With the glaring exception of Dota 2, unlocking characters in a free-to-play MOBAs can be a confusing. In fact, even just figuring out what one MOBA calls their characters can be confusing. In Dota 2, it’s “Heroes,” in League of Legends, it’s “Champions.” MXM went with the term “Masters,” which should be obvious by its extended name “Masters X Masters.”
At any rate, since MXM is free-to-play, it’s gone with the tried-and-true model of leaving most of its Masters to be unlocked, while providing only a select few Masters for general use. But how does this system actually work, and what are the numbers behind them? If you’re just jumping in to MXM for the first time, make sure to read this guide so you don’t get too lost.
Starting Out
When you first launch MXM, unless you’ve purchased a Founder’s Pack, you will have default access to Lua and Sizuka, two females masters with mostly offensive capabilities. Since MXM deals with a tag-team system not used in other MOBAs, they obviously have to give you at least two Masters so you can actually switch between them.
You’ll also notice that you’ll have access to three more Masters, and each of them will have a circular arrow in the corner of their images. This means that those Masters are on a free rotation. In total, this makes five heroes you’ll have access to at any given time, which is good, because Lua and Sizuka don’t make the best pair. As of right now, Lorraine, Pancuga and Bumaro are the three Masters on free rotation.
As a side note, although this won’t affect your gameplay, you won’t be able to make free-rotation Masters your “Representative Master.” This is entirely cosmetic, though. It will just be how other users see you when in the Bridge.
SOL-d American!
If you want to unlock more Masters, there is one of two ways you can do it. The first is by using SOL. SOL is an item that you gain in the game through various activities, which we will go over, and it’s primary purpose is to unlock more Masters. Lower cost Masters will generally cost anywhere from 2-4 SOL, but they can cost as much as 11, so keep that in mind as we go forward.
To start, every time you level up, you get one SOL. When you start the game, you’ll be earning SOL at a massive rate because the game’s tutorial will level you up rapidly, and even flat-out give you enough SOL to purchase a Master. That being said, you do max-out at level 99, so you can only earn 99 SOL through leveling up. The game also has daily, weekly and monthly challenges. At present, one weekly challenge will always grant you one SOL, so you can rely on that pretty consistently.
Perhaps the most difficult way of earning SOL, though, is through MXM‘s PvE mode. Upon completion of a PvE stage on Nightmare difficulty, you will be presented with 25 different potential awards for your completion. Three of these 25 will be one SOL each, and you get to choose four rewards. So, if you beat a PvE on Nightmare and get lucky, you can also gain some more SOL, but this is obviously an inconsistent way of doing so.
X-Coin, Best Coin
Like most free-to-play games, MXM has premium currency, and it’s the quickest way to unlock more Masters. Called X-Coin, this currency can be purchased outright, but there wouldn’t be any point in writing a section of a guide that can be summed up with two words: “buy it.” That’s because, unlike in many other games I’ve seen, you can actually earn X-Coin at a surprisingly decent rate.
Certain daily missions will grant you 75 X-Coin. Also, if you complete 4/10 weekly missions, you will be granted 150 X-Coin. 10/20 monthly missions will grant you 300 X-Coin. In addition, you can double your efforts by selecting monthly missions that grant you X-Coin, these include completing 60 Daily Missions (two a day on average) or 20 weekly missions (five a week on average), which will grant you 100 and 200 X-Coin respectively. Added all together, you can potentially earn 4,050 X-Coin per month (although it would be quite the grind).
In addition, the Challenge Missions for the PvE mode can get you a total of 18,000 X-Coin, but this is a one-time bonus upon completion of those challenges. Considering that Masters cost anywhere from 990 to 3,490 X-Coin, you can safely earn enough X-Coin to purchase one new Master each week, maybe a week and a half for the more expensive Masters on your busier weeks.
That’s all for unlocking Masters. Stay tuned for more guides regarding which Masters you should choose.
