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.
hhehe
So how do you get the cardback's?
Beat all the wings with all the heroes or just clear it?
Dr. Boom: “They laughed when I gave a gnoll a sniper rifle ... whose laughin’ now!? Aim for the laughter!” 😆 💥
I've completed first chapter in my first try and it was pretty enjoyable. It turns out, that if you cut some RNG elements and give player more control over his deck, whole experience is much better and smoother. Why didn't they do it in previous adventures? Because free content is not worth effort?
So you are surprised that the content that has about 3-4 previous iterations and tons of feedback has improved?
I am, because Rumble Run was MUCH WORSE than Monster Hunt and Dungeon Run, despite all player's feedback. It felt rushed and cheap (less content, more frustrating RNG).
The Taverns are a great addition. Some of the cards and interactions are also solid.
Only gripe is that the final boss is still going to destroy you most of the time. I rolled over most of the previous 7 bosses only to get obliterated by the final boss without much effort. The mana difference at the start is so painful to deal with. I'm fine with runs being difficult but it shouldn't all be laid on the final boss and maybe not having perfect synergy with your cards.
its boring just rehashed solo content .the bots miss play consistently
Enjoying so far! I appreciate the different angles you can approach the runs with, and I dig the addition of Heroic mode for extra challenge.
i really like it so far.
only thing i don't like that much is that bosses are not exclusive to the different chapters. means you fight the same bosses in chapter 1 as in chapter 2. but the deck building variety is amazing. sooo much replay value.
good job, guys. (btw, beast hunter is like cheating)
I think is better that what you showed guys. The worst golden pack is like 8 worst packs, so you have like 20~23 packs, and golden Zayle, is 1600 dust, that is like 40 of 40-dust packs ( 4 commons and 1 rare). Isnt that bad. Of course, if you have already a lot of cards of this expansion, then probably 28 packs of the new one is better.
TL;DR:
There is nothing behind the paywall. Anomaly mode is just an extra option to your run. Golden Zayle is unlocked when you have purchased all five wings, no matter if with gold or real money (they can be bought earlier).
Is it worth purchasing it with gold? No. Is it worth purchasing it with real money? Yes. Does this mean you should only purchase it with real money? Absolutely not. If you enjoy doing solo content and don't mind trading 2800 gold for less value than you could get through packs, then I highly recommend you purchase it with gold. Otherwise, purchase it with real money.
lol okay. The grocery store should also give you free groceries for life because you bought some last week.
Guys, pls explain. What's the difference between normal mode and heroic? Didn't mention any
Heroic is waaaay harder.
NOt even remotely worth it. Cant even play more than Mage as a Hero. And have to wait weeks for the other content to unlock. Even if I paid for the whole thing too. Which I wont, ever. I bought the preorder. Thats plenty of money spent.
absolutely they shold give us this content for free. I pre ordered RoS and Blizzard said I would get the Adventure for free. NOw, I find out I only get the first chapter free. That was really shady of them. So, yah, they should honor that and give it all for free, or stop false advertising and tricking the customers into spending more money on content that should be free. Blizzard makes plenty of money already.
Aaaaaand they never stated such things...
Honestly; none of this should be free. It's a game from a pro-profit company. It is awfully nice of them to offer a free option but they in no way need to make any part of it free. They are quite generous in what they do give for free. The rewards of the game are open to everyone; not just p2p players. F2p players get the free packs too. They get the gold. They get the rewards.
Blizzard never said you would get any adventure for free. Clearly stated it is a pay to play adventure and how nice of them to let us try out a chapter for free that gave me THREE free packs on top of that.
Blizzard is here to make money and they will never will have enough money as running a company like Blizzard is expensive and for them to continue to remain a company they need to make more money to provide us more games and more content.
Do I get packs for the first wing?