How's the Murder at Castle Nathria reveal season going? Have you seen any cool cards? While we still have many reveals left, a good portion of the new cards is already available for theorycrafting and discussions. With this being said, many Hearthstone developers found some time to answer the community's questions regarding how certain cards work, why they got designed that way and many other interesting insights.
In this article, we're going to go over the most meaningful contributions from Team 5, which you can see listed below. If you're interested in a particular paragraph, make sure to click on one of these titles, as you'll immediately jump to it without the need to endlessly scroll.
- Wildseed Archetype and Undead Beasts in Shadowlands
- Clarifications on How Rogue's Ghastly Gravedigger Works
- Clarification on How Sire Denathrius Works
- Dead Characters Returning in the Shadowlands
- Topior the Shrubbagazzor's Birth
Moreover, here are a couple other developer insights we covered that you might want to take a look at:
- Hearthstone Designer Cora Georgiou Shares Insights on Convoke the Spirits - Gameplay, Prioritization & More
- Hearthstone Designers Gallon and Songbird Share Insights on Huntsman Altimor - Callbacks, Tavish & More
Wildseed Archetype and Undead Beasts in Shadowlands
Let's start by talking about one of the new mechanics for the Hunter class: Wildseed beasts. Although we know little about them, it has been indirectly confirmed that they won't appear just in one card, but they'll be a brand new archetype. In fact, Hearthstone Features Lead Chadd "Celestalon" Nervig tweeted this the exact day Spirit Poacher got revealed, hinting at the fact that we should receive more cards related to Poacher.
Quote From Celestalon Anyone seen any cool Hunter archetypes lately?
This is not the place for speculations, so let's stick to the facts. The Wildseed Hunter archetype was designed in a very short window of time by the Associate Game Designer Alex "Gonnzo" Smith after just two months on the team, which is rather impressive.
Quote From Songbird He pulled Wildseed Hunter together in a single afternoon in like his 2nd month on the team. It was super impressive.
On a final note, Team 5 got asked why the 3 Wildseed tokens you can see above are tagged as Beasts: while they are "spirit" beasts, we are currently in the Shadowlands, where (almost) everyone is dead, so being a dead beast doesn't make you as special as it would if we were on Azeroth!
Quote From Celestalon We're all in the Shadowlands here, so they're not Undead from this point of view. They're dead, but they're not UNdead, because they're not alive again.
Clarifications on How Rogue's Ghastly Gravedigger Works
Ghastly Gravedigger is the first Secret-related card for Rogue in Murder at Castle Nathria. Power level and support apart, many players from the community questioned the minion's card text, as it says that you get to "choose a card in your opponent's hand": literally, you'd think that Gravedigger would allow you to look at your opponent's hand in its entirety.
However, we've already seen similar effects in Hearthstone in past expansions: for example, take Scholomance Academy's Star Student Stelina. Long story short, Ghastly Gravedigger will show you just 3 cards from your opponent's hand.
Quote From Leo Robles Hmmm, doesn’t use Discover keyword, so will it show you 9 cards if that’s how many your opponent has?
It specifically says, “choose a card in your opponent’s hand” but I have this gut feeling it’s just gonna show me three cards.
You still choose from 3! We didn't use the Discover keyword here because Discover is a mechanic that generates things (the tooltip says "Choose one of three cards to add to your hand"), where as this card does the opposite!
And you might say "well what about Drakefire Amulet?" Well, that card IS generating things, they just go immediately into the battlefield rather than stick around in your hand.
Hope that helps! :)
So is this card functionally just Star Student Stelina with condition?
With a different condition, yep! Stelina was Outcast, this is Secrets.
Clarification on How Sire Denathrius Works
A short clip of Sire Denathrius in action was shown during the Hearthside chat reveal of a week ago. As you can see from the video below, Denathrius' animation doesn't play like C'Thun: in fact, the damage seems to be dealt to each enemy in a single blow. Is this just a visual effect? Does Sire Denathrius shoot 1 damage pings or not?
Hearthstone Associate Game Designer Leo Robles solved the issue, confirming that Sire Denathrius deals all the damage at once.
We dare to say that such behavior isn't correctly described by the unit's text effect: while it doesn't use the expression "randomly split" like Arcane Missiles does, there's no clear way to tell the difference. However, it is important to remember that Sire Denathrius' damage will be blocked by Divine Shield and halved by Lightforged Cariel's The Immovable Object.
Quote From Leo Robles Hi @MyntyPhresh, we saw in the video that Sire Denathrius does all its damage at once. Does it mean that it's stopped by a Divine Shield, halved by The Immovable Object, etc.?
The damage happens all at once, so yes it is stopped by Divine Shield, halved by The Immovable Object, etc.
The animation is cool, by the way, maybe a good time to praise the artist?
Dead Characters Returning in the Shadowlands
The Shadowlands are where the souls of those who died on Azeroth go: once they get there, they are sorted in the four Covenants - Night Fae, Necrolord, Venthyr, and Kyrian. Those who are deemed irredeemable from their past undoings are sent into the Maw, an unescapable prison where the most wicked souls in the universe are locked away.
As Shadowlands is the equivalent of our afterlife, it is only natural for us to meet some characters that previously passed away. Although we'll probably see many more with the remaining reveals, Bru'kan and Kael'thas Sunstrider already made their appearance in the expansion.
But wait, why is Bru'kan in the Shadowlands? Is he... dead?
Quote From Songbird I'm sorry you had to find out like this…
Topior the Shrubbagazzor's Birth
Last but not least, let's talk about Topior the Shrubbagazzor. Definitely one of the Legendary minions that the community has been talking about the most, and what has caught the spotlight is the unit's quite bizarre name. Fortunately, Songbird shared it with the rest of us.
Quote From Songbird I was out one morning for VO recording I believe, and the rest of the team did a flavor session while I was gone. When I came back, the name "Topior the Shrubbagazzor" was in the sheet, and I was like "wtf is this?" And then it was almost like a challenge to keep it. So we did..
Apparently they couldn't decide between Topior and Shrubbagazzor, so they put them together. I argued that if Kresh, Lord of Turtling could ship, then this probably could too..
Did you find any of these dev insights interesting? Are you excited for the new expansion? Let us know in the comments below!
Comments
So we can assume every character/minion released in this expansion died. Even Murloc Holmes! HTF did he die?!
And the whole expansion is based around the murder of an already dead vampire, well...
Not quite. There are beings native to the Shadowlands that didn't get there after a mortal life. Denathrius was created along with the other Covenant leaders, and he himself created the venthyr like Renathal, so some, if not all the vampires are natives. There are natives from other zones too, such as Stewart the Steward.
That said, lots of the characters will have died at some point, yes, and I presume that includes Murloc Holmes. If he was himself murdered, I hope he at least managed to work out the killer.