(OUT NOW!) Forged in the Barrens Releases Today – Here’s What You Need to Know About the New Expansion!

Update: Forged in the Barrens was just released! Have fun, everyone!

Forged in the Barrens is the first expansion of Year of the Gryphon (2021). Forged in the Barrens transports players to the sun-baked savanna of central Kalimdor, a proving ground where the mighty heroes of the Horde embark on their first adventures. They’ll recruit legendary mercenaries, face roving bands of quilboar raiders, and if they’re really lucky, maybe even find Mankrik’s wife! It’s also the first expansion of a year-long narrative – it’s heavily Horde-themed, the second one should be Alliance-themed, while the final one will most likely be about the war between two factions.

Expansion will add 135 new cards (with mini-set adding 35 more at a later date), as well as a variety of new mechanics and synergies.

Check out our Forged in the Barrens expansion guide, which contains tons of information including a full list of cards.

Release Time

Let’s start with the most important – when does the new expansion launch? For years now, Hearthstone sets have a simultaneous launch across the globe, so it should be out on every server at the same time. However, the time it launches for you depends on where you live – some countries from the Eastern Hemisphere will have it out on March 31 instead of the “official” March 30 release date because of time zone differences. Here are some examples:

• 10 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday (March 30)
• 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (March 30)
• 7 PM Central European Summer Time on Tuesday (March 30)
• 2 AM Korean Standard Time on Wednesday (March 31)
• 4 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (March  31)

Standard Rotation & Core Set

First expansion of the year always brings a Standard rotation – it’s a huge event, given that three entire expansions become unplayable in Standard. Believe it or not, but this one will be even bigger than usual because we’re also losing an entire Basic & Classic set – those are getting replaced by a free Core Set (which contains ~145 fewer cards than Basic + Classic combined). You can learn more about Core Set and check out a full list of cards here. Here’s a quick roundup of the changes:

• Removed: Basic, Classic, Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, Descent of Dragons (+Galakrond’s Awakening)
• Added: Core Set 2021, Forged in the Barrens

All in all, Standard players will have access to ~450 fewer cards than they do right now, which should drastically impact the meta. Of course, if you play Wild, you don’t really lose anything – you’re only getting some new Core Set cards + Forged in the Barrens expansion.

On top of the rotation, multiple older cards got buffed after being added to the new Core Set. For example, Flamestrike will now deal 5 damage, Shadowform will cost 2 mana, and Lord Jaraxxus will finally be a Hero card (so it will no longer set max health to 15). It’s hard to say how much impact those changes will have, but some of them do look promising.

New Mechanics

This expansion’s new keyword is Frenzy. Frenzy triggers the first time a minion takes damage and survives. If you think that it sounds a bit similar to now retired Enrage mechanic – well, that’s because it is!

Most important difference between Frenzy and the old Enrage is that Frenzy can only trigger once. Enrage was sort of an on/off thing – if minion got healed up to full health, it would lose its Enrage effect. Frenzy is one and done.

As you can see, Frenzy can trigger all kinds of different effects, ranging from dealing extra damage, buffing the minion, transforming it, to adding more value to your hand. Frenzy cards will certainly be stronger in classes that can more easily damage their own minions, such as Warrior. Rush is also a big bonus, given that you can attack immediately, which means that Animated Broomstick might see even more play with Frenzy cards!

The second main mechanic of the expansion is Spell Schools. Minions had their types (also known as tribes – e.g. Dragon or Beast) ever since the game’s creation, and it’s time for Spells to also have something similar. Those might now belong to one of the seven schools – Arcane, Fel, Fire, Frost, Nature, Holy or Shadow. Schools will also be applied retroactively to already existing spells. Keep in mind, however, that not every single spell belongs to a school. Spell schools seem to be much more common in classes naturally associated with spell casting, such as Mage, Druid, Priest or Warlock – on the other hand, they are less common in e.g. Hunter or Warrior.

There are also pay-off cards that synergize with a certain spell school. Most of the synergies boil down to “after you cast a spell from X” school, but I suspect that Blizzard wanted to start off simple, and now that Spell Schools will be a part of the game going forward, we’ll get some more interesting synergies later.

And those are just some of many cool mechanics featured on cards in Forged in the Barrens! We’re also getting Ranked Spells (spells that become more powerful on Turn 5 and Turn 10), Watch Posts, Caravans, and more!

New Rewards Track & Diamond Cards

The rewards track, first introduced in Darkmoon Faire, is getting its first refresh. When Forged in the Barrens launches, all players will get reset to Level 1 and will work their way up through the track again. There are some changes compared to the one we have right now – “base” part will have 100 levels instead of 50 (but each will require half the XP, which simply means that the progression is faster) and we’ll get slightly more rewards throughout the track. We detailed all the changes, as well as the new Tavern Pass here.

Your daily & weekly Quests will NOT reset when new expansion launches. It might be a good idea to save them for after the launch to give you a nice boost through the early levels of the rewards track. The only situation 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. If you want to min-max, try to hit a new level on your rewards track and stop there because any “excess” XP won’t carry over.

Additionally, a new type of cosmetics will launch – Diamond Cards. They work similarly to Golden cards, in a way that they’re only visual upgrades and don’t add anything extra. However, they will be much rarer – only two are getting added this expansion. Players  – but only two will be available this expansion – Blademaster Samuro and Bru'kan. Blademaster Samuro will be a Level 1 reward from Tavern Pass (paid part of the rewards track), while Bru’kan will be obtained by collecting all Forged in the Barrens Legendaries.

Talking about the rewards track, I would advise everyone to open their packs BEFORE visiting rewards track and claiming their level 1 rewards. This is because Blizzard has issued a full Dust refund for Golden Mankrik as well as regular & golden Blademaster Samuro. The reason for dust refund is that you will be able to get those cards for free from the rewards track. However, now that you can disenchant them for their full crafting cost, it’s actually beneficial to try to open them before getting copies of them from track & triggering duplicate protection. 1600 Dust is always better than a Legendary, because when you have 1600 Dust you can craft whatever you want. Learn more here.

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 Forged in the Barrens:

• Players can get Shadowhunter Vol'jin Legendary for logging in. It has been available for over a month now, so you’ve probably picked it up already, but if you’re coming back to the game after a longer break, you’ll still get him!
• Mankrik is unlocked on Level 1 of the new Rewards Track, which means that you can get it as soon as expansion releases (but as I’ve mentioned above, you should first open your packs BEFORE claiming him).
• All players who have Basic cards unlocked will get 235 Core Set cards for free, including many Legendaries. If you’re a new player, unlocking it is very simple – all you need to do is hit Level 10 with each class (it takes a few games against AI per class). You can learn more about Core Set here.
• Not exactly “free”, but if you plan to buy a Tavern Pass, you can get a Diamond version of Blademaster Samuro on Level 1. I’m mentioning it, because there were no extra Legendaries coming with the Pass last expansion.
• We don’t have any information about any Legendary Quests. We got one in Scholomance Academy right when the expansion launched. However, in Darkmoon Faire, it wasn’t tied to set’s launch, but rather the release of a new game mode – Duels. We had three Quests giving 6 packs in total for playing Duels. It’s not yet know how things will work right now – maybe we’ll have a Legendary Quest chain now, or maybe they’re planning to drop it later when Mercenaries game mode releases (hopefully in a couple of months).

New Decks

Don’t know what decks to try out when the expansion launches? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Once expansion launches, we’ll be adding new decks from streamers & pro players to this post. We always give them some time (30-60 minutes) to open packs and prepare decks and then go crazy, adding dozens of new builds over the first 24 hours.