Mortal Kombat 1 Guide – How to Earn Koins and Dragon Krystals

Mortal Kombat 1 is finally upon us, and just like its predecessor, completing the story leads to the grind for Koins. It’s not as punishing a grind as Mortal Kombat 11 – you won’t be going into the Towers of Time and having your Noob Saibot AI farm opponents all night for Kurrency.

There’s also no Krypt this time around. Instead, players will spend Koins on the Shrine. It randomly dispenses rewards like concept art, gear and new skins. You spend 1,000 Koins per “pull” so the more Koins earned, the better. Here are some of the best and quickest methods to farm Koins in Mortal Kombat 1.

How to Farm Koins

Play Matches

Every match played will award Koins, whether it’s online, completing the Story Mode or running through the Towers with all characters. While the difficulty of other single-player modes is fixed, you can adjust the difficulty of Story Mode, making it even easier to breeze through and earn those Koins. Since there are some repeatable elements in Story Mode (particularly in the end), earning some Koins from completing those match-ups is a nice bonus.

Complete the Tutorials

For those new to fighting games, it’s worth heading into Mortal Kombat 1’s tutorials to familiarize yourself with the mechanics. However, it’s also a good source for Koins. Go to the Learn section in the Main Menu. There are eight Kategories of tutorials – Basics, Offense, Defense, Frame Data, Kombos, Pressure, Positioning and Challenges.

Each Kategory has multiple individual lessons – while the Basics offer five, Offense consists of nine. Completing one provides 250 Koins, and you gain an additional 1000 Koins as a Kategory Completion Reward. That’s several thousand Koins per Kategory without much effort, and if you finish up all of them, you can easily earn well over 15,000 Koins. It’s a one-time, non-repeatable payout, but still great for a quick top-off.

Invasion Mode Chests

Invasion is the new single-player focused mode this time, providing a separate, non-canon story and challenges to complete. While more of a source for Seasonal Kredits (also earned from the Daily Challenge and Weekly Challenges), you can open chests for Koins while exploring.

Regarding Seasonal Kredits: Spend them before the season concludes to earn cosmetics related to the current season, even if the offerings aren’t all that interesting. Once the season ends, the Kredits are gone, so there’s no point hanging on to them.

Complete Daily and Weekly Quests

Quests are essentially challenges, and completing them nets Koins. If you complete a specific number of Quests, you can earn milestone rewards like new gear, additional Kurrency and much more. When starting in Mortal Kombat 1, the first series of Quests will provide 250 Koins each upon completion and are very straightforward, from entering Story Mode and winning fights to opening the Settings menu and venturing into Practice Mode.

None of these take much time to complete, so get them out of the way and keep checking back for new Daily and Weekly Quests. Most of them will give you Seasonal Kredits, but completing them is still advised for earning some Koins and additional cosmetics.

“Squad Up” Farm

You could play through Invasion and earn Koins naturally, but of course, there is a faster method. First, go to Test Your Might in the Tarkatan Colony and repeat it to earn XP (equip the Not Junk Relic for 15 percent extra) for leveling up your Invasion character. Assign all stat points to Attack, and once the character hits level 30, go to the Squad Up mission in the same region.

It’s an Endurance mission that involves taking out three opponents, one after the other. With a high Attack stat, a simple uppercut will finish them. You earn Koins, Seasonal Kredits and Mastery Rank XP for your character and Kameo Fighter. Keep repeating this for some easy currency.

How to Earn Dragon Krystals

Like Time Krystals in Mortal Kombat 11, Dragon Krystals are Mortal Kombat 1’s premium currency. They’re used to purchase certain skins and gear along with Easy Fatality Tokens from the in-game store. Skins typically range from 600 to 800 Dragon Krystals.

If you purchased the Premium Edition for $109.99, you get 1250 Dragon Krystals. Those who snagged the Kollector’s Edition for $249.99 have 2700 Dragon Krystals to spend. You can also spend real money on bundles – $4.99 nets 500 Dragon Krystals, $9.99 grants1,250 Dragon Krystals, $19.99 provides 2,700 Dragon Krystals, and $39.99 will provide 5,900 Dragon Krystals. Buying the minimum amount isn’t enough to get a skin – you must spend $9.99, which means some Krystals are left over.

There are ways to earn Dragon Krystals in-game, though they’re one-time unlocks. You can 500 Krystals by completing Story Mode. Each fighter also has a Mastery, a separate progression path that grants rewards with every Rank. There are 35 Ranks in total, and at Rank 20, you get 100 Dragon Krystals. With 23 characters (including Shang Tsung, a pre-order bonus), that means 2300 Dragon Krystals. Kameo Fighters also have Master Ranks, but none reward Dragon Krystals.

Of course, it can take time to level up each character. Leveling up requires playing Invasion or online matches for XP. Flawless Victories provide larger amounts, and while that can be tough when fighting other players, it’s easy if you use the Squad Up farming method described above.

Mortal Kombat 1 launches on September 19th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC and Nintendo Switch. Stay tuned for more details, tips and tricks in the coming days.