Attention all wannabe achievement hunters! It looks like we might only have less than a week left to try to milk some extra bits of precious XP from Madness at the Darkmoon Faire related tasks. So if you've been largely slacking off until now like some of us *coughs*, this is your last chance to get moving. The official blog word on the subject as follows:
Quote From Blizzard Finally, please note that incomplete Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Gameplay achievements will no longer grant Reward Track XP after the 20.0 patch is released, and instead a new set of Forged in the Barrens Gameplay achievements will so don’t forget to finish and claim those before they’re gone!
The clock is ticking now. It's a bit of a shame we won't have until Forged in the Barrens launches (supposedly due to the nature of Hearthstone's patching), and Celestalon himself was quick to confirm the above in case of any lingering doubts.
With that in mind, the best we can do is to have a look at some last-minute tips and tricks in order to maximize XP gains from Gameplay achievements for various Darkmoon Class and Neutral cards. We have already covered achievements for all 9 original classes:
Demon Hunter remains because we don't know the alphabet, nobody loves Illidan anyway, they are outcasts and won't mind either way. Ahem. Because as a new class it is the odd one out and we thought a handful of other Neutral achievements could use some good company. It's not forgotten. Let's delve into this final batch:
Demon Hunter
For the most part, fairly simple. If you've played any sort of Soul Demon Hunter or OTK Demon Hunter this expansion, you most likely already got a lot of progress with 2 or even 3 of these achievements.
- For getting Redeemed Pariah to 10 Attack, I had much better luck with this version (only needing a couple of tries). You can use your Outcast cards freely - for the most part - to draw through your deck and for staying alive, as you will only need a few of them for the buffs at the end. The goal is to survive long enough to gather your combo pieces, ideally with some Skull of Gul'dan discounts. Mo'arg Artificer is great for board clears with Immolation Aura or even emergency heals, as we know from OTK Demon Hunter. Even dropping them on curve can be fine to stall. Double Beaming Sidekick plus Crazed Alchemist on your Redeemed Pariah already takes it to 7 attack for just 6 mana, minus any discounts. From then you only need to add 3 cheap Outcast cards (they don't need to be to the left or the right of your hand), and voila.
- You could add one Line Hopper if desired; personally, I found it a little clunky at that mana cost and not necessary. Same as with Costumed Entertainer - it's what many people used for their achievement, but it requires fewer minions to be run and involves a bit more randomness. There are conflicting reports on Abusive Sergeant - apparently, if you end your turn with temporary buffs it won't count, but if you buff up the Attack to 10 with them and then concede, it might? Up for testing.
- Wild has of course plenty of extra options, such as Lance Carrier, Brann Bronzebeard, and Emperor Thaurissan. For Duels there is Blade of Quickening, but you would need to complete some games for a bigger discount and your starting deck won't have copies of Outcast cards. Not as consistent.
- Throw Glaive achievement is easy if you modify your deck accordingly (and if you faced enough Token Druid, without anything special). Mo'arg Artificer is your best friend to boost it to 4 damage per minion (Raging Felscreamer can discount ahead of time), and you could stack your deck with cheap minions, Desert Hare and cycle/removal if you are worried your opponents won't give you enough targets.
Neutral Achievements
If you've been hunting down Class achievements or even playing around with a variety of decks and game modes, chances are you already have most of these Neutral achievements completed or at least progressed significantly through that bar count. Many of the decks we have showcased throughout could also be easily adjusted for the job just by adding a few relevant cards.
- Add or take out Corrupt cards based on preferences and what you already have completed. Especially Carnival Clown can be clunky. Best mulligan for Horrendous Growth and Dark Inquisitor Xanesh, from then on it's just a matter of time.
- You can make decent Corrupt decks with Druid and Warlock as well. Carnival Clown Druid was a thing early on in the expansion, after all. And Tickatus Warlock is always willing to ruin dreams.
