How to get Units in MCOC in 2026 (We'll need them for banquet this year)

Note: this is an update of my 2025 guide from (https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/385738/how-to-get-units-in-mcoc-in-2025-its-like-2024-but-with-fewer-typos#latest). There are some additions, mostly revolving around the change to EQ and related changes to daily quests and events. I've also added some additional sources for units like the double track events and things like the special end of year arena.

FAQ: How to get Units in MCOC

One of the most commonly asked questions, at least periodically, is where can you earn Units in MCOC and how much can you earn. And I have a feeling players are going to be asking this question a lot more often in 2026 after the blockbuster Banquet event of 2025.

I've tried to catalog all the units in the game, where they are, and how much you can earn. I've broken it down into five sections: Minimal Grind, Moderate to High Grind, Non-repeatable sources (you can only earn them once) and Spending required, plus a special section where I place all the special cases where it is impossible to quantify how many you could get exactly (because they are rare, because they aren't predictable, or because they vary). Where appropriate, I try to calculate both how much units are available, and how much you could earn in a year using those sources, to give an idea of the overall rate at which you could tap those sources of units with sufficient play.

Note: These numbers are as of January 2026.

Minimal Grind Unit Sources

Monthly Calendar: 100 units/month, 1200 units/year
Requirement: sign in every day

Weekly Supply Run + Supply Strike maps:

Supply Run and Supply Strike are progression tiered.
Supply Run Monday through Saturday, Supply Strike on Sunday
Conqueror/Uncollected: 10 units per SR + 40 on Sunday = 100 per week
Cavalier/Thronebreaker: 15 units per SR + 60 on Sunday = 150 per week
Paragon/Valiant: 15 units per SR + 70 on Sunday = 160 per week

Total SR/SS units (Para/Val): 160 * 52 = 8,320 per year

Daily Super Event milestones
Reach milestone 3 for 30 units per day
30 x 7 = 210 units per week, 10950 units per year

Double Track Events:
1140 units for free track
4 Saga themed tracks per year
1140 x 4 = 4,560 units/year
(also in paid track, see below)

Total minimal grind unit sources: 25,030 units/year

Moderate to High Grind Unit Sources

Monthly Event Quest
Explore Classic Adaptive EQ: 150 units/month, 1800 units/year

Arena milestones
Basic: 135/cycle
Featured: 135/cycle
Summoner Trials: 270/cycle
Catalyst Clash (basic, class, alpha): 30/cycle
Requirement: complete all milestones for each arena
Basic/Featured/Trials: 56160 units/year (2 cycles per week, 52 weeks)
Catalyst Clash: 3650/year (30 units per cycle, 3 day cycle)

Total arena milestone units: 59810 units/year

[Note: grind time is roster dependent: for sufficiently strong rosters Basic and Featured arenas require low amounts of effort while the trials requires moderate levels of grind. For smaller roster players this can take much more time to complete]

Estimated units from arena crystals from Battlechips: ~ 30000

Total Moderate Grind unit sources: ~ 90000 units/year (61610 + ~30000)

Non-repeatable Unit Sources

Back Issues
Back Issue 1 (Classic/Variant): 225 units/360 units
Back Issue 2 (Classic/Variant): 225 units/360 units
Back Issue 3 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/270 units
Back Issue 4 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/270 units
Back Issue 5 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/360 units
Back Issue 6 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/360 units
Back Issue 7 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/360 units
Back Issue 8 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/360 units
Back Issue 9 (Classic/Variant): 150 units/360 units
Total Units in Back Issues: 4560 units
Requirements: exploration (completion grants partial units)

Act content
Book 1 Act 1: 445 units
Book 1 Act 2: 610 units
Book 1 Act 3: 1520 units
Book 1 Act 4: 1080 units
Book 1 Act 5: 1840 units
Book 1 Act 6: 2160 units
Book 1 total units: 7655 units
Requirements: exploration (completion grants ~ 1/3 of the total)

Book 2 Act 7: 2160 units
Book 2 Act 8: 2160 units
Book 2 Act 9.1: 540 units
Book 2 Act 9.2: 540 units
Book 2 Act 9.3: 540 units
Book 2 total units to date: 5940 units
Requirements: units are in specific path rewards on each quest. From 7.1 to 8.2 units each quest map has two paths with 45 units each, from 8.3 onward there is a single path per quest map with 90 units.
Note: this will increase over time as more Act content is released.

Road to Labyrinth: 360 units
Requirements: Exploration. Every quest has a single path with units in the rewards.

