Card pack

Card packs are items that players can open to acquire cards for filling a player's collection.

Every expansion has its own type of card pack with unique artwork, and each card pack contains 5 cards from that card set. Each card opened has a chance to be of common, rare, epic or legendary rarity, but each pack is guaranteed to contain at least one card of at least rare rarity. Each card opened also has the chance to be a golden version of that card. The chances for rarities and golden versions are the same for all types of card packs,  and is well-documented in the statistics section below.

Card packs are the most cost-efficient means of obtaining cards. They offer the quickest way of expanding the player's collection for a particular set, but when wishing to obtain a specific card, players will generally find it cheaper and quicker to craft the card instead.

As of Patch 16.0 (Descent of Dragons patch), all card packs, Standard and Wild, are available for purchase in the in-game Shop. However, only Standard card packs are awarded from in-game rewards, such as Ranked rewards and Arena rewards.

Opening a pack
Card packs can be opened by clicking on the "Open Packs" icon from the main menu screen. The number underneath the icon indicates how many unopened card packs you currently possess.

Once the Open Packs screen has been reached, all current unopened packs will be displayed on the left-hand side. Drag a pack over to the right-hand section or hit the space bar to open it. Once you open a pack, 5 cards appear face down. This forces you to turn each card individually either by hitting the space bar or clicking each card.

Hovering over a card shows a border depending on the rarity of the card. Hearthstone uses quality colors based on World of Warcraft's gear system.


 * No color means the card is of common rarity
 * A blue glow means the card is of rare rarity
 * A purple glow means the card is of epic rarity
 * An orange glow means the card is of legendary rarity

How to get
Standard format card packs can be obtained in many ways. They can be gained from competing in the Arena, for your first Tavern Brawl win each week, from Ranked rewards, from certain quests, or they can be purchased from the in-game Shop, either for gold or for real money. Standard format card packs can also be purchased from the online shop. Classic card packs can also be obtained as rewards through the Recruit A Friend system.

Wild format card packs are never granted as rewards. However, Wild format card packs can be bought from the in-game Shop. Players who had packs left over when the set moved to Wild format can still open them and receive cards as normal, and players can still obtain Wild format cards through crafting.

Purchasing
The following purchasing options are available. Only the single pack option is available for gold (although players can buy more than one pack at a time); all other options require real money. Players can use any of the payment methods that are also available for buying games and goodies from the Blizzard store.

Some of these prices were subject to changes on March 22, 2017 and may no longer be accurate.


 * * Russian Ruble prices are frequently changing due to unstable exchange rate.
 * ** Only available on PC and Mac.

Note that a discount is offered when buying in bulk. Purchasing 40 packs of cards at once presents a 12-16% discount compared to buying cards in sets of 2. Exact prices and discounts vary by currency.

While no bulk purchase option is presented for gold transactions, players can double-click on the '1 pack' option to instantly order multiple packs by entering a number from 1 to 50. No discount is offered. Players are informed of this option upon entering the shop for the first time with a sufficiently large amount of gold.

Statistics


Various attempts have been made to establish the chances of receiving each rarity of card when opening card packs. Note that all types of card pack have the same chances at rarities and golden cards.

The following numbers combine data from several other studies. Since the numbers provided by each study are relatively similar, this is mostly for the convenience of a single overview of the statistics, as well as improved accuracy in the rarer cases. The original studies can be found in the linked article.

Currently included studies: Steve Marinconz (June 2014), E. R. Kjellgren (August 2014), Amaz (February 2015), HearthSim (August 2015). This produces a total sample size of 27,868 card packs, describing 139,340 cards in total.

In April 2017, in compliance with Chinese law, Blizzard published official probablities of card drops. Though the official announcement applies to the Chinese region only, it is likely that the drop rates are across all regions.

The officially announced drop rates are:
 * RARE - At least 1 rare or better in each pack. (This was already known).
 * EPIC - Average of 1 every 5 packs. (This implies that at least 4% of all cards are epic).
 * LEGENDARY - Average of 1 every 20 packs. (This implies that at least 1% of all cards are legendary).

The reported drop chances are slightly lower than the observed drop rates. This is likely an indication that the announcement drop rates have to be read as "at least 1 epic every 5 packs", and "at least 1 legendary every 20 packs".


 * Golden cards

Golden card data gathered prior to The Grand Tournament show significant differences from that gathered after. For this reason the below information is currently taken solely from the most recent study: HearthSim (August 2015).


