In this new era of online gaming, people who can put a lot of money in the game has an advantage and NHL is one of that game. We all played against those team full of legends, trying to grind your way up with your #1 center being Mikko Koivu, and it can be very frustrating. This guide is made to help you make coins and collections so you can have a line-up that can play against great team in division 1. I wanted to update that guide sooner, but HUT changed drastically this year, I need some time/experience to really write something useful. All the information is related to NHL17 but I’ll try to update them as soon as possible when NHL18 will be released, hopefully, the mode won’t change too much and I’ll be able to update it faster. Keep in mind that English is not my mother tongue and it shows, sorry in advance.
STEP 1: CONSIDE BUYING A DELUXE EDITION OF THE GAME
One of my golden rule, and that’s the main reason why I’m creating this guide, is to not invest real money into the game, but the exception might be the edition of the game which gives you interesting bonuses. At this time of the year, you probably already bought the game, but maybe it could help you next year.
Buying the super deluxe edition of the game this year gives you an interesting bonus: 50 HUT Gold Plus Packs (2 per week for 25 weeks). I don’t remember how much more you have to pay (between $20 to $40 if I remember correctly), but it’s worth it.
Everything has value in these packs now, beside maybe the injury cards, but there are still useful even if you won't use them all. You get players you can use/sell, you get team information cards (jersey/logo/coach/arena) that you can either sell or invest into a set and contracts. It's been three years in a row now that I didn't buy any contracts from the game because of those packs and that was one thing I really hated in the past. Compare to the money/coins they ask in game for these packs, it really is a bargain. It also helps you to have a pretty decent team early on in the game.
STEP 2: NEVER BUY PACKS or DON’T COMPLETE SPECIAL SETS
Never. Trust me. Never. I don’t it’s tempting, I did it so often when I was young and naïve… I never got anything that was worth my investment, even in the long road. I know, all those reddit pictures of great pull or those youtube video or even some comments on this board will convince you that you can be lucky too but… you won’t be. Also, most of those youtubers got their pack for free so… yeah, not same reality here.
In the same vein, don’t complete special sets either. I know it’s tempting for some amazing players (96 Roy, 96 Bure, 97 Heatley), but those sets require special collectibles and those collectibles are only available with… special packs. In other words, you have to buy a pack to complete those sets, and a lot of them, because you’re not guarantee to get a special collectible out of those packs. Sure, you can buy those special collectible at the marketplace, but you also have to add some gold and carbon collectibles to acquire those player which is ridiculously expensive when you compare it to hero sets that give you, I remind you, a 94 OV player.
But if you REALLY want to buys packs, please, don't buy them with coins. Coins are so useful to keep you going, if you use 150k for a pack and you don't get much, you're financially stock for few days and time is money.
STEP 3: BE PATIENT
I know, it’s hard, but you have to be patient. This year, EA is flooding the game with special sets, which allows player to get top players fast. Combine to the Heroes you can get on the market or by completing their team’s set, the market is flooded with high quality players.
The result is that now, more than ever, the value of 87 and 88 players dropped significantly, and fast. After 2-3 months, you can acquire some 87 players between 1k to 3k and some 88 players in the range of 20k (the range is wider, it really depends of the player) but it makes them easy to acquire and lining-up those players gives you an edge when it comes to play. If you buy them too early in the cycle of the game, you might spend around 15k too much for a players. In the first month of the game, Kessel was around 37k. Three months later, you can get him for 22k. The key is to save as much money as you can, so this 15k is very valuable for you. It makes it count even more when it comes to complete Hero sets.
In other words, in the first two months, buy basic cards for cheap (common cards and 85-86 rare cards), work the market, play online/offline games, get yourself busy and THEN, buy those big names.
STEP 4: KEEP YOUR SELLING/BUYING SLOTS FULL
You can bid on 25 cards simultaneously and there is no reason to ever go below that amount if the game is running. Every card you bid on represent a potential profit, as small as it could be. Also, use it to build slowly your collections. Same goes when it comes to selling, keep your slots full to maximize profit.
