Well, this is it. The Darkmoon Races mini-set will launch on January 21st to bring 35 new cards to the game and a new balance to the meta. All the cards in the mini-set will be added to Madness at the Darkmoon Faire packs and can be crafted individually, and there is also a time-limited bundle to get a full playset of the mini-set cards (one copy of each Legendary card, two copies of all the others) for $14.99 or 2000 Gold.
The bundle looks like a great deal compared to the previous adventure pricing of $19.99 or 2800 Gold, although that did include a single-player campaign in addition to the cards. However, as there are the options of crafting the mini-set or acquiring it from Madness at the Darkmoon Faire packs, what is the best way to get the new cards? In this article, I will take a deep dive into the economics of the new mini-set.
What Is Included in the Mini-Set?
The rarity distribution of the mini-set is slightly different from the previous adventures. There are 16 Common cards, 14 Rare cards, 1 Epic card, and 4 Legendary cards in the set. That’s 35 unique cards, and the bundle, therefore, contains 66 cards, as there are two copies of all the non-Legendary cards in it.
Compared to Galakrond’s Awakening, which also included 35 unique cards, there are fewer Epic cards and more Rare and Common cards in the set. This lowers the overall dust value of the set, increases the number of packs needed to acquire all the Common and Rare cards, and decreases the number of packs needed to acquire the full set while adding more variance.
The overall dust cost of crafting the full mini-set is 11,280 dust (6400 for Legendary cards, 800 for Epic cards, 2800 for Rare cards, and 1280 for Common cards), while the dust value of disenchanting the full mini-set is 2520 dust (1600 from Legendary cards, 200 from Epic cards, 560 from Rare cards, and 160 from Common cards).
Getting the Mini-Set From Card Packs
If you have been saving Madness at the Darkmoon Faire card packs for the mini-set, you will need an average of 50 packs to open the full mini-set, assuming an otherwise full Madness at the Darkmoon Faire collection and dusting any duplicates to craft the final Legendary card.
However, the low number of Epic cards and the relatively high number of Legendary cards add a lot of variance to acquiring the full set from packs: you will get everything else fairly quickly, and the moment you open your third Legendary card dictates when you will get the full set. It can happen with as few as 40 packs, or it might take more than 60 packs to get there. The later you get your third Legendary card, the more excess dust you will have after crafting the fourth Legendary from the mini-set. If there had been more Epic cards in the set, the overall cost would have been higher, but there would have been less variance: for example, with the rarity distribution of Galakrond’s Awakening, acquiring the full set would have taken around 70 packs.
From a pure pack-opening perspective, here are the numbers of packs you need to open on average to get playsets of different rarities:
- All four Legendary cards: 72.7 packs
- Two copies of the single Epic card: 9.0 packs
- 28 copies of Rare cards: 24.5 packs
- 32 copies of Common cards: 8.9 packs
Therefore, if you do not care about the Legendary cards, you can get everything else with around 25 packs. Note that buying the full mini-set bundle for 2000 Gold is cheaper than buying 25 packs!
Buying the Mini-Set Bundle With Gold
At 2000 Gold, the mini-set bundle is attractively priced for a free-to-play player. It costs the same as 20 packs, whereas opening the mini-set from packs would take an average of 50 packs. With 20 packs, you would not even get all the Rare cards from the mini-set!
The low number of Epic cards in the mini-set makes the set slightly less attractive from a pure dust perspective: if you dust everything, a card pack is worth roughly 100 dust, and the full mini-set is worth 2520 dust. This is still a favorable comparison though, as it is worth 25 packs of dust.
Buying the Mini-Set Bundle With Real Money
At $14.99, the real money pricing of the mini-set is even more attractive than its Gold price. Even in good bundle deals, you can only get around 15 packs for that money, and far fewer with regular pricing. Now, that $14.99 gets you between 25 packs (pure dust value) and 50 packs (card value) worth of content. This is one of the best Hearthstone bundle deals of all time.
