Update: The expansion is now live! Enjoy!
Into the Emerald Dream is the first expansion of Year of the Raptor (2025). The Emerald Dream is a realm of ethereal entities and the source of all Nature magic on Azeroth. But Ysera’s domain is under attack from a creeping corruption, threatening to turn the Dream into a Nightmare! Will you Imbue your Hero Power with blessings from the World Tree or accept the Dark Gifts of the Old Gods? Choose One and rally massive Wild Gods to your cause.
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 Emerald Dream should be out on every server at the same time. However, due to timezone differences (not to mention daylight saving time and such), 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 (March 25)
- 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (March 25)
- 6 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (March 25)
- 2 AM Korean & Japan Standard Time on Wednesday (March 26)
- 4 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (March 26)
Since the expansion was already pre-loaded in Patch 32.0 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 Into the Emerald Dream:
- 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 received 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.
- Ysera, Emerald Aspect was given out as a free Emerald Dream Legendary in Patch 31.6. If you haven’t picked it up yet, just log in and it’ll be waiting for you in-game.
- A random Wild God (expensive Legendary minions each class is getting) is unlocked at Level 1 of rewards track, which means that you will get it as soon as the expansion releases.
- 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 together with the expansion. Players can get a lot of rewards – 6 Into the Emerald Dream Packs, 3 Year of the Pegasus Packs, 3 The Great Dark Beyond Packs, 2 Perils in Paradise Packs, 1 Whizbang’s Workshop Pack, and the Woodland Valeera Rogue 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 Keywords/Mechanics
As usual, new expansions usually come with . Sometimes we also see an older one making a big return. Here’s what you can expect in Into the Emerald Dream:
New Mechanic – Imbue
mbue mechanic is usable in Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman. The first time you play a card with “Imbue”, you change your Hero Power to a brand new one, specific to your class. Then each subsequent Imbue upgrades your Hero Power by increasing all the numbers on it by 1.
For example, as you can see above, Blessing of the Wolf is Hunter’s Imbued Hero Power (you get it the first time you play an Imbue card in that class). It starts by giving a random Beast in your hand +1 Attack and reducing its cost by (1). It’s quite weak to begin with. However, every time you Imbue it after that, it gets stronger. After one Imbue, it gives +2 Attack and reduces the cost by (2), then both of those numbers grow to 3, 4, and so on.
There are also a couple of payoff cards that get an extra effect if you Imbued X time this game – Resplendent Dreamweaver and Malorne the Waywatcher.
New Mechanic – Dark Gifts
The second new mechanic is available to Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior. Technically there are also Neutral “Dark Gifts”, but those classes get the extra synergies and focus.
Dark Gift is kind of like an upgraded Discover. Cards with Dark Gift always Discover a minion, and those minions come with extra effects.
Whenever you Discover with a Dark Gift, you will get three random minion options and each one will have a random bonus Dark Gift effect (shown below the minion). Here’s a full list of Dark Gift bonuses:
- +3 Attack and Lifesteal
- +2/+2 and Elusive
- Costs (2) less, but has -2 Attack. (Only offered on minions whose Attack would not reduce below 1)
- Charge
- When you play this, summon a 2/2 copy of it.
- This minion’s Battlecries trigger twice. (Only offered on minions with Battlecries)
- +4 Health and Taunt
- Reborn. Is Reborn with full health and enchantments.
- Divine Shield, Windfury
- +4/+5. Place this card on top of your deck.
Expanded Keyword – Choose One
Choose One is one of the Classic Hearthstone mechanics. For a very long time, it was exclusive to Druid class, but it was expanded into other classes a few times with Dual-Class cards.
However, since the expansion is, well, all about Emerald Dream – a place deeply connected to Druids – Blizzard has decided to expand the keyword and give it to all classes.
In Into the Emerald Dream, every non-Druid class gets one Choose One card. I suspect that it’s mostly a one-time deal and the mechanic will go back to being Druid-exclusive after the set, but who knows.
New Signature Cards
Another batch of Signatures has been released for Into the Emerald Dream. They have seen no general updates in this expansion (such as the card’s border or rarity gems). However, as usual, many of them look phenomenal
We’ve gathered all of Into the Emerald Dream 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 Into the Emerald Dream launches, all players will get reset to Level 1 and will work their way up through the track again. The rewards track goes through some minor changes this expansion, like the position of Legendaries on the track or some minor value changes for Tavern Pass. You can find more information here.
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.
Into the Emerald Dream 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 as always, 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.
