Hearthstone, a strategy card game developed by Blizzard Entertainment, will launch its latest expansion, the Festival of Legends, on April 11, featuring “the greatest musicians from all over Azeroth” coming together to put on “the biggest music festival in history.”
With 145 new cards, players can earn Gold, musical card packs, music-themed cosmetics and many more. The new expansion will drop right after the game releases the patch 26.0 update, paving the way for the new year with Battlegrounds, Duels and Arena adjustments and more.
Festival of Legends
This expansion will see each card class representing a different music genre — Death Knight with metal, Druid with hippie, Demon Hunter with emo, Hunter with folk, Mage with electronic, Paladin with disco, Priest with pop, rogue with hip hop, Warlock with classical, Shaman with jazz and Warrior with rock. Each card class gets its unique instrument weapon, Legendary spell song and musician minion.
The Rewards Track will refresh as soon as the Festival of Legends launches, offering players many free rewards.
Along the track, players can expect to receive 11 card packs, Standard packs, a random Epic card, two random Legendary cards, Tavern tickets, a new card back and one of the 10 returning Hero Skins.
Players can also earn the uncraftable 14 Golden cards and the Pozzik – Audio Engineer Legendary card.
On top of that, any unclaimed rewards from the free Rewards Track and the Tavern Pass track (if purchased) of the previous year will be granted automatically to all players.
The new Tavern Pass will also be available, offering various brand-new cosmetic rewards and XP Boosts.
With the release of the Festival of Legends expansion, Hearthstone will also introduce a new Tavern Pass.
Players can purchase this pass to access various cosmetic rewards and XP boosts. This purchase will grant an immediate 10 percent XP boost throughout the expansion.
Players can also redeem Golden versions of the Pozzik and E.T.C, Band Manager Legendaries and a Diamond Heartbreaker Hedanis Legendary card. Music-themed versions of Warcraft heroes, such as Teen Idol Anduin, Rockabilly Rexxar and Halveria Darkraven, will also be available.
The upcoming expansion will introduce two new exciting mechanics for Hearthstone players to explore. First is the Finale keyword, which rewards players with unique bonuses when they use cards that exhaust all their remaining mana.
A new Overheal keyword exclusive to the Priest class will be introduced, allowing certain minions to activate special abilities when healed beyond their maximum health. Players can also expect to see the Diamond Heartbreaker Hedanis, a legendary card showcasing the Overheal keyword in action.
Kicking off the Year of the Wolf
As the big Hearthstone clock counts down to the end of the Year of Hydra, The Festival of Legends kicks off Hearthstone’s new Year of the Wolf.
Blizzard’s website revealed that the Year of The Wolf would be divided into three phases with “more new cards and Battlegrounds updates than ever.”
The Core Set of the year is set to receive several updates, including new cards, keyword updates and rotation in the Standard format.
The Year of the Gryphon expansions, like Forged in the Barrens, United in Stormwind and Fractured in Alterac Valley, will be rotated out of Standard.
Meanwhile, the new Standard format for this year will include Voyage to the Sunken City, Murder at Castle Nathria, March of the Lich King and Festival of the Legends.
The new year oversees several keyword updates alongside Finale and Overheal. Tradeable — a keyword introduced back in United in Stormwind — will return as an evergreen keyword.
The Magnetic keyword will also return after its debut in The Boomsday Project, although it might only last for a short time as Tradeable and is limited to this year only.
Hearthstone also announced a significant change to the Core Set, as the game will swap out 70 cards for new ones. An infographic for the cards waving goodbye and the new cards coming into the Core set is available on the Hearthstone website.
