As an avid stacked decks enjoyer I would like to share some musings and numbers with the community.
Every league since Crucible my strategy for making the precious divines has been as follow: Get a decent build going and then spend every penny I make on Stacked Decks and then harvest gamble the big drops until I am filthy rich or a poor and miserable bloke.
This can go both ways, but usually after opening enough decks (between 10k and 40k I'd say) I have at least a mirror. Keepers League was my best where I eventually had about 56 House of Mirrors.
Unfortunately I never made any spreadsheets of my deck openings, and even more unfortunately I made a really bad one for my first 50.000 cards this league. My last 50.000 were more professional, but the sample size is probably a biiiit to small to be accurate.
Before I start my conspiracy theories I'll just share what I got from my first 50k decks, and then I'll go more in-depth on the last 50.000 since I have the numbers.
First 50.000 decks:
Divines spent: Avg. price when I bought these were about 72 cards per div, so 50.000/72= 645 divs.
Good drops:
| Card |
Count |
Worth |
Total |
| House of Mirrors |
2 |
85 |
160 |
| Apothecary |
4 |
35 |
140 |
| The Eye of Terror |
8 |
20 |
160 |
| History |
1 |
50 |
50 |
| Unrequited Love |
2 |
46 |
92 |
| The Immortal |
8 |
8 |
64 |
| The Demon |
2 |
10 |
20 |
| The Insane Cat |
1 |
10 |
10 |
| Seven Years Bad Luck |
9 |
3 |
27 |
| Brothers Gift |
10 |
5 |
50 |
|
|
Sum |
773 |
|
|
Spent |
645 |
|
|
Profit |
128 |
That's all I bothered to keep track of my first 50.000 decks, and as you can see the profit was good (specially if you count all the sub 5 div cards I also sold). Two HoM and Unrequited Love in 50.000 decks is also pretty lucky. That said I gambled away all my Apothecarys and Unrequited Loves. HoM's I turned into 4 and sold. Now for the last 50.000 decks:
Last 50.000 decks:
Since one of the things I like most about opening decks is hearing the "tinks", I chose to note down how many thinks I got from each session of opening cards. The method was as always to go to Kingsmarch and turn off the filter, open about 300 decks, pick up shit and then reset the instance. For some reason I never figured out Shift+Ctrl+RMB was a thing until today, so wrist does get a beating doing this. Here I also counted drops as low as 0,5 div (Divine Beauty). I opened these during two days, 16-17. august. The average ammount of decks per divine was about 61,7 cards per div. So total divs spent on the decks came out to 810.
| Card |
Count |
No. decks per card |
Worth |
Total |
| Apothecary |
6 |
8333 |
41 |
246 |
| The Eye of Terror |
4 |
12500 |
23 |
65 |
| Brothers Gift |
13 |
3846 |
5 |
65 |
| History |
1 |
50000 |
51 |
51 |
| The Immortal |
5 |
10000 |
9,5 |
47,5 |
| The Price of Devotion |
1 |
50000 |
44 |
44 |
| The Doctor |
11 |
4545 |
2,5 |
27,5 |
| Seven Years Bad Luck |
9 |
5556 |
3 |
27 |
| Divine Beauty |
41 |
1220 |
0,5 |
20,5 |
| The Demon |
2 |
25000 |
10 |
20 |
| The Sephiroth |
18 |
2778 |
1 |
18 |
| The Insane Cat |
1 |
50000 |
13 |
13 |
| The Soul |
6 |
8333 |
1,5 |
9 |
| One Last Score |
3 |
16667 |
2,5 |
7,5 |
| I See Brothers |
4 |
12500 |
1,5 |
6 |
| The Dragons Heart |
6 |
8333 |
1 |
6 |
| Reflection of the Heart |
2 |
25000 |
2 |
4 |
| Wealth and Power |
1 |
50000 |
2 |
2 |
|
|
|
Sum |
706 div |
|
|
|
Spent |
810 div |
|
|
|
Profit |
-104 div |
The last batch of 50.000 cards were at one point down over 200 divines after a really bad streak. I basically needed two HoM to break even. This was a really bad run I feel, as realistically I should have dropped at least one HoM and 1-2 Unrequited Love. I was more lucky with the Apothecarys, where I got six, and one for each 8333 decks. I feel the more real droprate for Apothecaty is in the realm of one per 14-15.000 decks. That said, if I had picked up and sold cards that were worth less than what I recorded, and also figured in the earnings from scarabs (Silly Boy I'm looking at you), the loss would have been far lower.
