The second larger Hearthstone content update of the year just arrived at our doorstep, and we've been pretty much expecting at least a handful of sneaky bugs to follow in its wake. This time around the team was very quick to post about a few known issues for Onyxia's Lair (both on and post-launch) in the usual forum thread.

We did go over these early concerns in our aforementioned post celebrating the launch of the patch 22.4, and since then we have seen some further fixes or clarifications follow. Alas, the community also had a chance to uncover a few more potential problems than have been officially acknowledged thus far. As always, we will aim to cover all such reports below, noting possible workarounds along with known information where able. 

If you encounter anything else, it's always worth sending a report in! The more attention given, the better chance of something seeing a fix sooner. In some cases, members of the Hearthstone team have provided us with extra context through Twitter, allowing players to better know what to expect. Here is what's currently out there: 

Bugged Quests

Update: should be all resolved by now !

It all started with Nozdormu the Eternal (this isn't us blaming the poor timeless dragon, for the record), as it turned out many players were still trying to complete their special quest upon patching to the newest game version. Except... it didn't budge. The progress wasn't being counted regardless of winning, losing, or even meeting other people with Noz in their deck, unfortunately causing less patient individuals to reroll their bonus XP away. 

Nozdormu the Eternal Card Image

At around the same time we also started seeing reports of Honor gains not being counted properly (not quite the same as the disappearing Questline from over a week ago), eventually followed by similar claims of certain Weekly Quests being broken as well (mainly the "Win 5 Ranked Games" one). It took a while, but all of these were eventually added to the Known Issues forum thread and subsequently resolved: 

Quote From Blizzard

  • [Resolved 2/17] The team is investigating reports that the Nozdormu Day quest stopped properly tracking last night.
  • [Resolved 2/17] The team is investigating reports that the Honor Track stopped properly tracking last night.
  • [Resolved 2/17] The team is investigating reports that other quests, aside from Nozdormu Day and the Honor Track, have also stopped properly tracking.

There actually was a workaround for Nozdormu the Eternal quest: only Standard and Wild ladder games didn't seem to count, but the quest completion was still possible in Casual, Tavern Brawl, or Duels (I've personally tested the last two after updating to the patch 22.4). With Honor, it was quite similar: nothing for wins or losses in Constructed, but Duels and Arena were still granting the same bonuses. At least we didn't have to wait long and know what to expect if it ever happens again. 

Missing or Non-Working Achievements

As noted yesterday both in the patch 22.4 article and in the comments section, two of the new Gameplay achievements granting bonus XP didn't make it. We do know the why and when to expect them:

Quote From MyntyPhresh

Re: Rogue and DH achievements "missing" from the mini-set

We ran into some localization hiccups with these two, so we had to push them to the next patch (22.6)!

Associate Designer Leo Robles was also kind enough to tell us what they are going to be about, following the request from our own Avalon:

Quote From MyntyPhresh

Demon Hunter: "Right Side, Many Cards!"
Draw 50 cards with Razorglaive Sentinel. -> Draw 100 cards with Razorglaive Sentinel.

Rogue: "!"
Summon a 10-Cost minion with SI:7 Smuggler. -> Summon a Legendary 10-Cost minion with SI:7 Smuggler.

 

Just don't expect this future patch 22.6 to arrive before early to mid March. 

Unfortunately, this isn't all on the subject. Stubborn Duels achievements still refuse to recognize players' progress, which especially hurts when it comes to these successful 12-win runs. Not much else to add here, other than it's on the radar: 

Quote From DeckTech
The team is aware of the bug and working on it.

As for the good news, some players claim they have received extra numbers for their Class Win achievements, resulting in faster access to Golden Heroes. 

Game Crashes and Disconnects

We've seen a worrying increase in reports of random crashes and disconnects post-patch, mainly on mobile and as the games finish. Associate Test Analyst Daniel Duffin covered this topic in more detail:

Quote From Daniel Duffin
Qa talks about this daily. Improving it is complex but a main focus for us. If you want to help make mobile better, file a bug report on our forums with your device/specs. If you know how to pull logs, the data really helps crash investigations.

Your device may not be supported though. We're trying to do a better job of communicating device support. I think were gonna see a lot of progress in that area this year. Having a log upload button in game would be ideal too, I get it👍

When something crashes we dont always know why until we see the device logs. Even then it can be difficult, as devices work so differently. (Android, iOS, Huawei, tablet vs phone) Logs go a long way to showing the problem, and its required for some bugs (like crashes). 

