23 Wild Cards Coming Back to Standard Temporarily, New Portraits For 1000 Wins, More Events, Search & Quest Improvements

Great news, everyone! We have some huge changes coming to Hearthstone soon. Here’s a roundup of all the new things coming:

  • 23 Cards will move from Wild to Standard temporarily! While we don’t know which cards will move yet (we’ll get a full list on October 4, but we know that this includes Ragnaros the Firelord and N'Zoth, The Corruptor). On top of that, every player will get them all for free (extra copies won’t be disenchantable) so even players with limited Wild collections can enjoy the event. (Edit: Devs have confirmed on reddit that the free copies of Wild cards are also temporary and will disappear after the event ends.)
  • We’re finally getting more cosmetics! After a Golden Portrait for 500 wins, now when we get 1000 wins with a class, we’ll now get a completely new portrait. This is a great incentive to grind wins on your favorite class and show off. We don’t have a full list of portraits yet, just those three:

  • We’ll be getting more events in the future, starting off in a few weeks with Dungeon Run-like Tavern Brawls, dual-class Arenas, more Legendary Quests as well as the Wild event mentioned above.
  • There will be some minor improvements to Quests (not included in the next major update – they will come out in the future). They’re cutting some of the less popular Quests and adding new Quests to the pool to mix things up. Also, the “easy” Quests will be split into two categories – 50g and 60g. 60g ones will require slightly more work and a more specific deck to finish them (e.g. play 10 Beasts). Rerolling 60g Quests will always result in one of the easiest 50g Quests, which is a good option for players who just want to get them done quickly.
  • Search function will be improved. They will add more terms to the search box, as well as popular, slightly misspelled versions of the cards (e.g. instead of SN1P you can now search for snip and it will still show SN1P-SN4P). They’re also adding more support for searching in different languages than English.

Read more in the official blog post below:

While we’re constantly recruiting lackeys, tinkering with experimental tech, and delving into dusty tombs to bring you new Hearthstone expansions and Adventures, we’re also hard at work on some awesome, albeit less flashy, new stuff. In this blog we’ll shine a light on some of the smaller, but still exciting new features, events, and changes coming to Hearthstone in the near future.

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Adding More Events

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After the overwhelmingly positive response to the recent Fire Fest-E.V.I.L. event, we’re looking for more opportunities to introduce even more large-scale in-game events with rewards, themed Tavern Brawls, and changes that could temporarily (or permanently!) create fun new Hearthstone experiences for players.

We’re starting off with a new event in just a couple weeks featuring Dungeon Run-inspired Tavern Brawls, dual-class Arenas, Legendary quest rewards, and some meta-shifting changes outlined in the “Shaking up Standard Play” section below.

We’ll have more to share on this sensationally spooky event on October 4, but in the meantime . . . try not to lose your head!

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Shaking up Standard Play

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Now that the Saviors of Uldum Standard ladder experience has solidified, we think it’s a great time to throw a wrench or two (or twenty-three) in the gears. We’re going to be pulling some of the most popular and game-changing cards from across Hearthstone history, including [[Ragnaros, the Firelord]] and [[N’Zoth the Corruptor]], out of Wild and dropping them back into Standard for a limited time. To ensure that everyone can participate in this meta-mixing event, we’ll be granting everyone free copies of each card (these copies cannot be disenchanted or crafted) so they can add these heavy-hitters to their decks and get them into the action.

We’ll be sharing more details (including the full list of 23 cards) in a blog update on October 4. Stay tuned!

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1,000 Win Class Portraits

Looking ahead, we want to continue celebrating personal successes and milestones for all you dedicated Hearthstone players. Our next major update will introduce some really cool new portraits that you can earn by earning 1,000 wins with each class. Wins earned before this update goes live will retroactively count towards these totals. Take a look at a couple of examples below and start stacking up those wins!

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Quality of Life Improvements

Alternate Search Terms

We want it to be easier to quickly find the cards you’re looking for while deckbuilding, so we’re adding alternate search terms for some hard-to-type cards. We’ll be adding common misspellings and simplified versions of leetspeak card names (found on some Mech minions). For example, searching “snip” or “snap” will now show you SN1P-SN4P. While this feature will only be enabled for a few commonly misspelled cards at first, we’ll be able to add even more alternate search terms as needed.

  • This feature will also support languages other than English. For example, SN1P-SN4P in Latin American Spanish is “CL1C-CL4C”, so searching “clic” would return the expected results.