 * This yields a disenchantment value of 98.25 Arcane Dust per pack, on average.

The following table describes the likelihood of getting at least 1 golden card in a given pack.

The following table describes the percentage of cards of each rarity which will be golden.

Duplicate protection
Duplicate protection in Hearthstone pack opening refers to the protection given to a player that prevents them from opening a card which the player has acquired more than one copy of (for legendaries) or more than two copies of (for commons, rares, and epics). Duplicate protection arises from the fact that normal game rules prohibit players from using more than one copy of a legendary card, or more than two copies of a common, rare, or epic card, in a typical playing deck. With duplicate protection, players are able to collect cards without having to worry about frequently getting useless duplicate and triplicate cards from card packs. Duplicate protection did not exist as a rule in Hearthstone before August 10th, 2017.

On June 22nd, 2017, Blizzard announced the brand new rule of duplicate protection would be implemented for legendary cards opened from card packs. The announced duplicate protection rule and some additional rule changes to pack opening were officially implemented on August 10th 2017 with the launch of the Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion and were as follows: On March 17th, 2020, Blizzard announced that duplicate protection would be extended to all rarities when opening card packs, meaning that commons, rares, and epics would now be given triplicate protection, in addition to legendaries having duplicate protection. The new triplicate protection rules and some additional rules of card tracking were officially implemented on March 26th 2020, about two weeks prior to the launch of the Ashes of Outland expansion, and were as follows:
 * When you open a Legendary, you are guaranteed to find a Legendary that you do not yet own a (non-golden or golden) copy of, unless you already own all Legendaries of the set.
 * At this time, this meant that if a player owned all Legendaries in a set and disenchanted one of them, they were guaranteed to open the disenchanted Legendary in their next card pack containing a Legendary.
 * A single pack will never contain more than two copies of the same Common, Rare, or Epic card, or more than one copy of the same Legendary card.
 * Within each new set, you are guaranteed to get at least one Legendary within the first ten packs.
 * When a Legendary card is opened, you are still guaranteed to find a Legendary card that you do not yet own a copy of (non-golden and golden inclusive), but now only if you have not yet opened a copy of all Legendary cards in the set.
 * A Legendary card is still guaranteed within the first ten packs of an expansion.
 * When a Common/Rare/Epic card is opened, you are guaranteed to find a card of that rarity that you do not yet own two copies of (non-golden and golden inclusive ), but only if you have not yet opened two copies of all cards of that specific rarity in the set.
 * Additionally, a new rule is that if a player disenchants a card and has yet to open all copies of cards from that rarity, the card that was disenchanted will no longer show up in card packs until all other copies of cards from that rarity in that set have been marked as "collected".
 * For tracking purposes, cards are marked as "collected" whenever a player acquires a card (golden or non-golden) through any means, and cards which are disenchanted still remain marked as being "collected". This means that disenchanted Legendary cards, as well as disenchanted Common/Rare/Epic cards, are not guaranteed to show up in card packs after a player has "collected" all copies of cards of that rarity, but they will continue to show up as normal per the rarity distribution of card packs. Once a card is marked as "collected", it is forever marked as such. Tracking for such disenchanted cards began when the patch went live on March 26.
 * Chadd Nervig also explained on Twitter that, for example, when a player has obtained 2 of all Commons, future Commons will be random but non-goldens will be ones which the player still hasn't gotten non-golden of, and goldens will be ones the player still hasn't gotten golden of. This means that non-golden and golden cards are marked separately, as well as individually, for the purposes of card tracking.
 * Additionally, outside of card pack openings, if players receive single-card rewards from elsewhere in the game, such as from Ranked rewards, these cards will also obey the duplicate protection rules afforded to card pack opening.

Strategy
There are many strategies to opening card packs to maximize their utility, depending on factors such as how much gold a player earns on average per day, if the player is new, etc.

Trivia
The Goblins vs Gnomes card pack and its opening animation was originally designed by Jomaro Kindred, and animated by John Zwicker.

Videos

 * Purchasing card packs (2013-08-15)
 * Opening card packs (2013-08-17)

Patch changes

 * When random card back is selected, you will now see a randomized card back every time you open a pack, as well as every time you open the Crafting menu.
 * Duplicate protection applied to all rarities. (Read details)
 * Wild card packs can now be purchased with in-game gold in the Shop.
 * Knights of the Frozen Throne logo.png Server-side patch (2018-08-10): Duplicate protection applied to Legendary cards.
 * Expert card packs have been renamed to “Classic” card packs.