Hearthstone pro disenchants cards for over 600k dust

Popular Hearthstone pro and streamer Octavian “Kripparian” Morosan (often referred to as “Kripp”) has been saving his duplicate cards from purchased booster packs since 2014. He had refrained from ‘disenchanting’ them (or trading in his duplicates for in-game currency, called ‘dust’) until this weekend, when he finally hit the ‘disenchant’ button for a return of a whopping 660,620 dust.

Dust is a return currency used in Hearthstone to allow players to turn their duplicate cards into new cards for a diminished return. For reference, Common cards cost 40 dust to craft, Rares cost 100, Epics cost 400, and Legendaries cost 1600; disenchanting cards would only reward players around a quarter of their crafting cost (e.g. disenchanting a Legendary gets you 400 dust). However, if Blizzard chooses to nerf a card that players already owned, those cards can be disenchanted for full value (e.g. disenchanting a nerfed Legendary card will get you 1600 dust).

Kripp’s plan was to save all of his duplicate cards—including any nerfed full-value duplicates—until he had enough dust to craft a comprehensive collection of Golden (or ‘holo’) cards, which cost double the amount of their standard counterparts. However, as expansions began to come out, further increasing Hearthstone’s already robust card library, it became increasingly expensive for Kripp to accumulate enough duplicates for a full Golden collection. With every new rollout of 30 to over 100 new cards, Kripp found himself further and further away from reaching his goal.

The closest I’ve ever been was near the end of GvG—I was about 30,000 [dust] away from hitting the button. The next closest time was right before [Mean Streets of Gadgetzan] came out—I think I was, like, 80,000 from hitting the button. But the last two expansions…I’d be 80k away from hitting the button, I’d spend like $1,500 on packs and then I’d still require 300k left for the button. It’s ridiculous.

As the months passed and expansion after expansion came and went, the story of Kripp’s untouched Disenchant button slowly became something of Twitch and Hearthstone legend. Kripp’s followers eagerly awaited the moment when he would finally press the button, referring to the inevitable event with the reverence of an urban legend.

Finally, this past Friday, Kripp announced on his YouTube channel that, in celebration of hitting 1 million followers on Twitch, he would be pressing the button that night. During the stream, Kripp states that he decided to end the ‘press the button’ campaign because the now constant influx of cards makes it “not really achievable to have a full Golden collection all the time unless you’re literally spending several thousands of dollars every expansion [on packs].” Kripp also references the Hearthstone Arena mode’s recent move from Wild cards (full Hearthstone library) to Standard (only Classic cards and expansions from the last two calendar years), implying that having a full collection of Goldens isn’t as appealing as it once was. With all of this in mind, Kripp hopped on the stream, warmed up with a few Tavern Brawl matches, and then finally hit the button.

The result—at first—was a bit underwhelming.

Usually, upon pressing the Disenchant button, Hearthstone treats players with an exciting flurry of firework-like whizzing and buzzing as cards are magically ‘dusted’ and transport into a little jar of card remains. This time, however, Kripp and the tens of thousands of live Twitch viewers waited in vain as the game refused everyone the firework show they no doubt had been hoping for. Moments later, the game crashed, and Kripp signed back on to find that his 660k dust had indeed been transferred to his little jar. Kripp had stated previously on the stream that he had contacted Blizzard to let them know that he would be attempting the Disenchant, but it would appear that preparing for a disenchant of 660k dust was more than the game could handle.

So the button had been pressed, and Kripp was finally over half a million in dust richer, but his followers had been cheated out of a show. At the time of pressing the button, Kripp had procured 27,458 Common cards, 8,169 Rares, 1,401 Epics, 312 Legendaries, and over a thousand Goldens of various rarities, so viewers were no doubt expecting quite the firework show. To help sate his viewers’ unfulfilled craving for dust flurries, Kripp quickly purchased a booster pack, cracked it open, and promptly disenchanted it for viewing pleasure.

Not quite as satisfying, but certainly a nice gesture.

For those of you still hungering for a more extravagant spectacle, check out this redditor’s “no crash edition” of the momentous occasion.

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