Icebrood Saga regions will contribute to Icebrood Saga Mastery experience.
- End of Dragons regions will contribute to End of Dragons Mastery experience.
- Secrets of the Obscure regions will contribute to Secrets of the Obscure Mastery experience.