On October 12, 2021, Blizzard rolled out a new update to their Hearthstone card game. In addition to balancing the cards and the different game modes, we especially discovered the new Mercenaries game mode at the crossroads of the card game and the tactical game. We talk about it in more detail in this article while giving you advice to get started! A little important information, for World Of Warcaft players, a mount is unlockable if you complete the game's prologue!
A very different game
Mercenaries mode is a very different game mode from what we know today. It will be a completely free mode with the possibility of buying card packs to speed up your progress and/or acquire new characters. If we have to define a type of game for this mode, we will say that it combines elements of role-playing and roguelike (for the PvE part). There are currently 51 mercenaries available in Hearthstone and you will unlock 8 of them for free after completing the prologue (a kind of tutorial).
Before talking about the gameplay and what we can find around this game mode, we will dwell a little on the mercenaries. Each mercenary will be able to evolve up to level 30 and will have 3 playable skills in game which are unlocked at level 1, 5 and 15. He will also have the opportunity to equip himself with an object which you will recover by reaching the level and/ or by completing tasks 2 and 7 of said mercenary (the tasks are daily character quests related to the latter's spells or gameplay). Whether it is skills or equipment, they can be increased up to level 5 improving their effectiveness thanks to mercenary coins that you will obtain by completing bounties, tasks or by opening mercenary packages (via coins or real money).
Each character has a color assigned to it: red for so-called protective characters, blue for spellcasters and green for fighters. There will be between each of the classes a kind of circle of weakness which will allow the strong color to inflict critical damage to the weak color (x2 in damage). It is defined as follows: Red > Blue > Green > Red.
Your team will consist of up to 6 mercenaries with whom you can play in PvE (Bounties) or PvP mode. Bounties will give you the opportunity to level up your characters quickly and acquire parts to perfect your characters. PvP content is much like other game modes where you compete against other players for additional end-of-season rewards based on your rank. Remember to upgrade your village (mode hub) to unlock all the features of Mercenaries mode.
At the start of the fight, you will choose 3 mercenaries from your group and place them on the board to start the fight. The placement remains important in relation to the skills of your allies or even those of your enemies (group healing, area spells, etc.). A turn is divided into two phases:
- Command phase: you will choose, for each of your mercenaries, the skill that will be used for the combat phase. Some skills may have a cooldown of 1 or more turns. Each skill has a number below its image which corresponds to the initiative of the latter. The lower the value, the faster it will be launched into combat. Namely, in the PvE content, you always know what the opposing characters are throwing, which will allow you to anticipate what will happen.
- Combat phase: the actions are executed automatically according to the speed of the actions of each of the characters. If two characters have the same value, chance will decide. In the case of a physical fight, the two characters inflict their attack value on each other.
The turns will be linked until a player loses one of his fallen mercenaries. This will trigger a phase where the player will have to refill his board with lost mercenaries. It is not possible, except through skill effects (Shinywing for example), to swap characters in the middle of a fight. Basically, your characters will fight to the death! For the PvE mode, each end of the fight will restore your living characters to all their hit points, which will allow you to continue the bounty to unlock the end bonus. Regarding the bonuses, in addition to the end bonus, you should know that the entire tree structure of combats or bonuses is procedurally generated at each start of the adventure. You can find in these an event called "Mysterious Encounter" which will grant you a quest for one of the characters in your group which, as I mentioned earlier, will allow you to acquire medals and/or unlock items. of mercenaries.
Conclusion
I had taken a certain break from the game because it could turn out to be quite boring over time and it had a lot of trouble renewing its gameplay. Here, with the mercenary mode, we find something completely new like with the Battlefield game mode when it was released. The latter has the advantage of being totally free and you will be able to farm certain bonuses in a loop to earn the mercenary coins you want in order to unlock and progress your mercenaries by starting to move up the ladder afterwards. of PvP mode.
I strongly advise you to test this new game mode to discover a new facet of what Blizzard can offer with its card game.
