We prefer to joke about Valve Time, however Blizzard don’t appear to care about temporal circulate as an idea. First an overhaul for Warcraft III simply yesterday, and now a clearly Halloween-themed growth for Hearthstone in the course of April. Still, The Witchwood appears a adequate excuse as any to sling some playing cards, splat some monsters and delve some dungeons, because it’s out now… principally.
Halloween is a year-long factor for Blizzard, as The Witchwood is seemingly the starting of a sequence of darkish and sinister updates coming to Hearthstone as a part of their Year of The Raven season. The 12 months has already introduced with it a scary reshuffling of the accepted Standard format playing cards. For the foreseeable future, solely the Basic, Classic, Un’Goro, Frozen Throne, Kobolds & Witchwood units are allowed in Standard play, with the remaining being relegated to the much less balanced Wild zone. A handful of different playing cards (you may see the full patch-notes here) have been exiled to the Wilds as effectively.
Sadly, the single-player element of The Witchwood, a free new solo Adventure mode, isn’t going to be rolling out for an additional two weeks. For the time being you’ll simply need to get pleasure from the brand new playing cards, options and the low season environment. Plus, it’s an ideal excuse to re-watch the pleasant musical trailer that heralded the announcement of this explicit growth.
Anyone logging into Hearthstone will discover themselves gifted the same old trio of new-expansion boosters, together with one class legendary. The Witchwood provides 135 new playing cards with some attention-grabbing new quirks to them. Two playing cards particularly – Genn Greymane and Baku the Mooneater – are deck-defining, as they restrict you to constructing a deck with solely odd or even-cost playing cards in alternate for a buff to your hero energy.
The growth has additionally improved the standard of life for everybody. Daily Quests at the moment are simpler to finish, and pay out 50 gold as a substitute of the irritating 40 that they gave beforehand, making it far simpler to land on a pleasant sq. 100 for a booster pack. For informal, pleasant matches now you can lend a whole deck to a buddy for them to check out, although the patch notes do point out that this isn’t usable in Tavern or Fireside brawl modes.
The Arena has additionally seen just a few minor tweaks, with some ‘below average’ playing cards now being much less prone to flip up between rounds, and the Humongous Razorleaf and Ancient Watcher playing cards being booted out completely, presumably on account of their overly loud and rowdy nature. There are loads extra minor tweaks and adjustments, and you may see the entire list here.
Hearthstone, as all the time, stays free-to-play, with booster packs for the Witchwood growth priced (somewhat cheekily) at a numerically related £3/$3.
