We've got a brand new event in Hearthstone's Mercenaries game mode and it's here only for a limited-time! This time, we'll venture into many dangerous Bounty zones with the aid of N'Zoth, (in)famous Old God that already made its appearance in Hearthstone in Whispers of the Old Gods with N'Zoth, the Corruptor.
Our journey won't be in search of just fame and success, but you'll be able to complete a set of 10 event Tasks, which will reward you coins for N'Zoth and many other goodies.
Here are all the tasks that are available during the N'Zoth Mercenaries event. Click any of the links below to visit our guide for the task.
- Raiding the Shore
- Ice Sculpting
- Requirement: Complete Icehowl Bounty without any Blocks of Ice on the board in Winterspring.
- Reward: N'Zoth Mercenary.
- One with the Void
- Bunker Crashers
- Requirement: Complete Galvangar Bounty using 6 of Human, Dwarf and Elf characters in Alterac Valley.
- Reward: 50 N'Zoth coins, 25 Balinda Stonehearth Coins.
- Murlocs in the Valley
- Bones and Golems
- Damage Supreme
- Requirement: Deal 100 damage with N'zoth's Corrupted Viscera in a single battle.
- Reward: N'Zoth Golden Portrait
- Emperor Dethroned
- Requirement: Complete Emperor Thaurissan Bounty without setting off powdered kegs.
- Reward: 75 N'Zoth coins, 50 Balinda Stonehearth coins.
- Murlocs on Ice
- Requirement: Complete Heroic Popsicooler Bounty with at least 3 Murlocs in Alterac Valley.
- Reward: 75 N'Zoth coins, 50 Murky coins, 50 random coins.
- Visions of Conquest
- Requirement: Land a killing blow with N'zoth's Spawn of N'zoth against Gigafin or Gigafin's Maw in Corrupted Murlocs Bounty in Darkshore.
- Reward: Diamond N'Zoth portrait.
As you can see, these tasks are quite the mixed bag: while some are fairly simple to complete, others require more than a bit of thinking (and luck: that one's always welcome) and planning ahead.
Moreover, certain tasks clearly state that you need Comps consisting of Mercenaries belonging to specific races in order for your progresses to count: while the Leeroy Jenkins event was about Orcs, Humans and Dragons, this time you'll need the help of Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and... Murlocs!
Not all challenges might be as difficult as they seem at a glance: there are usually tips and tricks to be found to make everyone's lives easier. In this series of guides we'll take a look at how to complete each event Task, so that you'll be able to get your hands on all the rewards available. As of now, we'll focus our attention on the current task.
In case you missed them, if you click the banner below you'll have access to each of our task guides for this event.
Table of Contents
How to Complete the "Ice Sculpting" Task from the N'Zoth Event
- Requirement: Complete Icehowl Bounty without any Blocks of Ice on the board in Winterspring.
- Rewards: N'Zoth Mercenary.
- Difficulty: 1/5
For the second N'Zoth task we're going to head to the Winterspring zone to the Icehowl bounty.
The final fight is going to be very physical, with your opponents trying to bring you down through direct attacks, which will occasionally bypass Taunt enhancements and will require some thoughts about how you should position your Mercs at the start of the fight. However, let's start with one thing at time. What does the fight look like?
The starting board is going to be quite crowded: not only will Icehowl appear on board with two 15/120 Chillwind Yeti Fighters, but there will also be two 0/100 Blocks of Ice on your side of the board.
As for the moveset of each unit, here's what you need to know.
Icehowl - Clearly the elephant in the room, being the enemy unit with the most Attack, Health and broken abilities. Icehowl will attack you regardless of Stealth/Taunt, based purely on what unit there is in a certain place on the board.
Icehowl's moveset.
Chillwind Yeti - Pretty much physical Fighters, with nothing more to worry about other than a wide set of abilities. If your party has some healing and a decent Taunt you should be able to keep them in check with no particular issues.
Chillwind Yeti's moveset.
Block of Ice - 0/100 tokens that the normal fight asks you to use in order to soak some Icehowl abilities into. It cannot attack but, thanks to its abilities Slide Left and Slide Right, it can move around the board and therefore change the positioning of your friendly Mercenaries mid-fight. However, for this specific task they won't need to do anything, as we'll put them where they need to be from the very start.
Block of Ice's moveset.
