When you have played multiple minions the same number of times, it doesn’t change when you “tie” the first one that got to that number. It’s just to help you keep track of things, and it’s not perfect. When you play any minion a higher number of times, the tracker will update.

This might be me being silly and worrying about semantics, but I am not sure about using the word “tempo” to describe the ideal plan of this deck, and some people might misinterpret it, especially if they are already struggling with the deck. Finishing the quest and playing Crystal Core is of course a huge tempo swing, but the plays the deck aims to make on its way there are not about tempo in the way that any other deck plays for tempo. For example, playing a Southsea Deckhand on an early turn to kill an enemy minion is a tempo play, but often it is better to be patient and wait until after casting the Crystal Core, so SSDH is 1 or 2 (if it pulls Patches) 5/5s. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked a complicated grey area example. How about playing a Novice Engineer on turn 3, then ending your turn without returning it to your hand. It’s a higher tempo play than re-daggering, but often it is much better to be patient and wait until you have a bouncer.

In my experience with this deck, you only want to play for tempo as much as is necessary to survive, because you are only going to get so many cards, and most of your cards are wayyyy better after you cast Crystal Core. Sometimes “as necessary to survive” means dumping your hand inefficiently to try not to die on turn 4 (this is sort of full tempo), sometimes that means chilling and waiting until you have the proper hand (aka full value). Usually you are in between those two extremes, of course. Anyhoo, this is a fun deck and a cool game and I’m glad we get to play it

The quest never resets. Minions dying has nothing to do with it. Team 5 puts a lot of work into writing cards clearly and simply, and having their gameplay effect reflect their wording. There are of course exceptions, such as Ysera not explaining what the heck a Dream card is, but usually taking what they say literally is correct. In this case, The Caverns Below does not say “Play four minions with the same name unless one of them dies then you have to start over”. It just says “play them”. The progress display when you hover over the quest icon is a little confusing, I wonder if that has tripped you up. The progress indicator, that shows 0/1/2/3/4 of 4 minions played, only tracks the minion you have played the most times. In case of a “tie”, it shows the first minion you reached the current highest number with. For example, if you have played 2 Fire Flys, the quest tracker will say “Fire Fly 2/4”. Then if you play 2 Novice Engineers, the tracker won’t change. But if you play a 3rd Novice Engineer, it’ll pop up to say 3/4 and when you hover over the quest, it will say “Novice Engineer 3/4”.

Coldight Oracles are certainly a possible inclusion. My assessment is that they are stronger versus control (where they might not have time to play the cards you draw for them) and weaker against aggressive opponents (who are likely to have a low hand size, thus appreciate the draws, then use the cards they’ve drawn to kill you). Since this deck is already heavily favored against control, and struggles with aggro, I am not using them. Perhaps in a slower meta, or a tournament where you can ban an aggressive class. Igneous Elemental is a bit slow versus aggro, and can be a bit underwhelming post-crystal core, but getting 2 Flame Elementals is a great way to finish your quest, especially because you are also running Fire Fly 2x. The matchup they are worst in is Shaman, where your opponent is extremely happy to Hex them. VS Silence Priest they may get silenced but neither of those matchups are common enough in my pocket meta to worry about.