a way to use excess coins to add power and personalized traits to your Maxed Mercs
I hope there is a relatively low cap on the amount of power you can add, otherwise balance might go into pay2win territory. It sounds like this extra power only applies to the new end-game content, but I don't know how much mid-game content they'll keep making when the whales are playing end-game content. I'm a bit nervous ever since Diablo Immor(t)al.
They're a weird compromise: the numbers are very low for Mercenaries, as you can finish such a quest in about 2 minutes, while in Constructed it takes way too long. For example using Flamestrike in Constructed you have to wait until turn 7 and then do up to 5*7=35 damage, but more likely 10-20 damage. In Mercenaries you can do 21*3=63 fire AoE with an upgraded Baron Geddon on turn 1 (more if any of the opposing mercs are red), plus you have another two mercs, although they won't have such effective AoEs. In any case, if you're lucky the quest is finished in a single turn, otherwise in two.
Changing it to "cast N fire spells" would make it fair for both modes.
Usually they're available for one month, at which point the next month's offer replaces them. I don't expect the next set before August, so this promotion has probably ended before then.
By the way, they give a Standard legendary, so while you're more likely to get one from the latest set (assuming you have fewer legendaries of that set), it's not guaranteed.
I completed the last task this weekend. Thanks for the guides, they were a great help on some of the tougher challenges.
I didn't complete the first two events. For the first I was too much behind on completing the storyline missions to even start on it. The Leeroy event I did play about halfway, but got stuck on a difficult task and either ran out of time or motivation (can't remember which).
Compared to the N'Zoth event, the difficulty on this one felt a bit more even: fewer very easy ones but also no overly hard tasks. Task 5 auto-completed itself for me though, not sure if that was a bug or some kind of deliberate hotfix. I didn't run into problems with my collection being too narrow, but I can imagine that people who haven't been playing Mercenaries consistently since launch would have problems with the very specific requirements of some of the tasks.
Thanks for the comp and video! I tried to mirror the video exactly and use the trick of casting the freeze on Psychus to bypass N'Zoth's immunity. Unfortunately my mercs didn't do quite enough damage to finish off Psychus, so that got frozen and N'Zoth sent all my mercs to the bench.
I had to improvise and put Yrel into play, as she had acquired a reward ability that deals repeat damage for each Holy spell used. That turned out to be the right move, as there was enough damage in it (probably helped by earlier buffs from Velen) to finish off the new spawns plus N'Zoth in a single turn.
Why craft legendaries from the mini set? When you're interested in multiple legendaries from the set, it's more efficient to buy the full set with gold: 2000 gold vs 3200+ dust, while they are roughly 1:1 in value.
I tried all pirates, but mine aren't fully upgraded yet and I didn't get great treasures, so that was a loss at the boss.
Second time I used Gruul with the fire resistance equipment, as that's always a good merc in BRM. I picked Prophet Velen as a healer, Cookie, the Cook sitting on the bench for extra health and the rest was pirates. Gruul fell eventually, but not after taking out both of the green guys and 3 vs 1 was doable even with not fully upgraded pirates.
I finished the last two earlier this week. I got most done on the first try, thanks to the guides here and Old Guardian's videos. The hardest one was definitely "Murlocs on Ice"; I was lucky to get it in two tries, but I can imagine people getting stuck on it for longer than that.
The risk of not finding a big card is a good point; you would indeed need a pretty top-heavy deck to make it likely to hit a good card. On the other hand, the mulligan does help a bit in improving the ratio of expensive cards in the deck and a 4-damage AoE might still be good enough.
Perhaps a bigger problem is this costing 5 mana, which may not be fast enough. Meanwhile, Paladin has divine shields so it might not actually clear the board.
I used the fire comp, although with Antonidas instead of Chi-Ji because I haven't leveled the latter as far. Climbing was easy, but the boss battle is pretty tricky. You can't really take it slow because the Maw's ability will keep buffing the opponent, but if you play too aggressively you might not land a final blow with the spawns. I got it on the second try though.
I think it's not such a bad card specifically for Big DH, since what you need there is finding your big cards and surviving until you have enough mana to play them, and this card does both of those things.
I don't think Big DH will be good though; it was way behind other decks in power level and this card doesn't look like it will be enough to change that.
My first try was with the fire comp suggested here, but I had too much health left on the Trolley by the time the murlocs hit the board.
Second try was with all 5 murlocs + Malfurion. I got the Amalgimation treasure for Mutanus, which let me eat the Trolley and gain a ton of health plus some attack from poor Murky who was at the other side of Mutanus. Then I killed off Popsicooler as fast as I could (I had already weakened it turn 1 by having Murky give it taunt and attacking into it) and had just enough health left on Mutanus to finish off the remainder of the enemies.
The "actually" was more in response to myself thinking "60%, is it really that bad?" and it turned out to be even worse (slightly). Your estimate was pretty accurate.
I don't understand why the rewards are so bad though (the payout is about 70% of the dust value put in). Even if the payout were 100% or slightly above, the event would still be a net win for Blizzard, as players would be converting real money and gold into cards, which is the whole point of the Hearthstone economy.
I used Old Guardian's Orc comp, which swaps out the Holy mercs for even more Orcs. It makes the climb a bit quicker, but it's not a budget comp.
I recommend to reroll the map until you get a Fighter coin: I hit Windfury for all Fighters and won the boss battle in a single turn.
Well, you start with a large quantity of arcane dust, about 1600 units...
