Hearthstone: How to get gold and cards faster
So how do I get delicious, tasty gold?
Every day, you’ll be given a Daily Quest in Hearthstone which range from “Get 2 victories as [Class 1] or [Class 2]” to “Play 20 Minions that cost 5 Mana or more.” These earn you around 40 gold (40g) on completion – bigger victory streak quests give you 60g each, and one particular Daily awards you 100g. To compensate for the large reward, this quest is longer than others. The quests you get every day are random and save up when you don’t play, so if you don’t play for three days, you’ll come back to three quests.
You also get 10g for every three victories you have in Play Mode and there’s no limit to how many times you can earn this bonus. You can earn gold rewards in the Arena, but we’ll touch on that later on.
OK, I’m rich, now what?
Alright, moneybags, you’ve got two choices when it comes to spending your hard-earned coin: Packs or the Arena.
Expert Packs (or just ‘Packs’ or ‘Decks’) are the booster pack of the Hearthstone world. What’s inside? Cards. More specifically? Cards – where at least one is Rare quality or better. These bad boys will set you back 100g a piece, but you might want to hang on to that.
See, for 150g you can buy your way into the Arena. In the Arena, you choose one of three classes presented to you and then choose one card from three presented to you until you have a full deck to present to everyone else. You then use this deck against other people who want to present their deck want to kick your teeth in for a fix.
“Fix? What fix?” Gold, son. Gold. For every win you get in the Arena, your rewards get better and better. You can take your reward whenever you like, showing your true lack of conviction and will to succeed in the world. Or you can play like a man until you get three losses and are forcibly ejected from the premises. Basically, the Arena is like professional gambling; there’s a lot of skill involved, there’s a shit-ton of luck involved and you can never predict how well you’ll do. What can you get from the Arena? Gold, Packs, Dust (used for crafting new cards) and special Reward Cards that can only be obtained through the Arena.
I love money and want everything, where should I throw gold?
Right, hold on to your asses, boys and girls, because we’re going to be conducting mathematics up in this bitch. IN this section, we’re going to assume that your only goal is to get the cards you want as fast as possible.
Let’s look at what happens if you just get a deck.
First off, you’re gonna need 100g. How do you get that 100g? To start:
100g = That one Daily that gives you 100g (aren’t you lucky, 100g straight off!)
OR
2*40g Dailies + 2*10g streak (1 extra victory per day to get the streak, this will take you two days)
OR
3*40g Dailies (120g), then 2*40g Dailies (120-100 = 20. 20+(2*40) = 20+80 = 100) repeat until shit changes, this nets you a brand new pack every five days
OR
2*60g Dailies (120g) then method described above so you get a new pack every four days
OR
40g Daily, then 60g Daily which (shock/horror) takes two days
OR
10*10g streak reward = 30 wins. Let’s say each winning game takes twenty minutes, this will take you ten hours (assuming you win every single game). Let’s assume that Blizzard’s matchmaking is perfectly callibrated so you’ll win exactly half your matches and this method will take you twenty hours of gaming (by which time you’ll probably get your dailies back).
So looking at the above, the fastest you can get a new pack of cards without playing the game constantly is every two days.
But wait!
What if the cards in that Pack aren’t the ones you wanted? Well now we have to disenchant them for dust to craft new cards. What do we get out of a pack in terms of dust?
All you’re guaranteed in a pack is 1 Rare or better card so, if you’re unlucky:
4 Common + 1 Rare = 40 Dust <——– This is the minimum dust you can get from a pack
Rather than me list every single combination of cards you can get in a deck and relate it to what you can do with dust, here’s the info:
Cost of Disenchant/Cost of Creation for all rarities (non-gold)
Common: 5/40
Rare: 20/100
Epic: 100/400
Legendary: 400/1600
Example:
3 Common + 2 Rare = 55 Dust which is enough to make one Common card.
Now what?
So getting what you want out of an Expert Pack might take a while. So how about The Arena?
The rewards you get for playing Arena varies depending on how many wins you get. You’re ALWAYS going to get an Expert pack with the other rewards being gold, dust or even a card of variable rarity (or you can get lucky and get a really rare gold card).
