Bonus Boosters

Bonus Boosters are the newest upgrade to Marvel Snap’s in-game shop. The feature takes the place of the previous Fast Upgrade section by making a strict upgrade to it. The concept is quite simple – every 8 hours (at 3 AM, 11 AM, and 7 PM UTC) the Bonus Boosters section of the shop will feature three cards (at random) from your collection that need a few Boosters to upgrade to the next rarity.

Overview

You can use for Credits to upgrade the cards immediately at no additional cost, essentially getting the missing Boosters for free. Take my shop for example:

During this offering, I have the option to upgrade this specific variant of Groot, Blade, or Spider-Man 2099.

As you can see, I have 32 Groot Boosters, but need 40 to upgrade! Since Groot is featured, I can use the Bonus Booster feature to upgrade this Groot to the Ultra rarity, despite not having enough boosters to do so regularly.

As you can see, there is no added cost to this section! The cost is simply the cost of the regular upgrade, and the added Boosters needed to upgrade are free! The downside of this upgraded shop is you can’t directly select which cards are featured each refresh. You can, however, influence which cards show up by making sure the upgrades you are chasing are upgraded to the highest you can with the Boosters you own. If you need more Boosters to reach your next split, the card will have a chance to be featured in the shop!

This new feature is great for new players and veterans alike! New players can use this feature to upgrade cards easier when your Booster supply is low. This can help speed up progression without needing to grind as many games to get enough Boosters to upgrade cards. For veterans, this should help grab those extra boosters needed for big splits you are chasing!

As a helpful tip if you are chasing a split and are hoping the shop will feature the card(s) you need, make sure to keep some Credits on hand! Since the cost to upgrade is the same as splitting with boosters, you know many Credits to bank. Though your shop features the card you want and you don’t have enough Credits on hand, you may be forced to spend Gold or real money to activate that split in the small 8 hour window you get.

Targeting Bonus Boosters

With a little manipulation, you can control which cards and even which variants show up. Buying anything in the Bonus Boosters section is a great use of resources. The Credit cost is the same, and the Booster cost is discounted by 1–50. What if you’re trying to upgrade or split a specific card?

Well, the Bonus Boosters section only offers cards that you don’t have enough Boosters to upgrade. Knowing that, we can manipulate the system.

Split Hunting

Let’s say you really wanna split your — oh, I dunno — Pixel Valkyrie, random example. You’re hunting for a god split. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to grind for 155 Boosters for each split?

You check out the new Bonus Boosters section of your shop, and… she’s nowhere to be seen.

In order to make Pixel Valk always show up, you need everybody else to never show up. You need enough Boosters to upgrade every other card in your collection.

Stopping the Other Characters

Using Spider-Woman as an example, there are three ways to do this:

1. Save up 50 Spider-Woman Boosters
2. Upgrade Spider-Woman to Infinity, then don’t split her
3. Upgrade and split Spider-Woman, then save up 5 Spider-Woman Boosters

Option 1 is great in that it covers all your Spider-Woman variants if you have several. Downside: it might take a while to farm up to 50 Boosters.

Option 2 is great in that there’s no Booster farming necessary. Downside: you’ll have to do that for each of your Spider-Woman variants.

Option 3 is a sort of sweet spot. You can still split your cards, but you’ll need to do a little farming. You can pick a different sweet spot if you’d like — maybe you take all your Spider-Women to Uncommon (green) and then farm for 10 Boosters.

For options 2 and 3, you can use the Bonus Boosters section to upgrade your cards to Infinity faster.

Finding Your Targets

Of course, the cards you need more Boosters for will show up in the Bonus Boosters section. There’s a better way to figure out all the cards you need to work on, though.

If you go to your collection and sort it by “Upgradeable” in descending order (match the image below), it makes it really easy to find who’s short on Boosters.

Your collection will be sorted into two sections. All the cards you can’t upgrade, followed by those you can. Within each section, your cards will be sorted by how many Boosters you own, lowest first.

I think option 1 is simplest — to get everybody to 50 Boosters. However, you can save some time by focusing on getting everybody to enough Boosters instead. For some characters, that might only be 5 or 10 Boosters. If you want to focus on getting enough Boosters, you’ll need to look at the cards that aren’t upgradeable when you have 500+ Credits and the Favorites filter is disabled.

Let’s say you had about a dozen characters with fewer than 50 Boosters. You throw them into a (terrible) deck and spend a few days in Conquest (Proving Grounds, of course). Finally, you have 50 Boosters for all of them. At the next refresh of the Bonus Boosters section (every 8 hours), you can tell it’s working. Kinda.

Stopping the Other Variants

Well, you’ve stopped the other characters. Now you need to stop your other Valk variants. You can’t have them interrupting your holy quest for a Pixel Valk god split!

Here, you’re limited to only two of the options:

1. Save up 50 Valkyrie Boosters
2. Upgrade your other Valkyrie variants to Infinity, then don’t split them
3. Upgrade and split your other Valkyrie variants, then farm for 5 Valkyrie Boosters

Option 1’s a no-go, since it would cause Pixel Valk to stop showing up.

Option 2 is optimal. Once you’ve done that, you can just check your shop every 8 hours and Pixel Valk will be there.

Option 3 works, but you’ll need to farm for 5 Valkyrie Boosters every 8 hours. You should only use option 3 if you absolutely can’t stand leaving a card un-split for a little while.

Once again, you can use the Bonus Boosters section to help us upgrade our other variants to Infinity faster.

Super-Focused Splitting

You’ve done it. You can upgrade Pixel Valk by one stage every 8 hours. That means you can get a new split every other day! It doesn’t take long at all before you land your gorgeous prize. 🥹

Of course, now you can finally split your other Valkyrie variants that you had waiting at Infinity.

Summary & Tips

There you have it — the fastest way to grind for the perfect split! That is, without having to spend any Gold on Boosters. Previously, the bottleneck on upgrading your cards was Booster farming. With the new Bonus Boosters section of the shop and a little set-up, the bottleneck becomes your Credit income instead.

It certainly takes some time to set up, but it’s easy to maintain once you have set it up!

You could technically work on three different characters simultaneously, but you won’t have enough Credit income to upgrade all three every 8 hours.

Incoming Changes

We are expecting an update to Marvel Snap very soon that will make it so that splits are unlocked per-character rather than per-variant. That will simplify this process since targeting a specific variant won’t matter anymore.

We are also expecting the Bonus Boosters section to eventually receive an update that will fill in empty spots with cards you do have enough Boosters for. I imagine cards you don’t have enough Boosters for will be prioritized. As such, that change shouldn’t affect the strategy outlined above.

Both of these expected changes come from developer answers on the official Marvel Snap Discord server.

Good luck chasing and finding your next god split!

Changelog

• April 24, 2024: Added more detail on targeting specific cards for more Boosters by LaurenWhatevs.
• April 10, 2024: New guide. Replaced Fast Upgrade in April 10, 2024 Patch.