The art of free to play

[Taan 46]

Hello everyone!

Here is something I wanted to do for some time now. I recognized that some people complain about the prize of Hearthstone or that you can only achieve higher ranks when you pay real money. I don't want to discuss this topic here (also I totally disagree ;) ). Instead I want to give some advice how to manage your resources (so Gold and Dust) more wisely and therefore get better decks and more fun out of them.

You may deem some of the advice pretty expected, but maybe the "strategies" I run can still inspire you to wasting less and getting more. But I will still skip the obvious: get as much gold as possible, finish the Brawl every week etc.

Also Icy Veins (the side you are currently on) has a pretty nice Guide-Section too and I will try not to repeat the hints from there.

Finally: the hints are mainly for the standard-format.

 

1.) Know when to stop and save up.

After purchasing something like 50+ packs you will own nearly all commons, most of the rares, some epics and a few legendaries. So you will draw mainly cards you already own from additional packs. Since drawing cards is much better than crafting them (e.g. you basically save 300 dust, when you draw an epic card you would have crafted otherwise) saving your gold up for the next expansion can be much more valuable than buying more packs for the current set. Just head into your collection from time to time and check all the cards from the set you would have bought packs from. If you realize that you mainly missing out legendaries and a few epics it could be time to stockpile your gold (since the chance of drawing a specific epic or legendary is pretty slim anyways). You should be able to have 3000 to 5000 gold at the start of the next expansion that way.

 

2.) Only disenchant "useless" cards when you need the dust for a specific reason.

Sometimes cards that are deemed useless or bad at the beginning of the meta can turn out to be quite powerful later on (e.g. Evolve before and after the release of Doppelgangster). There would be nothing more frustrating than having to craft a card you already disenchanted two sets ago.

So be very very careful when disenchanting cards that are still legal in standard and never disenchant them only to pile up dust. You can always disenchant a card you own but never take it back.

 

3.) Use placeholders and build "prototype"-decks first.

This is a difficult one. Many people want to try out new and innovative decks. This can be quite expensive and you don't know beforehand if the deck will be any good and (most importantly) fun. Thats why it can be a good idea to test out the main functionality of the deck by replacing less important cards with similar (weaker) ones and find out that way if the deck is fun to play with.

For example: you can play many aggressive decks in the past without (the old) Patches the Pirate by replacing him and the "pirate-package" with other low cost cards. It may be way weaker but the main structure of the deck often stays the same. Other examples would be Cubelock without N'Zoth, the Corruptor or Spell-Hunter without Rhok'delar.

 

4.) Wait for the meta to settle.

It is pretty obvious. Don't get carried away by the hype of a new set and craft everything that people call powerful. Cards can quickly fall out of relevance. Not only because they are worse than people thought, but often because the meta turns out to be unfitting for the respective deck. Taunt-Warrior is an example for this. Both Fire Plume's Heart and the Hunter-Quest were hyped, but fell out of relevance rather quickly.

 

5.) try to craft cards with a wider use first.

Some cards can only be played in one specific deck and it is pretty obvious from the first spoilers onward that they are. Twin Emperor Vek'lor or basically all the Quests are perfect examples. When you don't know what to play and/or you want to play a bigger variety of decks it can be a good idea to spend your dust on cards that are playable in a bigger range of decks and classes. Obviously neutral cards fit this idea more often.

Examples are: N'Zoth, the Corruptor for all sorts of Deathrattle-Decks, Kazakus for every type of Highlander-Deck, Alexstrasza or Leeroy Jenkins for combo- or OTK-decks and so on.

 

 

I play Hearthstone regular since "goblin vs gnomes" and was able to play multiple competitive decks with multiple classes without buying a single pack for real money. But I always had to be very stingy how I spend my resources and I believe that other people have to be too, to get high on the ladder while still having fun and trying out new decks.

Do you have any additional advices how to get more out of your hard earned gold?

[Caldyrvan 377]

It's just a few hours til the rotation you might replace N'zoth and Kazakus with other examples since they are leaving standard. New players might get confused :)

The rest sounds reasonable. Maybe just one thing, with 50 packs you might get all commons, not sure I am bad at math, but definitley not all rares not even most, at least not 2 copies of each. Ofc you don't need all, some are just useless but with 50 packs you can easily miss a lot of crucial rare of a set.

What I do here is: Looking at a set in my collection writing down the numbers of cards I'm missing sorted by rarity, then carefully browsing throw the cards I miss again and writing down the numbers of cards I really want/need looking like this:

• Common 1/7
• Rare 3/12
• Epic 7/20
• Legendary: 2/19

I constantly adjust these numbers when the meta changes or I get cards from packs etc. For me this is a good overview of how much I am missing of a set, how much dust it would cost to craft them and how likely it is to get certain cards out of packs. This way I noticed long time ago I am missing really a lot of cards from Un'goro but in fact I only want a few cards there which was not worth to gamble it by getting packs of this set.

Also it's good to know how many packs you opened of a set without getting a legend. In case you had bad luck and opened like 38 packs of a set without a legend, even if you might still get a bad one, I think it is worth to buy one more and maybe a 2nd pack to get that legend. But that's just really mini max :D

Edited April 12, 2018 by Caldyrvan

[Taan 46]

3 hours ago, Caldyrvan said:

Also it's good to know how many packs you opened of a set without getting a legend. In case you had bad luck and opened like 38 packs of a set without a legend, even if you might still get a bad one, I think it is worth to buy one more and maybe a 2nd pack to get that legend. But that's just really mini max :D

Thank you! I kind of forgot about that one. Normally at a point where I think "hmm, I got most of the stuff I want from the current set" I still open packs until I get a legendary and then start stockpiling my gold. At least when I drew my last legendary a reasonable long time ago.

