I have enjoyed dabbling in this game with the $5.00 welcome pack. However, even after leveling several classes to 10 to get all the free class cards, I still lose far more often than not, since the cards that really create or leverage combos are usually rare, or at least only available in packs.
I'm not masochistic enough to do nearly free-to-play with a free quest pack from 100 gold once a week, but I don't want to spend a mint either.
If I were to drop, say, another $20.00 into this game, would I get more competitive value in doing the $20.00 Night in Manfredgensen or whatever (c.f. a Fish Called Wanda) adventure pack to get those cards, or just buying packs? Other strategy? Should I not even bother spending $$$ unless I spend serious $$$?
In an absolute perfect world with perfect RNG (never opening a duplicate before completing a rarity set), it takes about 270 packs to complete an expansion. However, because you'll be opening duplicates, it takes more like an average of 350.
I've opened something like 80 [KFT] packs and have all commons, 55/72 rares, 16/54 epics, & 6/23 legendaries.
Many of the best decks cost about 7000 dust. On average, 1 pack is worth 102 dust, so to craft one Tier 1 deck from dust alone, it would take about 70 packs.
Focus on classic packs as much as humanly possible. Classic doesn't rotate and has many of the most powerful cards in the game. Might I inquire about the legendary you got from the welcome bundle by the way?
As for leveling classes, you'll want as many classes as possible at level 20 to get the necessary basics (iirc). You'll need at least one to level 20 to be able to get the free tavern brawl packs each week. Hope this helps. :)
The gateway to a strong cheap account is to get good at Arena. The rewards once you're good are the best way to farm. Watch good arena players on twitch (Hafu and Kripp are really good), look at tier lists when picking cards, http://www.heartharena.com/tierlist , understand what a good curve looks like for different types of decks (aggro, control, etc) and understand when to favor synergy over card quality.
Also arena is a great game mode (my favorite) and a way funner way to farm than losing to strong netdecks.
I have enjoyed dabbling in this game with the $5.00 welcome pack. However, even after leveling several classes to 10 to get all the free class cards, I still lose far more often than not, since the cards that really create or leverage combos are usually rare, or at least only available in packs.
I'm not masochistic enough to do nearly free-to-play with a free quest pack from 100 gold once a week, but I don't want to spend a mint either.
If I were to drop, say, another $20.00 into this game, would I get more competitive value in doing the $20.00 Night in Manfredgensen or whatever (c.f. a Fish Called Wanda) adventure pack to get those cards, or just buying packs? Other strategy? Should I not even bother spending $$$ unless I spend serious $$$?
Please advise, thanks.
Sniv
Yes and no.
As a new player you won't get good value from only $20 but it will improve what you are playing and you will be closer to play a good deck.
If you want to have a nice collection and you can spend the money then commit to preorder every expansion and you will do fine after 3 sets or so, you will find those classes you can focus on and you will have more than 2 good decks to play with.
But if you want to go and play several classes then you will need a lot more time and money to do so, being competitive isn't that expensive but being able to play a lot of decks that is quite expensive and needs time.
Also should mention, $20 is nothing, you'll almost immediately wish you spent more to get more packs per dollar. Also, there are Amazon Prime discounts of 25% off packs.
