Unless you have enough disposable income to drop $1000 on Hearthstone card packs, you probably want to spend your in-game gold or real-life money as efficiently as possible to get the most (and best) cards for the lowest cost. Here are a few tips on how to get the biggest bang for your buck in Hearthstone.

Adventures

Generally, the best money-to-card ratio comes from Hearthstone’s single-player Adventures, of which there are currently three (in order of release): Curse of Naxxramas, Blackrock Mountain, and The League of Explorers. Each Adventure offers a number of powerful cards that cannot be obtained any other way, and several are cornerstone’s of some of the most popular decks in the Hearthstone meta.

In the current meta, you will continuously run into cards like Sludge Belchers (Naxxramas) or Emperor Thaurissan (Blackrock Mountain), both of which fit into numerous types of decks. In fact, according to Hearthstone deck building and statistics site Hearthpwn, roughly a third of all decks use Sludge Belchers.

The Adventures also include more situational cards that are important for specific types of decks, such as the once feared Grim Patron, which was an essential component to the Grim Patron Warrior deck that dominated the Hearthstone meta until it was nerfed late last year.

Basically, if you plan on spending any actual cash on Hearthstone, buying an Adventure ($20-$25) will net you much better cards than spending an equivalent amount on card packs. Spending real money on Adventures will also save you a lot of time, as it can take up to a week of consistently playing to earn enough gold to unlock one out of five wings for a single Adventure.

Fully unlocking all three Adventures could take months, during which time you would be staring longingly at them in the Hearthstone menu wishing you already had those cards.

As for which Adventure you should buy first, it is difficult to say. Naxxramas has some of the best general purpose cards like Zombie Chows and Sludge Belchers, but you can’t go wrong with Blackrock Mountain or League of Explorers either.

Card Packs

There are three types of card packs currently available in Hearthstone (in order of release): Classic, Goblins vs Gnomes, and The Grand Tournament. Each card pack contains five cards, one of which is guaranteed to be rare or better, but there is also a small possibility that you can have several rare, epic, or even legendary cards in a single pack.

Early on in your Hearthstone career, it is generally considered best to buy Classic packs first, as they contain numerous important cards that can be used in a wide variety of deck types.

The other card packs also contain numerous important cards, most notably Dr Boom, a legendary card that can be found in Goblins vs Gnomes packs. Dr Boom is widely considered one of the best cards in the game, and he is often jokingly referred to as “Dr Seven” for being an almost obligatory card to play on turn seven during a match.

When spending real money on card packs, the more packs you buy at once the cheaper the per-unit price will be, so it is much better to buy 40 packs at once versus buying two packs 20 times.

So if you plan on consistently spending real money on card packs, you should save up your money and buy a bunch at once rather than buying a few here and there over time.

There are no bulk discounts for buying card packs with gold.

Arena

Arena mode in Hearthstone costs 150 gold to enter, which is 50 gold higher than buying a card pack. You can also enter by paying $1.99 in real money instead, which is just $1 less than buying two card packs.

Playing in Arena guarantees you a card pack, and with each win, you unlock better and better rewards, including additional cards, card packs, gold, and enchanting dust. You can play in Arena until you either lose three times or win 12 times, whichever comes first.

On paper, the Arena can be an incredibly cost efficient way to earn new cards, but this is only assuming that you can consistently win enough to offset the cost of entering. You need to win at least seven matches to be guaranteed enough gold to cover your entrance fee. If you are using real money, you would need to enter the Arena twice ($3.98 total) to be guaranteed the same number of card packs you could buy for $2.99.

For this reason, Arena is not typically recommended for new players, especially since choosing the best cards to draft is difficult when you do not fully understand deck building in the game.

The exception to this rule is the very first time you play in the Arena, which costs nothing. This makes it worth playing through once even if you lose three times in a row, since you will get a free card pack out of it. And who knows, maybe you will luck out and get some bonus rewards for your trouble.

Screenshot by Eric David | SiliconANGLE