Reports w/logs help our engineers find the problem. On pc pulling logs is easier. If you want to upload logs click show in explorer, then in the hearthstone folder you can copy the log folder to a zip

There is never one clear reason with these things. I know that I haven't noticed any new unusual client hiccups personally, be it desktop or mobile. But with so many varied devices out there, any persisting problems of the kind can become truly frustrating. It's really important to know that your forum bug reports matter and will be thoroughly investigated.

"Epic" Arena Drafts

There is no official word on this yet, which is perhaps not surprising when you consider there isn't any dedicated Hearthstone Arena team, or any special levers currently being pulled. For the time being it's all based on the early community suspicions and investigations, as we await more data. What's the "Epic offering bug"? It's something we have seen come up a couple of times in the past - Arena drafts suddenly becoming heavily weighted towards offering Epic cards on the one hand (when it happens way more than is expected on average, it becomes really noticeable), and very few spells on the other.

Mercenaries Ratings Cap Lifted

A little while ago we talked about how the previously unknown max Duels rating of 14000 was reached by one dedicated player, in stark contrast to the Mercenaries Leaderboards of the past two seasons having the majority of Top 200 sitting at 14k thanks to the more generous matchmaking system. That's something the most competitive Mercs PvP-ers weren't too happy about, and their wish was finally granted. It turns out the mention of this just didn't make it into the patch notes: 

Quote From DeckTech
Nothing more to add except that the team felt this made for a better play experience. Also, that this was supposed to have been added to a patch notes post, but it seems to have maybe fallen off somewhere along the way. Sorry! 

There's a new cap. The team raised it to a number that they don't expect people to be able to hit in the one month season, so it should function as no cap, but never say never. If you all end up somehow hitting the new cap, too, I assume they're just discuss moving it again.

I believe in you all! I expect it won't be a problem if one or two crazy-devoted people somehow get there every once in a while. It was more the fact that we were consistently having dozens of people hitting the old cap.

Okay, the team says that it looks to be set up correctly in all regions. It's just that the scores update after a game. So those 14k people in the other regions just haven't played a game on the patch yet.

 

Suppose we're going to find out if anybody is crazy dedicated enough to hit that new 'unattainable' cap.

Duels Corner

You might've heard how Kazakusan was misbehaving in the one mode that gave inspiration to most of its treasures and allowed the ongoing conquest of the Standard ladder. At least that problem was solved quickly: 

Quote From Blizzard
[Resolved 2/15] There appear to have been two related issues with Kazakusan in Duels. We are in the process of deploying a hotfix that should resolve both those issues.

But if you'd stopped your run in its tracks hoping to pick it up again only once everything has been fixed, you might still be out of luck: 

Quote From DeckTech
Dev tells me that as of now any new game started should work correctly (if you already started the game you're in before this went out, then maybe skip playing him).

On the upside, the fresh runs should be good from that point onwards (nope, no free Tavern Tickets here). 

Kazakusan Card Image

There's been a few more small changes to note - Forge in Light has lost its Holy spell school (was never intended in the first place), and Necrotic Poison has decided to switch sides. But maybe that latter shadowy shift won't stick.

Quote From Daniel Duffin
It wasn't intended to have a school initially. None of the other STs do as they're supposed to represent allying with that merc. A bug gave Cariel a holy exemption and we just made her pay taxes like everyone else.

Quote From Daniel Duffin
I made a bug report of this too, but Kazakusan's Necrotic Poison has the wrong spell school as well. (Should be Nature)

Yea, should probably change it back since its inconsistent. But I'll need ask design just in case they changed it to shadow on purpose since kazakus is evil and stuff.

And Duels bug hunter extraordinaire Persia has managed to stumble upon a curious issue with Marvelous Mycelium - it's not playable with a full board (it will be looked into).

Um, Whelp?

Following the grand reveal, we were promised that Raid Boss Onyxia would recognize all Whelps equally - new and old, big or small - but it looks like that might've been taken just a step too far. A certain Whelp Bonker was so good at playing pretend that the sneaky goblin currently carries this distinguished mantle as well:

Quote From Cora
I guess it's checking for the name then

Nah we create a tag and attach it to the appropriate cards, and Onyxia references that tag.

So it's worse, actually. Somebody manually tagged Whelp Bonker as a Whelp lol.