STEP 5: DRAFT CHAMPIONSHIP PLAYERS or LET YOUR TEAM WORK FOR YOU
A new mode is available to you this year, and it’s the Draft Championship. You get to draft players to create a team and play a tournament offline or online. Every time you win a game, you’ll get a Draft Championship (DC) card. Early in the cycle of the game, it’s an interesting mode because it’s fun to play with high quality players early on. You’ll get way better DC teams than your actual team.
But this mode is more interesting for those DC cards. You can complete some sets with those cards. If you get a 100$ of those, you can get a 92 OV Malhotra or Grossman or Emery. In other words, with some work, you can add 3 92 OV players for free. This is very useful to build a competitive team.
You’re a busy person? No surprise. You don’t get to play as much as you want, and the less you play, the fewer coins you get. But let’s say you have a stay-at-home day where you must do cleaning/homework/work/etc. and you can’t be in front of the television playing, let your team do the job for you!
One of the particularity of DC is that you can TOTALLY let the computer play for you. Once you launch a game, disconnect your controller and reconnect it. You’ll see a screen that ask you to choose side. Once you’re on your team side, press on the left joystick to lock a position. Right after “RW”, you’ll see “CO”. That’s the coach mode. It means the computer will control all your players and will play for you. What I usually do is that I check a the second intermission and if my team is trailing or it’s tie, I play the third period until I have a 2 goals lead. But most of the time, I don’t even have to touch the controller, my team will win without me.
Do try to get those 88 OV players… it’s a waste of time and you won’t be able to use/sell them if you change your mind and acquire their 92 OV counterpart.
Understand though that DC gives you DC cards, but no coins. In other words, once you got your 3 DC players, I wouldn’t suggest using this mode again. I still use it when I have no “basic cards team” to use offline, but it’s better for you to get the 800 pucks an offline game will give you than the other DC sets (10 DC cards for one gold pack or 15 DC cards for up to 10k coins).
But still, you can let the computer play for you offline! There is no coach mode though, but you can lock into a defensive position (RD or LD) and let the computer do the rest. The early tournaments are very easy, you play against a bunch of CHL teams and I was surprised to see my team winning a lot of those games! Just for the completion rewards of 600 pucks, it’s worth it. All you have to do is to take a look at the TV once in a while to skip the intermissions and you’re done.
Take this opportunity to use cards you will never use otherwise. I personally only line up one 85-86 gold players that I’ll later sell.
STEP 6: KNOW THE BASIC VALUES
An easy way to make a little bit of money, is knowing the SELL NOW values of basic cards. Let’s take a look at NHL17 cards:
Common gold card: 150
Rare gold card: 500
Knowing those values help you to bid on cards. I personally always bid 49 pucks lower the SIN value. I'll bid 101 coins on a common gold card. The reasons why are the following:
- Someone who wants to make a profit probably won't overbid you because he had to add a minimum of 50 pucks, which represent the sell now value. He could try to overbid you to put the card on the market but it isn't necessarily a smart move since you only have 25 spots to sell and you could use them for something else.
- Buying cards at that price assure you a profit. If you sell now, you gain 50 pucks. If your selling spots are empty, you put the starting price higher and you make a profit.
- You could bid lower and make a larger profit. But the odds are that someone will overbid you anyway. A 50 pucks margin is a fair margin to get the card. If you bid on 25 cards that way, on a good day, you could easily get 15 of them for a 750 pucks profit. If you bid on 25 cards with, let's say, a margin of 100 pucks, on a good day, you'd be lucky to get 2 or 3 cards for a potential profit of 200 or 300 pucks.
- I add one puck so the people who wants to acquire cards for the SIN value don’t see my bid. Let’s say someone search common gold cards for a maximum of 150 coins, he won’t see my bid because the next bid is of 151 coins.
