Noob asking: how to best spend gold?

[Deleted]

Hi,

I have begun playing Hearthstone together with a family member. We are both counting on staying F2P and we are not really aiming to competitive in any serious sense, aka we are casuals.
This does however not means we do not like to have a large variety of cards, even though we know staying F2P is a major limit.

So what I like to ask you, more knowable people, about is: What is the best way for us to spend our gold?

With the new expansion coming within a month or so we are currently just saving our gold until the release, but are there any point doing that?
And if there’s a point in saving up the gold, should we then just be buying classic packs or should we buy Old Gods packs? (We don’t think we currently are good enough to be anywhere near arena.)

I have also read that certain adventure modes (Naxramas I think it was) will be unobtainable come the new expansion. Should we instead try to gain access to these before the expansion hit?

Best regards,
Syxz

[Jester Joe]

Honestly, I'd say hold off a wee bit more until we see all the Old Gods cards, since there's still a lot more left to be revealed.

By the current situation, I'd say Classic are more worth the investment, but who knows, maybe there's a lot of cards left that we don't know about that will blow Classic cards away (But even then, classic cards are always staying in cycle for Standard format, so there's that too)

In regards to the adventures, if you're alright with not personally experiencing the adventure, you can always craft the cards from them instead. Otherwise yeah, once Old Gods goes live (estimated to be the 26th of April), you won't be able to obtain the adventures UNLESS you own one wing already, but you can still only buy them with gold (Which cost 700 gold a wing). So that's your call if you want to aim for getting at least a single wing of Naxx, but the cards from Naxx won't be usable in Standard anyway, and Wild mode will probably crush you with Old Gods cards being thrown into the mix with all the GvG/Naxx cards, since GvG/Naxx are pretty much already considered the expansions with the strongest cards.

[Deleted]

I see, thank you for your answer

My question would probably have been better timed like 3-5 days before the 26th then.

[Jester Joe]

I see, thank you for your answer

My question would probably have been better timed like 3-5 days before the 26th then.

It's better to know ahead of time though rather than end up spending gold without double checking!

Also I'd expect some of the other more experienced players to come in at some point to give some suggestions too honestly, so we'll see how that plays out too!

[muto]

Don't buy Naxx or GvG packs with gold unless you plan on only playing Wild. If you want to play the new Standard then I would say save your gold for when Old Gods is released. Most of the best cards from classic are commons and rares, so they won't cost much dust to craft.

[Twoddle]

Problem is they announced the expansion far too early so everyone's been saving their gold instead of spending it. Had they released it earlier or had they announced it nearer the actual day of release instead of saying "spring", people would have likely spent most of their gold and would be more likely to spend real money on cards. As it is, I, like many people have enough to buy the expansion twice over with gold saved up.

[nextormento]

The cost of the full Naxx adventure is 7*5=3.5k gold. If one disenchants the entire set of cards, you get some ~3.1k dust. Given the gold/dust ratio is close to one, playing through it is not cost effective. But it is a fun thing to do. I'd *personally* buy the first wing, but only because I just like having stuff and seeing content.

Buying GvG packs is not advisable, generally. Unless you plan to play Wild, but I suspect it to be less newbie-friendly. The other use for GvG (and Naxx for that matter) is Tavern Brawl. From time to time we'll get that brawl which may be trivial if one has that one card from those sets; if such situation arises, you can craft that card at any time.

As for buying classic packs. Well... as mentioned , it has to do with how the Old Gods set develops. Some powerful cards from classic are rather cheap to craft. Thought they haven't announced the nerfs, afaik, so that might change a bit. In any case, you also get classic packs here and there anyway (from the "Watch and Learn!" daily quest, and the weekly Brawl). So, in the long run, you'll be slowly building the classic collection even if you never buy any pack.

If you want to have a wide and diverse collection, saving for Old Gods is probably the easiest way to expand it, since you'll be getting mostly new cards.

Al in all, save it up, at least till a few days before the patch and then decide. And the case of Naxx is, imho, is a flavorful personal call.

You might want to look into getting Old Murk-Eye (it's a reward from getting all the murlocs from Classic/Basic sets). They're taking out the reward mechanism and making it craftable through dust. The cost of crafting the 4 murlocs needed (the other 4 are unlocked in every collection) is 700 dust. And the dust value of disenchanting it after the patch is 400. If you already have some of those murlocs (either the epic one, or the 3 rares), you actually gain dust if you craft it today and disenchant it after the patch (or keep it, but it can't be played in Standard).
The same happens to Captain's Parrot, but that one is very difficult to result in some positive dust trade.

