Nine Things to Do in Your First 10 Hours of Diamond Dynasty in MLB The Show 25

Acquire an Ace

There is no question that you’re going to be playing a lot of games within Diamond Dynasty in those first 10 hours. And if you’re doing so in any mode in which you can pick a pitcher, you will want one that you can rely on – so, whether it’s getting Roger Clemens from the Starter program, nabbing Yoshinobu Yamamoto from the Tokyo Series program, or spending big to obtain Roki Sasaki’s 99 OVR card, acquiring an ace to slot in as SP1 on your roster and rely on throughout Conquest, Mini Seasons, Ranked, or something else is something you will not regret doing, as having just one reliable starting pitcher to get familiar with provides a significant return on investment.

Roster Some Relief

Almost as important as selecting a starter in Diamond Dynasty is picking up a couple of reliable relievers. Starters generally don’t have the Stamina to complete full games – welcome to modern baseball – and players will need to turn to at least one and often two relievers to get the third inning’s worth of outs at minimum in a Conquest or Mini Seasons game.

Fortunately, there are tons of cheap options for decent relievers, from the 79 OVR Golds in Team Affinity to 80-84 OVR Live Series Golds that often have stats rivaling Diamonds.

Here is a tip for placing those players: You will want them to be in your Long Relief Pitcher (LRP) and Closer spots on your roster if you delve into Diamond Quest, as those roster spots are

Tackle the Tokyo Series

And since we’ve mentioned the Tokyo Series program, let’s call it out specifically: The program dropped on Tuesday to coincide with the MLB season beginning with a two-game series between the Dodgers and Cubs in Shohei Ohtani’s homeland is probably the single best program in Diamond Dynasty at present.

With free cards of Ohtani as a designated hitter, Shota Imanaga, Seiya Suzuki, and Yamamoto on the reward path, and only Ohtani not being a Diamond-level performer, the program yields a better core of cards than the slightly more involved Pipeline and Spring Breakout programs, and is extremely simple, with Moments and XP Missions for the cards, positions, and teams involved. Dedicated effort might get the entire program done in an evening, but just breezing through the Moments and a few of the Missions should get you Ohtani and Imanaga in the span of an hour or two, and that’s a fine foundation for most any DD squad.

Pull Your Packs, Then Sell Your Stuff

Not every player entering Diamond Dynasty this week will have packs from preorder bonuses or the Now and Later program within MLB The Show 24 – but many will. And cards will never, ever be nearly as valuable as they are right now at launch.

So it behooves players to deplete their pack stashes as soon as possible, rather than saving them, and also to sell any cards that will not be regulars in their rosters. Diamonds will plummet in value as the year goes on, but even random Bronze and Silver cards go for far more than they “should” be worth right now, as the relatively low number of total packs ripped by the player base translates to rarity for most cards.

And while the value of Stubs decreases as the year wears on, the value of cards tanks more swiftly. Get your liquidity while you can.

Dabble in Diamond Quest

The new Diamond Quest roguelike mode in Diamond Dynasty is destined to be a love-it-or-hate-it proposition for most players. The rewards are good, especially right now at the outset of DD, but the challenges within it being almost entirely Moments that can feel unfair and Showdowns that can feel very unfair will certainly turn some players off.

That might not be the case for you! You might be an absolute savant when it comes to taking on Showdowns, or someone patient enough to figure out how to find small edges in the Moments, and you might just have the skill to play the Stadium Challenges that conclude each Diamond Quest map on higher difficulties for better chances at the capstone rewards.

Taking the time to at least complete the tutorial map and decide whether Diamond Quest is for you is worth doing very early on.

Touch Team Affinity

The revamped Team Affinity program in MLB The Show 24 is much, much deeper at launch than in last year’s game, with its initial design mapped out to the entire year rather than tied to last year’s Seasons and Sets model. This means that some of the goals are as lofty and time-intensive as matching franchise leaders in hits, homers, and strikeouts – but that depth is offset by San Diego Studio making sure to give players some goodies for their first bits of program XP.

Specifically, every single Team Affinity reward path begins with a 79 OVR player that can be obtained for 5,000 Team Affinity XP – the total rewarded for completing the single Moments on Veteran located in the Start Here! Missions in the program. There are cards in just that cohort, like the Red Sox’s Joe Kelly or the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., that could be quite useful in filling out an early-days roster.

And having at least one player from a given team on your roster also allows you to begin the slower, longer grind toward the high-OVR Golds and low-OVR Diamonds that are available in Team Affinity – some of which are among the best free cards in Diamond Dynasty right now.

Mind the Grind

Diving into a new Diamond Dynasty season can be a fun grind. But it is almost always a grind, with players once more using the least powerful cards they will have all year and either relearning the rhythms of effective play in MLB The Show or adjusting to something totally new, like this year’s institution of ambush hitting.

On some level, a little grind is probably fine – even enjoyable – for most players. But there is an inherent struggle to starting out that can be frustrating, which is not ideal for the beginning of a game cycle intent on keeping players for eight months or more.

San Diego Studio bears plenty of responsibility for mitigating that feeling. Players, though, can do it, too: Finding a good album or Netflix show to pair with The Show or utilizing something like my Rule of Three – if I ever run up against a Moment or a game that is giving me trouble, I give myself three final attempts and then move on from it, as I know fresh eyes and focus will benefit me more when taking it on than a 13th consecutive attempt ever could – to help avert or diminish the feeling of being stuck that can come with miring in the grind.

Find Your Fun 

And finally, on the flip side of avoiding the least fun parts of Diamond Dynasty, players really ought to find their most fun parts and enjoy them as much as possible.

Maybe you like churning through Moments. Maybe you’re a diehard Rockies fan who wants to be first to get every Colorado player to Parallel V. Maybe you’re an online demon who wants to flex the new cosmetic cards for reaching a 1,000 rating in Ranked. Maybe you really like making Stubs and will spend hours flipping cards on the Marketplace.

Regardless of what it is, if you are reading these words, you probably have something in Diamond Dynasty that delights you. Do that thing. Enjoy the game. Don’t let tweets or TikToks or Discord missives ranting or raving about the game affect the specific pleasures you derive from it.

There’s no question that MLB The Show and Diamond Dynasty are imperfect products made by imperfect people, like everything else humans make and tweak. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have perfectly great days playing the game – and you owe it to yourself to try.