Although we're still in the middle of the reveal season, it appears that Blizzard just leaked via mail part of the patch notes' content that will be shared tomorrow. Thanks u/Fakumon115 for the scoop!
Here is some of the leaked information:
- Battlegrounds update
- Diablo will return to Battlegrounds for a week.
- New Hero (Ozumat) and new minion (Bubbler) available.
- Mercenaries update
- Y'shaarj Event consisting of 10 tasks (7-21 June).
- New Mercenaries, including Y'shaarj (Legendary Protector) and Queen Azshara (Legendary Caster).
- New zones and bounties.
- Mystery Node reworked.
- Solo content
- Book of Heroes: Faelin
Quote From Reddit BATTLEGROUDS UPDATES
- Diablo returns Battlegrounds for just a week, starting from June 1st, to celebrate the launch of Diablo Immortal.
- New Hero (Ozumat) and minion (Bubbler) available.
MERCENARIES UPDATES
- New limited time event: Y'shaarj (7-21 June).
- Completing all 10 tasks will grant you the Y'shaarj Mercenary, a Y'shaarj golden portrait, the Y'shaarj Diamond portrait and a total of 750 Mercenary coins.
- You best allies against Y'shaarj for this event will be Humans and Pirates.
- New Mercenaries, including Y'shaarj (Legendary Protector) and Queen Azshara (Legendary Caster).
- New zones and bounties.
- The Mysterious Nodes appearing on maps now give you the chance to find either a Cursed Treasure - which will hinder your characters for the rest of the turn - or Reward Bonuses that will add up to the ones you'll receive at the end of the bounty!
BOOK OF HEROES: FAELIN
When he finally has the chance to visit Zin-Azshari, Ambassador Faelin can't wait to face the dangers he could run into with his intrepid crew. But is the distant past just like he remembers it, or has something darker remained beneath the surface all this time?
This adventure can be played as three different characters. Completing all 17 tasks for the first time will reward you the Ghost Ship card back; completing all 17 tasks with a different character will reward you a Standard pack; completing all 17 tasks also with the third character will reward you a Voyage to the Sunken City card pack.
Comments
Wasn't it confirmed in like a Q&A or something that there would be no solo content this year?
In a pre-Sunken City Interview a dev said that we are going to learn more about Fealin and his crew through single player content, meanwhile Iksar said in a Q&A that there won't be any new Adventures this year. Technically both are correct, because Fealins Story would not be a new Adventure, but a addition to a already existing one.
Was that interview covered on this site? I didn't remember that, so I went back all the way to the Sunken City announcement and didn't see it.
found it:
"I don’t want to give away too many spoilers, but we will have some solo content coming up that dives deeper into Faelin’s storyline–puns possibly intended–and you will get to see how the premise of the cinematic plays out."
Here.
That's the one I remembered where they said there'd be no adventures this year. The other reply had what I was looking for. I don't follow multiple sites for Hearthstone news, so I never saw that interview.
Sounds fun! Glad I've been saving up Mercenaries packs (currently have 45) to bag those new Mercs and, hopefully, plenty of their coins. This seems to indicate that only those 2 Mercs will drop this week, while the other anticipated Mercs will follow in the coming weeks or months? If that's the case, how many packs should I open vs. how many to save for the next drop?
When it comes to packs you should either:
1) open as many packs as feels fun to you.
2) open until you get basically all of the Rares and maybe the Epics. Pulling a legendary Merc from a pack is not likely.
I think it's likely that most of the details will be available before the patch hits.
They already confirmed 8 new mercs, which is only a fraction of the total mercs they are going to release with this patch. That you are even thinking that they are only adding 2 new mercs this patch shows how terribly Blizzard communicated that this is the major merc patch of the expansion.
That will be one hell of a week...
There would have to be a new way to trigger the task chain for a given character -- otherwise, one would be forced to rely on daily random procs, which is practically impossible. That feature is the most important one that we'd need to know about.
The mysterious stranger is still in the game, just less likely to appear.
The Mystery Node rework described above precludes the Mysterious Stranger being available unless the description was inaccurate. Mysterious Stranger isn't a bonus that appears at the end of the Bounty as that description holds.
I think I read somewhere online that it has roughly a 20% chance to appear now.
If the new addition to the mysterious node is true, then it makes it even less sensible to ever want to go get it. Now that stranger grinding is near non-existent, what further motivation other than masochism to even bother about the node anyway? The reward bonus has got to be really extraordinary, otherwise there's no sense risking a cursed treasure - or even worse still, hot potato.
Book of heroes would be interesting. Wished they released this much earlier when the meta was stale.
I think it's a complete rework of how the node works; in other words, Portal, Sabotage, Spud and Stranger will no longer appear.
Now you'll have a 50/50 chance of either getting a slight impairment (probably a negative version of the boons, e.g. "-5 attack to your fighters"), or bonus coins (I'm guessing similar to how the Stranger currently gives you coins when you're full up on tasks).
Overall, I feel this new version is better, because even the 'beneficial' results of the current version could complicate your run significantly (an early Portal could leave you underpowered for the final encounter, for instance). Of course, if you don't want to take any risks, just try to avoid Mystery Nodes from the start.
I do wish the game would give you the option of skipping over the Mystery Node altogether before its effect is revealed -- that would satisfy everyone: risk-averse players could just ignore it, and those who want to gamble could take a chance on gaining extra coins for their team.
Interesting. Should I read "impersonating" as something that gets muddled up in translation, and really just means you have a choice of hero to use? I assume the 3 characters would be Faelin, Ini and Finley so the story is effectively the same throughout, just with different decks. Though I'd love it if we actually got genuinely different perspectives of the same events through the eyes of VttSC's 3 faction leaders: Faelin, Hooktusk and Aszhara.
Since I wanted the article to go live as soon as possible, I translated the mail quite literally.
"Impersonando" is "impersonating", meaning that you can play the adventure as 3 different characters.