^{Contributors: Writing: Shaggy & JMJWilson23; Review & Editing: SwanDive.}

Introduction

Now that you have learned about the different types of resources in Gwent and how reward points form the center of the economy, it’s time to look ahead at how to best spend your RP for maximum return. Please note that this is a general optimization of spending RP geared toward new players who wish to build their collection as quickly as possible. If you have different goals with the game, your priorities in terms of spending RP may be different, but this is intended as a general best practice guideline.

Reward Trees

The Reward Book consists of two pages. On the first page, you can find reward trees for Gwent’s base factions, Monsters, Nilfgaard, Northern Realms, Scoia’tael and Skellige, as well as four leader trees for each faction. In the center of the first page, you can find two seasonal trees that change every season.

The Reward Book’s second page includes trees added with this year’s Gwent expansions, such as Thronebreaker, Crimson Curse, the Syndicate faction from Novigrad, and Iron Judgment.

Finding a Starting Point

The first step to building a collection is opening the Reward Book found in the bottom-left of the home screen. Spending 1 RP will unlock an achievement which awards an additional 9 RP, so you are going to have 10 RP right after the tutorial is done. It is a good idea to explore the Reward Book before investing any RP to see what a good starting place would be. Most trees provide solid rewards, so it is a bit arbitrary which one you use to start. Some of the places we would recommend would be the Skellige, Scoia’tael, and Monsters faction trees, as these place your starting position in close proximity to valuable nodes.

Where to Spend

When spending RP, it is possible to branch out from your starting point in a Faction Tree and gain access to additional Leader Trees by purchasing leader nodes for 10 RP. Leader Trees give you access to specific cosmetics, so purchasing these nodes is not a good investment and should be avoided, aside from intermediate or advanced players that wish to gain certain leader cosmetics.

You will eventually gain enough RP to unlock everything you want in the Reward Book, so don’t fret if you have already spent some RP suboptimally. However, if you want to maximize the value of your RP, here is a breakdown of the most and least valuable nodes (concerning only collection building and ignoring cosmetics):

• Premium keg node (5 RP)
• Faction-specific keg node (5 RP)
• Story node (5 RP)
• Nodes with three connection points are better value than 2- and 1-point nodes (focusing on ore in particular)

The value of story nodes is one reason we highlight the Skellige faction tree as a strong starting point. It is possible in this tree to acquire all four story nodes for only 22 RPs. This investment will provide you with a total of 1550 ore and two Base Set kegs, while also providing access to valuable faction-keg nodes if you choose to pursue Skellige as your preferred faction. This is merely an example and good value can be found all across the Reward Book, so please do explore to find the best ways to spend your RPs in line with your own goals.

Summary

• Pick a starting point that is close to valuable ore and story nodes
  • Bonus: Premium-keg nodes are the best value, so if you can find a path to these through valuable resources that is even better
• Do not invest in leader nodes until you have a large collection already
• Prioritize premium-keg nodes over story nodes, which in turn you should value over ore nodes

Author

Green Cricket

Green Cricket is one of the heads of Aretuza, creating an environment where players and content creators can thrive and continuously improve themselves. In addition to his work at Aretuza, he runs a Gwent YouTube channel for beginners and advanced players alike. He teaches how to become better at Gwent and offers one in-depth Gwent guide each week as inspiration.