Update: The expansion is now live! Enjoy!
The Great Dark Beyond is the third expansion of Year of the Pegasus (2024). When the demonic Burning Legion invaded their planet, the Draenei fled to the stars. Now, these “Exiled Ones” are being chased across the cosmos while they search for a new home. Build your own Starship, command the new Draenei minion type, and battle a demonic threat as you explore The Great Dark Beyond!
The expansion will add 145 new cards (with a mini-set adding 38 more at a later date), as well as a variety of new mechanics and synergies. Learn everything you should know about it below!
Release Time
Let’s start with the most important – when does the new expansion launch? Hearthstone sets have a simultaneous launch across the globe, so The Great Dark Beyond should be out on every server at the same time. However, due to timezone differences, that “same time” is a different hour around the globe. Here are some example launch times for different time zones:
- 10 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday (November 5)
- 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (November 5)
- 7 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (November 5)
- 3 AM Korean & Japan Standard Time on Wednesday (November 6)
- 4 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (November 6)
Since the expansion was already pre-loaded in Patch 31.0 last week, you won’t need to download a big update when it launches. This also means that mobile release should happen exactly at the same time as PC. Just make sure to open the game early and download any patches if you haven’t been playing lately.
Freebies
When new expansion launches, players are usually greeted with some free stuff, like packs, free Legendaries etc. Here’s what we know so far about The Great Dark Beyond:
- A big part of the rewards were already given out before the expansion, including a bunch of freebies from Twitch drops. But even if you missed them, don’t worry, you won’t be far behind.
- Pre-Release Brawl is still going on and it will be available until the expansion’s launch. Each player has got one free entry, and even the worst-case scenario of 0-3 finish gives you two free card packs. Additionally, if you have some Tavern Tickets hoarded, you might give it a few more tries. We compiled lots of successful Pre-Release Brawl decks here.
- Nexus-Prince Shaffar was given out as a free The Great Dark Beyond Legendary in Patch 30.6. If you haven’t picked it up yet, just log in and it’ll be waiting for you in-game.
- The Exodar is unlocked on Level 1 of the new Rewards Track, which means that you will get it as soon as the expansion releases.
- Not exactly “free”, but if you plan to buy a Tavern Pass, you can get a Diamond version of Archimonde on Level 2 and 2x Signature Red Giant on Level 3. While Tavern Pass is mostly about XP boosts and Cosmetics, the extra Legendary/Epics you get at the start are also a nice bonus. If you already opened regular versions of those cards in your packs, claiming the Diamond/Signature copy will let you reroll the normal version into another Legendary/Epic card you don’t own.
- The first few levels of the rewards track require almost no XP, so they are meant to be unlocked nearly instantly as you start playing. You will unlock six extra card packs over the first 11 levels, which you should easily be able to achieve on Day 1 with a couple of Dailies (only 2200 XP in total is required to get there). You can get even further into the rewards track if you keep your Weekly Quests to get a jump start on the new rewards track.
- A new in-game event will launch a week after the expansion. Players can get a new Epic Neutral card (both in regular and Golden versions), a card back, and a Warrior Hero skin.
- If you’re a new or returning player (haven’t logged in for over 90 days), you will be offered one of the updated free decks. To be more specific – you get to borrow all 6 decks for a week and play them as much as you want, but after a week is over you have to pick one of them and only that will be added to your collection. Do keep in mind, however, that the decks don’t contain any cards from the latest expansion, you will still need to get those to keep them up to date.
New Mechanic – Starships
The main new mechanic of this expansion is Starships. Many cards in the expansion will have a “Starship Piece” keyword. Once a Starship Piece dies, a “dormant” Starship will appear on your board. You can launch your Starship for a fixed 5 mana cost no matter how many pieces you’ve added to it. Here are some example Starship pieces:
Your Starship will be a combination of all the Starship Pieces that died – adding their base stats and effects together. For example, if you had Dimensional Core, Shattershard Turret, and Arkonite Defense Crystal die, your Starship will be an 8/10 minion with Taunt, Divine Shield, Rush, Windfury and Deathrattle: Gain 6 Armor. As you can see, those can quickly stack up to some impressive numbers.
Until you launch your Starship, it can’t be interacted with like for example Sargeras, the Destroyer‘s Portal – players can’t target it, remove it etc. The only way to deal with a “dormant” Starship is Reno, Lone Ranger. After you launch it, however, it becomes a normal minion and both players can interact with it.
You can build as many Starships as you want throughout the match, but you can only work on one at a time. Once you launch the first Starship, future Pieces that die will be added to a second one (that you will have to spend 5 mana again to launch). The mechanic is sort of “how greedy do you want to get”. You can prepare one massive Starship with lots of extra keywords and effects and launch it in the late game. It’s going to be insane value for just 5 mana… but it can easily get destroyed or even stolen by the likes of Reska, the Pit Boss. Or you can use a different tactic and launch a few smaller Starships, which is going to cost you much more mana in total, but it will be impossible to counter with a single card.
While every class can build a Starship with Neutral pieces, only 6 classes will get Starship synergies of their own: Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Druid, Hunter, Rogue, and Warlock. This is akin to the recent Excavate mechanic – while every class can Excavate, only a few of them had extra synergies. Those classes will get their own unique Starship Pieces as well as one card that comes with an extra effect if you’re building a Starship. Additionally, Starships for those 6 classes will have unique names and artworks too (the other 5 classes will share the same, Neutral Starship).
