Update: Liv has confirmed on reddit that the legendary questline will be available throughout the entire expansion. (Source)
So, that's still a ton of games that need to be played, but at least we have almost 4x the amount of time to work towards it. Original post is down below.
More information is available now on the upcoming faction war event that is coming to Hearthstone in the Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion including details on the Legendary Questline.
- Logging in to the game makes you choose your faction - Alliance or Horde.
- If you've logged in since the previous patch, you've already chosen your faction for the event.
- The war runs from December 7 until January 11.
- When the war ends, a tally will occur and the winning faction decides which card will get Diamond art - Drek'Thar or Vanndar Stormpike.
- A Legendary questline is available that is progressed by earning honor.
- This questline rewards several Rare Golden cards.
- There is also a Golden Legendary reward at the end - the card from the faction you didn't pick.
During the event, everyone will earn Honor points by playing games in Standard, Wild, Classic, Arena, and Duels. Wins providing more honor.
- 10 Honor for every game played
- 10 more Honor for every game won (20 total)
- 20 more Honor for every game won versus an opponent of the enemy faction (40 total)
Your Honor is how you progress through your faction's Legendary quest. Everyone will be able to unlock the same rewards, they just get rewarded in a different order. This order is the same order that you'd follow in progression inside of World of Warcraft's Alterac Valley Battleground. Such great flavor!
How Hard is it to Finish the Alterac Valley Legendary Questline?
With 7200 Honor being required to unlock all the rewards, that's a cool 720 games played if you don't win any. Incoming bot storm! We know you're the best though and will win all your games and they will always be against the enemy faction, which brings it down to180 games - the fewest number of games possible to play for all the rewards.
Realistically though, let's make a few assumptions here:
- Players should win half their games on average.
- The player base is equally split between Alliance and Horde, you should see half your games against the opposing faction.
- More likely, Horde is biased here so Alliance players may have an easier time earning the rewards.
Knowing that we're likely to encounter an even number of Alliance and Horde opponents, we can assume the average honor that will be earned for a win is 30 ((40 + 20) / 2). With our next assumption of a 50/50 winrate, we can further assume that the value of playing a single game of Hearthstone is going to be 20 Honor ((10+30) / 2). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but 7200 / 20 is 360 - that's a ton of games that we need to play to get all the rewards.
With the Alterac Valley faction war lasting 36 days, that means you're going to need to play, on average, 10 games per day. That isn't a crazy amount of Hearthstone to play each day, but with the holiday season coming into full swing, its a bit unfortunate to have the looming dread of grinding Hearthstone games at your side.
Now, there could be some alternate forms of grinding out Honor which would speed up the process, but none of Blizzard's official communications have confirmed that - we'll have to wait and see.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Legendary Questline Rewards
Here are all the rewards for the Legendary Questline and how much honor each step requires.
| Alliance Quest | Alliance Reward | Horde Quest | Horde Reward | Quest Honor Quota | Achieve Honor Quota |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corporal | x1 Golden Stormpike Aid Station | Grunt | x1 Golden Frostwolf Kennels | 40 | 40 |
| Sergeant | x1 Golden Stormpike Aid Station | Sergeant | x1 Golden Frostwolf Kennels | 80 | 120 |
| Master Sergeant | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bunker | Senior Sergeant | x1 Golden Iceblood Tower | 180 | 300 |
| Sergeant Major | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bunker | First Sergeant | x1 Golden Iceblood Tower | 260 | 560 |
| Knight | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bridge | Stone Guard | x1 Golden Iceblood Garrison | 400 | 960 |
| Knight-Lieutenant | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bridge | Blood Guard | x1 Golden Iceblood Garrison | 500 | 1460 |
| Knight-Captain | x1 Golden Iceblood Garrison | Legionnaire | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bridge | 540 | 2000 |
| Knight-Champion | x1 Golden Iceblood Garrison | Centurion | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bridge | 620 | 2620 |
| Lieutenant Commander | x1 Golden Iceblood Tower | Champion | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bunker | 660 | 3280 |
| Commander | x1 Golden Iceblood Tower | Lieutenant General | x1 Golden Dun Baldar Bunker | 780 | 4060 |
| Marshal | x1 Golden Frostwolf Kennels | General | x1 Golden Stormpike Aid Station | 840 | 4900 |
| Field Marshal | x1 Golden Frostwolf Kennels | Warlord | x1 Golden Stormpike Aid Station | 900 | 5800 |
| Grand Marshal | x1 Golden Drek'Thar | High Warlord | x1 Golden Vanndar Stormpike | 1400 | 7200 |
Comments
It’s also possible that the achievement is always, um, achievable—you keep getting 10-40 honor per game until you hit max rank, however many years it taks—but you only get the reward (the gold and diamond cards) if you complete the achievements before the next expansion.