Quest Changes

While not included in our next major update, here’s a preview of some of the changes we’re making to quests a little further down the line.

  • We’re cutting some of the less popular daily quests and tuning down some of their requirements to make them quicker and easier to complete. We’ll also be adding some new quests to the pool to mix things up!
  • We split most daily quests into two buckets: Easy (50g) and Slightly More Difficult (60g). Rerolling a Slightly More Difficult (60g) quest (like Play 10 Beasts) always gives you an Easy (50g) quest, so players can be guaranteed to get an Easy quest every day if they want. We love  Murlocs and Pirates as much as anyone, but it should be your choice if you decide to complete their quests.

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We’re excited to be bringing these new features, events, and other changes to Hearthstone soon. Please let us know what you think on social media or the official Hearthstone forums. Until then, we’ll see you in the Tavern!

Stonekeep

A Hearthstone player and writer from Poland, Stonekeep has been in a love-hate relationship with Hearthstone since Closed Beta. Over that time, he has achieved many high Legend climbs and infinite Arena runs. He's the current admin of Hearthstone Top Decks.

Check out Stonekeep on Twitter!

Leave a Reply

48 Comments

  1. […] Hearthstone went all in on this year’s event! Last week, we’ve already announced that 23 Wild cards will be coming back to Standard temporarily, but we finally have a full list of those cards. And that’s not all there is to the event […]

  2. Dbm14
    October 4, 2019 at 8:12 am

    This is great news, Blizzard really seem to be going all out this year.
    Does anyone know how long this wild event lasts for?

  3. Skoopy
    October 3, 2019 at 9:21 am

    Is oct 4th only the announcement? Or do we get all these cards that day?… not clear…

  4. Suede88
    October 2, 2019 at 10:49 am

    C’Thun please 😀 and all of his fellas. Also, dont remove Divine Spirit, my Marin The Fox Will ve definitely useless 😀

  5. Poope
    September 28, 2019 at 5:02 am

    loathab and sylvanass plz and also poor azure drake, these days we dont see any spell power on spells and decks also

  6. Thanatos
    September 27, 2019 at 11:15 am

    There should be week quests.

    Quests that change every week, with big rewards. For example: cause 200 damage to enemy heroes, or win 15 ranked games, I don’t know, but something like that. And the reward could be a 500 gold or something…

    • Njuns
      September 30, 2019 at 2:41 am

      I really like that idea but that means way more packs for players and I don’t think Blizzard wants this

    • Suede88
      October 2, 2019 at 10:50 am

      Oh man, this is great. But Blizzard needs milk the cow…

  7. MJT3ll3r
    September 27, 2019 at 4:55 am

    A bit off topic: Where can we start a petition to get blizzard to permanently move Wizzbang to Standard at Rotation?
    I’ll miss that jolly golden dude!

  8. LuKeAA
    September 27, 2019 at 1:59 am

    More FREE Portraits, great.
    23 Wild Legendaries (or just cards?) back (please not Moorabi for Shaman), interesting;
    better search function for “My Collection”, ehrm, while at it, could you add a “1 copy added” sign or mark or some such to make Highlander-building a less frustrating ordeal?

    • Skoopy
      September 27, 2019 at 2:31 am

      There is a leaked list already:
      https://twitter.com/sipiwi94/status/1177340237804122112

      If thats true, it will be insane!

      • Stonekeep - Site Admin
        September 27, 2019 at 6:18 am

        I wouldn’t trust the leaks like that. E.g. we have some “leaks” basically before any nerf patch and most of the time they aren’t true 🙂

        We’ll have a 100% confirmed list of cards next week so we’ll post it then!

    • Lluadian
      September 27, 2019 at 4:04 am

      A better option would be to work it like they did for odd and even. When you put Baku or Genn in first you had a pop up that asked if you only wanted to see the associated list. For Highlander should have it have a similar request and then when add a card it makes a lock on it similar to what looks like when have 2 copies in a deck.

  9. Taz004
    September 27, 2019 at 1:36 am

    DIE, INSECT!!! <3

    • Lluadian
      September 27, 2019 at 4:05 am

      I’m having fun with the solo adventure and pulling ragnaros several times now I’ve deliberately set the board so ragnaros kills an insect enemy including the boss.

