Patch 25.4 Preview - Mercenaries Stops Getting Content Updates & New End Game Mercs Mode
Huge news drop from Blizzard. Read everything below!
Quote from BlizzardPatch 25.4 will bring some awesome updates to Mercenaries, including new Mercs, Mercenary Faction designations, dual-type Mercenaries, and the all-new Mythic Boss Rush end-game system! It will also be the last major update to the Mercenaries mode as we align our goals and focus on continuing to make Hearthstone the best digital card game in the world. We’re excited to share more details about the next Hearthstone year, Core Set, and expansion, ahead of Patch 25.6. But first, we want to talk about the major Mercenaries updates coming in 25.4.
Six More Mercenaries Join the Village
Six new Mercenaries are coming in Patch 25.4. This is our final planned infusion of new collectible Mercs into the mode, and they’re some of our most interesting Mercs yet.
You can get all the details about the new Mercs in the 25.4 Patch Notes, coming soon. Once these Mercs join the fray, we’ll have over 120 total Mercenaries for players to collect, add to their Parties, level-up, and max out. That’s one bustling Village!
Dual-Types, Reworked Types, Factions, and more!
Starting in 25.4, Mercenaries will be able to have two different Types to better represent their identities. We’ll have Human-Undead, Celestial-Beasts, and more! Several Mercs will gain a second Type in this update, opening up a whole slew of new synergies across your collection.
Many Mercenaries will also be gaining Factions, like Horde and Alliance—signified by the flag in the upper-right corner of the card. These will make it easier to tell exactly how a particular Treasure or Ability might impact your Party. Some Abilities, Equipment, and Treasures have been updated or reworked to refer to Factions and/or to better work within the new Mythic Boss Rush system. On top of that, we’re adding five new Factions, for a total of seven.
You already know the Horde and Alliance well, but now they will have clear flags to show where their loyalties lie. Explorers represents the League of Explorers who are now, truly, in a League of their own. The Empire, Legion, and Scourge Factions represent different enemies of Azeroth. The Empire is comprised of the Old Gods and their followers; the Legion is the Demons and demigods who make up the Burning Legion; and the Scourge is made up of the Lich King and his shambling Undead servants. Finally, Pirate has been converted from a Type to a Faction, and represents those raiders and rapscallions who don’t fly any flag but their own.
Mythic Boss Rush End Game Content Coming Soon
The final big system update to Mercenaries is the new and challenging Mythic Boss Rush end-game system. At its core, Mythic Boss Rush is a gauntlet of bosses with randomized elements that you can face to earn more Renown and push your Mercs beyond their limits.
Mythic Boss Rush is weekly content, with a new Boss Rush unlocking every day throughout the week, until a reset at the end of the week. Each Boss Rush is like a Bounty with 3 Bounty Boss fights in a row, leading to a final Boss that is two Bounty Bosses at the same time!
Mythic Boss Rush has been streamlined to include only the most interesting PVE content: there are no Point of Interest nodes or mob fights, just bosses. Bosses will also have random anomalies that make them stronger—with power that scales based on a sliding difficulty setting you can choose for yourself. You earn Renown as a reward for each clear, with the bulk of your Rewards being granted after your first clear, based on the difficulty you were set to for that run.
How are you supposed to take on this bevy of big, bad bosses? In Mythic Boss Rush, you’ll be able to spend your Renown to upgrade your Mercs’ Abilities, Equipment, Treasures, and stats beyond Maxed! Those upgrades persist from Boss Rush to Boss Rush, letting you take on bigger and badder bosses each week.
In Mythic Boss Rush, you can spend Renown to upgrade your Mercs beyond their Max. These upgrades don't carry over to regular Bounties or the Fighting Pit.
You’ll be able to unlock Mythic Boss Rush via a free upgrade to the Travel Point. The upgrade becomes available once you’ve unlocked Heroic Bounties and have at least one Maxed Merc. Mythic Boss Rush adds tons of replayability to Mercenaries for players who love the PVE aspect of the mode and are hungry to push their Parties to the limits.