That would be straightforward, it’s how they handle XP rewards for current-expansion achievements.
Is it possible to get Vanndar Stormpike non-golden down the road? With all the info dump happening this month, I might have missed it.
I think you'll be normally able to get it from packs or you can craft it
Don't think I've seen any info on the non-golden version being free anywhere though
I am hoping the non-golden can be crafted or unpacked.
So we might have time to grind this.
That's a nice play on the original WoW pvp ranks!
Ok, I'm out then (without any additional honor gains). 10 games per day is too much for a casual player like myself. I have to work and have a RL :)
The only thing worse than reacting to unfounded speculation is publishing it in the first place.
Same here: I could do 10 games on one particular day, but not keep up an average of 10 games per day for a month. And free time isn't even the bottleneck, as I have a lot of holidays saved up; I just don't want to spend so much of it playing Hearthstone.
Let's hope that there are additional sources or multipliers that we don't know about yet.
Same. Even if I didn't have to work, that's quite a grind.
Does this mean to get the opposite faction legendary, we'd have to grind up to 7200 honor in that 36 days or get lucky with whoever wins the war at the end?
10 games per day (and that's being generous here) is a fairly big amount to be honest. Fortunately it also works with the other modes, so we dont have to pour it all on standard ranked, but that's still an incredible amount of games. Not a fan of this arrangement.
Pretty sure team5 coded it so you dont get honor if you concede before a certain amount of health, because otherwise there would be quite a lot of t1 concedes down in bronze wild. That'll likely suck, because there are certain games where its perfectly legitimate to concede before getting to 15 health or less.
I'm not entirely certain if the legendary quest will go away for those that already started it after the 36 day event is over. Assuming the worst case scenario, then yes, you have 36 days to guarantee the opposing faction golden legendary card. I hope that isn't the case, but Blizzard has being stupidly vague about everything because its Blizzard.
I agree that 10 games a day is huge. Especially considering at how casual Hearthstone is, something like this just becomes so unobtainable in a month's timeframe. I feel like they've left out a key part of the event within their post or they laid out their numbers wrong because honestly, it makes no sense. I remember when we datamined the original rewards track XP numbers and it sent everything into a fury. Blizzard came out and said it wasn't the whole picture and that we'd see events during the expansion cycle that would give you more XP - which they then got rid of and made the whole track make more sense without needing those larger event XP gains. Perhaps there's some special quests that reward honor or there will be times where they increase the honor gains. Doubtful but I'll remain slightly optimistic they sucked at their messaging.
I think the concede factor is either time spent in game, turns, or health which makes it fairly forgiving. Don't quote me on that though!
Well, that's not fun. I'm never going to play that many games as a casual player, I really hope they bring in some catchup mechanics later in the expansion.
Very cool. Lots of free cards this time around for those who play a lot. I hope there is a similar system for future expacs going forward.
So...are the golden rares uncraftable then? Because if they aren't that would be some nice dust to get for free.
There are no confirmed details right now but I'm assuming this is going to be like the rewards track content.
Previously, looking at quest rewards like the ones we've seen during Noble Garden, Golden cards that were rewarded via a quest were still craftable. This might lead one to believe you'd be able to craft all these cards yourself but with the way Blizzard has been dealing with Golden Cards lately via the Rewards Track, they will be flagged as uncraftable since they are a part of a special event.
I'd love to be wrong about that, and I think it's kinda bull that you can't choose to craft golden cards that are a part of free content since Blizzard gets more value out of you if you do that (open this up after a rewards track ends), but idk, I guess they don't like that idea since we haven't seen it yet. (Silas Darkmoon was the first golden rewards track card and remains uncraftable as a golden).
I'm assuming Drek'Thar and Vanndar Stormpike can't be opened in packs right? Seeing as we all have a change to get both legendries by playing 360 games on average.