When it come to sell the cards on the market, knowing the value is also very important because if you put a starting price that is too high, it will take forever for you to sell them and time is money. Each card you don’t sell stayed in his sell slot and prevents you to sell another card. A good way to know the value of a card is to verify how many of the card you want to sell there is on the market. If there only one, you can boost the starting price. If you see there is 20, be realistic and put an inviting starting price.
After some time, when the market stabilize for basic cards, here’s what I use to sell my cards (Starting Price – Buy Now):
Bad rare cards: 550 - 750
Good rare cards: 650 – 850
Very good rare cards: 750 – 950 or higher
A bad rare card is any 85 gold rare card or 86 gold rare card with bad skating/shooting abilities (Nelson/Little/Dubinsky). A good rare card is usually a 86 gold rare card with acceptable skating/shooting abilities (Pominville/Toffoli/Schwartz). A very good cards are usually very fast players (Gaborik /Boedker/Johnson/Nyqvist). They usually sell well at 950, but I occasionally get around 1250 for them so you can test the market.
Again, those can change depending of the card and its rarity, but it gives you an idea. With those prices, I usually make a fair profit and I can sell the card fast. If a card doesn’t sell, I remove 50 pucks from the BUY NOW per days price until I sell it.
Never pay more than the SELL NOW price
As stated before, for cards below 87 OV, never pay more than the SELL NOW price. For example, never pay more than 101 pucks for a common gold card because the SIN price is 150 coins. That way, I’m guaranteed to make at least a 50 coins profit.
BUY NOW only if necessary or amazing bargain
It’s seem tempting when there is a small difference in puck from the starting price and the buy now price, but don’t do it, it’s not worth it. It’s better to acquire a card 2 or 3 days later at a cheaper price. Yes, it’s heartbreaking when someone BIN a card you bided on, but the wait will be worth your while.
STEP 7: COMPLETE HERO SETS
First of all, why should you complete a hero set? It’s actually a good question, considering that some of those sets are very expensive and it would be easier (and cheaper) to simply buy the hero in the marketplace.
The first reason is that even if it can be cheaper on the market, it’s still a huge amount of coins you have to pay immediately. We don’t always have between 100k – 300k in our wallet. Building a set takes time so you have many expenses, but all pretty small, which gives you the time to make money while you build a set. So yeah, it’s longer, but most of the time, it’s financially more viable. Doing that, you can keep a lot of your Heroes while you do other sets while when you buy a Hero, you often have to sell one to get one.
The second reason is that when you complete a Hero set, you get 2 cards out of the pack, the actually 94 OV Hero and a Hero Collectible. We still don’t know what those collectibles are for, but it might be important so it’s not bad to rack those collectibles up.
Finally, it’s those heroes that will help you to get the best team possible.
I suggest to complete the sets starting with the cheaper and finishing with the most expensive. I know it's tempting to complete New Jersey early because Daneyko has a synergy you really need, but it's better to complete 2-3 cheap sets, to sell them and acquire Daneyko on the market than to waste 5 carbon collectibles on one player. Remember, you get a hero collectible after completion of those sets.
Early in the cycle of the game some team could be more expensive than other but it could change. Wait about two months, the price of players will heavily drop and in the end, it will come to the teams with the least collectibles required.
The exceptions would be when it comes to goaltender heroes. Like most goaltenders, goaltender heroes have cheap value on the market, even if you needed 4 carbon collectibles to acquire them. The exception might be Vernon because his set is very cheap and maybe Kolzig as well, but the others, their re-sale value is not strong enough. Keep those when you've done the rest.
