Important Dates
- Madness at the Darkmoon Faire launches November 17.
- Hearthstone Duels Early Access launches October 22 (Today).
- Hearthstone Duels Season 1 starts November 17.
- Progression and Rewards system updates launches November 12.
It's an exciting day for Hearthstone players! Blizzard is revealing new details on the upcoming set, a new game mode, and details on new game systems.
- We are expecting to see information on the upcoming battle pass. Maybe even achievements!
- Watching the stream can earn you 2 Scholomance Packs.
- If you want to chat about the stream in real-time with fellow Out of Cards members, join our Discord!
Today is the replacement for what would normally be the reveals at BlizzCon since Blizzard's huge event has been postponed until February. It might be a little bit earlier than normal to hear about the new expansion, but with it only being a week or two earlier, it made more sense to announce the expansion earlier alongside the new game mode to make for one big event. Who knows, we may even get to play the new mode today since there is a client patch confirmed!
Read on for all our coverage on today's event. We'll have dedicated posts and guides afterward that discuss everything in more detail as well, so stay tuned for that.
New Expansion - Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
The new set is named Madness at the Darkmoon Faire!
- New Keyword: Corrupt - When you hold one of these cards and you play a card with a higher cost, it'll corrupt the card.
- A mini-set of 35 will be added later in the expansion.
The Old Gods Return
Darkmoon Faire Demon Hunter Cards
Darkmoon Faire Druid Cards
Darkmoon Faire Paladin Cards
Darkmoon Faire Priest Cards
Darkmoon Faire Shaman Cards
Darkmoon Faire Neutral Cards
How Yogg Works
New Game Mode - Duels
Launches today!
- This is a PVP version of Dungeon Runs!
- You'll get to add more cards to your deck as your progress in your duels run.
- Scholomance, Karazhan, Naxxramas, Basic, and Classic sets are available to start during Early Access.
- When Darkmoon Faire comes out, Darkmoon Faire and Whispers of the Old Gods are all being added to the sets available.
- Early Access is available if you pre-order Madness at the Darkmoon Faire.
Additionally, there are two formats available for duels.
- Casual - Lets you test your skills.
- Heroic - A paid version that has you battle for rewards.
Achievements
- There are achievements for collections, different modes.
- If you collect 135 unique cards in a set, you get a special cosmetic coin!
Progression Revamp - The Tavern Pass and Rewards Track
- Doesn't matter if you miss dailies anymore - you can make up for that.
- At level 25 you get a random legendary.
- At level 50, you can choose a free hero skin.
- Daily quests reward experience instead of gold (Gold is now in the reward track instead).
- We have weekly quests now too!
- You can reroll weekly quests (once per day)
- You get 3 weekly quests at the start of a new week.
- We've got a new profile page!
- Completing all 50 levels of the Reward Track with the Tavern Pass gets you a cosmetic coin (different compared to collecting cards).
The Pre Show
- We started off on a looped video of a walk through the Darkmoon Island forest.
- We have arrived at the Darkmoon Faire! What is beyond the gates?
- We've zoomed out a bit and we can see a... Moon? Planet?
- The sky is changing colors! We're getting pitch shifts on the music.
- It's a bubble gum old god! Or the stuff Chicken Nuggets are made out of.
- A second bubble gum has appeared!
- WHAT THE OLD GODS?! N'ZOTH!
- Music is getting drowned out by N'Zoth noises. More tentacles!
- World of Warcraft's spirit realm music is playing in the background now. A timer has appeared.
Watch Live
You can watch the reveal live down below!
Learn more about Madness at the Darkmoon Faire
Head on over to our dedicated guide for Madness at the Darkmoon Faire to learn more about the new expansion and to see all the revealed cards!
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Learn more about how you can save money on Hearthstone packs for the new expansion with our guide on Amazon Coins!
Comments
Soooo... About these 35 cards added "later"
Now free to players (and most players) who accumulate gold all expansion and buy all of it in packs at launch suddenly after 2 months don't have the cards they need anymore? Very "for the players" of you. In my opinion these 35 mid-expansion cards should either be free or much easier to obtain than "buy more packs and craft because otherwise you only spend once every expansion and that's not enough money for this small indie company"
For what it's worth - the new mode is pretty dang fun. I bought the pre-order today, so I played one run so far as the Paladin hero. There's some really busted stuff/combos that can happen in a run, but I had a blast playing. I got 5 wins with my deck that you build over time. It will be interesting to see what the entry cost is for Heroic Duels. If it's a lower "cost" than arena I could be tempted to play it outside of the casual mode. I currently don't play any arena outside of events and free tickets.
Casual mode will be fun for when I get a quest or just want to do something different to goof around with.
Blizzard have done it again. 4 very exciting legendaries, of which I'm sure I will never get out of a pack. Oh well, moving on.
Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate is an rng card that will certainly see play, and will certainly shit on some unlucky streamer in one of those meme videos. Nearly all the options will be good from what I saw, but the one 5% chance to get a pyro or nothing deal is where we cross the line to bonkersburg. Why does this option even need to exist is beyond me, but after I calmed down a bit, its actually just a massive gamble of which odds are will always favor the winning player, so perhaps its not as bs as I thought on first impression.
