Whether you’re enjoying the ambiance of an interactive board, immersing yourself in the charmingly composed music, or jumping right into the thick of deck-building, there’s a little something for everyone in the world of Hearthstone. A few of our goals include making your Hearthstone experience fun, streamlined, engaging, and immersive, whether you’re a new player or a card game veteran.  One of the ways in which we’re streamlining your gameplay experience is through our easy-to-use Crafting system.

What is Crafting in Hearthstone?

Our crafting system will allow you to take the cards you don’t want and turn them into cards you do want—quickly and easily. 

Why can’t I just trade my cards with my friends to get the cards I want?

Many card games out there are considered “Trading Card Games,” or TCGs. While there are perks to being able to trade your cards, there are negatives to card games that support trading, even in a digital world. What do you as a player want out of trading cards? Generally, the answer is “To get the cards I want and trade away the cards I don’t!”

What happens when the cards you have are the “wrong” cards—cards other players simply don’t want? What about when everyone wants the same cards?

When a player opens a pack of cards in a typical TCG, they’ll generally find a fixed number of cards of various rarities. Cards of the most numerous rarity in any given pack, or “common” cards, end up having little to no value. Everyone has them and no one wants them.

What about the rare cards? These “more valuable” cards can vary wildly from “MUST HAVE!” to “meh” and anywhere in between. In a trading system, the unimpressive rares end up being only slightly more valuable than common cards, even if they aren’t nearly as common. It’s very common for a dozen or so rare cards from any given set to contain most of the value and the rest are worth very little. People demand those high-end cards, and their value skyrockets. Can’t afford to buy all of the good rares? You better hope you’re lucky when you open your next pack.

So in a trading-based card game, you may finally manage to get a card that is “worth” something . . . but then you want to keep that card and not trade it away. So your only option is to purchase more packs until you get something worth trading, even if you may not actually want to part with it. That’s not particularly fun. On top of that, you may even feel like you can’t play the game competitively without that specific card! It’s very frustrating, and new players are reluctant to become invested in a card game if they can’t manage to get those cards—in trade or for cash.

Crafting allows you to get the cards you’re actually looking for without having to wait for random luck to shine your way, with no need to look for people that have a particular card you want to round out your deck.

Hearthstone allows you to disenchant your Expert cards into Arcane Dust, and you then use the Arcane Dust to create the cards you want, instantly! It’s fast, it’s easy, and you don’t have to reference how valuable your card is on a secondary market each time to want to make a choice to trade it off or not.

The Nitty Gritty

“Expert” cards are cards you acquire through packs, whether you purchase them with Gold or real money. You’ll find a card’s rarity right in the middle, as shown by the little oval gem. A white gem denotes Common cards, blue are Rare, purple are Epic, and orange cards are Legendary.

Cards will disenchant into a quantity of Arcane Dust based on their rarity. Common cards will be worth less Arcane Dust than Epic or Legendary cards. If you want to craft a card for your favorite deck, simply take your accumulated Dust, find the card that you want in your collection, and spend enough to unlock that card! It’ll take a lot more dust to unlock a Legendary card than it does to unlock a Common card, so keep that in mind when you’re on a crafting spree.

Here’s the breakdown of how much Arcane Dust you get from each card rarity:

• Common (White) Cards – Disenchant for 5 Arcane Dust / Craft a Common card for 40 Arcane Dust
• Rare (Blue) Cards – Disenchant for 20 Arcane Dust / Craft a Rare card for 100 Arcane Dust
• Epic (Purple) Cards – Disenchant for 100 Arcane Dust / Craft an Epic card for 400 Arcane Dust
• Legendary (Orange) Cards – Disenchant for 400 Arcane Dust / Craft a Legendary card for 1600 Arcane Dust

Gold Cards

You can also use Arcane Dust to craft Golden versions of every card in your collection! Golden cards have beautiful alternate frames surrounding them, proudly displaying your accomplishment of acquiring them to you and your opponent. Golden cards also have the added bonus of having animated art to make your epic Hearthstone duels even more epic. Golden cards can also be found in packs, but they are very rare.

Let’s take a look at how much Arcane Dust you’ll need to craft Golden cards!

• Common Golden Cards – Disenchant for 50 Arcane Dust / Craft a Golden Common card for 400 Arcane Dust
• Rare Golden Cards – Disenchant for 100 Arcane Dust / Craft a Golden Rare card for 800 Arcane Dust
• Epic Golden Cards – Disenchant for 400 Arcane Dust / Craft a Golden Epic card for 1600 Arcane Dust
• Legendary Golden Cards – Disenchant for 1600 Arcane Dust / Craft a Legendary Golden card for 3200 Arcane Dust

Keep in mind that these Arcane Dust numbers aren’t final and they may change during the beta.

That’s Hearthstone’s Crafting system in a nutshell: grind your extra cards into precious Arcane Dust and immediately use that Dust to make the cards you want—it’s that easy! We hope you have a ton of fun crafting cards in Hearthstone to make some pretty awesome decks!