*Getting Started: Gold Farming/Deck Building*

[Jeromy]

The below method can be used by current players looking to start an alt, but this is primarily a way for new players to get a strong foothold in the game, even if they cannot spend money right away.
The Setup: Pick your starting Hero. I prefer the Mage, but any will do. You need to get 100 Shadow Crystals, you have three choices to get them:
Option 1: Level up 4 times with starting deck (Takes 21 wins to get there, sell off 2 cards from deck, buy 2 Fireballs, 2 Lightning Blasts. Reduce deck size to 29+Hero for speed/consistency.
Option 2: Do those free crystals offers until you hit 100 (I'd guess that this would take longer than leveling)
Option 3: Spend the $1.99 for 220 Shadow Crystals (This is what I would recommend if you can afford it. 21 wins with the starter deck took a couple of hours)
Use 100 SC to buy Shadow Elemental Deck. Use Zal or Ele, your choice. I like Ele.
Switch to Ele deck, and remove cards until you have 30 total. **Don't remove Spark, Fire Snake, or Shard of Power** Include Keldor, P.Behemoth, E.Renewal, Sliver of Shadow in your removals. Save deck.
Sell off your starting deck and all of the cards you removed from your new Elemental Deck.
You will have 3500-4000 gold to work with. Buy cards the following cards:
Allies
4x Rotling 400g
4x Hell Steed 400g
4x Flare 400g
2x Fire Snake (You should now have 4) 200g
2x Spark (You should now have 4) 300g
1x Dark Flayer (He is always a sac, feel free to replace him) 100g
Non-Allies
4x Bloodlust (only expensive part of deck) 1,040g
2x Shard of Power (You should now have 4) 200g
Total cost of deck: 3,040 Gold
This is the ultimate gold/xp farming deck against the computer!
Your best opponents will be Zhanna or Eladwen. Lower health hero means 4th turn kill.

Typical Game:
Turn 1: Spark or Rotling/Firesnake
Turn 2: Spark/Flare/HellSteed (Attack for 2-3)
Turn 3: Shard of Power (Attack for 10-13) *Use ability if you played 2nd*
Turn 4: Blood Lust (Attack for 16-19) Dead.

The computer caps at 40g per win, but that is actually a lot for our purposes!
For example: Last week's Meltdown, I played ~70 games, made ~5000g in profit, and ranked 55, so no foil. Each Meltdown game takes 20-30 minutes on average, and you have to pay attention the whole time.
Playing against Comp Zhanna, a 4th turn win takes 2 minutes. 5th turn, just under 3 minutes. Most of this is waiting for the slow AI. I'm not on a timer or required to monitor the board, so I can farm anytime!
If I had invested the same amount of time farming the AI as I had in MD, I would have made over 35,000 gold instead of 5,000! I would be brain dead from that much grinding, but it wouldn't be the first time I had grinded out xp to achieve a goal; I'm sure a few of you out there know where I'm coming from
Aside from that, GL HF, and welcome to SE!

[Jets]

good stuff

[Jeromy]

Thank you! Put a lot of time into it.

[Flamebringer]

I was playing this against different AIs and found Lance is easier to beat if you don't get the right cards quickly - turn 6, maybe, still only a couple minutes (unlucky if that happens, but I seem to be extremely unlucky :P) then Zhanna. I actually lost a match to AI Eldawen when I couldn't damage her enough before turn 4.
It works amazing if it does go right though. I'm also at the point when they're giving 35 gold, so decks might be different

[Jeromy]

Keep at it, your bad streak will end! If you ever have a game where the AI decides to play "for real" and plays a board wipe, just restart, takes too long topdeck it out. GL!

[Fistleaf]

Considering that all new players must start with a human hero, perhaps it would be cheaper to use a human deck for farming. A consistent 5-6 turn victory is probably still good enough.

[Mongoosey]

A nice guide. Might test your optimum deck to earn som gold for my Alt.

[Jeromy]

Considering that all new players must start with a human hero, perhaps it would be cheaper to use a human deck for farming. A consistent 5-6 turn victory is probably still good enough.

I see where you're coming from, but If you are looking to only farm gold, without buying SE, adding 3+ minutes to each 40g won would be a substantial increase in the long run. As turns go on, the AI takes longer and longer to finish. AI turn time for 5 and 6 is nearly double 1-4, check it out sometime

[Flamebringer]

Ah. Now it's working. Dunno, could have been the level I was playing at. Went up one.
Heh, yeah, now I really want to try an elemental deck. Very interesting stuff in them.