The Great Dalaran Heist Has Launched! Two Wings This Week, First Wing Free
Hearthstone's newest adventure, The Great Dalaran Heist, has launched!
Join the newly-formed League of E.V.I.L. in their attempt to subdue the magical, treasure-filled city of Dalaran.
What Launches This Week?
There are two chapters available this week.
- You can get started for completely free with the first chapter, The Dalaran Bank, today.
- The second chapter, The Violet Hold, is also open today and can be purchased for 700 gold or $6.99.
- You may purchase the entire adventure for $19.99, a discounted cost.
- Other wings may be individually purchased ahead of time, allowing you to unlock Zayle, Shadow Cloak early.
- The remaining three chapters unlock one at a time over the next three weeks.
This Week's Twists
Each chapter has a special passive mechanic called Twists. These effects are active during all your games in that wing and will change up how you play against each boss. Here are the twists you can expect for this week's chapters.
- Dalaran Bank (FREE Chapter) - Coin-filled Coffers
- A 0/3 Cache spawns on the opponent's side of the board. Breaking it gives 2 Coins to each player.
- The Violet Hold - Imprisoned Minions
- At the start of the game a random minion from each player's deck is locked on the board. It will unlock once enough turns have by that are equal to its mana cost.
Is The Adventure Worth It?
There has been a lot of discussion about whether the adventure was worth the cost, so let's break it down. First though, what do you get when you buy the entire adventure?
- 15 Rise of Shadows Packs
- 1 Golden Classic Pack
- Zayle, Shadow Cloak Golden Legendary Card
- Two Card Backs
- The Great Dalaran Heist Solo Content Adventure
Let's make some quick assumptions to make this real easy.
- Everything in this article has been priced in USD, you may value your local currency differently.
- We don't care about the gameplay - everyone will value it differently.
- You're buying the entire adventure at once. Don't buy wings individually with money, it is $28 =(
- Golden Zayle, Shadow Cloak is hard to price. The decks aren't perfect and it is pointless if you have a large collection.
- The card backs are cosmetic and have no gameplay changing value so we don't care about them.
That brings to the real meat, the card packs. Is the adventure worth buying for the card packs?
Sort of. Kinda. It Depends.
Forgetting the golden classic pack, which has a minimum dust value of 300, let's talk about store prices. You can purchase the 15 Rise of Shadows packs in the shop for $19.99, the exact same price as the adventure. That establishes a nice base of the adventure being completely worth purchasing if you were looking for some more Rise of Shadows packs. We aren't getting a deal on the Rise of Shadows packs, but we also forgot a ton of content above.
Now, if you're on team gold, I've got some bad news. This is not at all worth it for the packs. You're losing 1300 gold on the Rise of Shadows packs purchase which means all the stuff we were going to temporarily forget about, that needs to be worth 13 card packs to you. We can bring that loss down a bit though if we consider you get at least 300 dust from the golden classic pack (worth 300 gold) so you end up paying 1000 gold extra for a golden legendary, two card backs, and solo content.
TL;DR: Buy with real money if the packs are your main concern and you want the most pack value. If you don't need the packs and hate solo content, don't buy.
Ultimately, Buy The Damn Adventure
Just have some damn fun with the game for a change!
Adventures have always been worth purchasing in Hearthstone. Even though the format and the rewards have changed over time, Blizzard does a really good job at making sure the rewards are fantastic - they want us to buy it =).
Dalaran looks to be the best piece of solo content the Hearthstone team has ever put out for us, so if you enjoyed past content (paid or free) you should love this one. Hearthstone is supposed to be a fun game and solo content can add that value of joy to the table quite easily. Forget about ladder for a day a week over the next month and chill with the League of E.V.I.L.
Probably why they added a heroic mode?
Some people just going to rush thru it for the rewards.
Back when they had paid adventures like Naxx, etc. you couldn't dust the cards you earned from them - Not until they went to Wild, and that didn't even come out until around Karazhan time.
The only real issue I have with the whole thing is the staggered release. I paid my $20, I've beaten both wings that are out on heroic, I want to keep playing but I have to wait for some time-gated guff? I get enough of that in WoW! No. I paid, give it to me.
Did you beat both Heroic and regular on all ~36 possible variations plus anomaly mode? I daresay most people didn't, and those who did definitely got their money's worth already. I beat regular and heroic as well, but I'm not even close to covering all variations and it would take me far longer to do that than the week between every wing releases.
I've been normal and heroic with each of the three classes they've given us, unlocked all the hero powers and decks for both chapters... Time gating is lazy and stupid development.
When does the 3rd level open?
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow when?
I don't know when ... My information came from Blizzard shop. That's all I know because that's all that is posted at the shop.
I really wish we would just go back to the old adventures system : pay 20€ get an adventure and 100% 1 legendary + epics for each wing
oh and before people down vote me , don't get me wrong i think its really fun to have all the new hero powers and decks/heroes but i still just miss the old adventure reward style
Paying for and adventure that used to be free is a bad more on Blizzard's part. They should have the adventure free and let you buy the cards and other stuff. The first chapter was fun for being free but not worth paying real money and sure not worth using gold. For 15K gold sure because you get the packs but otherwise no thanks.
Literally almost every single solo adventure that has come out in the past you have had to pay for: Nax, Blackrock, League and Karazhan. This solo adventure in particular is actually the largest solo adventure that Blizzard has released to Hearthstone. Plus, you get 15 packs and a bunch of other random shit. Blizzard stated the year before that they wanted to have that year's expansions be completely free. This is a new year.
"Literally almost every single solo adventure that has come out in the past you have had to pay for: Nax, Blackrock, League and Karazhan."
" Plus, you get 15 packs and a bunch of other random shit."
but that for me is the problem , with the old ones u atleast got to 100% 4 or more legendaries + epics , so u got a lot of interesting cards (or dust) for your money
now they have taken the worst of both worlds: The rewards just beings packs which can just be mega trash AND u have to pay like the old day
i rather just have f2p adventures with the shitty pack rewards or the old adventures where u paid money for cool legendaries
Lmao it is very easy to save enough gold to pay for the adventure. No one should complain that a free card game offers extra paid exclusives. The fact that they even let you pay with gold is pretty good, considering you can't purchase Gold ingame.
I'm not complaining just saying that it's not worth the gold and it's bad practice for a game company to make people pay for something that used to be free. I lay hearthstone for multiplayer not single player. This was meant for the casual and super causal player.
Another advantage to this adventure is we now have one additional Daily Quest rewarding a Classic Pack. I forgot to take down its name but it's the standard objective we've become used to over the years: "Defeat 3 Dalaran Heist Bosses".
I'd argue it's 5 separate dungeon runs with two difficulties and anomaly mode that has a ton of diff affixes that can make your runs and treasure building/deck building a wildly different experience.
All of that for $20? Best value HS has ever offered. Dungeon run was -one- difficulty, which was somewhere between N and H, but each class had one hero power, no anomaly mode.
I mean, the difference in content is huge, I personally am going to complete every wing with every class on H, that is 45 H dungeon runs I need to do, so far i've only been able to complete mage first and second wing on H, thats 2 out of 45.
tbh now that i think about it, it's just another dungeon run, but waaaay to easy. it's nothing new.
new players should just play dungeon run. it's for free and it's better.
Did I get Zalye even if I buy all the parts with gold?
Yep you do, you'll get her as soon as the last one is bought on week 5