I wanted to talk a little bit about the different types of currency in Hearthstone.

All the forms of currency are essentially funneled into getting more cards.

The first currency the game introduces is gold.

Gold is essentially interchangeable with real world money. Both can be used to purchase card packs or arena tickets.

Arena is a game mode similar to gambling. You create a deck and then try to win as many games as you can before you accumulate 3 losses with that deck.

After finishing an arena run, the game awards you a pack and a few other things as seen in the picture above.

Gold and real world currencies can only be used to buy packs for 100 gold ($1.50) each or arena tickets for 150 gold ($1.99) each.

Each pack contains 5 cards. Cards come in 4 degrees of rarity, common, rare, epic, and legendary.

The average pack has 4 commons and 1 rare. The card won from the arena run pictured above is a common card.

Unlike other CCGs there is no way to trade your cards with other players in Hearthstone.

Instead, cards must be traded with the computer at a bad exchange rate.

Card exchange is mediated through the dust currency I mentioned earlier.

The exchange rate is pretty bad as shown in this table. It takes 8 dusted common cards to get 1 common card that you want. 5 rares to make 1 rare. 4 epics or legendaries to make another epic or legendary.

Rarity	Crafting Cost	Disenchanting Refund
Common (White)	40	5
Rare (Blue)	100	20
Epic (Purple)	400	100
Legendary (Orange)	1600	400

A pack is worth 100 gold and that sets up the exchange rate for other things in the game. The value of an arena run is always compared to what you would get if the 150 gold cost for the arena run had been spent on a pack instead.At one point I wondered what the exchange rate between dust and gold should be.

So an average 100 gold pack gets you 4 commons and 1 rare. The above table shows that the average pack is worth 40 dust.

I’d say that number is slightly higher as occasionally more rares show up and epics and legendaries can pop up as well.

I’d estimate the value of a pack to be at 50 dust. So the exchange rate is 1 dust = 2 gold.

So if you’re new to playing and are disappointed when an arena run give dust instead of gold like I was, don’t be that way.

Dust is a good thing! At least in Hearthstone.

-Mister Ed