I created an account a few days ago to check out the new player experience. Did a solo adventure for 3 Rise of Shadow packs, got some classic packs from leveling, few hundred gold for various quests and leveling, a free random quest legendary from the latest expansion and 95 dust for disenchanting a common.
After all that, I opened up my packs and got two legendaries. Dark Pharaoh Tekhan from the latest expension and Nat Pagle from classic. Few epics, some rares and a bunch of commons. That’s all.
How am I supposed to compete? Brand new account, leveled up to rank 25 and this is all I have to work with? Are new players really forced to drop a ton of money on a game when all they experience is great loss right out the gate? This game just seems too punishing to new players.
it’s not necessarily great loss right out the gate, but you have to be disciplined in learning the cards and going up against meta decks, since that seems to be the easy solution to get a deck.
To compete, you build towards a budget deck archetype, build it in pieces as you go. You have Tekhan, which can provide a pretty nice boost to a lackey-based Zoolock.
Put in some cards that you open, that otherwise might not (eg: Witchwood Imp, Blood Witch) and play through the Ranks 20-15. A bunch of the people piloting meta decks at low ranks make dumb mistakes and it’s your opportunity to punish them. To go further, figure out what to craft to improve the deck, but theoretically the decklist shouldn’t have to be optimised to reach Rank 10. Then, reaching Rank 5, you have a pretty nice deck built up, get the dust rewards every month, and build toward the next deck.
It’s by no means an easy route, but playing with suboptimal cards makes you a better player in terms of being able to play well in general.
Now for getting lots of different decks for variety, well that takes a very long time and money helps speed that process, but not quite as much as you might think.
I guess most people don’t follow that and disenchant their collection to craft a full deck, only to not learn how to play it and still complain that they put all their eggs in one basket.
The learning curve would be better if they gave us updated starter decks so we wouldn’t have to “waste” dust on commons/rares and instead use it on epics/legendaries. Because trying to figure it out by yourself through research is not something many casual players would feel like doing.
A YouTube series I made attempts to go through the new player F2P experience, and overall winrate was fine (50%), but that’s with my knowledge of the game and sticking to certain classes.
Thanks for the explanation, but it seems that’s a long term thing. What am I supposed to do right now? I mean yeah, I got the cards make simple decks, but they can’t compete. Am I supposed to just lose over and over while I wait for a new quest each day that I might be able to complete for the gold? Buy 1 pack every 2 days? Where is the encouragement to even play when it’s so punishing to new players?
What I did when I was new, was I would watch top streamers and YouTubers to learn general concepts of the game. Playing around certain cards that your opponent has, playing things in the right order. Of course, most of them have expensive decklists so you cannot just copy what cards they have. I would search up websites with user-submitted decklists like Hearthpwn and outof.cards and there’d be budget versions of decks I could look into.
I would play my own Mage deck the most, learning the Classic cards, and add in expansion cards as I go. Mostly an aggressive burn strategy to finish games, because your opponent will eventually outvalue you.
Then with how many powerful commons and rares there are in the past 2 expansions you should be able to build into a budget deck after 2-4 weeks (without just disenchanting all your cards). If competing is so important to you I would go with this.
He gives you 18 premade decks that all have pretty good cards.
You just won’t be able to edit the decks or choose which one you play (it’s random), so it doesn’t help your overall collection but will give you decks to play.
So you are less than a week in and want to compete with players who are 3 years in.
And you can’t wonder why.
Gee.
I knew the instant gratification of 2019 was bad, but this is legendary level of “gimme gimme”.
You think this is bad? Try playing Hex. There is no free option. I dropped 30 bucks on the game because I like how it plays. But the only free tournamant you can enter you are facing up against legendary decks right from day 1 and it doesn’t ease up on you.
So you just lose and lose, and only gain new resources when you win.
Or spend money. That’s it.
At least with hearthstone, you are rewarded for the long grind.
Are you going to die within this month? Likely not. so a little bit of hearthstone here and there and going for quests. Bam free packs. And you never know what you will get. You have to keep at it, and you can’t expect to be at strong as 3 year players in your first week. That is just not realistic.
Getting to 25 is a fast easy grind. Getting much higher, I agree with the others. Choose a deck and just keep working it. I’m a few months in and still struggle. But what am I supposed to do when my opponent is playing a legendary every dam turn when I don’t even have 1 in my deck?
Win some lose some. Get knowledge on how to play when you lose. Gain knowledge and gold when you win.
Go ahead and jump into yugioh, YGOpro 2 is free to play. You will get slammed every day. Because you do not yet know what the hell you are doing. At least here, I win some, lose some. When opponent has a far more powerful deck than I do, there is just nothing I can do against it. But I don’t cry. I look for what my deck is missing so I can adapt and grow. You’ve heard of growing right?
I am seeing new cards and strategies often and I’m not discouraged by it.
What game doesn’t have a learning curve? how old are you, 14? Welcome to gaming.
The solo adventures are straight up unbalanced and unfair. That I have found out through play and reading. Don’t waste time on that.
But what I had to do was grind some tavern.
You can get 1 free pack a week from getting a win in tavern, that’s something.
You’ve got a daily quest to throw you half a pack worth in gold.
And while your best deck is still too strong to get wins in casual or ranked. Play and grind tavern.
Tavern games are at least balanced as you are both playing with no more advantage than the other player. It’s even footing and you have a chacne to win based on your skill. Getting wins in here for gold and packs will eventually open up new cards to improve your deck.
I’m in for the slow grind and not complaining. I don’t think blizzard is going to delete the game any time soon. And I have time out of game to put into researching deck builds that I may want to replicate a component of. It’s great we can take dust to form new cards we need. Trick is, knowing what you need to make. AGain that learning curve.
How old is this game? Your a week in, calm down kiddo.