Mastery (Asphalt 8)

Introduced in the Hot Summer Update, Car Mastery (or just Mastery) is another single player game mode of Asphalt 8: Airborne. It offers 15 single-lap races with traffic, called Challenges, for each car of the game, with the possibility to earn Credits, Tokens, Car Upgrades, Pro Boxes, Boosters, and  Licenses. This mode is only available for players with at least 135 stars in the Career Mode.

Challenges
For each car in the game there are 15 Mastery Challenges available. These races increase in difficulty: the ranks of the cars of NPC opponents will gradually increase from the initial car rank for Challenge 1 to MAX+PRO rank for Challenge 15. To be able to accept a certain Challenge, i.e. take part in the race, each previous Challenge must have been completed. Each Challenge also requires the car to have a certain rank; challenges 1 and 2 being available without upgrades, and increasing until Challenge 15, which requires a maxed and pro'ed car for 150 of the 162 cars (some low and mid end D Class cars and some low end C Class cars like the Ford Focus RS do not require a fully pro'ed vehicle for their final challenge).

Challenges are races either of the type Classic, Unplugged or Flawless- all of these race modes require a first place finish in order to be successfully completed. The Unplugged and Flawless modes, however, come with a twist: in an Unplugged race no nitro bottles appear on the track, whilst in the Flawless mode, the player is not allowed to wreck their car. A wrecked car results in immediate disqualification and the race ending with no credits awarded.

Licenses
Licenses work as an experience level, similar to the star system, which you cannot buy but only earn. However instead of giving you access to new levels, the licences give you access to new Decal packs, as well as some cars apparently exclusively available through licences: Camaro Z/28,  Datsun 280Z , Shelby Cobra 427 and Cadillac 16 Concept. See the detailed contents of each decal pack on the page Car Mastery Rewards.

Farming
The Mastery mode is interesting for farming in the classical sense once you have mastered your Class S or Class A car:

The 15th challenge for the Lamborghini Veneno and the Mclaren Mercedes MP4-25 in Alps pays -5,895 for less than a minute of driving (versus the Season 9 race which takes at least 1'30 and pays ) or the McLaren P1 15th challenge in Temple Drive which pays.

But not all pro'ed cars are suitable for farming, for instance for the Mercedes-Benz Silver Lightning in Tokyo gives, but because Tokyo is a long track and the race type is Unplugged, the credits per second are not very high. Also the opponents are at the same car upgrade level, you risk to not finish first if you crash. It has been established since the McLaren 675LT was introduced, its Challenge 15 race is the most efficient farming race to date for the game rewarding just over, at Dubai reverse in approximately 48 seconds for a clean run. In fact, by using a known shortcut on the track, the race win is virtually guaranteed as AI racers do not take the shortcut giving drivers a huge lead advantage. The Lykan Hypersport also has a similar earning rate on the same track on Challenge 15.

CAUTION: the numbers given in the following paragraph were based on Rewards prior to the Summer's Over Update. It has been confirmed that the Race Rewards and the Challenge Rewards were reduced, however it is unclear by how much. The current total might be closer to plus.


 * However in a less strict sense of the term, you can earn a lot of credits while playing, independent of you car level: among all races of all cars, the total of Race Rewards are estimated to, the medals reward around , and the Challenge Rewards close to , not counting the value of the Pro Boxes, Boosters or car upgrades. However these credits can only be obtained if the necessary cars are owned.

Challenge Rewards
For each race you play in the Mastery mode, you get a number of rewards. Similar to events, you can cash in those rewards after the race, or you can decide to leave them for later.

For each Challenge you get a Credits reward, and for Challenge 5, 6 (mostly), 10 and 15 you get an additional reward. With the release of the Subaru Impreza WRX STI, Kepler Motion, Bentley EXP10 Speed 6 there are over Licences in total, 83 Tuning Kits and 100 Nitro Starters available, so these rewards are very common. The rather rare rewards are Free Upgrades, Extra Tanks, Pro Kit Boxes, Tokens and Double Credits, which can be obtained in the following challenges:

Trivia

 * The graphic language of the Car Mastery is new to Asphalt 8. While the car overview resembles closely to Season 9, the Challenge selection screen, the Challenge loading screen and the Challenge completion / fail screen have graphic elements and colors which are new to Asphalt 8. See the gallery below for examples.
 * There is a glitch in the pre-race cut-scene which is visible sometimes, it shows the name of the car in a distorted layer. It seems this was supposed to look like the end screen but hasn't been finished in time for the release.
 * After the Summer's Over Update, many Car Mastery Rewards were reduced, see the page of the update for detailed information.