From Dungeons to Duels: Revisiting Monster Hunt and the Puzzle Labs

So how do you follow up something as iconic as the original Dungeon Run? You don’t, really, at least as far as the next expansions’ solo content is concerned: first, a smaller-scale version with minor tweaks, then a bunch of puzzles followed. Still, there were lessons learned and ideas which would return in the future as part of other single-player content pieces…

Check out previous part, in which we revisit original Dungeon Run here!

A Leisurely Forest Trek

Those in the community hoping for a Dungeon Run 2.0 from Monster Hunt were sorely disappointed on release, as it’s quite clearly a scaled-back version of the original smash hit with much more limited replay value. Again, this was likely on purpose, as it’s tough to justify the sort of PvE content which doesn’t rely on your collection and can’t be monetized over other alternatives. Indeed, the PvE content’s release was pushed back slightly: while Dungeons and Dragons launched alongside the Kobolds and Catacombs set, Monster Hunt was added two weeks after the fact, likely to encourage people to spend time on the ladder instead of hiding away in the big bad forest full of Hagatha’s monstrosities.

Instead of nine classes, you’ve only got four to work with this time around, though significant effort was put into making them unique and each offer varying degrees of unique gameplay scenarios to make it worth your while. Darius Crowley and his cannon revolve around positioning, Tess Greymane allows for ridiculous resource generation shenanigans, Toki, Time-Tinker is a min-maxer’s dream and Houndmaster Shaw… is a Midrange Hunter with a better Hero Power. Indeed, many of the treasures in this mode are exclusively made to augment their abilities (one of which, Bubba, has also been added to Duels and is widely considered to be one of the worst Treasures in the format).

So you’ve got your pre-set ten card starting deck and a similar sort of variety in builds as you did in Dungeon Run thanks to the buckets and the treasures – however, you only have four heroes to play with. The poorly explained Final Nemesis system is meant to add a bit of extra replayability and challenge, with the standard list of five final bosses expanded by four more, each assigned to one of the playable characters with a deck that works well against their approach.

They don’t always show up as the final boss and defeating them was not a requirement to get to the Final Challenge against Hagatha, a separate one-off battle. This is where arguably the most memorable moment of the whole Monster Hunt experience came into play. Infinite Toki’s Quest Mage against Toki, Time-Tinker, with the ten mana Alternate Timeline card which starts a new game but keeps both players’ health the same. To ensure the shenanigans, this is apparently always played on turn ten. (Another one of her special cards, Clockwork Assistant, has also made it to Duels as a treasure.)

Leaning into the “cross-promotion” between the PvE content and the actual set by reimagining some of the Constructed cards as bosses to fight against. The playable characters themselves have also made it in as either Witchwood cards or even Battlegrounds heroes – no doubt an infinitely greater accolade.

As for the final fight itself, it’s perhaps somewhat reminiscent of the Plague Lord encounters from Saviors of Uldum, with each of the four characters getting a turn to shine, represented by playable cards with monstrous Battlecry effects offering a choice of passive Treasures while also simultaneously dealing AoE damage to the board and shuffling more cards into your deck.

Hagatha the Witch has 100 Health and generates a lot of stuff. That’s it, that’s the boss fight. It’s not a particularly appealing one. Much like King Togwaggle, she is a character wholly unique to Hearthstone, and her playable version was a perfectly serviceable late-game Shaman tool (which also marked the return of Hero cards to the game), supercharged by her unholy alliance with Shudderwock, which no doubt soured many on her ugly mug.

An Evil Experiment

The Boomsday Project offered a little something different, and it was a welcome change after the limited ambition of Monster Hunt. A set of pre-made puzzles in the Puzzle Lab fit well with the theme of Dr. Boom’s mad machinations (though the team’s comedy writing chops never really rose to the level where they could competently pull off the “bumbling villain” archetype without making them look completely idiotic) offered a one-time experience, and returning to it a few years down the line for this article served as a good reminder that it could have been so much more.

Though puzzles may not seem like a natural fit to Hearthstone if you never ventured beyond the client, the community often posted “lethal puzzles” back when Constructed was the be-all and end-all experience in the game, featuring complicated board states with difficult solutions to ponder over – again, released with a two-week gap after the set’s launch. Beyond the “lethal” puzzles, the devs conjured up three other distinct types: Mirror (where you had to match your opponent’s board state), Board Clear and Survival (where you had to be able to tank a predetermined amount of damage from the opponent’s Hero Power). Notably, the Priest class rework in early 2020 broke two of the puzzles, and the fact that the replacement cards took a month and a half to implement should give us a good glimpse of the devs’ extensive to-do list. It’s also worth mentioning that even this mode with its nonsensically strong unique cards contributed to the future releases in a way, with Incubator later reimagined as Mindflayer Kaahrj.

Content like this fits well with games like Hearthstone. Nowadays, most of the large chess sites feature algorithmically generated puzzles plucked from the games played on the platform. Once again, the issue of whether Hearthstone’s devs would want the playerbase to mess around with an endless stream of PvE content remains, and it’s tough to envision a viable way to monetize this kind of content even with 100% artisanal, developer-made puzzles. It was a decent little distraction and a better experience than a second rehash of Dungeon Run would have been.

…which is exactly what we’ve got at the tail end of the year. Of course, the theming of Rastakhan’s Rumble suggests that it was where the canned tournament mode was meant to be launched, so it’s perhaps more understandable why it doesn’t live up to the previous content offerings. That, however, will be a topic of another discussion sometime after we’ve all had our fix with the Darkmoon Races.