New Minion Type – Draenei
Hearthstone is getting another minion type – this time it’s Draenei! The last minion type we got was Undead back when Death Knight was introduced in March of the Lich King (December 2022).
The main mechanic of Draenei is “The next Draenei you play does X”. There’s no special requirement like with many other minion types – they don’t have to be played on the following turn (like Elementals), you don’t need to have another Draenei in your hand (like Dragons) etc. It’s a simple mechanic, but most of the instances have some very clear synergies. Using some of the examples above – Ingenious Artificer can be used to summon Arkwing Pilot and refresh 4 of the 7 mana spent. Doing so means that you have much more mana to immediatley trigger Pilot’s Spellburst multiple times and flood the board with copies of it. Similarly, Expedition Sergeant has great synergy with Warrior’s Draenei package, most notably with Exarch Akama who makes the rest of your board be able to attack again.
There are also many Draenei with no specific synergies that are just generic cards in the expansion (but that’s pretty much expected because that’s how other minion types work too).
Returning Keyword – Spellburst
Spellburst keyword was first introduced in the Scholomance Academy expansion (August 2020). Just like most of the keywords, it was mostly limited to that set, with only a couple more Spellburst cards released later. The mechanic was generally well-received by the community and some players thought that it might become evergreen. While that didn’t happen, we finally see it returning to the game.
In case you don’t remember how it works, the Spellburst effect triggers after you play the first spell. It’s a one-time effect, so playing more spells doesn’t make it go off again.
The expansion doesn’t put a massive focus on Spellburst, but that might be expected given that it’s a returning keyword, not a brand-new one. Most of the classes have at least one Spellburst card, usually one that combos quite well with the rest of their kit, including a few Starship synergies.
New Signature Cards
Another batch of Signatures has been released in The Great Dark Beyond. They have seen no general updates in this expansion (such as the card’s border or rarity gems). However, it’s the expansion with the highest number of Signatures by far. The reason is that each Starship Piece has a Signature version – and if one of them is used to build it, the final Starship will also be a Signature.
We’ve gathered all of The Great Dark Beyond Signatures in a separate post, but you can find a few examples below:
New Rewards Track
The rewards track, first introduced in Darkmoon Faire, is getting another refresh. When The Great Dark Beyond launches, all players will get reset to Level 1 and will work their way up through the track again. And this is the first time the rewards track is changing in quite a few expansions. In order to compensate for the Weekly Quests giving less XP than for the last few months (it’s a long story), Blizzard added some rewards to the track. Five of the early 50 Gold rewards were swapped for a card pack from the latest expansion (so if you planned to spend that Gold on those packs, it nets you +250 Gold). Four more card packs were added to the Tavern Pass (paid rewards track). Other than those, the rewards track is pretty much the same as in the last few sets in terms of value. You can find more details in this post.
Your daily & weekly Quests will NOT reset when the new expansion launches. It’s not a bad idea to save them for after the launch to give you a nice boost through the early levels of the rewards track. The only situations in which I’d recommend finishing all your Quests under the old rewards track is if you have Tavern Pass right now, but you don’t plan to buy a new one after launch (this way you’ll get 20% extra XP), or you haven’t finished the previous rewards track and you’re close to leveling for some good rewards. In the second case, if you want to min-max, try to hit a new level on your current rewards track and stop there because any “excess” XP won’t carry over. Ultimately this is not a big deal and no matter what you do, you should come up with a similar amount of rewards in the long run. But a free pack here and there can’t hurt, right?
New & Returning Players Experience
I’ve already mentioned it in the freebies section, but let me expand on it. If you are a new player or haven’t been playing the game in a while (90+ days to be exact), you might be happy to hear that some extra goodies are waiting for you once you log in. You get two things – an extra Quest Chain with some nice rewards and a free Standard deck of your choice. Those free decks are updated every expansion but notably DO NOT include any cards from the latest set. However, they are a nice start and can serve you early into the new set before you can open enough packs or craft something else.
An extra feature added a while ago is that you no longer have to pick your free deck right away. You get access to all of them for a week, and only after that week passes you have to decide to keep one. It means that you have enough time to test all of them and see which one fits you the best.
You can find an updated list of free decks here with our reccomendations.
The Great Dark Beyond Decks
Once the expansion launches, I will be compiling decks from pro players & streamers in this post. I’ll try to add decks for all 11 classes, but it’s hard to say whether every single class will be viable around launch. The post will be updated every few hours over the early expansion period (roughly the first week). We also generally do compilations of best-performing decks in separate posts – one after ~24 hours and the second about one a week after launch. So if you want something to base your early crafting decisions on, that would be your best choice (it’s still not a guarantee that those decks will remain viable, but it’s better than nothing).
Until we get some actual decks, you can check out Old Guardian’s theorycrafting impressions. He talks about each class and how it might fare in the upcoming expansion, plus he showcases some decks from the event. Those never translate into the expansion meta once it launches and everyone gets to play it, but some decks that are strong during theorycrafting also end up being good once the set launches. So you can get some ideas this way. Here’s the article! Vicious Syndicate also always prepares an article with lots of decks to try on Day 1. And they are quite good at predicting some upcoming meta builds. Of course, the final decks still usually require some refinements, but many of them are great early meta picks. You can find their theorycrafting post here.
“Each player has got one free entry”
well, i have never played the pre-release brawl and still have to pay 2 tavern tickets for my first game.
what has gone wrong?