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

(1) Total amount of spent mastery points,
(2) Current regional block,
(3) Current mastery track,
(4) Number of available (unspent) mastery points for this region block,
(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 an account-wide progression system for level 80 characters that provides players with account-wide benefits such as gliding, mounts, etc. The mastery system interface is accessed through the bottom left tab of the hero panel, and is divided into four regional blocks: Central Tyria mastery tracks, Heart of Thorns mastery tracks, Path of Fire mastery tracks, and Icebrood Saga mastery tracks.
Each mastery is permanently acquired through the following process, further detailed below: 1: Start training a mastery, 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.
Contents
Unlocking the mastery system and its blocks[edit]
To unlock the mastery system, the following requisites must be completed:
- Having reached level 80, the highest level, on any character in the account.
- Having purchased the expansion Path of Fire (The Heart of Thorns expansion is included for free when purchasing Path of Fire).
- Having completed the first chapter of either the Heart of Thorns (Torn from the Sky), Path of Fire (Sparking the Flame) or The Icebrood Saga Episode 1: Whisper in the Dark (Silence) stories.
Completing the first chapter of either Heart of Thorns or Path of Fire unlocks the Central Tyria mastery block, and the block for that particular expansion. To unlock the remaining block, the other chapter 1 must be completed. e.g. a player that completes the first chapter of the Heart of Thorns story unlocks the Heart of Thorns mastery block for their account, and the Central Tyria mastery block. But that player will have to complete the first chapter of the story of Path of Fire to unlock the Path of Fire mastery block for their account. Unlocking the "Raids" Mastery also unlocks the Central Tyria mastery block, but not the rest of Heart of Thorns Mastery block.
Players should note that mastery points (explained below) are saved forever in their account, and are never lost, even if they haven't unlocked the mastery system.
Acquiring a mastery[edit]
To acquire a mastery, players will need 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. Up to one mastery track can be trained per region (i.e. Central Tyria, Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, etc.) at one time.
Once the player is training a mastery, all experience earned will go towards progressing the selected mastery for that region and their experience bar will change to track the current progress (does not include experience gained from leveling crafting disciplines). If a level 80 player has not yet unlocked the mastery system, earned experience will go towards a track that rewards spirit shards when completed (i.e. the normal "level up" reward). If the mastery system has been unlocked but no mastery track has been selected, any experience earned will go towards the first untrained mastery track for that region.
Moving to a different region will automatically swap to the respective mastery track for that region. It is not possible to train a mastery track in a region that is not where the mastery is from. Players can switch their mastery in training without losing any progress (experience gained) on it.
- For example, a player training the Raptor Mount mastery will only be able to earn experience towards said mastery within any region belonging to Path of Fire. Experienced earned in Heart of Thorns or Central Tyria regions will not train the raptor mastery—instead, they will train the mastery track that was selected for that particular region.
Once a mastery track has been fully trained, it may be unlocked using mastery points (see below). 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). In the case where every remaining track has a full experience bar and the player does not have enough mastery points, additional experience will go towards a track that rewards spirit shards when completed (i.e. the normal "level up" reward).
Players that have acquired all the masteries that are available to them but have not completed the prerequisites for the hidden tracks for the region they are currently in will return to the usual experience bar that rewards a spirit shard upon completion.
- For example, for Path of Fire masteries, only the Raptor, Springer, Skimmer, and Jackal mastery tracks are available at the start. The Griffon, Roller Beetle, Skyscale, and Crystal Champion mastery tracks are hidden until their requirements have been met (see below for unlock requirements).
Mastery points[edit]
Mastery points are a currency used for acquiring masteries. As players progress through the game, they will earn mastery points. All mastery points come from achievements, therefore can only be obtained once. These points are stored in the player's account, and are spent to permanently acquire a mastery. Achievements can be filtered to show only those that give mastery points or mastery points belonging to a specific region.
These achievements include but are not limited to:
- Interacting with Mastery Insight locations
- Completing achievements for a story chapter or step
- Finishing various scavenger hunt/location hunting achievements
- Defeating certain world bosses
- Earning silver or gold in an adventure
- Achieving world completion
Each mastery region has its own type of mastery point, easily discernible by their color. Masteries can only be acquired using mastery points of their respective mastery region. I.e., the Gliding mastery can only be acquired with Heart of Thorns mastery points, Raptor mastery with Path of Fire mastery points, and so on.
Icon | Type |
---|---|
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Central Tyria mastery points |
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Heart of Thorns mastery points |
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Path of Fire mastery points |
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Icebrood Saga mastery points |
Mastery points earned are stored forever, even if the player has not unlocked the mastery system.
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.
Acquiring a mastery[edit]
Once a mastery is fully trained by obtaining enough experience, the experience bar will start blinking and players will be able to spend the required amount of mastery points to permanently acquire the mastery on their account. 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).
Before spending the points to acquire a mastery, or switching to train another mastery, any additional experience (up to one full XP bar) gained will be redirected to training the next unlocked, untrained, least progressed mastery track in the same region, if one is available.
While training a mastery, the icon for the 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 in 4 blocks; each block 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 block (such as gliding) can be trained, the entire track must be unlocked by completing a certain task.
- ^ The reward track currently lists masteries requiring 20 in total, but not all of the masteries can be completed at the moment.
Notes[edit]
- A total of 137,208,658 experience is required to reach mastery rank 349, 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.
- Once all the available masteries of the region are acquired, experience goes towards a 254,000 experience repeatable track to gain 1 Spirit Shard
.