STEP 8: DON’T BUY COLLECTIBLES or WORK THE MARKET FOR TEAM INFOS
You can realistically, most of the time, get a team info card (jersey/logo/coach/arena) for 450. Even 400 sometimes. For other periods, you’ll only be able to get them for 500 of 550 coins. If that’s the case, simply wait, the price will come back at 450 eventually. Following that, you need ten of those cards to get a gold collectible so you will invest 4 500 coins in it. You need 10 gold collectibles to get a carbon so you will have to invest 45 000 coins in it. But if you take a look at the market, you’ll see a bunch of gold collectibles for 6K and carbon collectibles for 70K, it’s ridiculous. Yes, it’s take a lot of time to farm the team info cards, but it’s worth it.
STEP 9: WIN DIVISION TITLES AND TOURNAMENTS
Easier to say than to do, I know. But division titles will often give you gold collectibles and that’s very useful to complete your hero sets. When you can’t win a division title, spice things up a little; dress a lesser team to give you a challenge, that way you don’t waste your best players’ contract and you might be relegated to a lesser division that will be easier to seize.
And when it comes to tournament, be careful. If you win the toughest tournament, you will get two carbons and one special players (could be a movember card during the Movember, a Christmas card during that period or simply a TOTW card). The problem is that this tournament is very hard to win and the special card you’ll get might not be that good. Remember, those cards are untradable, so getting a TOTW 84 Melker Karlson card won’t get you far.
If you win the tournament just before, it’s already way easier, you will get the two carbon collectibles that are essentials for your sets and a 87+ gold player.
STEP 10: DON’T USE/BUY CONTRACTS
If there is one thing you don’t want to do, is wasting your time in buying contracts. It’s the most boring thing in the game. Also, the contract market is very illogical. You’ll get a contract for 150 pucks one day and won’t be able to get anything below 450 pucks the other day. And you never want to not be able to play because you don’t have contracts anymore.
To prevent buying contracts, you must use them as less as possible. You want to use them only for your valuable players. You like Johnson (86 OV) on your third line? Well, buy another one for 450 coins or below and instead of putting a contract on Johnson, you put him back on the market and replace him by the other card you bought before. By doing that, you’re making money by selling the Johnson card and you don’t use a contract card. It’s not as easy, but you can also do that for more expensive cards if your wallet is big enough.
If you didn’t buy the super deluxe version and the fact they removed free packs after completing collections, this year is harder than even to not buy contracts, but it’s still doable.
STEP 11: DON’T USE ALL THE CONTRACT DAYS ON A CARD
When you use a tradable card, always leave at least one day of contract, that will prevent to see the “contract expired” logo on the card that will decrease the value of your card. It might seem stupid, but that logo can slow down the sell of the card, and since you only have 25 slots... you want to sell quickly. Most buyers don’t even look at the amount of games that the players still has on his contract, so leaving just one game should do it.
STEP 12: OPEN YOUR PACKS AT THE RIGHT TIME
If you are like me, you're excited at the moment you get your packs and you want to open them right away. Apparently, it’s a mistake. Always wait that there are special cards out. Early in the game, it's not worth it, bank your packs to open them later. Wait that they release the Movember cards, or Cancer awareness cards, or Milestone Cards, Team of the weak/month/year cards, etc. Unproven, but opening them not long after midnight or the time when they release those cards seem to give some interesting results.
CONCLUSION
Following all those steps should give you a very capable team early. It’s the beginning of January, I’m in division 1, and 50% of the time, my team is better than my opponent, which was never the case before. I completed 10 hero sets (I sold three of them) and I’m on my way to complete two others (only few common cards/jerseys to acquire, all collectibles are ready to use). Here’s my line-up by January 3rd, it should give you a good idea.
(94) Sullivan – (92) Malhotra – (94) Bucyk
(94) Lafontaine – (94) Linden – (90) Gaudreau
(87) Ryan – (88) Backstrom – (88) Kuznetsov
(87) Eberle – (87) Couture – (87) Zuccarelo
(94) MacInnis – (92) Grossman
(94) Murphy – (88) Hedman
(87) Barrie – (86 WJC) Jones
(94) Kolzig
(92) Emery
