Hearthstone Patch – Balance Update, Lunar New Year Event, Curse of Hakkar Event

While slightly delayed, the patch just went live. Here’s a summary of what’s new:

Card Balance Changes

• Cold Blood – Now costs 2 mana (up from 1).
• Flametongue Totem – Now costs 3 mana (up from 2).
• Equality – Now costs 4 mana (up from 2).
• Hunter's Mark – Now costs 2 mana (up from 1).
• Lesser Emerald Spellstone – Now costs 6 mana (up from 5).

Lunar New Year Event

• Celebration lasts February 5 through February 12.
• Log in to redeem a free Golden copy of Fireworks Tech.
• Complete special Lunar New Year quests that award both Gold and Arcane Dust.
• Purchase a Lunar New Year Bundle of 30 packs (10x Witchwood, 10x Boomsday, 10x Rastakhan) for a special price of $19.99 (or €19.99).
• Greet your opponent with a special, new emote (just like during Winterveil).

Curse of Hakkar Event

• A small portion of players were infected and received a new card back. If you got it, be sure to equip it. If you weren’t one of them, don’t worry, you should be able to get it soon.
• The more games you play with an equipped card back, the further curse will spread. After a match is complete, your opponent also gets cursed and receives the card back.
• Early concedes or leaves don’t count – you need to play a longer match (similarly to how “Play a Friend” Quest works).
• Even though it might be difficult to get one at the start, the more players get infected, the faster the curse will spread. So be sure to equip yours so others can get it too!
• Card back can also be transferred in friendly matches – so if you have it, but your friend doesn’t, you can play with him so he gets one.

Season of Rastakhan

February 13 through March 3 earn glory for the Loa—and card packs!—over three weeks of Tavern Brawls during the Brawl of Champions.

• The Brawl of Champions – A series of three special Tavern Brawls. Choose a rumble Champion and harness the power of each Loa’s Shrine to prove which Loa is the mightiest!
  • Each Champion will have a new deck and Shrine each week!
• New repeatable Quest: For the Glory of Rastakhan – Play a Tavern Brawl 3 times to earn a Rastakhan’s Rumble card pack. Available each Wednesday when the Tavern Brawl starts.
  • Earn up to three Rastakhan’s Rumble card packs over the course of the Season of Rastakhan!

Card Backs

Game Improvements

• Fixed an issue that could cause cards that copy and set minion Health to a specific value to incorrectly activate “while damaged” effects.
• Fixed an issue that would cause Augmented Elekk to shuffle a copy of a card drawn by Tracking into the deck.
• Corrupted Blood no longer benefits from Spell Damage.
• Spellbender can no longer attack itself when activated by The Beast Within.
• Corrupting Mist and Reckless Experimenter can no longer incorrectly cause Immortal Prelate to be removed from the hand or deck.
• Fixed an instability issue that could occur when Book of Spectres drew multiple copies of Corrupted Blood.
• Fixed an instability issue that could occur when attempting to view an enemy minion as it’s being returned to an opponent’s hand.
• Gral, the Shark now works properly when executing its battlecry more times than there are minions left in your deck.
• Mecha’thun that has been transformed will no longer incorrectly play its original effects when destroyed.
• Astral Raptor Overkill animations will no longer play multiple times.
• Copied Zombeasts now correctly keep their Zombeast visual aura.
• The enchantments from Clutchmother Zavas now collapse into a single enchantment banner.
• [Rumble Run] Fixed a bug where damage from healing due to Bwonsamdi’s Covenant was not properly being credited to the source of the damage.
• [Rumble Run] Fireslinger now stops casting Fireballs if there are no valid targets.
• [Rumble Run] Fixed an issue with Tribute from the Tides not granting extra battlecries if it was damaged while buffed.
• [Rumble Run] Casting an Overload spell while affected by Electra Stormsurge now triggers Overcharged Totem once for each cast.
• [Rumble Run] Fixed an instability issue that could occur when playing Bouncing Blade while the Pirate’s Mark Shrine is in play.
• [Mobile] To reduce the initial size of the Hearthstone mobile app, some sound files are now an optional download.
• [Mobile] Hand and mana are now moved aside when Choose One cards are displayed.
• [Android] Background downloads are now displayed as a notification.