  10. Tombstone
    September 27, 2019 at 12:18 am

    In my opinion too is that the actually Hearthstone team makes a very good job. We have many more events and rotations at all. They hear the Players more than before. The handling of all changes into a better way. And we have much more choices of good decks which implenets different archetypes and ways to play. After all years I have to say that I like it very much to play Hearthstone at the moment. I can enjoy it again. Keep it up the good work and for this site here too. I have all I need. Thank you.

  11. H0lysatan
    September 26, 2019 at 11:26 pm

    I don’t know if this related or not, but anyway.
    How many festivals are there?
    I know for certain that we’ve passed the “Fire-Festival”
    I haven’t see “Frost-Festival” yet (usually comes after Fire-Fest)
    And there is “Winter Veil” on December and January.
    And last is “Lunar Festival” on Chinese New Year (February).
    Is that all?

    • H0lysatan
      September 26, 2019 at 11:29 pm

      and does this “Wild event” thing can be count as Festival?
      as far as I know, Festival usually goes along with World of Warcraft.

      I don’t think so… Random event maybe.

    • Lluadian
      September 27, 2019 at 4:12 am

      If you played WoW you would have a general idea of their event thoughts a fire festival is basically the midsummer festival. Just playing Hearthstone is pretty much the Brewfest with drinking reference and crazy stuff. Although I do wish they’d get put out cards for an event like that that actually made it seem real. Be amusing if there was a battlecry or spell that caused the screen to go blurry or caused some weird mix ups with the numbers or names of cards. Would make a great tavern brawl. They already have a thing for card cost being randomized why not attack or health within certain parameters.

  12. Lamri247
    September 26, 2019 at 10:51 pm

    I would like to see a reroll quest that makes you pick from a few random quest like discover!

  13. Asd21
    September 26, 2019 at 9:27 pm

    Please nerf combo priest (stupid priest), this deck won’t allow any of wild interesting cards to see play in standard ( competitive scene)

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      September 26, 2019 at 11:04 pm

      I disagree, the deck is strong, but not THAT strong. It’s not keeping other decks from the meta. We have a bunch of other popular, competitive decks.

      On the contrary, it has some clear weaknesses and maybe new Wild cards will be able to exploit them. I really doubt that they will return some strong Priest card that would boost Combo Priest, that would be a terrible move. So assuming the deck will stay at the same / similar power level and other decks grow stronger because of new Wild cards… It’s like an indirect nerf.

      • Skoopy
        September 27, 2019 at 12:53 am

        Iam totally with Stonekeep here. Developers see it the same way. Its good, but not totally broken. We saw that in Grandmasters, some Druids did beat Priests. I saw a picture of another card game, not sure what it was. Where a similiar card like DS got nerfed to 3 mana. I think that seems really good. But the stats on hsreplay or smth are not true at all. Cause you cant compare all kinds of ranks. If piloted well, Priest seems, if they hit perfect curve, unbeatable. Pro players going 20-0 in High Legend with that deck. Iksar than posting a list with decks, with better winrates than combo priest. And wuuuush, Combo Priest only top 8 decks, got beaten in winrate by a lot. But that feels not true. It just feels bad to lose against and totally insane to win with.

        Now they have to decide: do they nerf it for the pro scene? Or do they hit thousands of other players? The deck feels not that good in rank 15 by players with that skill. Just netdecking it cause its “good”.
        I play it close to legend right now, and it feels broken if you hit some puzzle practice and style overall.

        But the reason why Priest is so strong is just the current meta (in Grand Masters the Shield/Ban system). If new cards hit the pool. All things shake up. The chances are good, that other decks will rise and priest getting an indirect nerf.

    • H0lysatan
      September 26, 2019 at 11:20 pm

      As mentioned somewhere, planned for nerfing Divine Spirit will happen on April 2020 (or not).

      Besides, I’m not having difficulty over DS at the moment, as far as I’m concerned, only some priest with enough luck are able to execute those combo. I’ve gone several times with Aggro Deck and won almost all the time.
      I rather wish for Paladin Murloc to be nerfed.

  14. Alglyphic
    September 26, 2019 at 6:06 pm

    I’m a little on the fence about what we know for Quest changes. I appreciate the idea behind it, though I would probably have appreciated a swing in the other direction at least: if you roll a 50g Quest, could players be given the option to always roll for a harder, more rewarding Quest? Daily quests is my main method of gold since I haven’t arenaed in a long time, and having the option to roll for slightly more gold would be nice.