Crafting the Mini-Set
You also have the option to craft individual cards from the mini-set according to your needs. However, it takes 11,280 dust to craft them all, and that is 112.8 packs worth of dust, so this path should be pursued only if you are interested in a small number of cards. Even crafting a single Legendary is close to the cost of simply buying the full mini-set with Gold.
What Is the Best Way to Get the Darkmoon Races Mini-Set?
The best way to get the mini-set depends on your overall spending plan for Hearthstone. The game is expensive enough that you should plan your purchases to get the most out of them.
If you have been saving your card packs for the mini-set, you may have enough to get what you want. With around 25 packs, you will get everything except for the Legendary cards, and with around 50 packs, you can get the full set, although there is considerable variance depending on your Legendary luck.
You should not buy packs specifically for the mini-set, because the Gold bundle deal is better than buying packs: you can get the full set cheaper than getting all the Rare cards.
Both the Gold bundle and the real money bundle are some of the best deals in the history of Hearthstone. Which one you should go for depends on your plans for the next expansion: will you rather have 2000 Gold for some more packs from the next expansion and are you planning to pre-order it. For example, I am currently considering getting the big pre-order bundle for the next expansion and buying Darkmoon Races with real money, which should leave me with enough Gold to add to the pre-order to get everything I want from the next expansion immediately.
If you are not planning to pre-order the next expansion but are willing to spend some money on Hearthstone, buying the mini-set is the most cost-efficient way to spend money on the game right now.
Does anyone know how long the 2000 gold option will last?
One thing I’d like to note: With buying actual packs, there’s the slight chance to open golden copies of the new cards. You (obviously) don’t get those when purchasing the bundle.
“Note that buying the full mini-set bundle for 2000 Gold is cheaper than buying 25 packs!”
That’s a fair point, but I already have 29 Darkmoon packs hoarded and ready to be opened.
With that I’m basically guaranteed to get all the cards except the Legendaries.
If I do buy the miniset with gold, all the packs will have nothing but duplicates which kinda feels like a waste.
So it all comes down to how good these Legendaries will be, and how many decks they will go into.
I know it’s impossible to exactly predict how much play they might see, but honestly? Just from looking at them, they all seem kinda shitty.
I’ll wait a week to see, but I’m almost certain I’m not buying it with gold just for those legendaries.
The only other benefit I can see is the access to Duels treasures and hero powers, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason unless you enjoy playing it.
Well, even if the legendary are bad, buy with gold, precludes you to find them, so there is more chance to find more usefull legendary of the “basic” darkmoon set (if not already all in your possession)
Tricky one for me, I have 15 packs saved up and whilst I think several of the rares and commons are great, I’m really not sure how good the legendaries ‘s are. If the 4 legendaries were better or there were more epics it’s an easy 2000 gold (and I probably still will do that deal), but it’s not quite as straight forward a decision as I thought it would be a few days ago.
Yeah, with 15 packs you’re basically in the middle between “it’s worth to spend 2k” and “you should open the packs you’ve saved”, so it’s tough.
You can always wait a few days and see whether the new Legendaries end up seeing play. If not, then it might be worth it to just open your packs to get all Commons, most of the Rares, and maybe craft a couple of Rares that end up seeing play and you’re missing.
Note that you’ll get more packs and rares with the end of the month rewards if you climb high enough.
So even with 15 it might be enough if you add those extras in. Unless you’re still missing a lot of other rares from previous sets.
I guess it doesn’t matter (assuming you have all the rares and epics from the Darkmoon faire set), because if you open those packs – of course you will get the new cards, but if you THEN buy the 2000 gold whole new mini – expansion, you will get duplicates of these cards, which you may dust. If you don’t open them now and wait, till you get the set for 2000 gold, you will get duplicates of the old (or new) cards – which is again just dust, so in the end I think you can open the packs right now, for the ability to play with commons and some rares from the new set, untill you spare enough gold to buy whole set. 🙂
And if you considering not buying the whole set for 2k at all, it could be huge mistake because even if you dust all the cards including legendaries, it is so much dust, that it’s totally more worth than 2000 gold. 😉
easy $15