Not really sure how to go on about this, but I'm a semi-p2p is what I think most would call. You have the f2p where they spend 0$, semi-f2p ones that usually have spent some money on the starter bundle, and maybe only spend on pre-orders (since it's a good deal), semi-p2p which are those who spend regularly, just because they're spending their money on something that they enjoy doing, and the hardcore-p2ps which you can often see as streamers. Reynad for example who bought nearly 1200 packs on the latest expansion (not actually sure how much money was spent, since I'm pretty sure he saved some gold). These players play the game seriously, and by that, meaning almost or basically as it was their part-time job. I started playing 1 year ago as of right now, and have spent about 250$ on the game, mainly just because I enjoy it. From what I did, I found a deck that wasn't too difficult to play, was top-tier, and just worked my way towards it. Obviously it wasn't some really costly deck, since I was still new, around that time MSOG wasn't out yet, so I was playing my C'thun control warrior that cost about 5k dust I believe since there were a lot of epics and 1 legendary. Once MSOG came out, you could guess I was playing pirate warrior from how insanely OP is was before the STB nerf and how cheap it was also only requiring 1 main legendary (I played Reckless Rocketeer instead of Leeroy Jenkins, then after they nerfed that, I played Reno-Lock, which cost about 7k dust since I think the version I played had about 5 legendaries (3 were not from adventures). When Un'goro came out, that was when I started to play in tournaments, which if you don't know tournaments require you to play with at least 4 decks. I played a Midrange hunter, costing about 1k dust since there were no epics or legendaries, ZooLock which costed about 1.4k dust also without epics or legendaries, Burn mage that cost about 4k dust since it had 2 legendaries (1 from Karazhan), and elemental shaman at about 3k dust with only 1 legendary and no epics. As of right now I only am playing 1 deck which is a Jade druid deck that requires me to invest about 11k dust. As of right now, I think i can say confidently that Jade druid is one of the best decks and also one of the most cancerous (the best ones usually are). I do not have it fully complete because I am still missing 2 legendaries Fandral Staghelm and The Black Knight, but as of right now it runs 4 epics and 5 legendaries, so it is quite costly. Anyways I hope some of this helps out. Anyone want to play add me Qnxiety#1557 :D
So you are asking many questions here. Lets start with the first thing from your post, losing more than winning. This isn't only a question of cards/ decks you have, asit was proven many times that even a very cheap deck that only uses easy to obtain cards will be able to go to legend. It`s much more about skill and experience.
That being said to become good at Hearthstone you will need to invest time which correlates with your coin income. In a perfect world you would get ~60 gold a day from quest and 20 gold from playmode wins, while grinding arena for the rest of the day to maximise income. However most of us are not getting paid to play HS and therefore cannot afford dumping 8-10 hours a day into the game. Nevertheless you should be aware that playing less than 1-2 hours a day on average will be needed to a) keep up with the expansions from a card point of view and b) keep up in knowledge/ skill. To show how i come up with these numbers, let me run some fast calculations. Assuming you play 1.5 hours a day, or put in other words 90 minutes, going for fast decks for most efficiency you should be able to have a 6 min/game average. So you will be playing 15 games a day. Assuming you can maintain a winrate slightly above 50% thats 8 wins and 7 losses. Lets assume beetween each rotation there will be 120 days (360/3), you will end up with 960 wins which nets 3200 gold (10 gold per 3 wins) and 7200 gold from quests (60g/day). This will net you 10400 gold. Together with free packs on expansions releases this will give you ~120 packs which is a good number to obtain enough cards from an expansion to being able to put together 2-3 beast of the meta decks (accounting for cards packed, dust from duplicates and dust from useless cards).
That being said is only whats needed for keeping up. At this point you've got 2 choices. You can either start with what you have and maybe spend $20 dollars on Karazhan and fight an uphill battle until the last set you missed rotates out at which point you will have great cards from all current sets, which would be April 2019 or you gain competitive viability immediatly by putting up some real money:
There are 5 expansions (Classic, Whispers of the old Gods, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, Journey to Un'goro and Knights of the Frozen Throne) and 1 adventure (One Night in Karazhan) in standard right now. You would also want the 120 packs per expansion here, which leads to a total of 600 packs. With the current pricing of 69.99$ per 60 packs, you are looking at ~700$ + Karazhan for 20$ which sums up to a total of 720$. If you are lucky to being able to use Amazon Coins, you could buy 50.000 Coins (400 packs) for 350$ and 3x 10.000 (200 packs and Karazhan) for 80$ each. This way you only end up spending 590$.
At last you could go for the middle way and forget about the 2016 releases (i'd still go for Karazhan as it has fantastic value for money) so by April 2018 you will be invested in any current expansion. This way you would only need 360 packs from Classic, Un'goro and Frozen Throne at the cost of either 440$ (420$ for packs + 20$ for Karazhan) or 350$ with Amazon Coins.
These are the numbers to look at and as i started with putting this amount of money of money into a game you are not gonna play for at least 1-2 hours a day over the next years is hardly worth it. So it pretty much comes down to the question if you are passionate about HS for a long time or will have forgotten this game by the end of the year. If second is the case i would not even put up 20$ for Karazhan and just roll with the cheap stuff you got.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. As I anticipated, opinions have varied.
