Rumble Run - New Details On Upcoming Solo Content + Looking Back At Adventures
Like with the past few expansions, Hearthstone is getting some new solo content to play through! Here's everything we've learned about the mode so far.
- Rumble Run releases on December 13th, 9 days after the expansion launch.
- Shrines - Passives! They sit on the board giving you a special effect. They can be destroyed, but they will respawn after 3 turns.
- Like other solo content recently added to Hearthstone, successful wins let you add more cards to your run's deck.
- They really want to celebrate each of the teams (classes). Overpowered fights had to be done.
- You will fight eight opponents - all the other teams. Each team has 3 different shrines, and 3 champions so your runs won't always be the same.
- Rikkar is your champion you play with. He evolves over the run. He doesn't have a team to start with, that's up to you.
- You earn "Prize Fighters" for successful clears. Pick your own teammates.
- We'll get to play as the champions in "a series of" Tavern Brawls.
Adventures of Old
- The old way of doing solo content, adventures, didn't work out for them due to not having enough cards for a meta.
- Adventures needed to be easy so everyone could unlock the cards.
- The low replayability of adventures was also a problem that needed to be solved.
Frozen Throne - "Linear Battles"
- Knights of the Frozen Throne was the first expansion with the missions team. They went with the old formula, "linear battles" because it was known to work.
- The Lich King fight originally had you getting trapped into Frostmourne with a janky animation that made your game look like it bugged out.
- During QA of the Lich King fight, it was reported that the "Shut Up, Priest" could be stolen. They used that as an opportunity for an easter egg.
- There were several easter eggs within the Frozen Throne adventure that not many people found.
- One easter egg that didn't have many mentions online was the one when fighting The Lich King as a Paladin, turning yourself into Uther of the Ebon Blade and using hero power allowed him to collect your cards. When at 3 out of 4 Horsemen collected, he would say that it would be embarrassing it would be if he collected them all.
- Making the adventure more challenging then usual due to no card rewards turned out to be a positive. They learned players enjoy the challenge and lots of people played.
Kobolds / Witchwood - "Build As You Go"
- One of the big focuses was to make the content replayable. It's sad when they create content that doesn't get to be seen again.
- Making deckbuilding less intimidating was another priority. Lots of players beat the Lich King thanks to the deck copy feature.
- Increasing the challenge even more than before was their final goal for the modes.
- The initial prototype for Dungeon Run saw you playing as Mage and the entire running being just one very long game.
- When the boss died, the board would be reset, you'd pick your bucket of cards in a discover selection, and the new boss would start.
- A fun bug in the prototype caused Arcane Giant to be playable for 0 mana on turn 1 - they didn't reset the spell count between bosses.
- Thanks to that bug, it lead to the special treasure cards which got stronger as your run continued.
- Originally there were 12 bosses to beat each run instead of the 8 we got. They found the decks were too big and the bosses had too much health though which made it less fun.
- You were able to pick your boss in addition to the loot you got. It felt like a negative experience though if you didn't know what each boss did and you lost to them.
- They experimented with Tower Defense a lot with Witchwood. It's a mechanic they are always trying to get into the game.
- Darius Crowley became Hearthstone's Tower Defense and the first hero added to Monster Hunt.
- The final boss in the Witchwood prototype was Jaraxxus.
- Tess Greymane originally had a hero power which was a bag of weapons. Each time it was used, you would get a weapon out of the bag.
- Handgonne - 1 Mana 4/2
- Stake Thrower - 1 Mana 1/8 with Windfury
- Blunderbuss - 1 Mana 2/2 "Also damages the minions next to whomever your hero attacks.
- The weapons in Tess' bag ran out (there were only 3) and then her hero power became the one we have today, Scavenge.
- Magic Mirror allowed players to "break the dungeon" which is fun. Let the players do it.
Boomsday - "Puzzles"
- They always wanted to add Puzzles to Hearthstone.
- It was important to mix up the solo content after doing "Build As You Go" twice in a row.
- Boomsday thematically lead itself well to Puzzles. This was the set to do it.
