Introducing a New Game Mode: Hearthstone Duels!
INTRODUCING HEARTHSTONE DUELS!
Welcome to Duels, a new competitive Hearthstone game mode that changes every season! In Duels, you’ll choose a Hero, a Hero Power, a starting Treasure, and build a 15-card starter deck from your collection before facing off against a series of worthy human opponents—Dungeon Run-style! Devise your path to victory by enhancing your deck after each match with minions, spells, and powerful Treasures to aid in increasingly difficult encounters with other players!
How It Works:
Duels will be accessible through the Modes button from the Hearthstone main screen, where you’d go to play Battlegrounds or Arena. Here’s how it works:
- When you start a Duels run, you’ll choose a Hero, a Hero Power, and starting Treasure.
- Then, you’ll build a starter deck of 15 cards from your Collection and play your first match. In its debut season, Duels will include a curated assortment of cards from a number of sets, including:
- Scholomance Academy
- One Night in Kharazan
- Curse of Naxxramas
- Basic
- Classic
- After the match is over, you’ll gain additional health, and get to level up your deck by picking one of three sets of cards categorized by theme. Occasionally, you’ll also be able to pick from a selection of three incredibly powerful Treasures!
- Gain or lose rating based on your result! While separate, Duels uses the same Ratings system as Battlegrounds. Your run ends after you lose three times, or net 12 wins!
Play Duels: Early Access Today
In Duels: Early Access, each playable class will start with 1 Hero Power and 1 Treasure and will use cards from the Scholomance Academy, One Night in Kharazan, Curse of Naxxramas, Classic, and Basic sets. The card pool will be updated as new sets are released!
All Hero Powers and Treasures added after Duels: Early Access can be unlocked by meeting a variety of criteria associated with your Collection. For example, unlocking a new Hero Power may require owning a corresponding Legendary card. Or to unlock a specific Treasure, you might need to own 30 Epic cards from a given set.
How to Get Duels: Early Access
Pre-purchase the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Mega Bundle to get Duels: Early Access* today, along with 80 Madness at the Darkmoon Faire card packs, 5 Golden Madness at the Darkmoon Faire packs, one random Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Golden Legendary card, the N’Zoth Warlock Hero, the N’Zoth card back, and Battlegrounds perks**!
You can also pre-purchase the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Bundle to get Duels: Early Access* today along with 45 Madness as the Darkmoon Faire card packs, one random Madness at the Darkmoon Faire Legendary card, and the N’Zoth card back!
When you pre-purchase either bundle, you’ll get access to a special Legendary Quest chain that rewards 6 Scholomance Academy Packs for trying out Duels!
Pre-purchase will go live with the 18.6 patch at ~10:00 a.m. PT on 10/22.
Starting November 12, Duels: Early Access will be free and open to all players and Whispers of the Old Gods will be added to the pool of eligible sets!
*Early access obtained through pre-purchase is available between October 22, 2020 and November 11, 2020. Duels game mode is accessible after reaching level 10 with all Hero classes in-game.**Battlegrounds Perks are available upon purchase and expire at the end of the Madness at the Darkmoon Faire expansion cycle.
Duels: Early Access Twitch Drops
From October 28 at 10:00 a.m. PT to November 11 at 11:00 p.m. PT, we’ll also be giving away Duels: Early Access to 500 random viewers every hour, across the entire Hearthstone category on Twitch! Watch any Hearthstone stream to be eligible to receive a drop, so long as your Battle.net and Twitch accounts are linked.
Link Your Accounts
Before you can receive rewards, you’ll need to link your Twitch.tv and Battle.net accounts. Here’s how:
- Log in or create an account on Twitch.tv.
- Navigate to the Settings menu by clicking your account name in the top-right corner of the home screen.
- Navigate to the Connections tab of the Settings menu.
- Find the Battle.net section, then follow the instructions after selecting a region and clicking Connect.
- When connecting accounts, be sure that you’re currently logged into the Battle.net account on which you’d like to receive your rewards.
The official rules for Twitch Drops can be found here.
Duels: Season One Starts November 17
When the Duels officially launches on November 17, and we transition from Duels: Early Access to Duels: Season One, each class will have access to 2 Hero Powers and 3 Treasures. Additionally, Madness at the Darkmoon Faire cards will be added to the pool of eligible sets! We’ll be adding new Hero Powers and Treasures in a mid-season update early next year, and plan to reset Duels ratings at that time as well.
The theme for Duels: Early Access and Duels: Season One is Wizard Duels, which brings several familiar professors and luminaries from Scholomance Academy to the mode, each representing a different class and playstyle! The theme will change at the end of Duels: Season One, new Heroes will be added, and some Treasures will rotate out to make room for new ones.
When Duels: Season One begins, it’ll offer two methods of play with separate matchmaking pools: Casual and Heroic. Casual runs are free and are a perfect starting point for exploring the mode and experimenting. Heroic runs feature success-based rewards identical to Arena rewards, including gold, arcane dust, cards, golden cards, and card packs from the latest expansion. Heroic Duels runs cost 150 gold or a Tavern Ticket (US $1.99), which will be replacing Arena Tickets, and grant entry to Arena or Heroic Duels. If you’ve been sitting on Arena Tickets, they will be usable for Duels!
We announced a ton of stuff today! Be sure to check out the rest of what we’ve got going on:
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