Total non-repeatable unit sources: 18,515 units

Spending required

Sigil subscription
20 per week from weekly bundle
300 per renewal per month
~ 380/month, 4640/year

$5 USD Unit card: 735 units/30 days, ~ 8820 units/year
Requires: buying unit card, claiming units daily (note: this is the most efficient unit purchase that normally exists)

Double Track Events (four per year)
1140 units per Event
$25 per Event, four Double Track Events per year.
(Note: paid track also includes Fabulous crystals that contain units)

Most efficient no-limit purchase of units normally available
- In-app purchase: All Father Odin's Vault: 3100 units/$100 USD
- Webstore: Namor's Sunken Riches: 7040 units/$200 USD

Supreme Growth bundle $30 USD
10,000 units total, unlocked with leveling from 61-70
1200, 800, 800, 900, 900, 900, 1000, 1000, 1000, 1500 units respectively

Supreme Collection bundle $50 USD
12,000 units total for reaching specific 7* roster collection and rank up milestones

Other Unit Sources

End of year 1*/2* arena
- 185 units in milestones
- 235 units in special event milestones
- 420 units total
Note: these special arenas pop up periodically during the year, but everyone asks about them near the end of the year for obvious reasons.

Radiance store
75 units for 1208 radiance
75 x 10 units for 16976 radiance (scaling cost)

Daily crystals have 1% chance to drop small amounts of units (progression-dependent, 10-50 units)
[Note: daily crystals are only available in the webstore]
(currently unknown what the exact return rate is, but it is very small)

Quest crystals have rare chance for units
(currently unknown what the exact return rate is, but it is very very small)

Reunionn crystals have 0.94% chance to drop units

Fabulous/Super Fabulous/Ultra Super Fabulous crystal has 100% chance to drop units

Alliance Raid Valiant+ Crystal has a chance to drop 1500 units

Random Fights have a very rare chance to drop units
(currently unknown what the exact return rate is, but it is vewy vewy vewy small)

Gaining a progression level earns units (among other things):
Level 1 through 50: 5 units
Level 51 through 54: 10 units
Level 55 through 59: 15 units
Level 60: 20 units
Level 61 through 69: 300 units
Level 70: 1000 units

Arena crystals have 15% chance to drop units.
When purchased with Battlechips, the average drop rate per one million BC worth of arena crystals is 1875 units regardless of which crystal is bought. More expensive crystals drop larger amounts of units in direct proportion to cost.

Note: grinding arena has open-ended rewards: even when all milestones are exhausted you still earn Battlechips for arena rounds won, and because these can be exchanged for arena crystals that randomly award units this is the unlimited unit grind option for free to play players. I estimate the amount of units on average from arena crystals a player will likely have when grinding milestones in the arena milestone section.

Comments

DNA3000

Comments, additions, and corrections welcome. I will try to edit the original post to incorporate necessary changes as they marterialize.

rcm2017

@DNA3000 thank u for this, I am lazy when it comes to arena altough i have a decent roster and another personal problem is I cant keep my hands off new champ crystals particularly when the champs are amazing but as you said this years banquet was amazing. So thats an incentive to grind or atleast save whatever units I can earn and hoard.

willrun4adonut

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917299#Comment_2917299

Can you edit the original post? I thought it was locked after 15 minutes.

Buttehrs

Heres to hoping this year's heart of fire type event isnt as good as last years so I can save those 10k units for banquet instead.

arifin74

@DNA3000

There is no in-game daily crystals, only in webstore, at least for valiants

Daily super event is way off,

30 * 365 = 10,950 instead 1560

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917335#Comment_2917335

Yeah I don't know what happened there, I apparently forgot to carry the ten thousand.

Edit: what happened was my editing window crashed and forced me to add that section back in, and on the fly I decided 30 x 7 was 210 for the weekly units and 30 x 52 was 1560 for the yearly units. Because I can do wrong math in my head on the fly even faster than I can do right math.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917333#Comment_2917333

I have ways.

Vakrah_Jal

The sigil subscription gives more units when purchased through the webstore: 375?

ContestOfNoobs

can’t wait to see the i didn’t save or don’t have enough units for milestone post by 2026 banquet.

or what should I spent my units on cyber weekend or banquet lol.

time to save units again.

huge expectations for 2026 banquet.
crazy to see a lot of people complaint about the cutoff for 1% vs 2-3%, there’s gona be a cutoff somewhere and from the look of how this banquet went.

All the scores and demand will go up. Cant wait for mcoc 2026 has in store.

(They gota reinvest some of that revenue to make the game better right?)

Anotherconcernplayer

Hi @DNA3000 ,

I feel like included all milstones (270 unit) in Arena - Summoner Trail is too high to consider as Moderate Grinding. (I think I remember you stating yourself normally only do to about 10th milestones).