The gist I'm getting is that for someone like me who can only play for 1-2 hours per week, there's almost no point to going in half-cocked. Either sink in the bucks for expansion pre-orders (at minimum), or just roll with the $5.00 and suck up the excess losses, which won't be so bad as I earn good cards from packs over time.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. As I anticipated, opinions have varied.
The gist I'm getting is that for someone like me who can only play for 1-2 hours per week, there's almost no point to going in half-cocked. Either sink in the bucks for expansion pre-orders (at minimum), or just roll with the $5.00 and suck up the excess losses, which won't be so bad as I earn good cards from packs over time.
Sniv
Yeah, with only 1-2 hours a week you will constantly fall behind on card quality or be forced to spend ~100$ per expansion (read every 4 month) which just doesn't seem worth it for something you only do 1-2 hours a week.
Don't be discouraged, of course this game isnt fun for all, but everyone has different experiences. If you want to hit legend every month as a F2P, 1-2 hours isnt enough. Instead, this is what i would do: get the free legend from the KFT solo and do the missions with the free decks out there. Earn packs as you go, and save up some gold and buy the Kharazhan adventure (you don't need to spend money unless you want to) and you can get some great cards for the next few months. Then see what you can make and be creative and try new things. hit rank 20 and then switch to casual for a bit and develop classes. Don't bother trying to make meta decks because honestly going in on one deck is no fun. KFT is my second expansion but the first i went in for. I bought about 20 Un'goro packs and grinded to having my vast collection now. Its going to be a struggle at first, but your collection will develop. Once you feel comfortable, play the hell out of arena- much more enjoyable and great rewards. From there, move on up. But you don't need every legendary, hit legend, or have a golden collection. This game is about your experience and you experimenting and building decks you want to play. I cashed out in the beginning and made a pirate warrior to compete and it was so boring. then i made a Tiger Hunter deck and had a blast. Don't get discouraged by the community
It should be possible to choose one deck and work towards ONLY that, if your goal is success. The trick is going to be selecting a strong deck that isn't going to fall out of the meta and isn't prohibitively expensive. For example, Jade is *really* strong but quite expensive, while a few other decks are doing great now and are fairly cheap but might fall out of the meta soon. It's hard to toss all your eggs into one basket.
As others have mentioned, I'd recommend going with Classic packs as (aside from hall of fame) those won't rotate and contain strong, core cards.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. As I anticipated, opinions have varied.
The gist I'm getting is that for someone like me who can only play for 1-2 hours per week, there's almost no point to going in half-cocked. Either sink in the bucks for expansion pre-orders (at minimum), or just roll with the $5.00 and suck up the excess losses, which won't be so bad as I earn good cards from packs over time.
Sniv
If you are a 100% casual player ie: 1-2 hours per week. It is very difficult to start playing standard. With the rotation every year and expansion every 4 months you will always be behind in terms of cards unless you are very focused and manage dust to get the most value.
Two directions:
Do the quests and play arena. You get play with all the cards, it is the best rapport for gold/reward. And when you get good enough to reach around 5/6 (or the mythical 7 win) average your collection will fill itself by herself. It may feel more complicated because you have to choose the cards by yourself not knowing what makes a good deck, but the learning curve is just different in ladder but still here. You can start with heartharena to give you some tips.
You really want to go into ranked. Focus on one class, slowly get the cards for that class until you have most the class important cards. then you can play ranked with one class. Most of the time a new archetype will use 80% of the same cards and add 20% of new cards which in manageable in F2P model, once one class is full you start to work on the second one.
Type of ranked:
Wild: Starting cost expensive but cards never rotate out. meaning you have a one working deck it will always work and new sets have less impact on the meta. Free to play people with an average collection who suddenly have a play time reduction often switch to wild: No need to keep up with the fashion, less expensive on the long term as long as you don't find boring to play always the same decks. Cheap deck exist too but most of the deck in wild tend to be slightly more expensive than a standard one
Standard: Starting cost cheaper but cards rotate out regularly, new set have an important impact on meta. Ex someone who spent all his dust getting a complete quest warrior is very sad because the deck is completely useless in the current meta.
Which ever you choose, as a free to play you will have to go through the arena case. The only question is wherever should you start ranked play.
