There’s a new game mode coming to Hearthstone on Tuesday, October 12th, which seeks to blend the CCG’s characters with RPG and roguelike elements. It’s called Mercenaries, and at the very basic level, it’s a PvE mode that lets players form a party of mercs to take on bounties for rewards and to build up a mercenary village.
It all starts at the Bounty Board, where players select the bounty they want to hunt. After that, players select a party of six mercenaries, with three entering battle and the other three waiting on the Bench, arriving to the field as mercs are either defeated or swapped out with abilities. All XP earned from a bounty stays even if a mercenary is killed or rides the Bench, and bounties can be repeated if players are chasing specific rewards.
The devs have put together closer looks at all of this mode’s mechanics, including a rundown of combat, a look at the Mercenary Village, and even a full list of mercenaries players can find. Eagle-eyed readers may see there are Diablo, Sylvanas, and Lich King mercenaries in the list; those three can be either earned in-game or immediately received through the purchase of three different bundles, and those who sign up to a six month subscription for WoW get extra goodies like Tavern Pass and Battlegrounds Perks for this and the next expansion, 15 packs from United in Stormwind, 15 packs from Hearthstone’s next expansion, and 30 total Mercenaries Packs across the six month subscription span.
In the meantime, Hearthstone has released the 21.3 patch, which has tweaked certain Standard and Wild cards, made some Battlegrounds hero and minion updates, and applied some general tweaks to duels and arena among other things. The link above has the full patch notes, while a trailer for Mercenaries can be seen below.