The Arena costs 150g to enter so, with a guaranteed Expert Pack, we need to earn 50g worth of goodies for it to be worth our time.
So how much is dust worth in gold?
MINIMUM dust from disenchanting 1 Pack = 40 dust. 1 Pack is 100g so 1 dust = 2.5g
So now comes the fun part, data analysis!
From scouring the internet, I was able to find this spreadsheet detailing the reward data of 157 Arena excursions (which I am adding to my own data of Arena rewards, so thank you very much to the chap from the Hearthstone forums who mailed this to me).
What does the data tell us?
If you don’t win a single game, you will for the most part only take minor losses.
If you win just one game, it is around a 50% chance you’ll get 150g worth of stuff.
If you win 3 games, you will make a (minor) profit.
If you win 7 or more games, you can instantly re-enter The Arena with the gold rewards.
So which is worth my time?
Without a doubt, The Arena is the way to go in Hearthstone, as just getting Expert Packs by themselves yields poorer results. There is still the question of whether or not it’s better to work for your arena entry or pay for it with real money.
In the absolute best case scenario (You log in and get the “7 wins in any mode for 100g” quest then get 50g in streaks with the time assumptions above) it’s going to take you 7 hours to get enough gold for the Arena with the next-best scenario taking two days plus a couple of streak bonuses. That’s a lot of time to potentially throw down the drain if you don’t get enough wins in Arena mode. What’s the alternative? $1.99 US and you can jump straight into the Arena. It’ll certainly take a lot less time for you to earn that money than it will for you to earn the gold.
At the moment, there is a large focus on encouraging people to pay real money for things in Hearthstone as the free method takes too long. The game is by no means pay-to-win and it’s not impossible to play without spending money but, in the games present state, I do often feel like I’ll have to spend money before I have all the cards for the deck I want to build.
The real question is: How can this be altered so that players earn rewards in a smaller amount of time with Blizzard still earning money? Be sure to tell me your thoughts in the comments!
I’m pretty sure that the 3*40 and 2*60 methods loop around to 200 gold every five and four days respectively, meaning that you get TWO packs in those timespans.
Regardless, it is obviously better to go Drafting since you’ll always get your money’s worth. Also true in Magic. There’s a reason for that, too: Since the only sensible way to actually earn cards is the Arena, more players are bound for longer since it simply takes time to complete a run. Thus it’s ensured that the Arena is always populated. Also, it allows Blizzard to show you the spectrum of their cards without having to make gaining cards so easy that you actually gain them to keep.
I’m a huge Blizzard fan, so no evilness there, just business. I don’t think this model should significantly change, either, since rare cards aren’t necessarily better than commons. A lot of high-tier decks consist largely of commons, I’ve been told, since rare cards are just made for more specific roles. There’s one whose only purpose aside from being big is to make the game progress by setting the time limit to 15 seconds, in case you’re wondering how specific they are.
If anything, there could be a minimum payout to the arena even if you do terrible. Remember, each game you win, somebody has to lose. Getting a guaranteed X gold plus pack out of it so that you don’t have to grind 7 hours (but can’t always just start a new run) would probably give the Arena a lot of sticking power with existing players.
I have to say, Arena is great for getting a look at the available cards and thinking about new strategies.
At the moment, I would say that the only downside to the Arena is that it takes so long to get there purely by playing the game. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t play it every day so I tend to have Quests stacked up but if I DID want to play every day and wanted to get the cards I want/need for a deck quickly, I’m pretty screwed unless I spend money.
A potential method to keep people who want to play every day interested and have them come back every single day is to offer a premade Daily Deck which you get for X amount of wins/games/time from starting the game and you get some sort of bonus for playing with. That way, you’ll get to do something new and interesting every day whilst you’re saving up to jump into the Arena.
I’d make it multiple decks, perhaps on a rotation, so that you have some choice. Like how they made dailies two classes each. However, that’d be a great idea especially for starting off when you have nothing, to showcase some archetypes and strategies.
The major drawback to this is that you’re basically showing the player what the ideal deck would be like which leads to people spending a lot of time to build it themselves.
If more cards were to be added then this would work quite well as there would, in theory, be multiple types of deck for each class but until then, it’s wouldn’t quite work.
