Optimising acquisition of dust - new adventure

General Discussion
1

The question I sought to answer was whether I would spend more gold buying all wings of the new adventure or spending the gold on packs instead and the answer turns out to depend upon whether or not I want to have the new legendary Zayle, Shadow Cloak in my collection.

Funnily enough, if I want Zayle, I spend less gold just buying packs than I do buying the new adventure, if my plan is to dust all the other cards obtained either way, since I effectively won’t get any dust from dusting the golden Zayle, as it will all go back into crafting a regular Zayle. In fact I wouldn’t dust it at all as I’d have the golden copy for the same price, but the point is I don’t get any dust profit from the golden Zayle.

If, however, I don’t want Zayle in my collection, I get 1600 dust from dusting it, which results in a higher expected dust profit from buying and completing all wings of the expansion than if I spend the gold on packs and then craft a regular Zayle with some of the dust you acquire from dusting them.

I’m using the figure for average value of dust per pack that someone came up with, which I’m assuming to be true. I remember that it was over 90 dust per pack (in the 90s though), but I use 90. Here are my calculations:

No adventure I get 35 packs giving 35 * 90 = 3150 dust.

With the adventure I get 15 packs = 15 * 90 = 1350 dust + minimum dust from golden pack = 50 * 4 + 100 = 300 dust + dust from golden legendary = 1600 dust = 1350 +300 + 1600 = 3250 dust.

So to sum up, if dust is all you’re interested in and you don’t want Zayle, your expected dust is a bit higher if you buy and complete all 5 wings of the new adventure.

If you want Zayle, your expected dust is significantly higher if you don’t buy the new adventure, but instead spend your gold on packs.

If you’re not sure whether or not you want Zayle, you’d be better off not buying the new adventure, since the expected dust from buying it is only a bit higher if you end up wanting not wanting Zayle and if you want it, it’s significantly lower.

Of course all this only considers dust profit and spending gold optimally. It doesn’t take into account whether or not you want to buy the adventure just as something fun to do in its own right.

EDIT:

Since the first wing is actually free and the Golden Zayle obtained is uncraftable, the calculations above comparing spending gold on the adventure or buying packs need to be adjusted as follows:

No adventure I get 28 packs giving 28 * 90 = 2520 dust.

With the adventure I get 12 packs = 12 * 90 = 1080 dust + minimum dust from golden pack = 300 dust = 1380 dust. I do also get a golden legendary which can’t be dusted, so if I want that legendary, I effectively net another 400 dust, unless the fact that it’s golden is important to me (which it isn’t in my case; if it is, you could argue I net another 1600 dust).

2

Problem with the calculations here is this:

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3

I was thinking the same, that Zayle is uncrafatable.

4

Ah thanks. Didn’t notice that. I’ll have to factor that into my calculations. No time to do this now, but plan to later.

5

If you’re looking at it from a pure dust profit point of view, not buying the expansion and buying packs with the gold instead is, without doubt, the most profitable method…but then the adventure was never meant to be profitable, it’s meant to be fun :slight_smile:

6

I mean the math is simple, 2800 gold for 12 regular + 1 gold pack, so 1600 gold for 1 gold pack, so you need to get 1600 dust from that one pack. So realistic unless you hit a legendary from that one pack it’s terrible pure value wise and even if you hit a legendary it’s about even, simple because the golden legendary would have over written a regular one (or worse) so you’d only be 1200 + the other 4 cards up.

7

Yes, but if you were to use real money, buying the adventure would give you more dust. I believe that the dust value of a golden pack is around 5.535 the dust value of a regular pack, meaning that the adventure gives you 17.535 packs worth of dust, whereas the same amount of money only buys you 15 packs.

Calculation of the golden pack dust value:

I took the now pretty old data from the card_pack_statistics pack of the hearthstone gamepedia to calculate that over their sample size there were

  • 3.5812 commons

  • 1.1424 rares

  • 0.2215 epics

  • 0.0549 legendaries

per pack (evenly distributed, so it’s just an approximation).

Multiplying that with the corresponding dust values doesn’t look like a realistic average (regular: 84.86, golden: 469.73), but I assumed the distribution ratio of the rarities to be correct, which leads me to believe that 1 golden pack has (469.73/84.86) = 5.535 times the value of a regular pack.

So a regular dust average of 90 would lead to a golden pack being worth 498 dust. A regular average of 100 would lead to 553 and so on.

8

Well of course, but I thought we were talking about is it more profitable dust-wise to spend gold on packs or spend gold on the adventure.

With this data being so old my guess would be that it’s highly inaccurate and doesn’t take bad luck protection into account. Given that the average amount of packs required to get a legendary is approximately 20, if you were to buy 28 packs instead of the adventure there would be decent odds that you would get a legendary, raising the dust potential even higher of just buying packs. The golden pack from the adventure would…probably 98% of the time…result in the standard 4 commons and a rare as most people don’t buy classic packs any more so very little bad luck potential would be there for most. The golden Zayle you receive is also uncraftable and, therefore, un-dustable and can’t be factored into the dust profit from the adventure. With those 2 things taken into consideration, what you are basically left with is the dust of 15 packs vs the dust of 28…ergo…not buying the adventure with gold and buying packs instead easily results in more dust value :slight_smile:

9

I can craft Zayle, so did I hack Hearthstone?
I have not bought the adventure.

