Voyage to the Sunken City will go live on April 12th, but the new expansion's achievements are already available in our journals, so you can start completing them!
While most of these achievements require you to own Sunken City cards, and are not easily completed unless you want to rely on some Duels mid-run buckets luck, some are already doable. Therefore, you can either complete or start grinding them ahead of time, so that you'll be able to go through the first levels of the next reward track faster for even more rewards and sense of progression.
For this reason, we rounded up all the doable Sunken City achievements and added a little guide for each, so that you'll have something different to do during these last few days before the new cards will be available for everyone, and the real grind will begin. Have fun!
Remember: Any achievements you complete now will not reward XP until you claim them. Do not claim the achievements until the new rewards track goes live on April 12. If you claim them now, that XP goes towards your Alterac Valley track instead. When in doubt, stay out of your journal until the expansion launches.
How to Complete the "Ambidextrous" Demon Hunter Achievement
- Requirement: Kill 2 minions with your Hero in a single turn 30 times as Demon Hunter.
- Reward: 200 XP
- Speed Rating: 3/5
This achievement is obviously meant to be completed with the aid of Multi-Strike; however, Demon Hunter has another way to kill more than one minion in a single turn with their face, and it's Warglaives of Azzinoth. Although this weapon is not as impactful as it used to be a couple years ago, its can still help you with this achievement, as it will give you at best 2 progression points per equip. In fact, if you consume all the weapon's charges and there are still minions on the opposing side of the board, you'll still be able to attack if you Hero has any Attack power left (through Hero Power, another weapon or a buff spell).
Warglaives of Azzinoth will be in Core for another week, so if you do not own it from Ashes of Outland you're in for a last call!
Our best advice is to try to complete Ambidextrous in Wild, where you're pretty much guaranteed to face aggressive strategies (and not the usual Kazakusan Druid/Questline Hunter/Burn Shaman trio), but you can pull if off in Standard too. Make sure to have some healing and decent card draw.
How to Complete the "It Cost Me... Nothing" Demon Hunter Achievement
- Requirement: Play 30/60/100 spells after their Mana cost is reduced to 0 as Demon Hunter.
- Reward: 100/100/500 XP
- Speed Rating: 2/5
This achievement was clearly designed with Predation in mind but, even with that spell available, 100 casts are quite the number. Fortunately for everyone, It Cost Me... Nothing states as its only requirement that the spell's cost doesn't have to be originally 0 mana, but it has to be reduced afterwards, and let us tell you something: Demon Hunter has plenty of ways to discount stuff!
Looking at the current Standard card pool, here are all the cards that can help us completing this achievement ahead of time:
We tried to build a deck containing all these cards, and here's what we came up with. A Questline list that uses Final Showdown's mid-phase discounts to reduce your hand to 0 or nearly, granting you multiple progression points per game.
- With Skull of Gul'dan (cornerstone of this strategy) and Fel Guardians (discounts itself) as the only exceptions, all spells in this deck cost 3 mana or less, so that they'll be discounted to 0 by Skull.
- With Eye Beam (you kind of need to stay alive...) and Fel Guardians (see above) as the only exceptions, all Fel spells in this deck cost 2 mana or less, so that they'll be discounted to 0 by Felgorger.
- Illidari Studies is another great source of 0-Cost spells.
- Felosophy in Standard and Consume Magic in Wild are immediately free.
- Spectral Sight needs two studies discounts, but it can still be worth working towards.
How to Complete the "An Acquired Taste" Hunter Achievement
- Requirement: Destroy 15/30/60 minions with Poisonous spells.
- Reward: 100/100/500 XP
- Speed Rating: 3/5
Although you'd want to complete An Acquired Taste with Urchin Spines, there's another card that makes your spells Poisonous, and it's just about to rotate: we're talking about Scholomance Academy's Professor Slate. Jam it in a Questline Defend the Dwarven District list and you'll receive progress points while winning games.
How to Complete the "Scaling Scales" Warlock Achievement
- Requirement: Play a Murloc with 10 Attack as Warlock.
- Reward: 200 XP
- Speed Rating: 5/5
Murlock Warlock will be the class' main theme for Voyage in the Sunken City, but this doesn't mean that Scaling Scales it completely unreachable prior Day 1. In fact, we located a rather amusing (and relatively easy to pull off) strategy in the Wild game mode.
First of all, we need two copies of our friend, Circus Amalgam. This unit is technically a Murloc, but it's also a Dragon, a Mech, a Demon, a Naga,... whatever you want! For this reason, you'll be able to capitalize on each tribal handbuff synergy,
Your goal? Try to find Circus Amalgam in the mulligan and keep buffing it as you draw through your deck. Here are a few inclusions that will help us in bringing Amalgam's attack to 10:
- Tasty Flyfish - Circus Amalgam is the only Dragon in your deck, so Flyfish's Deathrattle is guaranteed to land on the Amalgam, as long as you have it in hand.
- Murloc Tastyfin - Not a buff card, but it draws either itself, Flyfish or Amalgam, allowing you to find your key components in less time.
- Soul Infusion - Remember when this card in combination with Doubling Imp was the real deal? Make sure to have Circus Amalgam as your left-most unit and you're guaranteed 1/3 of the whole buff you need.
How to Complete the "Army of Azshara" Neutral Achievement
- Requirement: Summon 100/200/300 Naga.
- Reward: 100/100/500 XP
- Speed Rating: 1/5
Although Patch 23.0 updated the card type of some existing units, granting them the Naga tribal tag, we feel like it would be better for your mental sanity to just wait for Sunken City Day 1 instead of brute-grinding this ahead of time: although it's possible, it is not worth the time and the effort.