So i ended up blowing $20 for Kharazan, and that's it. I enjoyed those quests and getting those interesting cards! I now win about half of my games in casual mode (all I've ever played) thanks to those cards and about 8 other original series packs i got from quests. perhaps this is because all the hard core players just play "ranked".
One last noob question. As a 4-5 hour per week player, should i only play casual? What's the upside of playing ranked? I suspect I'd get beat nearly all the time!
The payday of ranked is at rank 15 you get a golden rare and at rank 5 you get a golden epic card. Both rewards are at end of month.
In the long term difficulty of ranked vs playing on casual "should" equalise. As if you win lots in casual your hidden MMR will go up and you will get tougher opponents. Likewise for ranked play.
The advantage of playing both modes is that you can have 2 separate skill rankings. So your wins with your strongest deck don't give you hard opponents for when you are playing a stuff around deck.
If you're going for pure competitive viability, you can hit legend in 1 day from a fresh account (if you're good enough). But that would involve dusting all the cards you get to make one deck, if you're looking to make a good collection, I'm not sure exactly how much money you would need to put in.
If you're going for pure competitive viability, you can hit legend in 1 day from a fresh account (if you're good enough). But that would involve dusting all the cards you get to make one deck, if you're looking to make a good collection, I'm not sure exactly how much money you would need to put in.
I Don't even think that's possible even for a pro player, nonetheless and new player. Hitting legend on the same day of creating a new account WITHOUT spending any money is nearly impossible for the following reasons.
You only get 5 classic packs from completing all the tutorials and secret quests.
You only get about 300 gold (including secret quests) to spend on Arena and packs.
Even if you go infinite in arena, it would take more than 24 hours to grind up enough dust to create a decent deck. This is even if you can constantly average 7+ wins per run.
No matter how much you grind you can't make more than 100 + (daily quest reward) gold in a day.
You only get 3 (maybe 6) frozen throne packs, so you're still missing cards from every other set currently in standard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hello folks,
I have enjoyed dabbling in this game with the $5.00 welcome pack. However, even after leveling several classes to 10 to get all the free class cards, I still lose far more often than not, since the cards that really create or leverage combos are usually rare, or at least only available in packs.
I'm not masochistic enough to do nearly free-to-play with a free quest pack from 100 gold once a week, but I don't want to spend a mint either.
If I were to drop, say, another $20.00 into this game, would I get more competitive value in doing the $20.00 Night in Manfredgensen or whatever (c.f. a Fish Called Wanda) adventure pack to get those cards, or just buying packs? Other strategy? Should I not even bother spending $$$ unless I spend serious $$$?
Please advise, thanks.
Sniv
In an absolute perfect world with perfect RNG (never opening a duplicate before completing a rarity set), it takes about 270 packs to complete an expansion. However, because you'll be opening duplicates, it takes more like an average of 350.
I've opened something like 80 [KFT] packs and have all commons, 55/72 rares, 16/54 epics, & 6/23 legendaries.
Many of the best decks cost about 7000 dust. On average, 1 pack is worth 102 dust, so to craft one Tier 1 deck from dust alone, it would take about 70 packs.
Pick your poison.
"Nerf Paper," said Rock.
Focus on classic packs as much as humanly possible. Classic doesn't rotate and has many of the most powerful cards in the game. Might I inquire about the legendary you got from the welcome bundle by the way?
As for leveling classes, you'll want as many classes as possible at level 20 to get the necessary basics (iirc). You'll need at least one to level 20 to be able to get the free tavern brawl packs each week. Hope this helps. :)
The gateway to a strong cheap account is to get good at Arena. The rewards once you're good are the best way to farm. Watch good arena players on twitch (Hafu and Kripp are really good), look at tier lists when picking cards, http://www.heartharena.com/tierlist , understand what a good curve looks like for different types of decks (aggro, control, etc) and understand when to favor synergy over card quality.
Also arena is a great game mode (my favorite) and a way funner way to farm than losing to strong netdecks.
Also should mention, $20 is nothing, you'll almost immediately wish you spent more to get more packs per dollar. Also, there are Amazon Prime discounts of 25% off packs.
