Descent of Dragons Launch Survival Guide – Release Time, Mechanics Overview, Freebies, General Advice, Arena Rotation, Theorycrafts

Expansion is out now!

Descent of Dragons, final expansion of Year of the Dragon, launches today! Below, you will find everything you need to know during the launch.

Important Information

• Launch Date: 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET / 19:00 CET / 3 AM KST on December 10 (Dec 11 in Asia)
• 140 new cards!
• New single player content – Galakrond’s Awakening – will launch in January and offer 35 new constructed cards. We don’t have any more details yet.
• If you missed it, you can still pre-order all the way until expansion launches.
• We’ll cover all of the new decks from pros & streamers here!

Freebies

Blizzard has been pretty generous this time around, offering all five Galakrond cards for free. We hope that they will do it more often in the future for “central” cards of the expansion, so everyone can try them out!

• Get 3x Descent of Dragons card pack and two copies of Shield of Galakrond after logging in (promo lasts for 90 days, so if you have any alt accounts, log in on them before it expires).
• Get all five Galakrond Hero cards after opening your first Descent of Dragons card pack!
• Upon logging in, players will get a chain of six Legendary Quests to complete some relatively simple tasks, such as playing 30 cards or taking 50 turns. Total rewards for all six Quests will be 5x Descent of Dragons pack, 2x Saviors of Uldum card pack, 2x Rise of Shadows card pack and 200 Gold. Leave one Quest slot open – otherwise the Legendary Quest will replace one of your existing Quests!
• After the launch, players who still don’t own Tyrande Whisperwind Hero / card back will be able to claim those in the new shop!

Mechanics Overview

Descent of Dragons introduces a completely new mechanic, but also explorers some of the older ones (with a twist or two). Here’s an overview of what you should expect from this set.

• Galakrond / Invoke – Galakrond is a new Hero card that will be available in different versions for five classes. Players will get all copies for free. Galakrond will start weak, but grow in power after you play Invoke cards. Invoke him twice for the first upgrade, and twice more to get him fully powered up (so four times in total for max upgrade). Invoke cards not only upgrade your Galakrond, but also trigger his Hero Power, no matter where he is – in deck, in hand or already played.
• Sidequests – Sidequests are a new version of regular Quests. In fact, they work quite similarly. After you play them, you need to complete a certain task. After you do, you get a reward. Tasks are much easier to complete, but the rewards are also proportionally smaller. Unlike normal Quests, they are not Legendary (so you can run two of them in your deck), they do not start in your opening hand, and you can get them through random effects.
• Dragon Synergies – “If you’re holding a Dragon” mechanic makes a big comeback this expansion, with dozens of Dragons and Dragon synergies across all classes! Every single class is getting a new Breath card (e.g. Breath of Dreams, Arcane Breath) – a powerful spell that unlocks its full potential if you hold a Dragon. Four classes (League of Explorers classes) are also getting Explorer cards (e.g. Emerald Explorer, Bronze Explorer) – Dragons with some extra effects that can Discover another Dragon on Battlecry.

General Advice

Expansion’s release might be overwhelming for new players, but also tempting for others. Here are some advice we can give you based on surviving every expansion launch ever since the game’s creation:

• If you’re playing on a budget and don’t have a lot of Dust to spare, DO NOT craft any cards Day 1. Wait until the meta to stabilize at least a bit. If you want to be safe, a week should suffice, but I would say that 3 days is really a minimum. And if you’re wondering which cards to craft, we’ll update our Legendary & Epic crafting guides as soon as the meta stabilizes.
• On the other hand, if you’re filthy rich P2W player… I’m kidding. If you’re 100% sure that you want a certain card in Golden version, craft it FIRST before opening packs. This way you won’t open a useless regular version first (and the chances that you will snatch it in golden are incredibly slim).
• Decks that dominate the meta on Day 1 rarely turn out to be the best decks in the expansion. We’ve seen this time and time again. Don’t call for the nerfs, don’t make big rants and so on until the meta stabilizes. Some decks just do better when no one knows how to play against them, others are better at punishing unoptimized, greedy builds and so on. Sometimes decks that dominate Day 1 meta completely disappear after a week.
• Have one Quest slot open & start an Arena run before expansion launches. Open Quest slot is important, because we’ll be getting a Legendary Quest chain, and in case you don’t have any free slots, it will replace one of your regular Quests. As for the Arena run – we’ll be getting an Arena rotation, so current Arena decks will be get forcefully retired, meaning that you will get a free ticket back on top of Arena rewards (if you have some time, you might also want to play until 2 defeats – e.g. if you get up to 2-2, you will get rewards for 2 wins instead of 0). Edit: It seems that Arena entries were already disabled 🙁
• Have fun! That’s the most important part of expansion launches – meta is fresh, people play a lot of unoptimized decks, so you can enjoy basically whatever you want. Try building your own decks from the cards you cracked, test new strategies, or just play pros / streamers decks – do whatever works best for you!

Arena Rotation

New expansion release also comes with a new Arena rotation. Here’s a full list of sets that will be available in Arena after Descent of Dragon launches:

• Basic
• Classic
• Blackrock Mountain
• The Grand Tournament
• One Night in Karazhan
• Knights of the Frozen Throne
• Rastakhan’s Rumble
• Descent of Dragons

We’ll have a tips & tricks guide for the new rotation ready some time after the launch!

Descent of Dragons Theorycrafts

If you’re looking for some decks to try out on Day 1, we’ve got your back! Here’s a full list of theorycrafts we’ve prepared.

If you’re looking for budget decks specifically, or just want to playtest your Galakrond, Old Guardian has got you covered! He has created semi-budget (running only Kronx Dragonhoof and “If you’ve Invokted twice” Epics) as well as full budget (with no Epics / Legends other than free Galakrond) builds for all five classes! Check them out here.

We’ll also be adding new decks from pros & streamers as soon as they start coming, so stay tuned!