As of the 8th October update, Masteries have been introduced to SAS: Zombie Assault 4.
Masteries are passive upgrades to all your grenades, turrets, High Damage (HD) ammo, armor parts and weapon types. Each of the above has 5 levels of masteries. To upgrade to the next level, each category requires you to do different things to gain experience to level up.
For weapons, use a particular weapon type to kill zombies will give you xp. Note that the xp given is based on the amount of zombies killed, not the quality, meaning killing 2 Worms should give you more xp than killing a Savage Necrosis with the same weapon.
For grenades, using the grenades and killing zombies (again, quantity > quality) will give you xp. Note that, similar to turrets, you do not have to get kills to actually level up. Simply tossing the grenades will give you xp.
For turrets, deploying the turrets and killing zombies will give you xp. As mentioned, simply deploying the turrets will already give you xp. Killing zombies with the turret is not necessary, as long as the turret does some kind of damage. This is most noticeable with the Cryogenics Turret.
For HD ammo, using HD ammo to kill zombies will give you xp. Note that, no matter how much damage is dealt with HD ammo, xp will not be granted if the fatal blow is not delivered by HD ammo.
For armor parts, you will automatically gain xp as long as you wear armor when playing. The xp earned will be randomly distributed to different armor parts. Note that all the xp gained from one game will be distributed to the one category only.
Like normal experience points, Mastery experience received is greatly reduced if you fail to complete the mission. However, unlike normal experience points, which is more or less similar no matter what you do in a game, Mastery experience points are based on what you actually do.
Experience Requirement[]
Below are the experience requirement for each level of masteries. Experience requirement is the same for every weapon type, armor part, grenades, HD ammo and turrets
Level 1: 2,400 points
Level 2: 10,000 points
Level 3: 30,000 points
Level 4: 100,000 points
Level 5: 400,000 points
| Type | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 | Level 4 | Level 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pistols | +2% Movement Buff while holding a Pistol | +5% Damage to all Pistols | +10% Clip Size to all Pistols (1 minimum) | +10% faster Backpedalling | Full-Auto all Pistols/+25% RPS(mobile) |
| Sub-Machine Guns | +2% Movement Buff while holding a SMG | +15 Clip Size to all SMGs | Half Spread (increased accuracy) | +15% Fire Rate to all SMGs | +1 Pierce to all SMGs |
| Shotguns | +5% Reload Speed to all Shotguns | +50% Range | +50% chance to gibbing with all Shotguns | 2x Damage to all obstacles | +1 Fletchette to all Shotguns |
| Assault Rifles | +2% Crit Chance to all ARs | +10 Clip Size to all ARs | +10% Damage to bosses for all ARs | +5% Damage to all ARs | +1 Pierce to all ARs |
| Sniper Rifles | +5% Damage to all SRs | +1 Pierce to all SRs | +5% Crit Chance to all SRs | +25% Crit Damage to all SRs | On Crit, 5% chance to do 10X Damage . |
| Rocket Launchers | +5% Blast Radius to all RLs | +5% Damage to all RLs | Lower 8% of RL movement penalty (multiplies) | +2 Pierce to all RLs | +25% Resistance ignorance to all RLs |
| Light-Machine Guns | +5% Damage to all LMGs | Lower 8% of LMG movement penalty (multiplies) | +1 Pierce to all LMGs | +50 Clip Size to all LMGs | Ignore up to 35% of target resistance |
| Flamethrowers | +1 Pierce to all Flamethrowers | +25 Clip Size to all Flamethrowers | +25% Burn Time to all Flamethrowers(does not effect /sec of DoT) | +25% Resistance ignorance to all Flamethrowers | 50% Longer Flame Range |
| Turrets | +10% Turret Ammo Capacity | +10% Turret Damage | 1 turret of each type | +25% Turret Fire Rate | Maximum active Turret increased to 3 |
| High Damage Ammo | 2 packages of HD ammo to all gun types you own | +5% HD ammo Damage (+30% total) | +5% HD ammo Damage (+35% total) | +5% HD ammo Damage (+40% total) | +10% HD ammo Damage (+50% total) |
Grenades Mastery[]
| Level | Upgrades |
|---|---|
| 1 | 5% extra damage |
| 2 | 5% larger blast radius |
| 3 | Able to bring 50 grenades of each type into games instead of 20 |
| 4 | All loot drops also grant 1 frag grenade |
| 5 | Grenades cost 50% less |
Helmets Mastery[]
| Level | Upgrades |
|---|---|
| 1 | +0.25 energy regen per second |
| 2 | +1% gun damage |
| 3 | +10 energy |
| 4 | 5% faster recovery time |
| 5 | +100 defense to physical, heat, toxic |
Vests Mastery[]
| Level | Upgrades |
|---|---|
| 1 | +50 to physical |
| 2 | 100 damage to melee attacker |
| 3 | +2000 health |
| 4 | 10% chance that damage that would have killed you is ignored completely |
| 5 | +200 defense to physical, heat, and toxic |
Gloves Mastery[]
| Level | Upgrades |
|---|---|
| 1 | +25 defense to toxic |
| 2 | lower gun movement penalty up to max of 4% less |
| 3 | 10% faster reload |
| 4 | +50% pick up radius |
| 5 | +100 defense to physical, heat, and toxic |
Pants Mastery[]
| Level | Upgrades |
|---|---|
| 1 | +50 defense to heat |
| 2 | 50 damage to melee attacker |
| 3 | +3% movement speed |
| 4 | 15% more health from medkits (for both drop medkit and medic's medkit) |
| 5 | +100 defense to physical, heat, and toxic |
Boots Mastery[]
| Level | Upgrades |
|---|---|
| 1 | +25 defense to toxic |
| 2 | +25 defense to heat |
| 3 | +3% movement speed |
| 4 | 10% faster backpedaling |
| 5 | +100 defense to physical, heat, and toxic |
Mastery Farming[]
- Soloing level 400 Nightmare Mode games and killing all zombies within a map with the same type of weapon will earn around 10,000 mastery exp each time. This is a perfect and quick way to farming masteries, especially for guns you may want the mastery for quickly. In doing this, you can obtain level 5 from level 4 in any gun mastery in about 38 Nightmare mode games. Some guns will make the games longer due to killing power, but the kills will roughly be the same, as will the mastery exp reward.