Not really sure how to go on about this, but I'm a semi-p2p is what I think most would call. You have the f2p where they spend 0$, semi-f2p ones that usually have spent some money on the starter bundle, and maybe only spend on pre-orders (since it's a good deal), semi-p2p which are those who spend regularly, just because they're spending their money on something that they enjoy doing, and the hardcore-p2ps which you can often see as streamers. Reynad for example who bought nearly 1200 packs on the latest expansion (not actually sure how much money was spent, since I'm pretty sure he saved some gold). These players play the game seriously, and by that, meaning almost or basically as it was their part-time job. I started playing 1 year ago as of right now, and have spent about 250$ on the game, mainly just because I enjoy it. From what I did, I found a deck that wasn't too difficult to play, was top-tier, and just worked my way towards it. Obviously it wasn't some really costly deck, since I was still new, around that time MSOG wasn't out yet, so I was playing my C'thun control warrior that cost about 5k dust I believe since there were a lot of epics and 1 legendary. Once MSOG came out, you could guess I was playing pirate warrior from how insanely OP is was before the STB nerf and how cheap it was also only requiring 1 main legendary (I played Reckless Rocketeer instead of Leeroy Jenkins, then after they nerfed that, I played Reno-Lock, which cost about 7k dust since I think the version I played had about 5 legendaries (3 were not from adventures). When Un'goro came out, that was when I started to play in tournaments, which if you don't know tournaments require you to play with at least 4 decks. I played a Midrange hunter, costing about 1k dust since there were no epics or legendaries, ZooLock which costed about 1.4k dust also without epics or legendaries, Burn mage that cost about 4k dust since it had 2 legendaries (1 from Karazhan), and elemental shaman at about 3k dust with only 1 legendary and no epics. As of right now I only am playing 1 deck which is a Jade druid deck that requires me to invest about 11k dust. As of right now, I think i can say confidently that Jade druid is one of the best decks and also one of the most cancerous (the best ones usually are). I do not have it fully complete because I am still missing 2 legendaries Fandral Staghelm and The Black Knight, but as of right now it runs 4 epics and 5 legendaries, so it is quite costly. Anyways I hope some of this helps out. Anyone want to play add me Qnxiety#1557 :D
Once you can get at least 4 wins on average, just whore arena like no tomorrow.
It's really not that hard to be f2p. I am and I can afford all the cards I want.
So you are asking many questions here. Lets start with the first thing from your post, losing more than winning. This isn't only a question of cards/ decks you have, asit was proven many times that even a very cheap deck that only uses easy to obtain cards will be able to go to legend. It`s much more about skill and experience.
That being said to become good at Hearthstone you will need to invest time which correlates with your coin income. In a perfect world you would get ~60 gold a day from quest and 20 gold from playmode wins, while grinding arena for the rest of the day to maximise income. However most of us are not getting paid to play HS and therefore cannot afford dumping 8-10 hours a day into the game. Nevertheless you should be aware that playing less than 1-2 hours a day on average will be needed to a) keep up with the expansions from a card point of view and b) keep up in knowledge/ skill. To show how i come up with these numbers, let me run some fast calculations. Assuming you play 1.5 hours a day, or put in other words 90 minutes, going for fast decks for most efficiency you should be able to have a 6 min/game average. So you will be playing 15 games a day. Assuming you can maintain a winrate slightly above 50% thats 8 wins and 7 losses. Lets assume beetween each rotation there will be 120 days (360/3), you will end up with 960 wins which nets 3200 gold (10 gold per 3 wins) and 7200 gold from quests (60g/day). This will net you 10400 gold. Together with free packs on expansions releases this will give you ~120 packs which is a good number to obtain enough cards from an expansion to being able to put together 2-3 beast of the meta decks (accounting for cards packed, dust from duplicates and dust from useless cards).
That being said is only whats needed for keeping up. At this point you've got 2 choices. You can either start with what you have and maybe spend $20 dollars on Karazhan and fight an uphill battle until the last set you missed rotates out at which point you will have great cards from all current sets, which would be April 2019 or you gain competitive viability immediatly by putting up some real money:
There are 5 expansions (Classic, Whispers of the old Gods, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, Journey to Un'goro and Knights of the Frozen Throne) and 1 adventure (One Night in Karazhan) in standard right now. You would also want the 120 packs per expansion here, which leads to a total of 600 packs. With the current pricing of 69.99$ per 60 packs, you are looking at ~700$ + Karazhan for 20$ which sums up to a total of 720$. If you are lucky to being able to use Amazon Coins, you could buy 50.000 Coins (400 packs) for 350$ and 3x 10.000 (200 packs and Karazhan) for 80$ each. This way you only end up spending 590$.