- Puzzles originally got their start as a Tavern Brawl 2 years ago. They were Lethal-only puzzles. (We actually datamined this)
- The brawl created new tech that allowed them to save your state - absolutely needed for the real deal.
- Toki's replay turn tech helped out in the Puzzle Lab.
- First thing they tried to make was a Tower Defense puzzle.
- Netherspite laser beams tech was used to try and make a puzzle which required bouncing the beams off minions and into portals.
- Since they couldn't let you take extra turns, they instead gave you mana back to cheat in a multi-turn mechanic.
- Mirror was originally supposed to be seeing the solved board state and then having to replicate it. It was hard to remember in more difficult puzzles, even being able to see the solved state whenever you wanted.
- Sometimes there would be multiple developers behind one computer trying to get through a new puzzle they were given.
- One of the puzzles was accidentally unsolvable thanks to a number change and was given to Chakki shortly after he joined the team. Oops!
- They weren't really replayable, but there was very high engagement. They'll probably return to Puzzles again in the future.
*also in Undertaker,Grim Patron,Barnes and so on*
There were more cards used in the meta from adventures than from boomsday, especially after the nerf to giggling inventor.
Flamewaker approves
Holy hell! And ppl say they dont look at custom card designs :D I made Walking Fortress as a part of my class in one of our big comps.
Wow
1. from where is that card?
2. they are quite different
i actually like your version a bit more. I would be insanly hard to remove, but never a real threat
Teacher to Blizzard Dev "And did you copy off of a neighbour for this assignment???"
The old (heroic mode) adventures had some of the best card backs to this day (naxx, brm). I still use the green "patches" cardback from naxx.
Than*
You will get a Cardback as in the last Dungeon Runs, nothing more
....Their explanations for Adventures makes NO SENSE. It literally contradicts itself. Not to mention, so far, their "Runs" have been nothing but RNG bullshit-fests. Total pains in the ass that absolutely no one will want to go back to once they finally clear all 8 bosses. With Adventures, at least on Heroic mode, those bullshit broken mechanics were at the mercy of your own card collection, and thus their replayability was also at your own mercy.
Without the Brode and his A team, this current team is completely lost in the fucking woods. And scrounging around over Kotaku, reddit, and Reset era, it isn't just here or Blizz's forums where people have become utterly disillusioned with Hearthstone. I, along with just about most players, have been hoping they'll mix things up in the next rotation, but that obviously is not the case. Gotta sling them pack sales before making the game interesting!
I know it seems annoying when people in the comments plug other card games, but....they DO kind of have a point. The devs for those other games (so far) seem to have a general idea of what the fuck they're doing.
Speak for yourself. I played a shit-ton of dungeon run and loved it. I think it has a lot of replayability, the old adventures didn't.
do you need mommy to change your diapey too
It's adorable that I make an echoing point as someone else, and yet MY post is the one that gets downvoted the fuck out of.
This community is a perfect scale model of the current state of the game. Confused as fuck, with nine toes in the grave.
Hey, it worked once! So we are going to keep doing it untill they get absolutely bored of it.
Btw i hope the reward is not just a f*cking cardback.
It's gonna be just a fucking cardback. Alt heroes are now exclusively for whaling bundles.
See how they contradict themselves here? Heroic wings were incredibly interactive, and served indirectly as a puzzle on their own trying to figure out the perfect counter deck. Could it be that adventures, which rewarded players with meta changing cards upon completion, could be unlocked for free with in-game currency? Or how they were a fraction of the cost of an expansion for the same meta impact? Could it be that it wasnt profitable enough offering players such a deal? Yet they insist of pushing a free, low replayability mode like puzzles because it gives players a pack and a new cardback.
Heroic were a puzzle if you had a big enough collection to do it. Some of them still not done on my acc due how specific thing they are require and how insane restart rate they have due to the lack of semi-perfect draw some of them need (yeah, doing something forty times to get that 2 spec card in your hand and still can lose... not even worth a pack, and gives a twentieth of a card back).
Only the Blackrock heroic is missing tho, they just made Karazhan and LoE way too easy because of this.