Hearthstone used to celebrate multiple expansions and adventures back in the day. However, with 2018, Blizzard stopped doing adventures altogether and started a greater focus on expansions instead. This was primarily due to the fact that adventures had very few cards which could be unlocked, meaning that the card pool available for deck building was relatively small. Expansions have a much larger pool of cards, encouraging a greater variety of decks and a more diverse meta. Adventures also required people to successively buy wings till they could access the card they wanted to unlock. For an example, if you wanted to unlock Loatheb in the Curse of Naxxramas adventure (who is one of the best anti-control and anti-combo tools in the Wild format nowadays), then you needed to complete the first wing of the adventure and then unlock the second wing in order to get him. In expansions, players could just craft the card if they had dust, allowing more flexibility in the format.
Adventures used to be singleplayer content with cards as rewards. The absence of singleplayer content was extremely noticeable in Journey to Un’Goro, the first expansion of 2018, prompting people to raise their voices on social media till Blizzard was forced to return with a singleplayer mode in the next expansion, Knights of the Frozen Throne. The singleplayer content in the next expansion, however, was the game-changing one. The Dungeon Run mode added as part of the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion introduced the concept of drafting random cards while playing the adventure. This became a model which Blizzard later tweaked to perfection. And with the Dalaran Heist, the singleplayer mode has reached a pinnacle of its glory.
The Dalaran Heist sees actually shows the story of the invasion of Dalaran by the motley band of villains from past adventures and expansions. Led by Rafaam, the gang consisting of Boom, Hagatha, Toggwaggle, and Lazul – the bunch of villains calling themselves E.V.I.L. is invading the flying city of the mages – Dalaran.
The adventure, for the first time since launch, actually features the villains doing their thing instead of heroes protecting Azeroth or something else. The concept of anti-heroes went very well, and the element of humor is always there. These weren’t Azeroth’s chosen after all, but a bunch of evil dudes and doodads with evil intentions.
Each hero (or for sake of correctness, anti-heroes), are tasked with taking over a particular section of the city. Each section of the city has particular challenges to encounter and deal with. The streets, for example, are extremely crowded, as the streets of any busy city should be, allowing only four minions to be played at any point of time. Each section has different end bosses, and different smaller enemies on the way. The format used is almost exactly similar to the previous “deckbuilding” singleplayer content. One small (and pretty intriguing) change is the addition of neutral encounters in every run that help the player tweak their deck.
These neutral encounters allow the players to remove weak minions, add strong minions, remove useless spells or buff existing minions (those are only a few ways to change the deck, the list goes on).The taverns, bars, and inns of Dalaran do not discriminate, and allow even E.V.I.L members to enjoy.
One-time heroes (err…anti-heroes) of the city are treated to Anomaly mode. Anomalies are random magical occurrences which increase the randomness of the run. One anomaly allows Murlocs to enter the battlefield at any point of time, while another summons a random minion for every spell cast.
The adventure also features the return of the infamous Heroic mode, which isn’t for the faintest of heart. Sadly, Blizzard’s habit of giving the AI super overpowered cards instead of improving its gameplay gets in the way of having fun blasting some heroes in Heroic mode.
The adventure mode features nine additional heroes instead of our traditional ones (because let’s admit it, no one in their right mind would help E.V.I.L guys, right?). The heroes have different dialogues too! (Sadly BM’ing an AI is never fun) The Dalaran Heist features four unlockable decks as well as two unlockable hero powers for each hero.
In in-game tracker keeps a check of progress, the first of its kind in a Hearthstone singleplayer adventure. Sadly, even with these changes, the AI fails to live up to the expectations, and needs overpowered cards and the right draws to keep E.V.I.L out of the way.
The Dalaran Heist increases the rewards being given away for successful completion, and this is something no player can regret. The completion of each wing of the adventure grants three Rise of Shadows packs, while the successful completion of all wings grants a golden Classical pack. Also, buying all wings of the adventures grants the player a golden copy of Zayle, Shadow Cloak.
Zayle plays along the same lines as Whizbang, allowing players to experience five new decks featuring the Rafaam, Lazul, Hagatha, Toggwaggle and Boom. The decks are not competitively good, but are super fun to play. Considering the insane amount of content and the replayability of the mode, the rewards are pretty generous, though sadly they are still lesser than what was offered back in the day like Curse of Naxxramas, Blackrock Mountain, League of Explorers and One Night at Karazhan.
Overall, Blizzard’s new adventure is one solid piece of singleplayer content, and delivers quite an experience for the amount one is paying. Here’s to hoping the singleplayer content continues to evolve in all expansions to come.