If you're still reading, we congratulate to you for your impressive nerves of steel, as we'll proceed to showcase the most efficient way to progress the Army of Azshara achievement. In the following list you can see all the Naga you can currently summon in Constructed:
- Demon Hunter - Wrathscale Naga, Coilfang Warlord and its token Conchguard Warlord.
- Mage - Naga Sand Witch.
- Shaman - Lady Vashj.
- Neutral - Nightmare Amalgam, Zola the Gorgon, Circus Amalgam, Hench-Clan Hag's Amalgams, Naga Corsair, Darkscale Healer, Naga Sea Witch.
Moreover, the achievement's requirement clearly states that it will count all Naga you will Summon, and not just Play. Therefore, Resurrection effects like N'Zoth, the Corruptor can help you.
We think playing some bizarre form of Wild Deathrattle Demon Hunter is the most proficient way to progress Army of Azshara.
How to Complete the "Rock, Paper, BLADE!" Neutral Achievement
- Requirement: Counter a minion and a spell that cost (5) or more with Blademaster Okani.
- Reward: 200 XP
- Speed Rating: ?/5
Not very difficult, but still a very situational achievement, as it requires your opponent's cooperation, and we all know how dummy they can be at times. Based on the achievement's wording, the Countered spell has to naturally cost 5 or more, so Loatheb-like effect should not make your life easier.
All in all, we feel like Rock, Paper, BLADE! may take you a couple games as well as a couple hours, as it is very meta and opponent dependent, and for this reason we suggest you should pretty much include Blademaster Okani in every deck you play (especially if you're hunting other achievements - two birds with one stone!) until you'll get the achievement done.
Here below are the most successful Okani decks based on HSReplay data: pick one and test your odds!
- The only advice we feel like giving out is to not use Blademaster Okani to Counter a spell while your opponent has The Coin in hand - be smart!
Best of luck if you attempt any pre-Alterac achievement hunting. Let us know how many of these have you managed to complete: sharing other tips and tricks is also welcome!
Comments
Is it worth it to waste XP in old BP?
The article clearly states what follows.
Even if you manage to complete any of the displayed achievements, we suggest you to not claim the rewards, and keep them for when the new Reward Track will go live.
Depends on what you value. If you want gold then old is better because you can squeeze in a few extra packs.
Keeping them for the new one only makes sense if you for some reason feel the need to rush through the early levels.
Also, if you buy the Tavern Pass, the EXP boosts only kick in later on, so if you complete the achievements on the new track early you get less EXP overall (although it's such a small amount it doesn't really matter)
On the contrary, "rushing through the early levels" will get you to the higher XP bonus faster, which is exactly why you would want to do it.
I think the goal of rushing through the early levels is to hit the rewards sooner - especially the ones that are "random epic card" and such that would impact your duplicate protection.
That race to XP bonus argument is always a fallacy though, because you'd have the larger XP bonus applied to the achievements if you claimed them as part of the AV rewards track, so it all evens out in the long run. A related argument does apply though if you didn't get the AV Tavern Pass but do get the SC one, since now you actually get some XP bonus out of it.
Achievement XP is trivial compared to quest XP, so no, it's not a fallacy. You want the bigger bonus to apply to quest XP as soon as possible.
That makes no difference. The amount of XP you need to reach the levels to get higher XP bonuses is the same regardless of where it comes from, and hence the amount multiplied by 1.1, 1.15 and 1.2 is the same. If you reach the levels where you get 50g for every 1500XP, all you end up doing in the long run is shifting some XP from the end of 1 rewards track to another.
You do change how quickly you get rewards in the first 100 levels - albeit only slightly - but in the end you have the exact same stuff and the same amount of gold.
You get a finite number of quests per day or week. You want to apply the highest XP bonus to as many quests as you can over the course of the track. Therefore, every day or week spent at the lower XP bonus represents a loss.
It doesn't, because the achievement XP you are using to race to the XP bonus would just pick up that 'lost' bonus instead. That includes claiming them as part of the AV rewards track.
I'm a doctor of (theoretical) physics, and I know what I'm doing with the maths here. The ONLY loss of XP comes from overshooting the level boundaries where you increase the XP bonus, since the quest you complete only sees the lower bonus. So if you really want to min-max it, make sure you get XP in the smallest possible increments at those levels. But even then a 5% difference on a single quest is pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things.
That small increment is exactly what I'm talking about, though. You may consider it negligible, but I do not. I'm glad we finally agree that it exists.
A few updates on this since you probably didn't playtest them all.
Flamereaper doesn't work for the DH achievement because it'S not the hero that killls but the effect of the weapon. Warglaives work fine though.
Also Professor Slate doesn't work for the Hunter achievement for some reason. Can't tell you why, but I assume the achievement was hardcoded for Urchin Spines because I guess they forgot Slate was a thing. Or maybe it's just broken in general
Thanks for the Flamereaper thing: it sounds obvious now that you point it out, but I really believed it could work.
As for the Hunter achievement, I really the achievement is just hard-coded and not broken: Alterac Valley was full of buggy achievements, and I really don't want Sunken City to be the same...
So did I until I spent 15 minutes in a game farming it only to realize it doesn't work.
You could argue the Hunter one might be due to spaghetti code were Slate doesn't actually turn spells poisonous but rather just has an aura that says they always kill when they damage something while Urchin Spines actually flags them as poisonous internally.