Now that we cleared what each unit does, it is time to think about how to win the fight and complete Ice Sculpting. The deal is quite simple, although not incredibly easy to pull off: you need to clear the bounty while killing the two Blocks of Ice on your side of the board; if any of your friendly Mercenaries dies, you'll also need to kill the Blocks of Ice that will spawn in their place. However, things are better than you might think, and for a couple reasons:
- Although the Blocks of Ice cannot attack, you can position them in a way that Icehowl will attack (and kill them) with Charge Forward and Charge Right.
- Moreover, Icehowl's aura effect won't trigger if the unit to perish is a Block of Ice, meaning that you won't receive a second Block when the first one dies.
Going into the fight with a 3-Mercs-formation, you want to place one Block of Ice on the far-right and one in the exact middle of the board, so that they'll receive any attack that Icehowl will throw at you.
For the rest of the fight, you'll need to chip down your enemies without killing them before they'll deal with the Blocks of Ice for you - as we already pointed out, healing and a Taunt will be able to keep you safe without any additional Blocks popping up.
Suggested Comps
Here are a few Mercenaries parties you can use to complete the "Ice Sculpting" task. You'll be able to choose between many comps, suggested by different content creators, as well as mentions of budget alternatives for our readers that don't have many Legendary Mercs in their collection.
Out of Cards Recommendation - Holy Comp
So... you need to not die? Oh boy, we've got exactly what you need! A Human-based party has great sustainability thanks to abilities like Anduin Wrynn's Penance 1, which pairs up really well with Holy Nova 1 for a slow (but rather effective) gameplan against the enemy.
To prove this comp of being fit for this task, we actually recorded a video showing you that you can pull this off with ease.
Here are a few tips for those unfamiliar with this strategy.
- The final fight trio is Cariel Roame-Anduin Wrynn-Prophet Velen.
- Position them so that you'll have (from left to right) Cariel, Anduin, block, Velen, block.
- Spam Cariel Roame's Taunt 1 to keep the unit healthy and absorb most of the damage coming from the Yetis.
- Make sure to not heal your Blocks of Ice too much with Holy Nova 1, otherwise you'll make your life harder.
- Given that we already want to run Cariel Roame, we think that running the rest of the good old budget comp with Xyrella and Blademaster Samuro for the climb is a good idea.
Old Guardian's Nature Comp (+ Budget)
Old Guardian remains loyal to the Nature comp, consisting in Malfurion Stormrage, Guff Runetotem and Bru'kan. You can include any other Merc you want for the remaining three spots (other Nature units or maybe a climbing comp you're familiar with).
- The first thing you need to do is taking down Icehowl.
- Once it's gone, no more Blocks of Ice will appear.
- Keep the Yetis at bay while you kill off any remaining Blocks of Ice.
- Finish off the Yetis.
- For a budget version of this comp, consider replacing Malfurion Stormrage with Lady Anacondra.
Other Resources
Our clever community members set up a forum thread to share your Mercenaries progression journey, and we have added an #mercenaries channel on our Discord server if you want to talk with others in real-time. If you need an assist, you can also respond to this guide and we'll do our best to help you out; the comments are also a great way to share your own comps that you've used to complete the task above.
Good luck taking on any of these Bounties for those sweet sweet coins or just for the sake of satisfying completion!
Comments
Why are we pretending Icehowl never charges left? He definitely charges left sometimes.
Pretending? No, definitely not pretending. It's just that I haven't seen it doing so in multiple tries.
As you can see from the explanatory video, I placed Cariel Roame on the far left exactly because I wanted to play around that specific scenario, which, however, never took place :)
It's omitted from your listing of his moves, and your setup is not optimal if we assume left and right are equally likely, which they probably are.
The best setup is to alternate mercs and blocks, so that the ice blocks start in positions 2 and 4. You will always have time to slide a block to receive his charge because the blocks are faster than Icehowl.
The exception is when he charges center and you summon a minion, but summoning is a terrible idea for this task, so that should not be a problem.
Again, it's omitted because I haven't met it. You give me tangible proof and I will update the guide - it's as easy as that.
The Holy build is so resilient that you can easily take one hit or two without even going close to pass out: once you get rid of the two blocks you already have, then the chances any of your Mercs will die are almost zero.
In Old Guardian's guide, Icehowl's very first attack is to the left. https://youtu.be/-sgJlr1-p5Y
Is that tangible enough?
Tangible enough.
I used mannoroth because he has the "destroy a friendly character and give your characters +X/+X" treasure, which has no cooldown. I think tamsin has it too.