    Alternatively, players could be given options when rerolling – roll a quest of higher, lower, or equal difficulty/rewards? A random roll for higher rewards would account for Quests such as “Challenge a Friend” and “Play 100 Murlocs”.

    • Skoopy
      September 27, 2019 at 1:01 am

      Iam with you. You now cant reroll maybe the day after again to get a 60g out of 50g (if i understand right). So your average income is slightly lower i guess. Needs some maths but i think we are right. But i also see players who may not have the cards to get the quest done, or just not fast enough. Overall i like the change. I dont feel its important if you get 55g per day average a month or 57g if you do it every day. This change will just make people play the quests more and faster. So you can spend more time laddering. Seems fine :).

  15. Rolioli
    September 26, 2019 at 5:23 pm

    Will you be able to play Wild cards in wild?

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      September 26, 2019 at 5:28 pm

      Given that you can play any Standard card in Wild, if a Wild card becomes Standard for a while, it’s automatically Wild too… if you get what I mean.

      • Rolioli
        September 26, 2019 at 5:37 pm

        Thanks. I was curious because it is a standard event.

      • Sbud78
        September 27, 2019 at 2:36 am

        I think my version of the question(and maybe the intent of the original question) is, if i don’t own the actual card, do you think i would be able to play the event version of the card in wild or is it limited to standard?

  16. Maximum
    September 26, 2019 at 4:38 pm

    Is it me or has Christmas come early??

  17. Phobetor
    September 26, 2019 at 4:08 pm

    Very impressed with Hearthstone team right now. Year of Dragon has been a quite exciting year with series of events, meta changes, cool cards, design aesthetics, and many more. Indeed it has set the highest standard for next few years.

    NICE!

  18. Neverdustever
    September 26, 2019 at 3:45 pm

    XD I bet golden portraits will be cooler than mew ones!

  19. Zamaz1097
    September 26, 2019 at 3:35 pm

    Love the idea of more grind incentives for classes. I’ll patiently wait for the 2k and 3k class win rewards that I have for mage!

  20. Zamaz1097
    September 26, 2019 at 3:34 pm

    Love the idea of more grind incentives for classes. I’ll patiently wait for the 2k and 3k class win rewards that I have for mage ????????

  21. Nerose
    September 26, 2019 at 12:54 pm

    Hearthstone meta never truly settles these days. It’s pretty great.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      September 26, 2019 at 12:57 pm

      And the thing is that depending on the cards they decide to rotate in, this might be a much bigger shake-up than a simple nerf/buff patch! Just N’Zoth alone creates so many possibilities.

      • Nerose
        September 26, 2019 at 3:37 pm

        Very true! This could make for completely new decks, and hopefully new top tier classes.

        Thanks for the reply, btw.

  22. Armyloft
    September 26, 2019 at 12:42 pm

    Will the new portraits be interchangable with the old ones?I love the idea in itself,but I wouldn’t want to play with portaits I might not like.

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      September 26, 2019 at 12:56 pm

      I’m nearly sure that you will be able to change them at any time, because that’s how portraits work in HS. E.g. if you own Morgl, you can still play as Thrall. So I see no reason why those would be different.

      • Armyloft
        September 27, 2019 at 6:54 am

        You never know.From what we know we’ll get this new portraits with 1000 ranked wins,like the golden hero,which is a change you cannot reverse,so it would make sense if this was the case too.I’ll just have to pray that you’re right.Fingers crossed

  23. Electronick
    September 26, 2019 at 12:01 pm

    This is going to be sweet. N’Zoth was always my fav card in the game. I have a sneaky feeling we’re going to see a return of control lock with expired merchant into double n’zoth.

  24. Skyhouseboy
    September 26, 2019 at 10:39 am

    Will we be able to keep the wild cards after the event has stopped?

    • Stonekeep - Site Admin
      September 26, 2019 at 10:51 am

      We don’t have any info about that yet. We’ll definitely let you all know once we find out, but there’s a chance that devs will stay silent until official announcement of the full list of 23 Wild cards (October 4).

      Devs have confirmed on reddit that the free copies of Wild cards are also temporary and will disappear after the event ends.

  25. GlosuuLang
    September 26, 2019 at 10:38 am

    Wow some positive changes indeed! Glad they’re trying to bring something new to the game. I always wanted to play Dungeon Run style Hearthstone vs other people. Hope it becomes a permanent mode sometime!