Yes, do your quests and win 9 to 0 in arena each time is by far the best way to go.
Well that’s easy to say when you’re unbeatable!
Yes, must be why they didn’t send me a beta-key
Not that it has anything to do with this, but I noticed Heartstone is almost a exact mix of “YuGiOh” and “Magic the gathering”
These are generalisation descriptions, there are effects and exeptions to all of it.
Play cards:
YuGiOh = No mana to play cards but power dependent
Magic = Mana cost of very specific types
HeartStone = Mana cost of unspecific type but power dependent
Battles:
YuGiOh = Have to kill all opponents minions before can attack opponent directly
Magic = You always attack the opponent directly and it is then upto the opponent to choose if a minions shall block the attack.
HeartStone = You can choose between minions or the opponent freely
Spell cards:
YuGiOh = You can cast spell cards directly from your hand when it is your turn, if want to use spell cards or Trap cards during the opponents turn you must first have put them on the field (face down) during your turn.
Magic = You can cast Sorcery type spell cards during your turn, and Instant spell cards at any time
HeartStone = You cast spells during your turn, if want to use spell card during opponent turn it has to be a secret.
Deck builds:
YuGiOh = All cards can be put into any deck, just a mather of the players taste.
Magic = Most cards are very bound to mana-types
HearthStone = Most cards can be put into any deck, class-bound cards to change the deck in the players taste.
I could go on but think the point is made, and I don’t feel my examples are mean sources. HeartStone really are right in the middle of the mechanics of “YuGiOh” and “Magic the gathering”
Well, it’s a (trading… not really) card game. You can’t do much between letting people do things only on their turns and allowing them to play whatever whenever.
I’d say Hearthstone is closer to Magic IMHO. For instance, the Blue/Red mages are completely OP. Well, actually, it’s the U/B priests, but you know the drill.
Playing cards:
What exactly do you mean by power dependent? You also forgot that in YuGiOh, you need to sacrifice monsters of a lower power to summon the powerful ones which is (thankfully) absent in Hearthstone and MTG. If anything, Mana in HS works as if you’re playing MTG and draw one colourless mana every turn.
Battles:
It would be more of a mix of mechanics if you could assign blockers in HS.
Spells:
Spells in HS act like Sorceries from MTG and the Secret cards in HS function as Trap Cards from YGO (they have to be played your turn, activated on effect).
Deck builds:
Here’s where I disagree that there’s any mixing going on as in both YGO and MTG you can put whatever card you want in your deck. Although it would probably be a good idea not to be too diverse with your mana choices in MTG, there’s nothing stopping you.
Although there are similarities between mechanics (they are the same genre of game, after all) I wouldn’t say that Hearthstone is mechanically between Magic The Gathering and YuGiOh.
If you want to be exact, YGO is more limiting with its card choice. Ever built a Crystal Beast deck? Heroes? Another of the many very specific archetypes? Yeah, good luck with that unless you have playsets (3 of each non-restricted card) of each of the five cards that get mentioned by name by others in order for those cards to do anything at all.
You can toss a lot of random cards together, but if you want to go beyond that, you’ll need a lot of very specific cards. Not even just “play Goblins” like in Magic, but ones out of thousands.
I suppose that translates into class-specifics in Hearthstone, whereas the general cards are your non-themed cards. Necessary for a full deck, but you won’t always be successful using only them.
[…] common cards, so they shouldn’t be too hard to get for yourself. Play a bit with each class, unlock their cards, and learn their strategies and […]
My best Arena run was yesterday with a Mage deck (12-2) and only got 400 gold ! I think the rewards should be revalued because i played for nearly 2 hours only to receive enough for four packs.
I think there’s a table online somewhere with approximations of the new rewards so that might be worth a look.
Playing for two hours to instantly get five packs (don’t forget the one you get for completing an arena run) is still a lot faster than doing the quests and getting win streaks.
http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/10858265800 works for a start. It is nice to know that raising the cap up to 12 wins didn’t do much to the price structure other than flattening out the difficulty curve to make it more likely that you will reach the magic 7 wins if you deserve them.
hearthstone is most like wow tcg