Raid Boss Onyxia Card Image Whelp Bonker Card Image

While we are on the subject of Raid Boss Onyxia, let's talk about something that isn't a bug for a change - but enough confused players assumed otherwise and thought to report certain behaviors with the Immune keyword. There is a good reason why that Windchill or Hysteria won't work:

Quote From Gallon
Immune minions can't be specifically targeted by any action from the opponent.

Which means that, yes, you could target your own Raid Boss Onyxia with Ironbark for example, but that Taunt won't technically apply. Your opponent would still be able to attack through. But until that becomes more of a common knowledge, players on ladder might continue getting bamboozled.

There are also some reports of a small bug where Onyxia and a couple other minions don't show a green border when they are still eligible to attack (we've seen this around before). 

It's Tickatus' Battlegrounds 

Update: Tickatus nerfs have arrived as promised!

If you play Battlegrounds a fair amount, you've probably noticed there might be a power level issue with Tickatus and its Ticket Collector Buddy. That won't be the case for long now: 

Quote From DCalkosz
Any plans to nerf Tickatus to stop you getting infinite prizes with Brann and continually using Raise the Stakes on the buddy?

Yes, Raise the Stakes will be removed from Ticket Collector’s pool.

how about having to go through 5 ice blocks before you can kill him? (:

Removing Raise the Stakes should mostly address this, but we will also prevent Big Winner! from giving you more than 1 Ice Block per game.

What is the timeframe of this?

Should be within a week.

Ticket Collector Card Image Raise the Stakes Card Image Big Winner! Card Image

Other than that, it's become apparent that new hero Varden Dawngrasp only targets the right-most minion currently, but we don't know whether that's intended. 

Some players are also reporting server de-sync issues, where both opponents take combat damage simultaneously. It's happened before, and will be investigated again.

SI:7 Cards and Saidan

If you tried out this newest card addition, you've probably noticed how SI:7 Smuggler counts itself for the triggered effect, yet SI:7 Informant doesn't. This doesn't seem to be working as intended: 

Quote From Gallon
Inconsistency here, should act same as informant. Will follow up with the team here.

Quote From Gallon
Wait that's unintentional? Is it worded "other"?

There’s some confusion around wording here as well, we will be updating both it and Si:7 informant to have the correct wording.

 

SI:7 Smuggler Card Image SI:7 Informant Card Image

Saidan the Scarlet currently behaves in a very weird fashion (this is known to the developers), with the buffs not being properly doubled while the card is in hand. If you Soul Mirror your opponent's copy, yours might be smaller as a result. But, this gets even weirder. Apparently once Saidan the Scarlet is on the board and gets buffed again, he might suddenly recall all the former handbuffs and double in size as expected. 

Saidan the Scarlet Card Image

Just do not expect these fixes to hit before the upcoming Masters Tour: 

Quote From Gallon
As a heads up, no changes that affect strengths of cards will be made before the Masters Tour— SI:7 smuggler incorrectly counting itself, for instance.

Maestra & Chess = Broken Tavern Brawl

It's possible to break the current A Less Friendly Game of Chess Tavern Brawl by using Maestra of the Masquerade (somehow it has escaped the ban). And the results are... most curious. If everything works with the game actually allowing you to play, you will become a random class/hero skin from your Collection instead of a Chess King, with 30 Health instead of 20 to boot. More often than not, however, you will enter into a blackened starting screen, unable to perform any actions (and Concede button might refuse to work until you've restarted the client or your opponent has decided to bail meanwhile). There could be a correlation with the Black King allowing you to play and the White King crashing the game, but we haven't really run enough tests to be able to tell for certain. 

Maestra of the Masquerade Card Image


When it works...


...and when it doesn't.

Umm, don't try it at home?

Other

If you enjoy revisiting older Solo Adventures or are newer to the game and like to play catch-up, you might be happy to learn of a certain fix coming for Tombs of Terror (Saviors of Uldum's solo content) with the next Patch 22.6.

Quote From Blizzard
Please fix the Senior Signature Treasures from Tombs of Terror. They are broken for a long time now.

This bug is scheduled to be fixed in the next major patch, Patch 22.6.

 

Some people are also reporting small visual bugs, such as the "New Cards" notification in the Collection Manager persistently glowing even after all the cards have been explored. This can be mildly annoying if you get distracted by these things - admittedly we've been conditioned towards this for a long time with the stubborn exclamation marks reappearing on the Shop icon.

So that's another sizeable amount concluding our not-so-little Issues & Fixes compilation. This bug hunting can make for a rather peculiar hobby... Have you encountered any of these or know about anything else we might've missed? Don't forget to also report in the official forum thread if you are able!