Fractured in Alterac Valley is coming soon and with it, 135 new cards enter constructed play in Hearthstone. The launch of an expansion is a joyous time but it can also be stressful with so many new cards and decks to explore. Welcome to the Out of Cards Fractured in Alterac Valley Survival Guide where we're going to make that introduction into battle a little bit easier.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Fast Facts
- 135 new cards have been added to the game - Visit our Fractured in Alterac Valley Expansion Guide to see them all.
- Hero Cards Return - Our mercenary friends are the focus of these beloved cards. They feature powerful Battlecries and Hero Powers.
- New Keyword: Honorable Kill - Bonus effect if the card deals exact lethal to an enemy minion on your turn.
- Objective Spells - They last for three turns and provide you with a benefit for their duration.
- There is a faction war taking place during the expansion:
- You'll choose which faction to join - Horde or Alliance.
- You receive a golden legendary card for your faction leader in Alterac Valley.
- At the end of a questline, you'll get the opposing faction leader as a golden legendary.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Freebies
We've got a few freebies with Fractured in Alterac Valley, though they will not all be available right away, one even requiring that you work toward it.
- Logging in, everyone can choose to go with the Horde or Alliance which rewards either Drek'Thar or Vanndar Stormpike.
- Once the expansion launches, completing a Legendary Quest Chain will reward you with the faction leader you didn't choose.
- A Diamond card will be given out to all players based on the winning faction's general.
It is important that we point out that you can open the opposing faction leader in card packs even though they can be earned on the legendary questline. This is due to there being the possibility that you want this card and may never finish the questline. The downside is that if you do complete the legendary questline, that we've got details on below, you run into a problem where you can't disenchant the normal version of the card for the full dust value. It's not a great situation and we're hoping Blizzard will address this in the future because it feels like an oversight. Not that we should be complaining about free stuff, but it does feel like we're losing some pack value.
Reminder: Sync Your Collection to Out of Cards Automatically
We've got a plugin available for Hearthstone Deck Tracker! You can use this plugin to automatically sync your collection which can help you find decks to play on the site with personalized crafting costs.
- You can access your collection manager by using your user dropdown on the site's navigation. Click "HS Collection".
- Collections are private and are not shared with other users.
- Calculations are performed in-browser to prevent the servers from melting.
If you were having crash problems, this was fixed in our most recent update. Please reinstall the plugin from the link above or click here.
Earn Honor to Progress Your Legendary Quests!
During the event, everyone will earn Honor points by playing games in Standard, Wild, Classic, Arena, and Duels with wins providing more honor.
Here is a breakdown on how much honor you can earn per game:
- 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)
These Honor Points will contribute to your Legendary Questline which grants you golden rare card rewards and a golden legendary card at the end. You can see the Horde and Alliance versions of these questline rewards (they're the same, just a different order based on faction) over in our dedicated article. The faction questlines will be available throughout the entire expansion so you have around 4 months to grind out around 300 games.
Hero Cards Return to Hearthstone as Our Mercenaries
Whether you love them or hate them, we can all agree that Hero cards have made a big impact in the history of Hearthstone and its about time every class gets to equip themselves with a powerhouse. A really neat bit of trivia about them is that all our classic classes (not you, Demon Hunter) are equipped using their World of Warcraft "Dungeon Set 1" gear. These are the first end-game sets of gear characters can collect in WoW before they enter raids which means all the Mercenary characters have leveled up to 60 - we're so proud!
It would be crazy to list them all, but here's a taste of the new Hero cards that have arrived. You can find all of them over on our expansion guide - click on the cards to go to their database pages to see their hero powers.
What Is Honorable Kill?
Honorable Kill is a brand new keyword that is making its Hearthstone debut in Fractured in Alterac Valley. This keyword triggers the stated effect if the card it is attached to deals exact lethal damage to a character. If an enemy (or friendly) minion has 2 health and you deal 3 damage to it, that's a no go. The health of the target must resolve to 0 to trigger the effect.
- Honorable Kill can trigger as many times as long as you meet its condition.
- Honorable Kill works on friendly characters too.
Here are are a few examples of cards with Honorable Kill.
But wait, a challenger approaches! Not only do Honorable Kills matter, but Korrak is an interesting legendary which requires that he gets honorably killed or he'll come back! There's a cool interaction with this card and Counterfeit Blade. If you pickup his Deathrattle on the blade, when the blade breaks, you'll summon Korrak!
What Are Objective Spells?
Objective Spells aren't a unique card type or keyword but rather a group of spells that share similar functionality. The core identity of an objective spell is that it has a duration of 3 turns once cast and can be identified as having the text "Lasts 3 turns."
Each class received their own objective spell in the expansion, here's a few of them to see what is possible.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Diamond Cards
Two cards are getting the Diamond treatment with Alterac Valley - Korrak the Bloodrager and Balinda Stonehearth! A third one will be made available at a later date based on the faction war.
Korrak is obtained instantly when you purchase the Alterac Tavern Pass with Balinda being a reward for owning 25 Alterac Valley legendary cards.
New Fractured in Alterac Valley Achievements
Blizzard has added a fresh batch of achievements to the game for Fractured in Alterac Valley. If you're looking to farm experience, these have some great potential in helping you complete the rewards track earlier than by just playing games alone. You can check out all the new achievements here which includes those that do and don't reward experience.