[Deleted]

I would say that focusing on the upcoming Standard mode is the best bet for beginners, since it has a lower entry curve, and with that said I'd recommend waiting until Old Gods is released. Partly because we expect big changes to the old classic cards. It is difficult to predict exactly what would happen but personally I would still consider classic packs worth the investment. A good example is the sludge belcher from Naxx, which replaced almost every staple taunt minion up until that point and since. Many decks also still rely heavily on any number of classic cards, and your ability to deploy variety of different strategies will depend on your collection of those classic.

So that's what I would do; start by collecting classic, disenchant anything I don't plan on currently using, and craft any card or two from the newer packs that I felt I'd need. Not saying you need to collect 99% of the classics before it's worth buying the newer packs but that's where I would start, and work up from there.

Last but not least, keep in mind that you don't have to collect every card to play. Instead work towards one specific deck, with a class you like. You only need 30 cards for it; do your quests, collect gold, buy packs, DE everything you do not plan on using in the near future and craft what you need. It is surprisingly easy and quick to put together 1-2 cheap decks when you think economically.

In the mean time, if you only just started, did you get all the free packs yet? You get plenty of packs and gold from just doing simple stuff, so I suggest you have a look at the link below.

http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/h...cks-gold-dust/

[Deleted]

It's better to know ahead of time though rather than end up spending gold without double checking!

That’s for sure!

The cost of the full Naxx adventure is 7*5=3.5k gold. If one disenchants the entire set of cards, you get some ~3.1k dust. Given the gold/dust ratio is close to one, playing through it is not cost effective. But it is a fun thing to do. I'd *personally* buy the first wing, but only because I just like having stuff and seeing content.
[…]
[…]
The same happens to Captain's Parrot, but that one is very difficult to result in some positive dust trade.

Thank you for your answer! Especially the stuff you wrote about Naxx. I know my family member is really fond of the AI fights, so that might resonate well with her.

[…]
[…]
Last but not least, keep in mind that you don't have to collect every card to play. Instead work towards one specific deck, with a class you like. You only need 30 cards for it; do your quests, collect gold, buy packs, DE everything you do not plan on using in the near future and craft what you need. It is surprisingly easy and quick to put together 1-2 cheap decks when you think economically.

In the mean time, if you only just started, did you get all the free packs yet? You get plenty of packs and gold from just doing simple stuff, so I suggest you have a look at the link below.

http://www.hearthstonetopdecks.com/h...cks-gold-dust/

Thank you for your answer too. I quite like the approach you give in the above quote. Both rogue, priest and druid currently seems fun to me, so I might pick one or two of those and do what you suggested.

Also, thanks for the link I’ve done most of what I can from that page.

[Mormolyce]

IMO it's hard to know ahead of time because predicting the meta is difficult. Even the pro streamers get it wrong a lot.

My usual rule is: buy one kind of pack until I'm mostly getting dupes then swap to the next. But it depends - if you're building a particular deck and there's a rare/epic you need, buy that set. Might as well, you might get it, if not there's always dust.

At the moment I'd say classic is a good investment because it'll around forever (in Standard that is). Or just hold your gold/dust. That's what I'm doing.

[lordsphinx]

Last but not least, keep in mind that you don't have to collect every card to play. Instead work towards one specific deck, with a class you like. You only need 30 cards for it; do your quests, collect gold, buy packs, DE everything you do not plan on using in the near future and craft what you need. It is surprisingly easy and quick to put together 1-2 cheap decks when you think economically.

This is really solid advice. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but most experienced players will agree.

I had heard this same argument when I first started and didn't follow the advice, thinking "why would I disenchant something that I may want to craft later?" In the end, having one deck that can be competitive will make it so, so much easier to complete quests for ore gold. It's easier to build a snowman by rolling a small ball into a bigger one than it is to build the whole thing at the same time.

[Twoddle]

This is really solid advice. It may seem counterintuitive at first, but most experienced players will agree.

I had heard this same argument when I first started and didn't follow the advice, thinking "why would I disenchant something that I may want to craft later?" In the end, having one deck that can be competitive will make it so, so much easier to complete quests for ore gold. It's easier to build a snowman by rolling a small ball into a bigger one than it is to build the whole thing at the same time.

To each their own, this being the internet and all. I am an experienced player and I went a different route. Instead of streamlining to one particular class I collected cards naturally and instead of choosing a class I liked I just went with the class for which I opened the most and better cards. Two classes started to eke out in front and any excess dust and gold went to crafting cards for those classes first. I had a 500 win Warlock in no time.

This worked out perfectly well and did not slow my progression down at all. In fact it most definitely helped my progression as I moved towards playing those other classes because they had passively built a firm base of cards.

To me it's not worth disenchanting cards unless they're golden or you have duplicates, it just takes too long to craft them back or you have to settle for inferior replacements, we're talking months of grinding. Now I can make strong decks for virtually any class thanks to not disenchanting cards early on. This is my opinion of course, do whatever you want .