Vee's "Traverse the Spire" Custom Set - Hearthstone Fan Community Spotlight

Hello everybody and welcome back to another Fan Community Spotlight.

Hearthstone is a game that, to some varying degrees, has always been about the Warcraft universe. But when you give the fans the tools to make their own cards, people theorycraft the idea of what it would look like if other IPs had made their way into Hearthstone. Eventually, this type of decision making lead to Diablo showing up in Hearthstone, and the characters of StarCraft getting fully playable cards in Heroes of StarCraft.

We've actually the idea of crossover sets on Fan Community Spotlight before, with not, but two installments about bosses from Elden Ring being made into Duels heroes, which is a mode that no longer exists. We have one for Overwatch characters being made into Mercenaries, which is yet another mode that no longer exists.

Do you know what mode still exists though? Constructed. At least for now. I can't guarantee we'll still be able to play that mode in the future. For now, we can enjoy a new crossover set to be featured on Fan Community Spotlight. Today, we have Traverse the Spire, created by a person known as "Vee", who was last featured on this series all the way back in 2019. Remember when the world hadn't totally gone to shit before the 2020s? Yeah, me too.

Traverse the Spire is a crossover set with the Slay the Spire games, which makes for an interesting implementation into Hearthstone since they're both card games, but they're both very different types of card games. Still, the crossover potential only feels natural given that the games have built a cult fanbase over the years. When card games are thrown into the mix, crossover sets with other card games is a matter of when people will theorize them, not if.

Traverse the Spire does not have a conventional keyword introduced in the set, but it does have a new Status mechanic. Status cards are cards you can add to your opponent's hand to mess with them. Some cards will benefit if your opponent holds a Status card.

This also allows me to highlight one of the most notable elements of the set, which is that the set does not use traditional art. This isn't the first time we've encountered a set on this series that primarily uses a traditionally un-Hearthstone-y art style. We've seen this before on CivilKobold's custom expansion, Pilgrimage Through the Cosmos. We're all card makers, but not many of us are artists. While art is an important element on any card, these creators have taken it to heart that the most important part of a card is what it does. If you have a good idea, but don't have the art for it, feel free to push the boundaries!

With a whole new game to process, let's see how Vee managed to Lee-d the charge of this set.

What exactly is this set about? What is the inspiration for the set theme?

Vee: "The set is about porting one of my favorite game series of all time into Hearthstone and seeing how two vastly different card games might mesh together. I actually made the first few cards of the set (the player character legendaries) during a small, for-fun-only card making competition on the custom hearthstone discord. After making those first few cards, I liked them enough that it inspired to make some support cards around them, and then that grew into a whole set."

How was it like to translate Slay the Spire into Hearthstone? What was the most fun part? What was the most challenging?

Vee: "It was actually really fun trying to mesh the two games together. Some cards felt like they had fairly obvious design paths to me, but others are far just trying to capture the vibe of the original card, or adding to the rest of the set around them. I am also someone who has never actually pulled through and finished making a whole custom set, I have multiple half finished ideas that will likely never see completion. So, for this set, I really gave myself a time crunch to finish it before I started losing motivation or got distracted by something else. In the end, I made the whole set in about 6 weeks and although that was challenging, it was actually really fun; trying to put together cohesive synergies and packages and balance everything out within a short time."

What part of the set was the most fun to design?

Vee: "I found the player character and ancient legendaries, as well as the Form spells really fun. The legendaries had to adapt the whole vibe of a character that doesn't have a specific, singular effect or action associated with them in StS. The Form spells felt fun in trying to find effects that were cool and interesting, fit the cycle condition and made sense for the original card."

Are there any other cards you wish to showcase for any reason?

Vee: "I think my favorite cards of the set are Wraith Form and the Ironclad."

Do you have anything behind the scenes that you wish to share?

Do you have anything else you wish to share?

Vee: "Not at the moment!"

Click here to look at the entire set!

That will do it for this installment of Fan Community Spotlight, where I mentioned we'd still be here. The train is still running and there's still some rails left to go, so join me next time for another Fan Community Spotlight.

Feel free to talk about the set in the comments below.