Continued Support and New Frontiers
After these updates, we will be focusing on making the Hearthstone and Battlegrounds modes the best they can be. At the same time, Mercenaries will continue to get support for bug fixes and periodic balance changes as needed, but no further regular content updates. With the new additions in this patch, we hope that Mercenaries will be a fun, fulfilling mode for players.
To everybody who has ever chased a Bounty or gathered around the Campfire, we thank you for making this chapter in Hearthstone’s history special, and we hope you’ll enjoy everything Mercenaries has to offer in 25.4. See you in the Tavern!
Thank You
im glad i have never spent any gold on this game mode
remember when blizzard was hyping this mode up back in 2021? lmao
aaand nothing of value was lost
I hope they focus in other parts of the game like battlegrounds, constructed and arena
You really think same people work on all modes? They have teams that work on different modes.
less support of one means reassignment to make other teams more robust
hopefully.
With tech companies downsizing right and left, I wouldn't hold my breath...
When the only reason most people played the game mode was to deal 100 Nature damage or something for daily quests, I’m kinda surprised it lasted as long as it did. I still had enough fun with it though. Fun little Single Player Challenge and easiest Hearthstone game mode to play when bored at work :)
idk what you mean. I was bored playing this mode...
I wish they had done something like the single player adventures. Those were so much fun. But they did that instead and I’m relieved to see it failed. They have designed super fun PvE in the past, they could do it again, but not Mercenaries.
I'd not get my hopes up about them making good PvE again tho.
Keep in mind long before Mercenary mode was a thing all they cared for was making crappy Book of Heroes and Book of Mercenaries stuff. Which kind of made sense in its time, and ocasionally it was'nt even half bad (Gul'dan, Cariel), but was pretty much a waste.
Yeah they're probably done with Hearthstone PVE content.
I doubt they're adding anything to the game at this point either. All the big tech companies are cutting all the fat they can.
I vote they leave the PvE heavy stuff for WoW, and keep Hearthstone a simple PvP experience.
I liked the idea of the mode and had fun for quite a while, but it just seems as if it wasn't thought through at all. Like the idea of being able to spend money on packs that reward stuff that is to 100% useless (like coins for a maxed out merc). It was like that for close to a year, so of course many people who enjoyed the game stopped playing, because they were "rewarded" with more and more useless stuff. And it was clear from the start that this would happen.
And once a fix was introduced, the fix wasn't "you won't get stuff that is 100% useless", but rather "you still get useless stuff but if you delete 95% of it you can use the rest but only sometimes on random mercenaries and not the ones you want to". That was just a bad joke.
Or the settlement idea where you can build stuff. That also never really mattered. There was zero decision making in what to build at what time. There should have been more buildings that add different buffs or abilities (a bit like the garrisons in World of Draenor) and where you got to choose what to build in a way that matters. But it never did matter. It was a nice gimmick but took only three clicks and was ultimately pointless.
It seems like as if after 60% of the development somebody from higher up said "yeah you spent enough time on that mode, stop it now and just release it as is, we'll let Mike spend 3 hours a week on the mode to maintain and update it".
I just wanted the 7 packs for completing the tutorial but got so bored midway trough that I just went back to Battlegrounds.
Also when does the tutorial even end? I already got the map with all the buildings and stuff unlocked, thing seems to go on forever.
how long did this last? a year?
It was released on October 12, 2021.
It never was sufficiently random for a replayable PvE. IMO, It is what killed the mode
stopped playing merc after discovering an upgrade that cost gold while the whole gamemode doesnt reward any gold
It rewards XP. Just like "traditional" Hearthstone mode (i.e. ranked / casual). And XP awards gold. According to the same logic, there is no point playing ranked / casual because you don't get gold, but you need gold (or IRL money payments) to obtain cards.