Hearthstone Economy Question

Hi folks,

in old adventures one needed to open about 140 packs to get a "complete" collection, with all necessary cards, if a few legendaries were crafted with dust.

What do you think this number will be, when the duplicate protection hits?

I bought the 90 packs bundle, have about 8k gold and 16k dust. 

How many packs shall i buy additionally with gold? or is it wiser to spend all the dust?

If you already have the 90 pack bundle, why not decide for yourself when you have finished opening those? It will be much easier to judge when you know what you have already opened and how much is left that interests you.

Certainly you want to spend the dust at some point, with a sensible long-term goal being to open just the right number of packs each expansion to cover the dust costs. But what that actually means depends on how lucky you are with epics and lengedaries, hence my advice to decide after opening the 90.

Open the bundle, then see where you are at, I mean.. the answer to this question doesn't change your course of action, hoard gold open 90 packs, see what you are missing, craft what's left of interest to you.

Quote From DoubleSummon

Open the bundle, then see where you are at, I mean.. the answer to this question doesn't change your course of action, hoard gold open 90 packs, see what you are missing, craft what's left of interest to you.

It might change your action - if you think you'd buy packs later, you might consider buying the 55 pack bundle as an add-on to the 90 in order to save money on packs.

Just based on a (certainly inadequate) simulator that I built with data from https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Card_pack_statistics and https://pitytracker.com/insights, I expect that opening the 90 card bundle will still typically leave you with around 30 missing epic cards and 15 missing legendaries and enough dust for about one legendary. That same simulation for 145 packs (i.e. both bundles) sets the numbers at about 20 missing epics and 10 missing legendaries and enough dust for about 2.5 legendaries.

Using the same (certainly inadequate) simulator to check how many packs you need to get a full collection (and trying to account for using dust to craft epics and legendaries as you go), I'm getting something between 260 and 270 packs to go from 0 gold and 0 dust to a full expansion set.

Note that I am accounting for free legendaries in each case (Kael'thas and the bundle legendary - or legendaries if you get both) but I'm assuming all non-golden cards out of laziness, so the dust numbers should be better that what I'm reporting, ultimately driving down the total number of packs you'd need in the second simulation and driving up the dust values in those first simulations.

For a different back-of-envelope view - an article from PC Gamer about the duplicate protection changes (https://www.pcgamer.com/hearthstone-packs-are-getting-total-duplicate-protection-but-how-much-will-that-actually-save-you/) suggests that it will take around 260 packs to get a full set of epics (probably not accounting for the excess common and rare dust to craft epics).

You are right, but that's about it (the preorder is your only time based decision)

Wow, great explanation, thank you very much!

New no duplicate rule doesn't change the maximum amount card packs needed to complete the collection because it is calculated for Legendaries which is the most rare card of sets. So the maximum amount of card pacs needed to complete sets are still same. Nothing changed

New duplication rule only gives players a simple boost that they can collect less rare cards quicker which also means you will get lesser amount of dust after you opened your packs. So that also gives some disadvantages to players to craft some legendaries with the dust from duplicated cards.

Practically, If we consider it like all of your packs are simple 4 common and 1 rare packs;
26 packs would be enough for completing common cards
70 packs would be enough for completing rare cards.

Nothing ever changes except players who buys lesser packs now can complete all common + rares quicker.

Quote From Almaniarra

New no duplicate rule doesn't change the maximum amount card packs needed to complete the collection because it is calculated for Legendaries which is the most rare card of sets. So the maximum amount of card pacs needed to complete sets are still same. Nothing changed

New duplication rule only gives players a simple boost that they can collect less rare cards quicker which also means you will get lesser amount of dust after you opened your packs. So that also gives some disadvantages to players to craft some legendaries with the dust from duplicated cards.

Practically, If we consider it like all of your packs are simple 4 common and 1 rare packs;
26 packs would be enough for completing common cards
70 packs would be enough for completing rare cards.

Nothing ever changes except players who buys lesser packs now can complete all common + rares quicker.

Also no more duplicate epics (which happened me a lot-> never lucky)

It saves you dust if you didn't open 100+ packs.. every expansion I craft about 10 rares.. that's another legendary or 2 epics I could craft.

and since I stopped preordering I sometimes craft a few commons...

It saves you enough dust to actually be more competitive, at least you don't have to worry about crafting rares or commons.

I still have sets which I don't have all rares.. and I will open around 3 packs of those as a completionist..

Quote From DoubleSummon

Quote From Almaniarra

New no duplicate rule doesn't change the maximum amount card packs needed to complete the collection because it is calculated for Legendaries which is the most rare card of sets. So the maximum amount of card pacs needed to complete sets are still same. Nothing changed

New duplication rule only gives players a simple boost that they can collect less rare cards quicker which also means you will get lesser amount of dust after you opened your packs. So that also gives some disadvantages to players to craft some legendaries with the dust from duplicated cards.

Practically, If we consider it like all of your packs are simple 4 common and 1 rare packs;
26 packs would be enough for completing common cards
70 packs would be enough for completing rare cards.

Nothing ever changes except players who buys lesser packs now can complete all common + rares quicker.

Also no more duplicate epics (which happened me a lot-> never lucky)

It saves you dust if you didn't open 100+ packs.. every expansion I craft about 10 rares.. that's another legendary or 2 epics I could craft.

and since I stopped preordering I sometimes craft a few commons...

It saves you enough dust to actually be more competitive, at least you don't have to worry about crafting rares or commons.

I still have sets which I don't have all rares.. and I will open around 3 packs of those as a completionist..

Yeah, I will open some old packs too after patch arrives. I want to complete some of older expansions as well since I like to play wild.