I think just want to give players a balance and realistic perspective on Units grinding in MCoC.

While Arena is a good source for grinding units, it is also the biggest sink hold for losing your real life time (something that is very finite).

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917354#Comment_2917354

I'll triple check when mine renews nd update accordingly. Thanis.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917364#Comment_2917364

I'm not sure scores will go up. Even if 2026 banquet is even more enticing than 2025, the units might not be there.

I suspect that a lot of the units that poured into the 2025 banquet were unused from 2024, when many players held back during the 2024 banquet. They unleashed those units in 2025, in effect spending two year's worth of units. Those units will not just grow back in 2026. Scores might be lower in 2026 simply because players will "only" have a year to save units.

The preliminary data analysis seems to be telling me that the players under 10% bought proportionately more crystals in 2025 than the players over 10%. Both groups bought more than in 2025, but the players under 10% did so at a higher pace. In other words, to make up some numbers, if the top 5% of players bought 30% more crystals in 2025, the bottom 30% bought 50% more.

In other words, a lot of the extra points and higher bracket scores came from lower spenders and free to play players burning a lot more units this time around. That might be a one time thing.

Or not: if the enthusiasm for the 2025 banquet persists, it may cause players of all stripes to try to save more for banquet 2026. People aer difficult to predict. I predicted the top tier spenders and grinders would dump proportionately higher numbers into the banquet than the lower players when I saw the numbers rise by a lot, and 90% of the player base made me look pretty dumb (to be fair, I specifically stated that was a hunch, not a calculation, and no one should rely upon those numbers - I even held off posting them until players could no longer buy crystals. I might be dumb, but I am not cruel).

It might be a good problem to have, but the economy team is probably going to be pulling hairs trying to figure out what the spending data says for a very long time.

XrossBones

Alliance Raid Valiant+ Crystal - Chance of 1500 Units Drop

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917379#Comment_2917379

This is a tricky one. On the one hand, most players can't grind out all those milestones consistently, not even me. On the other hand, they optimally don't take a ton of time for veteran players with well-developed rosters. there's a similar problem with Classic EQ difficulty. Is that easy, moderate, or hard? Depends upon who you ask.

This is more of a guide to where the units are, and not a strategy guide for how to earn them. So I've tried to avoid making too many judgments on who should do what. Perhaps I should, and accompany this guide with actual strategy guides that advise different kinds of players how to best navigate these sources. That's a much more time consuming undertaking, because there are so many possibilities. My hope is that others will do that for me and I don't have to. But if those kinds of questions persist, I may decide to tackle them down the road. Its hard enough keeping track of where they are.

To be clear, no one should assume that because I call something easy or moderator or whatever that's a judgment on what they should be able to do.

houndogακι

You can also add those 300 units in levels 61+

Not sure how much level we grow up per year but they are in-game units too 😇

Good job and thanks for the effort by the way 😉

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917394#Comment_2917394

Added, thanks.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917414#Comment_2917414

I added all of the progression unit rewards for leveling up in the Other section. Thanks for reminding me about those. I had them in my notes from last year but forgot to add them in.

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2917379#Comment_2917379

I have decided to rename that section to better communicate the fact that those units require a variable amount of effort that would be judged different;y by different people.

Glassback

I opened 964 quest crystals and pulled 75 units. Not sure if that helps with any of your data collection.

Last year I accumulated 94k units, mostly through arena after reading your last guide. Investing in my 4*s really helped the trials and I can get the basic down to 35-40 mins now with an attack boost on.

Thanks again for all you do for the mcoc community, fella🙌🏼

DNA3000

Note:

Double track now split into free track placed into minimal grind section and paid track placed into spending section. Units corrected to properly show 1170 units in each track, and also a note that the paid track includes Fabulous crystals that also contain units.

Minimal grind now shows 25,030 units per year, moderate to high grind still shows ~90k units, for about 115k units grantable without spending in a calendar year.

Sambob

DNA3000, I have looked through many of your posts but haven't been able to find some info I'm looking for, I might just have to test / calc it out myself haha.

I am basically trying to find out which of the 3 repeating arenas is most time efficient. Most of your guides seem to be assuming the reader is doing all 3, and how to optimize from there. However, I hate arena and have decided I'd rather have less units than torture myself, so I've decided I'm only going to focus on 1 of the arenas each of the 3 day cycles.

I've found that completely focusing my efforts on the BASIC arena, I can get all milestones with 22 win streak (66 fights). This is using mostly 7r4 and a few 7r3. This gives 135 units and 16,750 Battlechips from milestones, plus 10,560 BC (160*66 fights) from the fights themselves. Using your average of 1840 Units / 1M BC, this is about 50 units from BC in a single 3 day arena, giving a TOTAL of 185 units per 3 day basic arena. 185 units / 66 fights = 2.8 units per fight.

