As announced with the release of the big Patch 23.6 earlier in the week, this summer's very own Fire Festival edition has officially begun on June 30 - more or less right around the time the special hotfix patch hit the live servers (although for all we know, the two events aren't even related). Yogg-Saron has been spotted trying to get in there, too.
For the time being, the celebration looks rather modest when compared to everything that was scheduled for the previous year. We only got a single paragraph about the event in the patch notes, so perhaps some special Tavern Brawls are yet to sneak in during the month of July.
The Legendary Questline is exactly the same as we've datamined a few days ago, except now we know the correct order of all tasks and rewards. As well as the entire festival duration: apparently going on for 4 full weeks, which will lead almost right up until the new Castle Nathria expansion. That's actually longer than in the past, hence there is no real reason to hurry. Unless you can complete the first four quests swiftly and grab the packs while the dust refund window still remains generously extended - best don't ask why, just hope to get lucky with card pulls.
Fire Festival 2022 Legendary Quests
The series of 7 quests (available for completion all at once) will unlock five varied card packs of Standard variety, as well as two different hero skins. In the exact order:
- Light Up the Lanterns
- Play 10 Fire spells.
- Rewards 1x Standard Pack.
- Beat the Heat
- Play 3 games as Druid, Rogue, or Shaman.
- Rewards 1x Alterac Valley Pack.
- Games and Glory
- Play 2 games of Battlegrounds.
- Rewards Torchbearer Blackthorn Hero Skin.
- Take a Splash
- Play 3 games as Hunter, Paladin, or Priest.
- Rewards 1x Sunken City Pack.
- Meet at the Campfire
- Win 3 bounties in Mercenaries.
- Rewards 1x Mercenaries Pack
- Spooky Firelight Stories
- Play 3 games as Demon Hunter, Mage, or Warlock.
- Rewards 1x Murder at Castle Nathria Card Pack.
- Lord of Feast and Flame
- Play 3 games as Warrior.
- Rewards Roaster Magni Hero Skin.
Only two quests require active player involvement: that is number #1 and #5; the rest could be completed even by absent-mindedly queueing games and letting them run their natural course. The Hearthstone team clearly wants everyone to have finished that Mercenaries tutorial - luckily, the lowest level bounties can be done with ease.
For what it's worth, it's actually "play 10 Fire spells *or* use 10 Fire school abilities", if you'd prefer to rely on your Mercenaries to do the work.
Let's notice and appreciate that newly improved UI, which clearly shows us the remaining duration for the active quest chain. Very handy to have this information visible within the game now.
Free Hero Skins
One for a fiery cheerful Quilboar chief, and one for everyone's favorite dwarven king. Both come with their own special descriptions, which can be viewed within the in-game collection (and now also with the names of their respective artists):
Flame Fighters Bundle
Technically available in the shop since the major patch on June 27 (and lasting until July 18), it's a trio of class card packs mixed with Fire Festival-themed Hero skins. For a total sum of $24.99.
Mage, Paladin, and Hunter, respectively:
It's fairly easy to tell we are going to see more bundles of this type appear over the coming weeks, especially seeing as there are more flavorful Hero skins waiting in the wings:
Got a favorite?
Comments
'Tis the season of having 6 unopenable packs sitting on my homescreen, flashing that notification over . . . and over . . . and OVER.
grrrrr
It's even worse if you are a merc player where it's the best to keep all of your packs, which you could open anytime, around until the next bunch of mercs drop.
That will surely be a longer wait, I don't recall Blizz usually giving out new expansion packs a good month in advance. But I saw some folks celebrating this change.
Usually once they drop the patch with pre-orders the end of month packs switch to the upcoming set. The only difference is because of the timing this time we will get end of month rewards twice between the announcement patch and the set launch. So it's not really a "change" but just luck on the players' end to get more free packs prior to launch.
Can we please start getting some new characters for portraits? I do not want 5 different versions of most of these characters. I would rather have hero portraits of characters like Tirion, Dr. Boom, Rotface, or Sneed to name a few.
SNEED
I've been having this theory for a while now, (last year perhaps). But whenever there's an active refund session, the probability of getting refunded cards from packs is being reduced to zero (or maybe lowered enough) so that we can't gain any extra dust from it.
The same exact theory as opening packs in the mid term expansion. The chance of getting epics and legends are significantly worse than when you opened them at the start of expansion. This is either true, or me having bad luck, because I've tried opening like 20 packs in mid expansion, and got only 3 epics and no legends.
Although, this is just a speculations. Because I literally have no way to prove it, only by statistics.
20 packs is NOT statistically significant. Not in any universe. Show me the data from 10,000 pack openings and maybe we can talk.
But there's simply no incentive for Blizzard to do this. The downsides of that information leaking are astronomically higher than the financial upside of screwing their player base.
Dupe clause is removed for Legendaries if you previously owned that legendary, so it is an easy explanation.
Isn't it removed from all cards once you've owned two non-golden copies of them as well? So if you own all the cards in a set, DE the nerfed cards, and then open up packs you won't be guaranteed anything other than not receiving more than two of the same Common, Rare, or Epic in the same pack (if that old rule still applies... might not as the duplicate protection makes it redundant)
This is not true, I've had cards eligible for refund come from packs during their refund period. Sorry for the bad RNG :(