- Low leveled Nightmare mode games will generally spawn the same number of zombies, but not as tough, so the reward for a lower level game will be the same. The difference in mastery exp between a level 70 and level 400 Nightmare game however, is about 2000 exp.
- This farming technique works the same in any other game mode, however, you will earn much less.
- Events generally don't go for very long, and the zombies usually spawn at a constant rate which is a little less than Nightmare mode (and Nightmare mode generally boosts everything anyway). Apocalypse being the longest event you can likely play, 10 minutes of constant kills will generally earn you about 2000 mastery exp, so it's not as worth it, unless you're trying for the exp rewards or/and have no more Nightmare mode tickets left.
- Contracts only last 2 minutes, so there isn't much point in trying here as the rewards are very little. Even the EXP contract (Zombie Hotspot) won't help, as it only boosts the exp you get, not the mastery exp.
- Single Player and normal Multi Player is actually an easy way of doing this same method as it is both easier and faster than most other game modes. Self boosting in Multi Player is obviously a better way as you'll boost the number and toughness of the zombies, but if you're unable to do that, Single Player works just as well. The best maps to do this on are generally: Vaccine ( for quick mastery exp boosting), Zombie Pods ( if rushed each time and done over and over), Power Out ( as the runners/spitters never stop spawning, you can keep earning provided the Loaderbots don't die), Last Stand (generally good for Rocket mastery farming), and Meltdown - even better with the Cave spawning (provided every room is opened and all zombies are killed before finishing).
Trivia[]
- From successfully completing a mission, 6 mastery points are earned per zombie kill with a weapon type, and 9 per zombie for premium weapons. This means that to get Level 5 mastery for a weapon type, it will require 90,400 kills, or 60,267 kills with a premium weapon.
- The Shotgun Mastery level 3, allowing players to gib zombies, has been confirmed by Ninja Kiwi as a purely cosmetic effect.
- Upgrades to weapons through masteries are now visible on the screen information of each weapon/armor in Co-op matches.
- Most of mastery stacks directly with its relevant augment, example Sublight Com2 has 30 base capacity, with cap augment it has 90 capacity + 10 from capacity mastery for a total of 100 capacity. Gun mastery effect also is not multiplied by skill effects. Example: A gun with 2 base pierce and +1 pierce mastery would have a total of 3 pierce. With killing spree +150% pierce effect active, you would only get (2 base + 2 base * 150%) + 1 = 6 pierce instead the expected (3 total + 3 total * 150%) = 7 pierce.
However some masteries stack multiplicative with total numbers. For example; vest's mastery extra HP+2000 will stack multiplicative with body fueling augment. Glove's 10% reload speed stacks with total of reload modifier from all armor parts as one multiplier to reload skill.
- Armor mastery defenses are not multiplied by Body Armor Expert.
- As of the November 24th Update, any guns with masteries that include increasing clip size now get the correct amount of HD ammo when using Field Supplies. Previously there was a bug that made Field Supplies only give you the percentage of HD Ammo of the original clip. For example, The Field Supplies skill will give you 120% HD Ammo of a clip, It would only count the original clip. Example: You have a weapon with 40 clip. The original was 30. Instead of giving you 40/8 HD ammo, it only gave you 30/6.
- The mobile version masteries has the gained XP reset every time you level up, making it much harder to level up.
- Currently there is a bug in the mobile version of SAS4 were leveling up a mastery after finishing a multiplayer game could prevent players from opening their earned strongboxes. However if you exit to the character selection screen and then reselect the one with the strongboxes it'll allow you to open them.
- As previously mentioned, lower level games will grant less mastery exp, so if any of the above tactics are used on lower level characters compared to level 100/400 games, the amount of rewarded mastery exp will be reduced (more so than Nightmare).
- The level 5 sniper rifle mastery, super crit, shows a different image than normal critical hits in game whenever a super crit is scored.
A super crit scored by a Hornet on a savage regurgitator.
(Example of this pictured to the left.)
- The Masteries Have images for their weapon categories from previous SAS:3 weapons! Although Its only edited/updated silhouettes
The Pistol category is the Glock 17
The Shotgun: Stoeger
SMG: MP5
Assault Rifle: M16A4
Sniper Rifle: Mark II
Explosives: RPG7
LMG: M240 MAG (This one is the most edited)
Flame Thrower: M2A1 FlameThrower
The armor appears to be from the Ronson "R" Series for PC (with the pants as an exception. The pants appear to be Atomic's TITAN MEM trooper but only the white/orange shin pad and knee pad) and on mobile/steam they are almost all different pieces of armor for each category, but the gloves are undecided as both of the Ronson and HVM gloves are fingerless.
Helmet: Special Forces Helmet
Vest: HVM Kevlar Vest
Gloves: HVM Kevlar Gloves/R6 Flamejuggler Gloves
Pants: HVM Kevlar Pants
Boots: Graphene Boots
The grenades are the M40 HE / M48 UHE grenades, and the turret is HVM's Heavy Machine Gun Sentry.