Also if you enjoy playing arena, you will get some packs from the current set anyways. So stopping to buy packs a little bit earlier could be usefull.

[Marcawesome 16]

Great post!  Agree with everything.

[BenTpe 3]

Great post thanks!

Since Im a new player I am now torn between playing Arena and getting Witchwood cards (I like Arena for its diversity of decks but mostly can only win 2 or 3 games each time) or sticking to getting expert packs since in most decks i want to build it seems there are always a large proportion of expert cards. 

Any advice on how to balance both? Also, in order to build meta decks you craft the missing cards from older packs, like Hallucination for Rogue in Miracle Rogue for example?

Edited April 17, 2018 by BenTpe
Clarifications

[Taan 46]

On 17.4.2018 at 4:32 PM, BenTpe said:

Any advice on how to balance both?

That depends on your own preferences.

Usually I save up something like 300 Gold for arena runs at the start of a new set. I takes me (most of the time) some days to finish an arena-run because I play only a few games of hearthstone each day. Sometimes I wait for a quest thats fits the class I got in arena.

Anyways the bottomline is: if you like playing arena, then do so. But since you will always get packs from the newest set as a reward you might want to buy less packs from this set before. As I said: getting packs from sets you don't own much cards from is better than getting a lot of surplus cards from sets you already bought 50 or 60 packs.

 

On 17.4.2018 at 4:32 PM, BenTpe said:

Also, in order to build meta decks you craft the missing cards from older packs, like Hallucination for Rogue in Miracle Rogue for example?

You can definitly do that. Especially because the chance of getting one specific card from a pack is pretty small (even when its only a common one). But you should keep the standard-rotation in mind and evaluate, if you want to craft a card from a set that will rotate a few month later (in case of Hallucination you will still have nearly a year ;) ).

 

Edited April 19, 2018 by Taan

[SithLordOfSnark 78]

I tend to only craft cards if I have enough dust to actually make a full deck. Like I was able to craft Ghostly Echoes since I already had Tess.

[SPECTRELIGHT 1]

Pardon my severe newbie question, but how can you see what cards you are missing?

Would it be wise to disenchant common cards you have more than 2 of? If I have 4 fireballs, should I disenchant 2?

[positiv2 952]

26 minutes ago, SPECTRELIGHT said:

Pardon my severe newbie question, but how can you see what cards you are missing?

If you open crafting, you can see that some cards are not coloured out. These cards are the ones you are missing from your collection. If you meant missing for a deck, if you copy a deck string, the missing cards will not be coloured out. 

28 minutes ago, SPECTRELIGHT said:

Would it be wise to disenchant common cards you have more than 2 of?

Absolutely. The only reason not to disenchant cards that you have more than 2 of (or in case of legendaries, 1 of), is to mass disenchant them if they are nerfed. However, since the amount of cards that do indeed receive nerf is low, and due to these cards often belonging to the basic set, it is way better to disenchant them whenever you need dust. 

30 minutes ago, SPECTRELIGHT said:

If I have 4 fireballs, should I disenchant 2?

Basic cards cannot be disenchanted as far as I know.

[Caldyrvan 377]

I would not suggest to craft cards too fast. Give it a second thought at least.

Especially for the more/most expensive cards of epic and legendary rarity. Crafting a common is not expensive and a rare, even if you don't like the card later, it's not hurting you too much. But spending 400 or 1600 on a card is an investment you don't want to regret :)

[BenTpe 3]

On 4/19/2018 at 4:09 PM, Taan said:

That depends on your own preferences.

Usually I save up something like 300 Gold for arena runs at the start of a new set. I takes me (most of the time) some days to finish an arena-run because I play only a few games of hearthstone each day. Sometimes I wait for a quest thats fits the class I got in arena.

Anyways the bottomline is: if you like playing arena, then do so. But since you will always get packs from the newest set as a reward you might want to buy less packs from this set before. As I said: getting packs from sets you don't own much cards from is better than getting a lot of surplus cards from sets you already bought 50 or 60 packs.

 

You can definitly do that. Especially because the chance of getting one specific card from a pack is pretty small (even when its only a common one). But you should keep the standard-rotation in mind and evaluate, if you want to craft a card from a set that will rotate a few month later (in case of Hallucination you will still have nearly a year ;) ).

 

Thanks Taan for the insight... I actually built an excel database of all cards in the game (I’m on Mac an Innkeeper isn’t available...) and realized that I now only own 70% of the classic pack common cards, so I decided to stick to it for now. First pack I opened after this decision had a legendary (Onyxia) and second one an epic for Hunter (Bratislava wrath) so pretty happy about my decision so far haha. 

As for hallucination i might not craft it after all, I realized that I can just upgrade my already strong Paladin set up and adapt it to WW current meta or play a cheap Hunter.  Since I see less cubelocks these days it’s actually more fun to play than before :) I think I’ll simply open some Un’Goro packs at some point!

anyway thanks again for your advice, have fun playing!