Hearthstone Patch - Card Nerfs, Lunar New Year Event, Card Backs, Curse of Hakkar
A new patch has hit the Battle.net client.
Players on mobile will receive updates later today when they get approved by their app stores.
Card Nerfs Have Arrived!
The previously announced nerfs are finally here.
- [Discuss] Cold Blood - Cost increased to 2 mana. (Up from 1)
- [Discuss] Flametongue Totem - Cost increased to 3 mana. (Up from 2)
- [Discuss] Equality - Cost increased to 4 mana. (Up from 2)
- [Discuss] Hunter's Mark - Cost increased to 2 mana. (Up from 1)
- [Discuss] Emerald Spellstone - Cost increased to 6 mana.(Up from 5)
Lunar New Year
The Lunar New Year event has begun and runs until February 12th.
- You can buy a Lunar New Year Bundle. 30 Packs (10 each of WW, BD, RR) for $20.
- Logging in rewards you with a golden Fireworks Tech.
- New quests (datamining incoming) that reward Gold and Arcane Dust.
Curse of Hakkar Event
A new card back in a special event that goes back to the Corrupted Blood Incident. We've put up a Discord to help you find someone to play with.
Quote from BlizzardThe Curse of Hakkar is Upon Us All!
A riotous bunch of gladiators have been living it up with the loa in Gurubashi Arena since Rastakhan’s Rumble began . . . but not everyone is overjoyed with the glory heaped upon the other loa. You see, before the rise of the Zandalari Empire and King Rastakhan, Gurubashi once belonged to a very different kind of loa. Adarker loa . . . .
The blood god Hakkar!
Oh yes, Hakkar has dabbled in Rastakhan’s little game—but in his dark heart he dreams of a return to the glory days, when every sacrifice in Gurubashi Arena was made in his honor and he ruled over the Gurubashi Empire with cursed blood and an iron fist! Er, scythey-claw-hand-thing.
But he has a plan, and soon, Hakkar’s name will be on every gladiator’s lips—because his curse has been unleashed on Rastakhan’s Rumble!
A Curse Unleashed
A small number of rumblers have already been marked by Hakkar’s curse. If you should encounter them while playing Hearthstone, the curse will spread to you—in the form of the
Mark of Hakkar card back!
When you play against another player while using the Mark of Hakkar card back, it will spread to them, and so on, and so on—FOREVER!
How fast will Hakkar’s curse spread? How long until EVERY player in the Tavern is afflicted? That is up to you.
See you in the Tavern. Muahahahaha!
New Card Backs
Official Patch Notes
Quote from BlizzardThis Hearthstone update kicks off Lunar New Year with a bang and sets the stage for the upcoming Season of Rastakhan Tavern Brawl event. We also made some mobile optimizations and fixed some bugs.
Read on for details!
Lunar New Year
Celebrate Lunar New Year 2019 from February 5 through February 12!
- Log in during the event to get a free Rare Golden Fireworks Tech card!
- Complete celebratory Quests that award both Gold and Arcane Dust!
- Share spectacular New Year emotes!
- The Lunar New Year Bundle – Get 30 card packs (10 each from The Witchwood, The Boomsday Project, and Rastakhan’s Rumble) for a special price. Available through February 12.
Season of Rastakhan
February 13 through March 3 earn glory for the Loa—and card packs!—over three weeks of Tavern Brawls during the Brawl of Champions.
- The Brawl of Champions – A series of three special Tavern Brawls. Choose a rumble Champion and harness the power of each Loa’s Shrine to prove which Loa is the mightiest!
- Each Champion will have a new deck and Shrine each week!
- New repeatable Quest: For the Glory of Rastakhan – Play a Tavern Brawl 3 times to earn a Rastakhan’s Rumble card pack. Available each Wednesday when the Tavern Brawl starts.
- Earn up to three Rastakhan’s Rumble card packs over the course of the Season of Rastakhan!
Game Improvements
- Fixed an issue that could cause cards that copy and set minion Health to a specific value to incorrectly activate “while damaged” effects.
- Fixed an issue that would cause Augmented Elekk to shuffle a copy of a card drawn by Tracking into the deck.
- Corrupted Blood no longer benefits from Spell Damage.
- Spellbender can no longer attack itself when activated by The Beast Within.
- Corrupting Mist and Reckless Experimenter can no longer incorrectly cause Immortal Prelate to be removed from the hand or deck.
- Fixed an instability issue that could occur when Book of Spectres drew multiple copies of Corrupted Blood.
- Fixed an instability issue that could occur when attempting to view an enemy minion as it’s being returned to an opponent’s hand.
- Gral, the Shark now works properly when executing its battlecry more times than there are minions left in your deck.
