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.
It has been stated that you can not DE golden Zayle.
In short if you buy with golds big NO, if you buy with money, Yes.
If more daily quests were "single player focused" -- I can play 30 druid cards in adventure, get my gold -- hell yeah, I would consider it rather than just running a joke deck in casual to get six combos or whatever out of the way.
I will sample the adventure and decide later, for now.
/did win with a joke combo deck yesterday though; mage ragequit when I killed his/her early mountain giants and a sea giant before he could cast Conjurer's Twinspell BS. So that was nice.
Maybe not the most important issue, but... I'm a bit disappointed your progress with a class here doesn't count towards the "Victory" or "Dominance" quests (you know, Win X games with Y or Z).
The only quest I know of that works in Adventures is the 100 gold "Win 5 games in any mode" quest.
Precisely. And isn't that a good reason to start changing things?
No.
I'm sorry, @Fluxflashor, but unless the first wing does *not* award any packs, your math is off here. Assuming 3 packs per wing, you buy *12* Ross packs for 20$/2800gold, not 15 packs. (and a golden classic pack and other goodies of subjective value)
12 regular and 1 golden dustwise worth 3 packs
pay to play .
greedy AF .
How is it greedy AF? Outside of getting a PvE experience not included in the free base game, you get tangible ROI with packs and a free card. I know people hate it, but they have to make money on opportunities like this and the price tag--coupled with the ROI--is reasonable.
Damn them for charging money for their labor! They should work for you entirely for free - that's SUCH a reasonable argument. Not at all the kind of thing a petulant child would demand.
Back in my day any video game was pay to play. Uphill, both waysides
This officially kicks me into "maintenance mode" in PvP, where I do nothing more than complete quests. Instead, I'll be spending most of my time in the Heist until we see some goddamn nerfs.
I always found the pve content boring as fuck in hs. I never bothered to complete the heroic modes or even play the adventures when there was no reward, let alone pay for them. So no easy pass from me. I wish the best of fun to those who will buy it though.
I'd actually recommend doing heroic challenges now. NOt only are they much easier now, but it's also kind of hilarious just steamrolling a boss that was previously almost ubeatable (for example skipping the entire NEfarian 3 stage fight by just turboing Mecha'thun)
You pay for only 12 packs, the first three ones are free.
12 regular and one golden
welll, given how I'm pretty bored of the meta right now and it doesn't look like it's going to change much (even if we were to get balance changes) it feels like I might not be playing this game for that much longer so I might as well use my saved up gold.
Although I'll feel pretty stupid if the next expansion turns out to be fantastic
It's not about the next expansion being "fantastic". If you want to be able to be competitive on ladder and have fun with the game you need to keep up with the meta. Not worth the gold that's for sure.