I've been looking to see if anyone has done the same calc for the featured and summoner trials (this one would only be up to milestone 10 because it gets less efficient from there). Basically just want to know which is a better time investment, assuming each arena fight takes the same amount of time.

ahmynuts

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2918094#Comment_2918094

4* is technically the best

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2918094#Comment_2918094

If your roster is big enough, it is the basic arena. The last time I looked at overall effort in the three main arenas was here:

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/367715/efficient-unit-grind-in-the-arena-1640-units-week

and here:

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/398872/optimizing-arena-ascension-express-recoil

Depending on how much time you have to spend, the most efficient grind isn't to do any of them to completion. The earlier milestones in every arena take less effort than the highest ones. So depending on how many rounds you are capable of doing the most efficient grind in the three main arenas could be to do most of the Basic, half the Featured, and the first two or three of trials. It is tricky to say what the absolute most efficient is, because it depends on how many rounds you can do.

But if you're going to concentrate on just one, Basic would be the one.

Java_Junkie

@DNA3000 they honestly owe you a custom avatar at this point; maybe an ISO spreadsheet?? calculator in the shape of Platpool’s head? sybiote possessed abacus? o)

your work is amazing, and appreciated. thank you!

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2918133#Comment_2918133

Are you kidding? I'm telling people how to grind a hundred thousands units in the game for free. Crashed is going to be handing me a bill next time I see him.

I already owe so much for those Alliance war revives I'm just glad they aren't hitting me with Contest Credits. Not even USAFA could buy me out of that hole.

Rayven5220

DNA, the amount of thought and work you put into posts like these is amazing.

Thank you for all you do, my friend. 😎

DNA3000

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2918206#Comment_2918206

Thanks, I appreciate it.

A common question I get asked is why? Why do this? And a common misconception is guides like this are for the veteran heavy grinders, the serious time-committed player of the game. But actually, that's not the case.

Sure, those people can make use of a guide like this, but most of those people already know most or all of this stuff. For them, this is a handy pocket reference. It is everyone else who doesn't know all this stuff. The people playing five hours a day know where almost everything is. The people. playing five hours a week don't have time to go looking.

The biggest lie about MCOC that I think is commonly repeated is: Kabam is stingy, and MCOC is pay to play. I think that is not just not true, it is almost the exact opposite that is true. No game is as generous, in my experience, than MCOC. To veterans to new players, to grinders and to casual players. I have often challenged people to prove me wrong, and so far no one has come even close. There is so much stuff you can get in this game no matter what kind of players you are, compared to pretty much the entire world of mobile gaming, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the premium currency situation. Show me another game that has 115,000 units of premium currency up for grabs by completely free to play players. I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist.

The problem is not the opportunities, it is information. When I go to a buffet, I have a ritual. I always start by walking the entire buffet. I don't grab food. I don't even grab a plate. I just walk around to every single station, looking over my options. Then, I go grab a plate and decide what to get. Knowing my options tells me what to prioritize, what I will have the appetite for and what I won't get to. How to budget my time and stomach space. The rewards in MCOC< especially units, are just like that. They are scattered all throughout the game like a buffet. But most players don't know where they are or how hard it is to get them.

This means they are vulnerable to the nay-sayers who say this game's rewards are sparse and its developers are miserly. When they can't find these rewards, it lends truth to those admonishments. They don't know the carving station is in the corner, or you have to ask for the lobster.

This guide is for them, as much as anyone. If you have five hours a day to grab everything in this guide, great. More power to you. But if you only have five hours a week, you need to know where you should be spending those five hours. You need to know what your options are, because you won't be able to eat everything at the buffet, so it is important to know where your favorite foods are and where the expensive stuff is. If a player uses this guide to only get 60k units, or 30k, or even 10k, that's still valuable. 10k units is still three hundred dollars (USD) of premium currency they otherwise would not have. For practically no effort.

The game is a smorgasbord. But only if you know where everything is. I want everyone to know just how much stuff is just sitting there waiting for players to go get it. And then decide for themselves if this game is stingy and the devs greedy. This game has many problems. But this is not one of them.

Today, someone quit MCOC because they didn't know where everything was and they believed the naysayers that said that's just the way it is. We're just never going to know who they were. But maybe someone will read this, and maybe they will tell a friend, and maybe the friend of a friend of a friend will start collecting easy units from somewhere, and when they hear the game is stingy they'll shrug it off because stuff will be pouring Ito their account because they know what it took the rest of us years to figure out. And they will stick it out and continue to enjoy the game,

That's why.