Marvel Snap has one of the more forgiving card acquisition paths when compared to other trading card games; however, that doesn’t mean it can’t be difficult to obtain certain cards — especially the weekly releases when they’re priced at 6000 Collector’s Tokens. Snap fans have, for quite a while, rabble-roused for a change to the current system, which sees 200 – 600 Collector’s Tokens drop in Collector’s Reserves once all Series 3 cards are unlocked. Hitting a Series 4 or Series 5 card is exceedingly rare, meaning you’ll have to save up to purchase the card you want in the shop. Enter Spotlight Caches, which Second Dinner revealed in June 2023 as the new way to obtain cards in Marvel Snap. Spotlight Caches will provide more cards to players more often, but with a couple of catches.
Explaining What Spotlight Caches Are in Marvel Snap
Past Collection Level 500, Spotlight Caches will appear every 10 Collector’s Reserves. Each week, Spotlight Caches will feature 3 different cards, including the new weekly card, along with a random Series 4 or Series 5 card. Each card has a 25% chance to drop; opening four Spotlight Caches — the equivalent of 40 Collector’s Reserves — will net you all of them.
Once you’ve collected all four cards, or if you have the card already, time-exclusive variants of those cards will appear in Spotlight Caches instead.
The example Second Dinner uses in its blog post sees Jean Grey, Knull, The Living Tribunal, and a random card slotted into these slots; if you open up Jean Grey first, the next Spotlight Cache will have a 33.3% chance to drop Knull, The Living Tribunal, or the random Series 4 or 5 card. If you already have Knull, for instance, you will pull an exclusive Knull Spotlight Variant.
What’s Good About Spotlight Caches?
Spotlight Caches, especially for those that have recently collected all the Series 3 cards, will allow you to collect more of the ever-growing roster of heroes and villains in Marvel Snap quicker.
Furthermore, the weekly Marvel Snap card releases won’t be locked behind an absurd amount of sparse Collector’s Tokens. Instead, you’ll have a pretty fair chance of pulling the card before it rotates out of the Spotlight Cache.
It also adds excitement back into collecting cards. Once you clear Series 3, it becomes rather dull to open Collector’s Reserves filled with titles, avatars, credits, gold, Collector’s Tokens, and very rarely a card. And if you like variants — you’re in luck!
What’s the Catch?
More cards but less agency. Second Dinner will decrease the amount of Collector’s Tokens you earn, meaning that if you don’t pull a card in a Spotlight Cache or — Odin forbid — don’t play for a week, saving up enough Collector’s Tokens to buy that card will take much longer unless they reintroduce it into a Spotlight Cache at a later date.
If you’re a frequent Marvel Snap player, you may already have most of the cards unlocked, so Spotlight Caches will feature quite a few variants instead; it will therefore take more time to obtain the new card each week.
And lastly, Collector’s Reserves and Caches will see less gold and Collector’s Tokens handed out. As of right now, there has been no word of whether or not the pricing of cards in the Token Shop will change. However, we do know that Series 4 and Series 5 cards will no longer appear in Collector’s Reserves.
That said, this is a change that will provide more cards to more players, along with more incentive to play. Expect Second Dinner to continue to make tweaks to this system, whether for the better by increasing how much gold and Collector’s Tokens are earned through regular play or a push to real-money purchases.
As of this article’s publishing, Spotlight Caches are not live, but expect them sometime by the next big July Marvel Snap patch.
Related: Marvel Snap Bots list and How to Recognize Them on Attack of the Fanboy