10

Crafting the regular one is in fact possible. But the golden variant that you get from purchasing the adventure isn’t able to be disenchanted.

One has to wonder if you could actually craft the golden version though…

11

As BrotherRoga correctly states, I was referring to the golden version you are rewarded from the adventure

No…you can’t

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12

What you say is correct, but just to clarify, I wasn’t commenting on what the adventure was or wasn’t meant to be. I was just taking a look at it in the context of gold optimisation as I mentioned in my OP:

The conclusion is that buying packs is the way to optimise gold, rather than buying the expansion, if this is all one is interested in.

13

Ah, my apologies, I got the impression you were asking the question, not drawing the conclusion…my mistake :slight_smile:

14

I didn’t factor in Zayle. I also said that I agree that the packs are better value if you use gold.

I was only talking about the scenario that uses real money. And there I constructed an average pack value and there the golden pack only differs from the regular pack in dust value, not in content.

Of course this construction won’t happen to a single person in reality. It was meant as a 'what can the whole population expect on average". and again, it was meant as a comparison of the real money scenario. and there the 1 gold pack just needs to have the dust value of 3 regular packs to break even. on average.

edit: I assumed the golden pack would be from rise of shadows. if it’s a classic, and I believe you of course :wink: , then yea, it’s worth less. I should read the words more carefully, not just the numbers :smiley:

15

I believe it’s a classic pack…I may be wrong, but I’m 90% certain. To be honest it seems I’ve misunderstood the entire intent of the post at the start anyway so I’ve just been waffling on for no real reason :joy::joy::joy:

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16

The golden pack is indeed Classic. However the expected values presented by khisana account for pity timer, so, on average, that is what we should expect to get.

Keep in mind that when talking average or expected values, other considerations like how many packs for pity timer, etc, are irrelevant. If we want to understand what is the value of things like these, those considerations shouldn’t accounted for because: 1. some are already included and; 2. the ones that aren’t don’t change the actual expected value and are specific.

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17

Averages are a good tool for determining things in a lot of cases, but in one off occurrences such as opening a golden pack, averages kind become a little bit redundant. Averages of pack openings are worked out over large sample pools and are only really relevant to opening multiple packs.

Think of it like this (and this is just made up numbers for hypothetical purposes): If you open 100 packs…50 of those packs contain your standard 4 commons and 1 Rare, 30 of the remining 50 contain 3 commons and 2 Rares, 25 of the remaining 30 contain 3 commons, 1 rare and 1 epic, and the remaining 5 contain 4 commons and a legendary.

Now you could argue you have a 5% chance to get a legendary because 5 out of 100 packs contained one. But realistically, when you open a single individual pack, what you really have is a 50% chance to get a pack that contains the basic 5 commons and 1 rare.

Obviously I haven’t take pity timer into account for this example to keep it simpler

18

I agree that the average dust value is beyond useless if one wants to know what he will get.

But I think that they are very useful when it comes to judging which decision is best. and if you opt for that purchase that has the higher dust value on average, you have made the better decision. it might end up with the worse result, but I think being results-oriented is the wrong thing to do if you’re thinking long-term (multiple purchases in this case).

about the golden pack (ignoring that it’s from the classic set): it’s not a one-of occurrence in my opinion because it is a pack like all the others, just that the cards are golden. your odds of getting a certain rarity aren’t different. but yea, the variance sky-rockets here :smiley:

still I maintain that buying the golden pack is like a lottery ticket that’s worth X dust for Y gold. if the X-Y-ratio is favorable to you, you should buy it and ignore the result.

19

Yeah, definitely, it’s a decent tool for a comparison where you’re opening multiple packs. Where the golden pack is concerned though, as I mentioned above, averages become all but useless in such one off pack openings because you are not in a scenario where averages become relevant, instead you’re in a scenario where you are likely to get the most common result. It needs to be looked at like an independent event like rolling a dice once.

The odd of getting a 6 in a single roll are one in 6. if there were 3 6’s on a 6 sided dice it would be 3/6 and as such that is your most likely result for a one off roll. As 4 commons and 1 rare is the most likely result from any given pack opening that must be considered to be what you are likely to get from a single pack opening

20

I tend to agree, but not quite :wink:

Say I have a lottery ticket that pays out 100€ on average. the most common result is that I win nothing. the ticket isn’t worth 0€ though. ok, being worth something isn’t a property of the thing, but a result of a person’s appreciation for the thing (which I find to be pretty applicable here). so for a highly risk-averse person, it might be worth 10€ or 20€ and for the bold daredevil it might be worth 150€ because he likes the thrill.

so it’s all subjective, but there is one constant though, which is the average. It’s the same for everyone and after rolling the numbers, the lottery ticket owner can see if his gamble paid off, how far away from expectation he was and how much his ticket was worth in hindsight.

I feel like I’m rambling on while watering down what I’m trying to say, so I rather just quit while I’m ahead. or quit before I’m even further behind :smiley:

I’m sorry, today just isn’t my day for deep thoughts I fear…