I only have 1 copy of Secure the Deck (an epic in Descent of Dragons) but have started receiving duplicate copies of epics that I already own both of from Descent packs.
What I think must be the culprit is that in the past I upgraded my single Secure the Deck to golden. I suspect that even though upgrading to golden is a single action, it might be implemented behind the scenes as two actions: disenchanting the non-golden then crafting the golden. If you did these two steps separately manually, I understand that it would count as you essentially having gotten two copies (the first that you naturally obtained and the second that you crafted) and thus somewhat make sense that you will no longer be guaranteed another copy from duplicate protection. However, it doesn’t at all seem like the right behavior for upgrading a single copy as I never technically “got” a second copy. I unfortunately wasted lots of packs expecting to eventually get the second copy
Normal and Golden versions are not counted as the same cards for dup protection. You can get a legendary reg and get a golden version of it right after it, it wont offer a reroll protection. Thats my understanding of why I sometimes get golden ones of legendaries I already have.
probabily what you write is true , they implemented it in multi steps , disenchant old card , refund dust , craft the new golden one , but this shadow disenchant breaks the duplicate protection.
Honestly I don’t upgrade/ craft any legendaries until I’ve already opened all the packs I want to open. If I get some other golden legendary, maybe it’s one I want, but if not I can just dust it and upgrade one that I do want.
But yes they are considered separate copies just like any other golden card in your collection
A couple people seem to have misunderstood me. I’m not talking about owning both one non-Golden and one Golden of an epic. I have only ever owned 1 copy of Secure the Deck, and happened to upgrade that 1 single copy to golden.
I think you hit the nail on the head here with this explanation.
I also agree with you that this is not what one might expect to happen.
No, this is not correct. Duplicate protection is “colour blind”. Here is how the officially announced duplicate protection works.
If you are opening a Descent of Dragons pack, and the game has rolled an Epic rarity card for you (regardless of quality, so either Regular Epic or Golden Epic), then it will look at DoD epics that you so far have only obtained zero or one times (regardless of quality, and regardless of whether you still own those copies), and randomly selects one from that list. Only if you have already obtained at least two copies (again, regardless of quality) of each DoD Epic, then the “duplicate protection” list would be empty; at this point it simply selects one of the DoD Epics at random.
However, I do personally believe that there is also an extra level of protection that only comes into play when you find a golden (or better?) quality. So let’s say you open a Lich King pack, and the game rolls that one of the cards will be a Golden Common. The official duplicate protection obviously applies. But there are only 69 Common cards in the Lich King expansion. 15 of which are in the Return to Naxxramas mini-set, which I’ll assume you bought, so you have two copies of each. That leaves 56 to be found in packs. With on average about 3.6 Common cards per pack, this means that you’ll have two of each after 16 packs. We’ll assume you opened more, so the documented duplicate protection does not apply.
But I do believe that in this case there is still a next phase of duplicate protection, and this (undocumented) second stage does look at qualities. So now it only looks at Golden Common cards from Lich King that you have already obtained 2 of, and rules them out, then generates one from the remaining list.
While I have no hard evidence for this, I do have empirical evidence. For each of the past expansions since Barrens, I found at least 10 Golden Common cards (except Sunken City, where I had only 8). For two it were even 16 Golden Commons. And in all that time, I have not once found a third Golden Common. With this number of Golden Commons found, that is possible given full random generation - but it would also be statistically quite improbable. So I believe that this is intentional.
In other words: First the official duplicate protection looks at what cards of the same rarity and expansion you own or owned, regardless of quality. But if you already own or owned all of them, then it has a second stage where it looks at what cards of the same rarity and expansion you own or owned of the same quality.
Im getting lost in all that overly complicated explanation. Your other words version is still too wordy and layered. (sorry, Im just not getting it) Try to say it in even simpler, shorter way? best example I can think of for how to translate what you think makes perfect sense but I am not getting it, is to think how that would be written for a sign made by the Government. the least number of words possible, arrows, x’s, etc. I can read and understand english fine most the time, but this is not one of those times I can wrap my head around what you are saying about the way duplicate protection works.
Rule number 1: Duplicate protection does not care about “quality” (regular, golden, signature or diamond). So if you have 1 regular and one golden Coroner, the game simply counts that as “2 Coroners”. And this means that any future Rare card from March of the Lich King will NOT be a Coroner, until you have 2 copies of all Lich King Rare cards.
Rule number 2: Only when rule 1 no longer works (because you have 2 of all Lich King Rare cards), then it DOES start to look at quality. So now, when you open a regular Lich King rare, it will give you a Coroner, because you only have 1 regular Coroner, while you already have 2 regular Banshee, Vampiric Blood, etc. And if you find a golden Lich King rare, it can also be that missing second golden Banshee (but not a third).
Do you mean legendary? Because I constantly get the same rares over and over from the same sets and I know I dont own all the rares of it already. I think Ive gotten the Holy Maki Roll rare at least a dozen times or more and I am still missing a few of the rares in the neutrals of Sunken City. So Im not following how the protection is allowing me to get that Maki roll rare so many times and not letting me finish up the set.
Interestingly, these are exactly the three rare cards in the Sunken City expansion that were given for free (in golden quality) upon reaching certain levels of the Sunken City Rewards Track. Did you perhaps click yes when the game offered to reroll the regular version upon gaining the golden one? Or did you manually disencchant them because you had a golden version already?