- Duels note: most recommended, there is Droplet of Insanity and Gift of the Old Gods. Goes well with Shadow Mend and Dark Arts for extra card draw.
- C'Thun, the Shattered achievement is also easier to complete in Duels. The initial games where your deck is thin and everyone's starting health is set below 30. Works nicely with Mage, Priest, Warlock, even Spell Damage Druid.
- There are enough decks (even for Ranked) that work with the Old Gods. If you don't have them, Duels is your best bet. Spell heavy for finding Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate (Yogg-tastic Tasties is said to count as well), Corrupt heavy for Y'Shaarj, the Defiler, Menagerie buckets for N'Zoth, God of the Deep. The only one you cannot get from loot buckets - as far as we know - is C'Thun, the Shattered.
- A variation on Big Warrior does a good enough job here, might even win some games. Ramp Paladin or Duel! Paladin is also worthy considerations. The current meta version of Guardian Animals Druid runs Moonfang as well.
- If you only need Moonfang achievement here, you could make a Druid or Priest deck with more buffs and ways to copy the minion. Crazed Alchemist too! Although increasing its Health only works as long as your opponents don't use hard removal.
- Runaway Blackwing achievement counts it when you directly kill minions with your dragon, not only with the end of turn effect.
Keep In Mind
These achievements can only be completed in either Ranked Mode (Standard/Wild), Duels, and Arena. Not Casual Standard/Wild or Tavern Brawl though. It's advised you hit a ranked floor first (i.e. 10 or 5 Silver/Platinum etc.) where you can't lose any stars before attempting anything there. Make sure you're not on a win streak either, it would be a shame to let that go to waste. With nothing at stake and gradual achievement progress to be had, you can have a number of relaxing games that don't require much attention. My favorite for multi-tasking.
Heroic Duels and Arena will cost you 150 gold per run while having the fiercest competition on average, so probably not the best investment for the sake of some additional XP (pretty good for finding Legendaries you don't have though). Casual Duels, on the other hand, is free of charge, and unlike Casual Standard/Wild, counts for all achievements. Being limited to 15 starting cards can actually help in some cases, and there is even more to gain for hitting 3-12 wins and achieving a flawless 12-0 run if you haven't done those yet.
Also losing the XP bonus, so grab it while you can!
Don't Stress Over It
You should expect that most opponents won't be able to read your intentions even once you start playing weirdly, likely still doing their best to go for the win and inadvertently ruin your delicate setup plans. Alas, it's rather difficult to communicate through a limited selection of emotes! Try not to let that annoy you too much; once in a while someone might catch on and play along. It's your call how much you want to try with these extra sources of XP and whether it's worth your time; every game played adds a small amount regardless. At the end of the day, you wouldn't be missing out on a lot (except for Duels). Just a nice little bonus here and there.
Unless stated otherwise, you can also complete achievements from one class with another class doing the same thing or getting a hold of required cards (such as Paladin lifesteal or Shaman face damage accomplished by Demon Hunter). We tried to mention that where applicable. The main focus here is on the cards available in the Standard format, as the extent of everyone's Wild collection would vary greatly. That said, you can definitely experiment to find valid additions and replacements based on what you got from the older sets. Many options exist. Good luck!
How many of these achievements did you manage to get done over the course of this expansion? Are you going to try your hardest during the final week to earn some extra XP or just take it easy? Any other tips and tricks that might be worth sharing with the rest of us? You can use our Deckbuilder to show your own achievement spins for these classes, and drop us a link in the comments!
Also a shout-out to many of our community members for being an inspiration with their creative suggestions and forum threads such as these. When in doubt, you know where to look!
Thank you for following our little last-minute achievement series, and for all the great comments out there.