- Mecha’thun that has been transformed will no longer incorrectly play its original effects when destroyed.
- Astral Raptor Overkill animations will no longer play multiple times.
- Copied Zombeasts now correctly keep their Zombeast visual aura.
- The enchantments from Clutchmother Zavas now collapse into a single enchantment banner.
- [Rumble Run] Fixed a bug where damage from healing due to Bwonsamdi's Covenant was not properly being credited to the source of the damage.
- [Rumble Run] Fireslinger now stops casting Fireballs if there are no valid targets.
- [Rumble Run] Fixed an issue with Tribute from the Tides not granting extra battlecries if it was damaged while buffed.
- [Rumble Run] Casting an Overload spell while affected by Electra Stormsurge now triggers Overcharged Totem once for each cast.
- [Rumble Run] Fixed an instability issue that could occur when playing Bouncing Blade while the Pirate’s Mark Shrine is in play.
- [Mobile] To reduce the initial size of the Hearthstone mobile app, some sound files are now an optional download.
- [Mobile] Hand and mana are now moved aside when Choose One cards are displayed.
- [Android] Background downloads are now displayed as a notification.
So, what are the new quests, guys? No datamining? Should I reroll a 60 gold\arcane dust one? Or should I do it? I have seen a 100 gold-dust one? Are they plenty or not? Are there 50 gold-dust ones?
60 is lowest. Reroll them. You can get 60- 80- 100- gold/dust quests.
Thanks.
Hmm...could these 3 other card backs that have the flavor "Acquired in a future event" hints the upcoming 3 expansions?
Let's examine them. (keep in mind that those 3 are all separated from the rastakhan's rumble theme so it has a possibility of being a hint of the next expansions)
The first is Pristine Scenes, The word "Pristine" is used in WoW for items that have quest in them, and those items are rewarded when you solve the artifacts from the archaeologist findings (if I recall...). Basically it will be an expansion about artifacts maybe but more leaning to LOE and K&C type of expansion, but where could it be set at? Maybe in Pandaria since that mechanic started out there.
The second card back called: Legion Schemes, an obvious guessing is a Legion/Demon expansion, but there is something got me more curious to make me think the second expansion might be more than we think. The flavor reads: "it isn't always easy being green, but its definitely awesome!" This text leads me to believe that we might get a new batch of Hero cards to every class in the game but what theme they will be? Maybe they all fell under the command of sargeras and become demons (and fix Sacrificial Pact to target Demon minions so that Demon hero cards won't be afflicted by that :) )
The third card back called: Machine Dreams, dunno what this could be, but it has machine in its name so maybe mechs return to support Boomsday Project's Mechs? But the flavor does talk about machines transport heroes so maybe it could be around that but its really hard to guess It.
I guess I'm late typing this since this post was made way long ago but hopefully someone sees this and spread it all over the internet so others know this very detail.
Probably just event card backs. I doubt they hint or have anything to do with future expansions.
I just got Machine Dreams cardback and the text said it was for logging into the client on PC.
New cardbacks for special events are all so sick! I want them!
Does anyone know when the special quests will be over?
February 13 is the last day of the event.
EDIT: Actually, i was wrong, because it was only supposed to last until February 12. But we just got a confirmation from a Blizzard employee on reddit that it's gonna last 1 day longer, because of the delays. Guess i was right all along, lol.
When you play a game against someone who doesn't have the cardback, does it immediatly change their cardback to the Hakkar one or does it happen after the game is done?
I got my cardback first game, didn't even notice my opponent playing that cardback untill the game ended and since every single game i noticed my opponent having the cardback to.
So now i'm curious if everybody already seems to have it or because this happens at the start of the game.
What happened to the data mining?
Just asking for updates, no rush intended.
FWiW - I noticed the original news no longer mentions that there will be an update with Data Mined information. There may be nothing new...?
"February 13 through March 3..."
i played the brawl 5 times and won 3. no card pack. xD
"February 13 through March 3..."
I feel you man, I misread that as well!
Is this curse card back bs going to last forever or only for the time of Lunar event? I prefer my festive cardback and don't want it to be changed to this one everytime I meet someone with it.
Edit: Nvm, automatic change was one time thing, got confused by wording of this card back
You guys forgot to nerf Priest, it's absolutely disgusting to play against right now.
I am not big on card backs because Hearthstone positions decks so badly, that you can never really fully see your card back. But damn, this one is beautiful.
At first I did not know how the new card back (curse) worked. I played someone that had the new card back and I had never seen it before, I was thinking well this is going to be a loss for sure. I ended out winning and got the new card back (but when I started my next match I was thinking what the heck, what happened to my regular old cardback), now instead of scooping I am spreading that s - word. The other card backs for future events look really good.