I hope there is a relatively low cap on the amount of power you can add, otherwise balance might go into pay2win territory. It sounds like this extra power only applies to the new end-game content, but I don't know how much mid-game content they'll keep making when the whales are playing end-game content. I'm a bit nervous ever since Diablo Immor(t)al.
They're a weird compromise: the numbers are very low for Mercenaries, as you can finish such a quest in about 2 minutes, while in Constructed it takes way too long. For example using Flamestrike in Constructed you have to wait until turn 7 and then do up to 5*7=35 damage, but more likely 10-20 damage. In Mercenaries you can do 21*3=63 fire AoE with an upgraded Baron Geddon on turn 1 (more if any of the opposing mercs are red), plus you have another two mercs, although they won't have such effective AoEs. In any case, if you're lucky the quest is finished in a single turn, otherwise in two.
Changing it to "cast N fire spells" would make it fair for both modes.
Usually they're available for one month, at which point the next month's offer replaces them. I don't expect the next set before August, so this promotion has probably ended before then.
By the way, they give a Standard legendary, so while you're more likely to get one from the latest set (assuming you have fewer legendaries of that set), it's not guaranteed.
I completed the last task this weekend. Thanks for the guides, they were a great help on some of the tougher challenges.
I didn't complete the first two events. For the first I was too much behind on completing the storyline missions to even start on it. The Leeroy event I did play about halfway, but got stuck on a difficult task and either ran out of time or motivation (can't remember which).
Compared to the N'Zoth event, the difficulty on this one felt a bit more even: fewer very easy ones but also no overly hard tasks. Task 5 auto-completed itself for me though, not sure if that was a bug or some kind of deliberate hotfix. I didn't run into problems with my collection being too narrow, but I can imagine that people who haven't been playing Mercenaries consistently since launch would have problems with the very specific requirements of some of the tasks.
Thanks for the comp and video! I tried to mirror the video exactly and use the trick of casting the freeze on Psychus to bypass N'Zoth's immunity. Unfortunately my mercs didn't do quite enough damage to finish off Psychus, so that got frozen and N'Zoth sent all my mercs to the bench.
I had to improvise and put Yrel into play, as she had acquired a reward ability that deals repeat damage for each Holy spell used. That turned out to be the right move, as there was enough damage in it (probably helped by earlier buffs from Velen) to finish off the new spawns plus N'Zoth in a single turn.
Why craft legendaries from the mini set? When you're interested in multiple legendaries from the set, it's more efficient to buy the full set with gold: 2000 gold vs 3200+ dust, while they are roughly 1:1 in value.
I didn't realize how much Mass Hysteria can wreck your mercs if you have a few with high attack. You should really stick to only spell casters.
I tried all pirates, but mine aren't fully upgraded yet and I didn't get great treasures, so that was a loss at the boss.
Second time I used Gruul with the fire resistance equipment, as that's always a good merc in BRM. I picked Prophet Velen as a healer, Cookie, the Cook sitting on the bench for extra health and the rest was pirates. Gruul fell eventually, but not after taking out both of the green guys and 3 vs 1 was doable even with not fully upgraded pirates.
I didn't realize that they had gotten a buff. Looking forward to the event now.
I hope pirate synergies are strong, because I haven't been impressed with most pirates individually and a heroic bounty with 5 pirates sounds tough.
A secret cow level popped up in Mercenaries. I guess it's an unannounced promo for Diablo Immortal.
I finished the last two earlier this week. I got most done on the first try, thanks to the guides here and Old Guardian's videos. The hardest one was definitely "Murlocs on Ice"; I was lucky to get it in two tries, but I can imagine people getting stuck on it for longer than that.
The risk of not finding a big card is a good point; you would indeed need a pretty top-heavy deck to make it likely to hit a good card. On the other hand, the mulligan does help a bit in improving the ratio of expensive cards in the deck and a 4-damage AoE might still be good enough.
Perhaps a bigger problem is this costing 5 mana, which may not be fast enough. Meanwhile, Paladin has divine shields so it might not actually clear the board.
I used the fire comp, although with Antonidas instead of Chi-Ji because I haven't leveled the latter as far. Climbing was easy, but the boss battle is pretty tricky. You can't really take it slow because the Maw's ability will keep buffing the opponent, but if you play too aggressively you might not land a final blow with the spawns. I got it on the second try though.
I think it's not such a bad card specifically for Big DH, since what you need there is finding your big cards and surviving until you have enough mana to play them, and this card does both of those things.
I don't think Big DH will be good though; it was way behind other decks in power level and this card doesn't look like it will be enough to change that.
My first try was with the fire comp suggested here, but I had too much health left on the Trolley by the time the murlocs hit the board.
Second try was with all 5 murlocs + Malfurion. I got the Amalgimation treasure for Mutanus, which let me eat the Trolley and gain a ton of health plus some attack from poor Murky who was at the other side of Mutanus. Then I killed off Popsicooler as fast as I could (I had already weakened it turn 1 by having Murky give it taunt and attacking into it) and had just enough health left on Mutanus to finish off the remainder of the enemies.
The "actually" was more in response to myself thinking "60%, is it really that bad?" and it turned out to be even worse (slightly). Your estimate was pretty accurate.
I don't understand why the rewards are so bad though (the payout is about 70% of the dust value put in). Even if the payout were 100% or slightly above, the event would still be a net win for Blizzard, as players would be converting real money and gold into cards, which is the whole point of the Hearthstone economy.