At last you could go for the middle way and forget about the 2016 releases (i'd still go for Karazhan as it has fantastic value for money) so by April 2018 you will be invested in any current expansion. This way you would only need 360 packs from Classic, Un'goro and Frozen Throne at the cost of either 440$ (420$ for packs + 20$ for Karazhan) or 350$ with Amazon Coins.
These are the numbers to look at and as i started with putting this amount of money of money into a game you are not gonna play for at least 1-2 hours a day over the next years is hardly worth it. So it pretty much comes down to the question if you are passionate about HS for a long time or will have forgotten this game by the end of the year. If second is the case i would not even put up 20$ for Karazhan and just roll with the cheap stuff you got.
@OP You might also want to check out this other post of a similar topic.
"Nerf Paper," said Rock.
Thanks for the replies, everyone. As I anticipated, opinions have varied.
The gist I'm getting is that for someone like me who can only play for 1-2 hours per week, there's almost no point to going in half-cocked. Either sink in the bucks for expansion pre-orders (at minimum), or just roll with the $5.00 and suck up the excess losses, which won't be so bad as I earn good cards from packs over time.
Sniv
If I can give you some advice, don't put money in this game. It's not worth it. Really..
Don't be discouraged, of course this game isnt fun for all, but everyone has different experiences. If you want to hit legend every month as a F2P, 1-2 hours isnt enough. Instead, this is what i would do: get the free legend from the KFT solo and do the missions with the free decks out there. Earn packs as you go, and save up some gold and buy the Kharazhan adventure (you don't need to spend money unless you want to) and you can get some great cards for the next few months. Then see what you can make and be creative and try new things. hit rank 20 and then switch to casual for a bit and develop classes. Don't bother trying to make meta decks because honestly going in on one deck is no fun. KFT is my second expansion but the first i went in for. I bought about 20 Un'goro packs and grinded to having my vast collection now. Its going to be a struggle at first, but your collection will develop. Once you feel comfortable, play the hell out of arena- much more enjoyable and great rewards. From there, move on up. But you don't need every legendary, hit legend, or have a golden collection. This game is about your experience and you experimenting and building decks you want to play. I cashed out in the beginning and made a pirate warrior to compete and it was so boring. then i made a Tiger Hunter deck and had a blast. Don't get discouraged by the community
- LePatron
It should be possible to choose one deck and work towards ONLY that, if your goal is success. The trick is going to be selecting a strong deck that isn't going to fall out of the meta and isn't prohibitively expensive. For example, Jade is *really* strong but quite expensive, while a few other decks are doing great now and are fairly cheap but might fall out of the meta soon. It's hard to toss all your eggs into one basket.
As others have mentioned, I'd recommend going with Classic packs as (aside from hall of fame) those won't rotate and contain strong, core cards.
Which ever you choose, as a free to play you will have to go through the arena case. The only question is wherever should you start ranked play.
Hi folks,
So i ended up blowing $20 for Kharazan, and that's it. I enjoyed those quests and getting those interesting cards! I now win about half of my games in casual mode (all I've ever played) thanks to those cards and about 8 other original series packs i got from quests. perhaps this is because all the hard core players just play "ranked".
One last noob question. As a 4-5 hour per week player, should i only play casual? What's the upside of playing ranked? I suspect I'd get beat nearly all the time!
Sniv
The payday of ranked is at rank 15 you get a golden rare and at rank 5 you get a golden epic card. Both rewards are at end of month.
In the long term difficulty of ranked vs playing on casual "should" equalise. As if you win lots in casual your hidden MMR will go up and you will get tougher opponents. Likewise for ranked play.
The advantage of playing both modes is that you can have 2 separate skill rankings. So your wins with your strongest deck don't give you hard opponents for when you are playing a stuff around deck.
If you're going for pure competitive viability, you can hit legend in 1 day from a fresh account (if you're good enough). But that would involve dusting all the cards you get to make one deck, if you're looking to make a good collection, I'm not sure exactly how much money you would need to put in.