Remember: Once the next expansion comes out, in March or April of 2022, Fractured in Alterac Valley achievements will no longer reward XP, so do them while they are worth it!
Fractured in Alterac Valley Day 1 Theorycraft Budget Decks
Our own Sule has put together a list of nine budget decks you may want to give a shot if you're playing Hearthstone on a budget or you just want something easy you can dive into and upgrade.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Day 1 Theorycraft Wild Decks
It wouldn't be an expansion launch without Frosty taking care of the wild side of the community in our round up that features some great community lists that make use of the new questlines.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Day 1 Theorycraft Standard Decks
We've got a round of theorycrafted decks for Standard players straight out of our card reviews! Click on any of these to go to the deck pages and get yourself a deck code for importing.
Fractured in Alterac Valley Class Reviews
Our team of definitely-never-been-wrong-before writers have put together reviews on each of Hearthstone's 10 classes. If you're looking to kill some time before the launch or need to do some last-minute catching up on the cards, we highly recommend checking them all out. You may even learn something!
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Fractured in Alterac Valley Community Compendium
I voted, you voted, we all voted; And then the math gods did some calculations and the scores are in! Our Fractured in Alterac Valley Community Compendium is now live and showcases the best and worst cards before we got a chance to play with them. How well will we do? We'll have to check back in a few weeks!
See you all out there in Fractured in Alterac Valley - may the best faction win!
Comments
Anyone else unable to buy the new Tavern Pass? Says I already own it but everything is still locked on the top of the track and it states I need to purchase it. Getting mixed messages Blizz lol.
And once again I am caught in the eternal loop of the android app telling me to open play store for an update which sends me back to the game without an update which then again sends me to the play store.
Never play on a patch day... :)
"It is important that we point out that you can open the opposing faction leader in card packs even though they can be earned on the legendary questline."
The same has been true of the golden cards on the rewards track since Forged in the Barrens. Opening Primordial Protector in a card pack before reaching the point in the rewards track where you get the second golden copy was basically like getting a rare (of your choice) in that pack instead of an epic. As a free-to-play player, I feel like missing out on an epic when its avoidable is not something I can afford to do, so I've been waiting until I have all of the guaranteed golden cards from the rewards track before I open any card packs, and I intend to hold off on opening FiAV card packs until I have my golden Drek'Thar. I don't like it that I have to do this in order to avoid getting a useless extra copy of Drek'Thar, but I'll do it anyway.
In Forged in the Barrens, I actually decided to open a few card packs right away, just until I got that guaranteed legendary in the first 10 packs. I figured the chance of getting a Primordial Protector before I got the first legendary were pretty small. Guess what my first epic was? It sucked. Never again.
Countdown is fixed - timezones are stupid and this further proves that we need to get rid of daylight savings time. Hurry up North America, get your stuff together.
My province in Canada recently had a binding referendum on daylight savings time. 50.2% of us voted against changing to year-round daylight time. It saddens me, especially because I think that if the vote had been to adopt year-round standard time instead of year-round daylight time, it would have passed. Before the vote, social media blew up with people complaining that if we change, the sun will rise an hour later in the Winter. I never understood the objection: it's Canada; we all wake up in the dark all winter long anyway. Sunrise was at 8:38 this morning in my city.
Yeah its insane to me that it hasn't fully caught on yet that time changes are bad news. Its an archaic construct that used to be important but no longer is. I'm remain hopeful that we're going to ditch it in the next 5 years.
Tip: if you can save some of your weekly quests (I've got a battlecry one sitting at 40/50) until after the expansion goes live, that XP will speed you along your fresh rewards track.
Good luck, all!
I did exactly this. I put all three of my weekly quests one tick away from completing. Then I saved my daily from Monday and today to complete after the expansion launched. Yes, I was one of those guys playing a 'no new cards' deck for a few games, but I got all the way to 20 on the rewards track to lock my free legendary and managed several extra packs. Now I'm raring to go with some fancy new cards.
hi guys can someone tell me how to open my reward track. its still united in stormwind.
It will change itself when the expansion launches.
Is it just me or your clock is running an hour ahead? It shows me 3 hours till launch, while in fact it is 4.
Yes, front page timer is correct but currently the one inside this article is one hour ahead.
Thanks. I was low-key sad no making it home to the release.
So it means we may not open packs till we finish the legendary questline or we may get the opposing side's legendary minion...
I am halfway through this questline what do you suggest?
If you are fine playing Arena and Duels meanwhile and not have to jump into Constructed from the get go, then 'better safe than sorry' approach might allow you to benefit and secure that second Golden Legendary before pack openings. But it does take quite some patience.
Its a no win scenario. Just open your packs and pray. Its a 1 in 25, and the averages to get a legendary is 1 in 20 packs.
Wont be shocking to me if theres no refund here. Despite how bad it looks, there's easy enough reasons for blizz to deny us a refund. For those who would probably only be finishing the honor quest somewhere around 3 months later, they would not be able to play with the opposite legendary, so it would 'unfair' to deny them the chance via packs. Something like that.
One thing is for sure, for those who opened it, well, my condolences (pretty sure I'll be repeating those words to myself later). Let's hope you can at least dust it for 400 dust.
No matter how poor the odds, first pack I opened was Vanndar :(
Open em and cross your fingers I reckon
That's a lot of games to play without any of the new cards
Good luck with your pack openings!!!!