An Atypical F2P Approach to HS

New Player Tavern
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Disclaimer: Hearthstone has a lot of problems these days, and I doubt they will get fixed at this point as the game continues to move away from a MtG-based strategy CCG and it continues to degenerate into more of a random-winner, Yu-Gi-Oh-based game, before eventually becoming a low-strategy game of Go Fish.

Now if your still interested in trying out HS after reading my disclaimer, here is one approach to getting started in HS as a F2P player:

Part One:

Since I do not think constructed formats are worth investing money in, I would recommend making 2-3 Bnet accounts and creating a new HS collection on each of the three different servers (Americas, Europe, and Asia), giving a player 6-9 different collections to play with.

This approach gives players access to a lot of quests and gold, while generating a lot of New Player and Returning Player Rewards. It takes patience and time (about a year or less) to develop a collection to point where it is capable of making an expensive, high quality deck for free.

Whenever, a new HS collection is made, a player will quickly get access to two Catch Up packs, and they will be able to claim a free deck to own from a selection of temporary loaner decks. Upon completing the Apprentice Track it will trigger a quest chain for three more Catch Up packs, which means that in around three to five hours of play, new players will be able to open a total of 5 Catch Up packs. I just did this on a brand new account and I got 50 cards from each pack five times in a row. That’s a lot of cards.

How Catch-Up Packs work:

Number of Cards: Each Catch-Up Pack includes 1-10 cards from each of the five included sets, for a total of 5-50 cards per pack. The number of cards you get from each set is based on the percentage of cards you’ve received* from that set:

  • 25% or less of that set: 10 cards from that set
  • 75% or more of that set: 1 card from that set
  • Between 25% and 75% completion: scales with collection completion percentage
    Rarity Distribution: At least 20% (rounded up) of the cards in each Catch-Up Pack will be a Rare or better. The overall rarity distribution for Catch-Up Packs is the same as normal packs.
    Quality: All cards are normal quality (non-Golden).
    First Legendary Guarantee: One Legendary in the first 50 cards from each expansion (yes, that means you get to capture five different Legendary offering bonuses in these packs).

Advice: since the number of cards one gets from a Catch-Up pack is determined by how many cards one already owns from a particular set, Catch-Up packs should be opened before any other kind of pack is opened or any other cards or decks are claimed, because the more cards you already own for a set, the fewer cards you will get from a catch-Up pack, which can range between 5-50 cards.

Even though I do not advocate spending money on HS, if you are the kind of person who does not mind spending a little money to get an early “leg-up” while exploring a new game, it’s common for the shop to offer a catch-Up pack bundle in the shop for new players, such as the following pictured one, which gives 10 catch-Up packs for $14.99.

https://imgur.com/a/T4W2Q1u

In addition to the catch-Up packs, a new player can claim a free deck to own. All the decks can be tested and played as loaner decks before one deck is claimed to own for free.

https://www.hearthpwn.com/news/11407-new-or-returning-player-decks-for-patch-31-4

As for which deck to claim, it depends on your goals. The Hunter deck might be the strongest deck to play right away, but the Warrior or Shaman decks would give the best values (in terms of how much dust it cost to make the cards in the deck).

Another consideration before claiming a free deck would be to decide what class a player would like to develop for a particular collection. There are 11 classes in HS and by prioritizing the collecting or creation of cards for one particular class for each of your different collections, it makes it easier to be able to consistently create good decks for that class. A different class could be focused on for development for each of your different collections, giving a player access to good decks for 6 or more classes, if a player has 6 or collections that they can play with.

Part Two:

Since the implementation of Returning Player Rewards, a HS account that has not logged in for at least 90 days will get quick access to 3 Catch-Up packs and a free deck to claim.

Here is my overall strategy: use one Bnet account as your main account, which you will play on regular basis, but let your second (and possibly third account) go fallow for 90 days, so that you can get the Returning Player Rewards when you log in and play a few matches. Repeat this process two or three times over the course of a year and you can expect to accumulate a similar amount of resources as I have done with the following demonstration accounts and collections:

Sa (Asia): [made this account in April 2024)

43 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary cards. (One remains unclaimed from the Rewards Track)
1065 gold
4 unopened packs
Extra (duplicate cards), which can disenchanted to yield 7.3k worth of dust—enough dust to craft 4+ Legendaries or other cards.

Sa (Europe):

29 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary cards. (One remains unclaimed from the Rewards Track)
1065 gold
5 unopened packs
8.4k dust—enough dust to craft 5+ Legendaries or other cards.

Sa (Americas):

43 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary cards. (One remains unclaimed from the Rewards Track)
2115 gold
2 unopened packs
6.2k dust—enough dust to craft 3+ Legendaries or other cards.

MZ (Asia): [made this account in Dec. 2023)

49 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary cards.
2115 gold
17 unopened packs.
7.7k dust

MZ (Europe):
48 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary cards.
2775 gold
32 unopened packs.
7.7 k dust

MZ (Americas):

47 craft-able or disenchant-able Legendary cards.
2430gold
5 unopened packs.
8k dust

After about year of collecting Returning Player Rewards and opening Catch-Up packs, I am still getting around 26-32 cards per Catch-Up pack, and the 5 sets are ranging from 35 percent to 60 percent complete. Of course it’s the Legendary and Epics that are still mostly missing for each set, but if one focuses on developing a collection for single class, then most of those missing Legendary and Epic cards become unnecessary to collect.

Anyways, if I had a friend that was completely new to HS, who wanted to play Standard, the above F2P approach is what I would recommend to them. :sunglasses:

EDIT: fixed a data mix up between accounts.

2 Likes
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this game is a time-stealing scam, there is no f2p approach, the AI ​​blizzard will always be able to make you feel that if you don’t spend you don’t win, because it controls everything, every random event, everything that happens, every game. I just lost a game in arena with 7 times in which a strange opponent with a nickname like sjbfiusfbwie made a clean sweep always with the eternal 15/15 that plowed everything, practically impossible with a simple draft. In my opinion blizzard must be stopped, change all the nicknames imitating mine

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Most F2P game models are financially dependent on making players think that if they spend money on the game it will become more fun or it will give them an advantage over players who spend less.

There are multiple F2P approaches that work just fine for HS. I have 3 old Bnet accounts, which were made back when I played WoW (I paid for two or more WoW subscriptions for over a decade), and I play on all three servers on each of those accounts, giving me 9 old HS collections.

For a recent Tavern Brawl, I crafted 5 or more Legendaries on each of those collections. All of these collections had the resources to make the best decks in Standard, but why bother if the mode is currently not that fun to play?

Botting was allowed to do incredible harm to HS. I think the early devs partially turned a blind eye to botting for a long period for various reasons with one reason being that it inflated the number of HS accounts, a metric that looked good to their superiors.

Yes, Arena remains flooded with barcode accounts, which is a big problem for the mode. Arena also suffers from a lot cards that are too broken for the format, but despite these problems, Arena offers more interactive and diverse play experiences than Standard or Wild does.

When Standard sucks, I turn to Arena or BGs for casual fun. Although I have not played BGs since Duos was introduced.

By ramping up the New player rewards and the Returning Player rewards, my casual multiple accounts approach to accumulating resources becomes even more viable, which is one reason that I now have more new accounts while I experiment and document an approach that intentionally lets accounts go dormant for 90 days to capitalize on Returning Player rewards.