Gold is the major limiting factor in your advancement
You give away cards until you land in “Donation Cooldown” every day and you still don’t have enough gold for an important upgrade? Let’s look at converting your gems to gold.
Chests are fun because they contain cards, sometimes lots of them. Usually, you get a high number of a few cards. This means that it’s not likely you’ll get the cards that you’re hoping for. However, you may get something that causes you rethink your entire attack strategy around a completely new deck configuration. All of that is fine, but we’re here to talk about GOLD.
Remember, the gold amount in the chest is a random number within a range.
| Chest | Gold | Gem Cost | Gold per Gem |
| Giant | 1,265 – 1,495 | 350 | 3.61 – 4.27 |
| Magical | 460 – 575 | 600 | .77 – .96 |
| Super Magical | 2,760 – 3,450 | 3,100 | .89 – 1.11 |
If you want to convert gems to gold by purchasing a chest, a Giant Chest is your best value by far. But, chests are really only an option if you also want to gamble your gems for cards. If you just want to cash them in for gold you need to look at the other options.
| Gold Package | Gold | Gem Cost | Gold per Gem |
| Pouch | 1,000 | 60 | 16.67 |
| Bucket | 10,000 | 500 | 20 |
| Wagon | 100,000 | 4,500 | 22.22 |
If you can afford to buy a bucket, your payout will be significantly better than buying a pouch. Your payout is a little better if you can afford to buy a wagon… but who can afford to buy a wagon?
There is one other option. I call it “pay as you go” and it’s a little more of a mystery. If you try to purchase something and you don’t have enough gold for it, the game will offer you the option to “Buy missing gold?” Here the numbers are little more difficult to come by, but I can give you some sample data.
| Missing Gold | Gem Cost | Gold per Gem |
| 13 | 1 | 13 |
| 494 | 31 | 16.95 |
| 1013 | 61 | 16.6 |
| 3094 | 162 | 19.1 |
These rates are actually pretty close to the gold packages offered in the shop. You will get that upgrade much cheaper this way since you’re only buying what you need right now. In some cases, the conversion ratio is actually better this way.
Bottom line: check the “pay as you go” price for your purchase before you buy a gold pack in the shop to make sure you’re getting the most value for your gems.
These calculations are based on costs in Arena 5 but you’ll find a similar relationship between the different gold purchasing options in every arena. Thanks to 1sickknave for providing additional “pay as you go” sample data.