Blizzard’s digital collectible card game, Hearthstone, will soon undergo a significant transformation — its second-ever set rotation. Basically, many cards currently considering legal for the game’s “Standard” format (which is used for almost all tournaments) will no longer be so, forcing players to alter their decks if they want to continue playing in the format. For regulars, that was already enough to deal with, but Blizzard has revealed another surprise — the rotation of powerful, evergreen cards, once considered untouchable.
Along with the normal rotation of the three oldest sets out of Standard — Blackrock Mountain, The Grand Tournament and League of Explorers — Blizzard is taking the opportunity with the “Year of the Mammoth” to remove problematic cards from the game’s (previously) eternal Classic set:
To help meet our goals, certain cards from the Classic set will become exclusive to the Wild format. These cards will be added to the new Hall of Fame set, which will also include cards that are currently in the Reward set.
Which cards exactly? Here’s the list:
- Azure Drake
- Sylvanas Windrunner
- Ragnaros the Firelord
- Power Overwhelming
- Ice Lance
- Conceal
Considering the developer originally stated that Classic cards would always be available in Standard, it’s come up with a generous way to compensate players who may have prioritised crafting these cards over ones from expansions. Normally, when a card is changed, players can disenchant it for its full “dust” cost for a limited time — dust being the currency used to craft cards.
With the Hall of Fame cards, Blizzard will instead just credit this dust to players, without the need to disenchant. There are a couple of caveats:
Up to the maximum number of cards you could put in a deck, we will give you the full dust value of any cards you have that are being added to the Hall of Fame set. (Yes, that means if you have at least one Golden Ragnaros, you’ll get 3200 dust!) The dust will be automatically awarded upon log-in once the Year of the Mammoth begins.
With this in mind, what’s the best way for a player to capitalise on the refund? That depends entirely on what you want to get out of it. For instance, if you own none of the cards, but have the dust available to craft them, then you should definitely go ahead and do it, knowing you’ll get their cost back once Mammoth rolls around.
Things get a little more confusing if you own some combination of the cards, particularly golden ones. Fortunately, a Reddit user with the handle “foofam” has come up with a helpful flowchart to help maximise your dust (or card collection).
If you just want some rules of thumb, here’s foofam’s analysis:
- When it comes to the legendaries, if you only own a regular one it’s better not to craft the golden version. 1600 dust > 400 dust + a prettier (yet the same) version.
- Make your priorities! if you don’t have A LOT of dust, I’d go to craft the legendaries first (if you don’t own them) before upgrading cards to golden versions.
- When it comes to the commons / rare, the upgrade isn’t expensive (giving up a 35 dust profit for common and giving up a 80 dust profit for a rare).
- [It’s not] worth it to craft golden commons just to disenchant them for a 10 dust profit per card. (unless you have A LOT of dust and don’t need it atm).
So there you have. You still have a few months to decide how you want to proceed — the rotation should hit around April — so start saving dust now to get the most from the, uh, mammoth.
A Year of Mammoth Proportions! [Blizzard]
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