Crafting

Crafting mode

The crafting system is an element of Hearthstone that allows players to directly create new cards. It can be accessed through the My Collection screen.

Crafting consumes Arcane Dust to produce new cards, while disenchanting allows players to destroy unwanted cards, granting a quantity of Arcane Dust in exchange. Crafting is the quickest and most direct way of obtaining a specific card, provided you have sufficient Dust.

The amount of Arcane Dust required for crafting, and granted by disenchanting, is determined by the card's rarity. Golden cards also cost several times more Dust to craft, and reward several times more for disenchanting.

Craftable cards

Not all cards can be crafted. Which cards can be crafted is largely determined by card set, and in some cases differs by regular or golden version. Cards which cannot be crafted are marked in the collection as "uncraftable".

• All cards from the Classic set can be crafted
• All cards from expansion card sets can be crafted, e.g., Goblins vs Gnomes, The Grand Tournament
• Golden cards from adventure card sets can be crafted once the regular versions have been obtained, e.g., Naxxramas, The League of Explorers
• Non-golden cards from the Promotion set can be crafted
• All other cards cannot be crafted, including all Basic and Reward cards

Use

Viewing an uncollected card

The combination of disenchanting and crafting allows players to convert unwanted cards into more desirable options. However, crafting any card costs between four and eight times more Dust than would be rewarded for disenchanting the same card, making the process extremely inefficient. Nonetheless this can be a very effective way of obtaining rarer cards, and may be a desirable option when disenchanting unwanted cards.

Since players can only have 2 of any card in a deck (and only 1 of each legendary card), disenchanting duplicate cards above this limit may be considered to have no true cost to the player. The 'Mass Disenchant' option allows players to automatically disenchant all duplicate cards in their collection with one click.

The only limitation to crafting lies in the required amount of Arcane Dust. While it is not possible to purchase Dust directly, all cards obtained through card packs can be disenchanted. Dust can also be obtained as a reward in the Arena and from the Ranked Chest at the end of each season. The player's current supply of Arcane Dust can be viewed in the My Collection screen.

Players can craft through entering the Collection and clicking the Crafting button. Any card on display can be clicked to view its crafting cost, and if the player has sufficient Dust, clicking on the Create button will craft it. Minion cards will play their summon quote when crafted.

After crafting a card, the player can choose to immediately undo the crafting, which will destroy the card and refund the full amount of Dust. However, once the crafting interface for that particular card is left (not Crafting mode in general), the player will not be able to undo the crafting of that card.

Players who already have 2 copies of a card (1 copy of a legendary card) will be unable to craft additional copies. This limit applies separately to the golden and non-golden versions of each card.

Crafting and disenchanting

Each card has fixed crafting and disenchanting costs, based on rarity and regular/golden status. Other factors, such as card set, do not affect cost.

Rarity	Crafting		Disenchanting
	Cost	Golden	Reward	Golden
Common (White)	40	400	5	50
Rare (Blue)	100	800	20	100
Epic (Purple)	400	1600	100	400
Legendary (Orange)	1600	3200	400	1600

Mass Disenchant

The Mass Disenchant interface

While in crafting mode, a large Arcane Dust icon on the bottom right will display the amount of Dust which would be gained by disenchanting all 'duplicate' or 'extra' cards - those of which the player already has the maximum playable number of copies (1 for legendaries, 2 for all other cards).

Clicking on the "Disenchant Extra Cards" icon will open the Mass Disenchant interface. The interface breaks down the number of duplicate cards by rarity, and provides a single Disenchant button which will disenchant all duplicate cards in a single click. NB: Unlike when crafting and disenchanting individual cards, the Mass Disenchant process cannot be undone. However, because only duplicate cards will be disenchanted, this generally has no drawback.

Note that golden and regular cards are considered separate when marking cards as duplicates. For example, a player can have 2 regular copies and 2 golden copies of any non-legendary card without the Mass Disenchant system considering any to be duplicates. This is useful in preventing golden cards from being disenchanted automatically, since players may wish to preserve either golden or regular versions of cards, or both. To specifically disenchant golden or regular versions of a given card (such as disenchanting a golden copy of a card the player already has 2 regular copies of), the player must use the normal disenchanting process. The interface itself only shows the breakdown of duplicate golden cards once the player has at least one duplicate golden card.

Card changes

On occasion a patch will feature card changes, altering a card's text or attributes. If the card is craftable, and the change is not a direct upgrade, that card will then be made disenchantable for its full crafting cost, for a short period, usually two weeks. This is designed to allow players who have spent dust crafting the card to disenchant it at no cost, minimising the disruption caused by such changes to existing cards. After the adjustment period ends, the card's disenchanting reward will be restored to its usual amount.

History

Crafting in action

A freshly crafted card

Hearthstone's crafting system was specifically designed as an alternative to the card trading that occurs with most collectible card games. There are currently no plans to introduce card trading. As explained in official blog Hearthstone Crafting: In Dust We Trust:

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.

Disenchanting an unwanted card

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 [Classic] 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.

Trivia

• Arcane Dust can only be obtained in multiples of 5 through Arena rewards and disenchanting common cards, and in multiples of 10 from other sources. It can only be spent in multiples of 10. For this reason some players dislike gaining amounts of Arcane Dust ending in 5, since the Dust in effect only becomes usable when combined with another 5 Dust from another source. This system also means that it is impossible to have an Arcane Dust value that does not end in a 5 or a 0.

Gallery

The Mass Disenchant interface when there are no golden duplicates

Patch changes

• Patch 3.0.0.9786 (2015-08-18): Crafting a minion card now plays its summoning quote.
• Patch 1.1.0.6024 (2014-07-22): Sounds and graphics that occur when Mass Disenchanting now take less time to complete.
• Patch 1.0.0.4944 (Open beta, 2014-03-11): Mass disenchanting now has new and improved graphics. Now you can mass disenchant in style!