Comments
A question not addressed by these guides that I'd like to see answered soon is how we should manage our quests in the days before Patch 20.0 (Thursday!) and March 30th. If I get my weekly quests on Monday, I should probably hold off on playing until launch or else all my XP will go towards the Darkmoon rewards track and not the Barrens rewards track. I might even want to bank four days of daily quests, no? Or will the weeklies refresh an extra time with the expansion launch? Also, I assume that if I'm between levels with ~1000XP that that will simply be lost with the track reset. None of this is a huge deal, but I'm sure there's a way to optimize our XP on expansion launch.
Actually, we don't quite know how the Rewards Track transition might go. Last time all old quests were lost while being replaced by the new ones and the whole experience system, but this time there won't be such a huge mechanical change. Depends really how they designed it. If for some reason our set of weekly quests from Monday 29 was to be replaced on Tuesday 30, I'd expect Hearthstone team to get the word out (would be lots of angry people otherwise). And if we see any blue posts on the subject, we'll definitely cover it.
This might be one of the questions that gets asked during Iksar's Q&A later today/tomorrow, and if you are an awake Twitter resident at the time, you could try to do it yourself!
Since the blog posts didn't mention anything about Patch 20.0 and no other patch messed with your weekly and daily quests, it should be safe to assume that's not being affected, we still get a few more days of Darkmoon Faire track.
If you are between levels, then yes, you will lose whatever small chunk when your level gets set back to 0. Worth to hit a new level if it's really close.
This is logical and in line with what I was thinking. I'll probably stop playing after Friday to bank Sa-Tu daily quests and the weeklies on Monday. Unless there are launch quests? I know a lot of this will be answered after the patch drops tomorrow and can be datamined. Sort of funny how it's likely to incentivize me not to play right before launch with all the new Classic and Duels content.
Hmm, you won't be able to bank 4 days worth of daily quests? That 4th slot is only ever being used for a special type. Last time we did not see any launch quests, sadly, so I have to wonder. I won't hold my breath as they seem to be baking that into the initial levels of Rewards Track, but it sure would be a nice surprise.
I noticed that Celestalon did tweet on the subject in response to people after all, perhaps we'll consider a small FYI. While I do agree with holding onto weekly quests in this instance (it's just a day and a half), I don't think the experience amount from daily ones really warrants denying yourself the opportunity to play with all the new stuff. The headstart from that will be really minimal.
"incomplete Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Gameplay achievements will no longer grant Reward Track XP"
$%&#@!!!
So stupid, Blizzard.
Do you know how long it would take to play 200 Greybough's assuming you even have one.
I did that one in like 2 games, with the right deck Greybough can go infinite and at that point the opponent loses all tools to remove them (baring plague of death). that achievement goes really fast in the right deck.
Good luck getting that condition to repeat it self. Let me guess...you buffed 100 totems in 4 games too with Grand Totem Eys'or?
I can't tell you how many times I had people quit before I got a chance to play Landslide. Sometimes I would just play the card on an empty board just to trigger the effect since I had to play it 60 times and didn't want to be playing more games than necessary.
They made some of these unnecessarily way too grindy, no argument there. I believe they also stated their intentions to correct that for the Barrens ones, but we won't know until we see them tomorrow.
Yogg-tastic Tasties definitely counts for the Yogg achievements as I finally fully completed both Yogg Take the Wheel and Wheel of Misfortune at the weekend. Bizarrely having never got Rod of Roasting on the Wheel before I got two in the same Duels run! One win, one loss - all hail Yogg the Faire!
Easiest way to do a Pariah achievement is actually not through it's ability, but in Wild with constant buffs. I've done like it 3rd game. Bonemares and Lance carriers through Brann. Emperor or Skull discounts work miracles.
So pretty much exactly how it's stated in the class section about it. ;) I find Bonemare too clunky compared to all the cheaper options, though.
This was a top tip thanks! I completed Not So Lonely on my first attempt using Brann Bronzebeard and 2x Lance Carrier. Even managed to complete Good Arm in the same go using the Mo'arg Artificer (discounted with Raging Felscreamer as suggested too).