Hearthstone is an ever-evolving game with ever-evolving meta’s and cards. As more expansions file in, rotations regulate how many cards are in the current meta. Though, as expansions retire themselves to Wild, so do our cards. And for those of us who don’t play Wild, we disenchant these cards for arcane dust to make new cards for what’s relevant.
Now, over the expansions, legendaries have… changed, I’ll put it. Class legendaries went from being good cards to necessities with Hero cards and Quests. The issue with Hero cards and Quests is that class will be polarized around those cards for the entire 2 years, even more so with future legendaries and cards for that class as well. These make these legendaries more needed to perform well with that class, making decks more expensive.
Legendaries have also overall become more extremely powerful. Decks that run legendaries are far better off than people who replace those legendaries with other options. Legendaries, every expansion I feel, support more niche archetypes than they have prior. Cards such as Stalagg or Feugen, for example.
You might say older cards did this too, such as Reno, Brann, Thaurissan, and you’re right! But those cards that were quite core to decks were gotten through expansions guaranteed, not packs. Back when a time of buying 7 packs was worse than buying the next wing of an expansion. Now, we don’t have that, all legendaries chained to random luck. As these legendaries get higher in power level, and Hero cards and Quests continue to exist, something must change.
The dusting system needs to be redone. Not massively overhauled, but massively changed in the players’ favor. If anybody is unfamiliar, here is the dust given for the rarity of card dusted and how much you need to craft a certain card.
Disenchantment Values
- Common: 5 arcane dust given. (50 arcane dust for Golden)
- Rare: 20 arcane dust given. (100 arcane dust for Golden)
- Epic: 100 arcane dust given. (400 arcane dust for Golden)
- Legendary: 400 arcane dust given. (1600 arcane dust for Golden)
Crafting Values
- Common: 40 arcane dust needed. (400 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Rare: 100 arcane dust needed. (800 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Epic: 400 arcane dust needed. (1600 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Legendary: 1600 arcane dust needed. (3200 arcane dust for Golden.)
These numbers do not fly anymore. 8 commons needed to make ONE common does not fly. 4 of every other rarity for its corresponding rarity does not fly anymore.
To fix this, cards and dust values must be changed to make more sense. Here’s what I came up with.
New Disenchantment Values
- Common: 25 arcane dust given. (100 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Rare: 50 arcane dust given. (200 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Epic 100 arcane dust given. (400 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Legendary: 400 arcane dust given. (1600 arcane dust for Golden.)
New Crafting Values
- Common: 50 arcane dust needed. (200 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Rare: 100 arcane dust needed. (400 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Epic: 200 arcane dust needed. (800 arcane dust for Golden.)
- Legendary: 800 arcane dust needed. (3200 arcane dust for Golden.)
Credit goes to some cool friends who helped me think about how I should place these values and myself, who spent more time than I’d like on this.
These values are marginally bigger, and I’d love to address any questions or concerns you could see with these values if they were ever implemented. But I feel with these values, you have actual POWER when you buy an expansion’s pre-order, you have POWER in normal pack openings, and would help us greater achieve bigger collection sizes. With these numbers, a collection that’s more full, more meat on its bones isn’t just left to spending thousands anymore. It allows collecting cards you want and need easier, and even gives power back to Golden cards, they are more impactful to get and more impactful to disenchant.
For anybody who’s wondering, you’d need 32 commons for a normal Legendary, and 128 for a Golden Legendary, a far cry from the original 320 and 640 commons needed to get one currently.
This makes getting cards and opening packs more impactful on your collection and dust count as well, the bottom of the barrel pack giving 150 dust. Of course, you’d need to destroy all those cards 6 times to get a Legendary if you needed.
I was even debating whether to include full dust refund for cards going into Wild, but I don’t even think you need that with this new system in place, you can still get a lot out of even free packs, let alone if you continue to buy pre-orders or dust your old cards.
I spent heaps of time on these numbers, lowering them and making them bigger, and I’d like to see any additions to this!
Also, in the collection I’d love to see the full color of normal/Golden cards even if I don’t have them. Looking at it in grey-scale is just boring, and to show the Hero Powers of the Quests/Hero cards.
Big changes to our dust system could be the first steps onto a better place for Hearthstone. What do you think?
