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Fractured in Alterac Valley Launch Day - Everything You Need To Know!

Hearthstone's newest expansion Fractured in Alterac Valley launches today, December 7th. We brought all the information and useful links together in this news post for you.

• The Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion should launch at 10am PT/ 1pm ET/ 19:00 CET/ 18:00 GMT.
• Yet another 135 new cards have been added to the game.
• Another 35 cards will follow in a Mini-Set midway through the expansion. There's no official details revealed yet!
• You can view all the new cards in our Fractured in Alterac Valley Card List.
• PvE content for the Fractured in Alterac Valley expansion will be a continuation of the Book of Mercenaries storylines.

Included for free in the Expansion

• All players logging in will have to make a choice between the Fractured in Alterac Valley Legendary cards Drek'Thar for the Horde or Vanndar Stormpike for the Alliance. These cards are free and determine the Faction you represent for the Honor event!
• All players opening up the first Reward in the new Free Reward Track will get two Cards for free, Lokholar the Ice Lord for Constructed and Vanessa VanCleef for the Mercenaries game mode!
• All players will have access to the free Core set, a replacement for the Classic and Basic set, read all about it here.
• There has been no mention so far of a chain of Event Quests to celebrate the release, like there often was. There is the Honor Event mentioned above however!

Launch time on Mobile:

Got some good news for you: doing the pre-patch last week enabled the team to set it up so that content should unlock tomorrow at the same time (~10 am Pacific) for all devices. Of course, the team is on-call if something goes wrong, but that's the plan.

— Nicholas “DeckTech” Weiss (@hsdecktech) December 6, 2021

New Mechanics

• Mercenary Heroes - Each class will receive a Hero Card with powerful Battlecries and Hero Powers.
• New Keyword: Honorable Kill - Cards featuring a bonus effect if they kill enemy minions with exact lethal damage. The effect is repeatable.
• New Mechanic: Objectives - Spells with effects that last for three turns.

Other Mechanics

Some mechanics that were seen in previous card sets were brought back on new cards, as well as some truly new mechanics were added:

• "Giant" that costs less when minions have died.
• Various cards interacting with Druid's Choose One keyword.
• A spell that puts a stronger version of itself back into your hand.
• Paladin spell that heals the user, based on the mana cost of the Minion it drew.
• A new version of Inner Fire for Priest.
• Weapon that copies the top card of your opponent's deck on Honorable Kill.
• Freeze Shaman is back!
• Warlock has multiple cards that shuffle cards into their deck that summon a 3/3 Imp when drawn.
• There's several cards with Armor interaction for Warrior.
• You can view all the new cards in our Fractured in Alterac Valley Cards List.

Mercenary Heroes

After clearing the Barrens, the Wailing Caverns, Stormwind, and the Deadmines, our mercenaries are max level and ready to lead their faction to victory!

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The Honor Event

The Fractured in Alterac Valley Honor Event allows you to compete for your Faction, depending on which Faction you chose to represent with your Legendary card choice Drek'Thar for the Horde or Vanndar Stormpike for the Alliance.

Quote from Blizzard

Storm into Alterac Valley on December 7

From December 7 to January 11, all players will compete for Honor in order to receive free rewards and claim victory for their faction. You gain Honor by playing and winning during the eligible period:

• 10 Honor for every game played
• 10 more Honor for every game won (20 total)
• 20 more Honor for every game won versus an opponent from the enemy faction (40 total)

Honor can be gained in Traditional, Arena, and Duels Modes. As you gain Honor, you climb through the ranks of your faction, and across the frozen battlefield—eventually capturing a Golden copy of the enemy faction’s leader! At the end of the event, all Honor will be tallied and the winning faction’s victory will be forever enshrined in Hearthstone when every player receives a Diamond copy of the winning faction’s leader card!

Arena Changes

At the launch of Fractured in Alterac Valley, the current Dual-Class Arena event will end and the pool of eligible Arena sets will rotate so that the following sets will make up the Arena card pool:

• Fractured in Alterac Valley
• Saviors of Uldum
• Kobolds and Catacombs
• League of Explorers
• Scholomance Academy
• The Boomsday Project
• Core

Theorycrafted Decks

We created a special Decks post yesterday, with a lot of new archetypes and a lot of new deck ideas. You can find the links to that Decks post below.

Alternatively, create your own deck with the Deckbuilder, add a good guide on how to pilot the deck and help create the post-launch meta!

• Big Deck Preview for Fractured in Alterac Valley

That should get you started! Thanks for being with us throughout this exciting Fractured in Alterac Valley reveal period. Shoutout to everyone who helped in one way or another during this time, the other moderators and staff and the devs and all the users who gave us useful suggestions and feedback, and to everyone who enjoyed and supported our coverage. You rock!

If you are looking for some company while opening packs or playing, come chat with us on our Discord.

Fractured in Alterac Valley Card List & Expansion Guide

Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.