C'Thun, the Shattered is another cthun build around card. As such its usefulness is completely based on whether you can assemble it fast enough, and if the pieces are actually worth shit. The end effect is strong, but unlikely to ever kill since its very rare to actually get an empty board and 10 mana to spend it. Its not confirmed yet, but cthun's pieces might actually be the first time ever that a card actually expand the deck size which might count for something in fatigue control wars.
N'Zoth, God of the Deep is deceptively powerful and Im 100% sure its going to go into every midrange-control deck in the next expansion. Might even creep its way into aggro decks too.
Y'Shaarj, the Defiler can only be powerful depending on the corrupt cards we see. But for now its the least powerful of the 4 we've got.
I will craft Yogg on Day #1. All Hail RNG!
Prince Malchezaar was the first, since he shuffled in 5 cards (even though they were randomized).
damn forgot about that one.
Yeah, pretty much everyone forgot about that card
Cool to see the Old Gods back in standard. All the cards are interesting.
Yogg is just... Yogg. A pure RNG Roulette. Good for those who only care about fun. A nightmare for those who despise extreme variance.
Y'Shaarj is a value engine for the corrupt keyword but getting full value from the cards can be difficult as playing him costs all your mana and the corrupt effects require you to play a card that costs more than the cards with corrupt in them. You will need a Coin and a 1-cost card to trigger them. Or find a way to discount Y'Shaarj below 10 mana. Priest can do this very easily with Fate Weaver. Or maybe i misunderstood how corrupt works? I didn't watch the stream so feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.
N'Zoth is a neutral full board resurrect card. That's probably already enough to make some people hate it but making him work isn't as simple as Mass Resurrection or old N'Zoth, the Corruptor. He only works for tribal minions. That means you won't see him resurrecting a full board of the most annoying minions of all time (Obsidian Statue, Convincing Infiltrator) as those aren't eligible for his effect. Getting the most out of him requires a good mixture of different card types that usually don't synergize well with each other. Also, the current pool of eligible cards isn't exactly great so he is going to be really dependent on whatever they decide to print in this expansion.
C'Thunn... Oh boy! This one is something else entirely. He is essentially the Exodia of Hearthstone. I'm not sure how he works but i believe you have to assemble all pieces and play them one by one once you have all of them to complete his body. Then you can play him and win the game (most likely). He is obviously better in classes with a lot of card draw (DH, Warlock) and it could be completely busted in those classes. Maybe i'm wrong and he works in a different way? I really don't know but this is certainly the coolest card by far.
The achievements isn't something i care about a lot but it's cool that they finally added them. And the new progression system seems fine but the only way to be sure is to experience it so once we get to 2021 then we all should know if it's better or worse. I highly doubt it could be worse than what we have right now but it might not be as good as we expect. It depends on how fast we can grind those levels and how much gold we can earn (and how fast as well) after completing the 50 levels.
The "new" playmode is a big disappointment to me. I was hoping for something fresh (2on2, 3on3).
On Top of that, the whole old god thing feels like recycling+tweaking old ideas. I loved them back in the days, but to get confronted with them over and over again is just boring.
Thanks for everything Blizzard. Had a lot of fun with your games, but it feels like i have hit the end of the road today.
Anyway, i wish you all a lot of fun with HS, had a good time with the community here.
*mic drop*
Yeah yeah, Darkmoon Faire is expected to add lots more RNG, but still....
I'm not sure if I understood this correctly - the extra 35 cards in mid-expansion released will be part of same expansion card packs ? If so, then isn't it bad ? Either I spend gold before it is released - I don't get chance to get the legendaries, and also I get lot more duplicates (if enough gold is spend) for lower rarity cards - inefficient. If I wait until mid-expansion, that means they basically push us away from playing the newest stuff while its most desired by players. If anyone can clarify or see some upside in this, please share.
No duplicate rule will help if you get enough packs, plus they're also available to craft once they drop.
the no duplicates rule will help a bit as you can get all mini-set commons in like, 6 packs
PvP Dungeon Run sounds pretty awesome !
Also, I like that you can choose whether you wanna pay for it and get Rewards, or not and still be able to enjoy the Mode.
Maybe they could do the same thing with Arena?
I'm more hyped by the new system revamp than the new game mode. This progression system seems cool ! Do we know how much the tavern pass will cost?
Do you still get the challenge a friend quest on a regular basis which will earn you gold? If not, the change to an experience based daily quest is utter trash and will effectively be a gold loss for the average joe.
In that case I already hate it and it might be the final push to call it quits
What a bizarre analysis. I haven't rolled that quest in a VERY long time. Losing it is not a problem in any way.
You do realize that the Play a Friend quest only rewards one extra packs worth of gold once traded. And you can maybe get it once a month if you re-roll every day. I am sure the new system can get us more rewards than that.
I get around 1-2 quests from friends each week (it used to be every other day before the latest quest change to reroll 50 into 60 and vice versa). It felt like a stealth nerf already. If that "economy" is missing, I lose about 2k gold per expansion. Already saved up 5k by the end of this week. I'm sure the new system won't grant me about 10k with questing daily and occasionally receiving a challenge a friend quest.
Well most people don't have that many friends, so I cam very confident in saying that the majority of the population will benefit from this change even if they remove the friend quest.