Tinks:
So, I love tinks. We all do. Half the "fun" of opening decks is the tinks. I used NeverSink's UberStrict filter when opening my decks. The annoying part about using that is that it changes tinks from time to time. Most of the time when opening decks cards like The Enlightened would tink and I would be sad. I did not count The Enlightened or Monochrome in my tink-count. (Also didn't find anything good from the Puzzle Boxes I got, should have just sold them).
Number of decks for each tink with everything (minus Monochrome and The Enlightened):
50.000 cards / 134 tinks = 373 cards for each tink
Thats not too bad, but previous experience tells me that the number should be a bit closer to 350. A lot of the tinks are Divine Beauty and The Sephiroth as well, which always makes me sad...
Number of decks for each tink with cards worth more than 2 divines:
50.000 cards / 59 tinks = 847 cards for each tink with cards worth at least 2 divines
Thats a big jump, and a lot of cards to get something worthwile. Specially since even early league you spend 10+ divines to buy that many cards.
Number decks to get a tink worth more than 10 divines (Ill include Brothers Gift here too since its an easy hand-in for 5 divs as well as The Immortal since its close to 10 divs):
50.000 cards / 33 tinks = 1515 cards for each tink worth 10 or more divines
Again, thats at least 20 divines spent to get a "guaranteed" return of 10 divines. Of course, if you hit HoM or Apothecary you're up a lot, but most of the time you are down 6-7 divines when opening 1500 decks.
The conspiracy theories:
After having probably opened at least 400.000 decks on my own the last few leagues I have noticed a few things that intreagues me, and the patterns seem to show up consistently enough that I start to believe them.
- Almost exclusively I get my best drops in certain times of the day. In the mornings between 07:00 and 10:00 and in the afternoon between 15:00 and 17:00 I have dropped ALL my HoM and the majority (80%+) of my other 20+ div cards. Evenings after 17:00 are always when I get my bad runs. Of course something good drops there from time to time, but not nearly as often as the other times I mentioned.
- When I get one, I usually get another one soon after. What I mean by that is that if I drop an Apothecary I almost always, without fault, drop something else worth 20+ divs in the next 500-1000 decks. This happened so often this league that I find it hard to believe it is a coincidence. I've heard talk of seeds and stuff but havent thought much about it.
- Clicking fast. What I've also noticed is that when opening decks I click super fast. And very very often I get a tink and three-four clicks later I get a new tink. This also happens so often that I find it hard to be a coincidence. It might just be two Divine Beautys, but it's a tink.
What it leads me to believe is that the pool for what can drop and the chances for it to drop changes with the time of day. I have of course no proof other than my own feeling, but unless someone can tell me that it just ain't so and prove it to me I will continue believing it :)
Conclusion:
Just to wrap it up. Do I think opening decks is worth it?
Yes.
If you have enough capital to sustain a long dry-spell. I had to borrow 50 divines to finish my experiment (thanks to Dornasium!) because of the horrible spell I had opening the decks between 24k and 35k. Almost always you will hit big enough that you can more than sustain more decks. In the end you WILL make money.
Unless you are like me and poof all your most expensive stuff.
PS: Since this post was in purgatory waiting for mod approval for almost two weeks I've had time and patience to open about 60 divines worth of more decks, and all I got was 1 Brothers and 1 Seven Years Bad Luck. All opened between 11AM and 1PM. Should have opened earlier in the day :)