One Year of Hearthstone Mercenaries – Has the Game Improved During This Time?

Hearthstone Mercenaries launched on October 12, 2021. It was not exactly a smooth launch. I’m not even sure where to start describing the issues surrounding the game mode at launch. There were $50 pre-order bundles that gave you no indication of what value you could expect from them. There was a lot of confusion on what the game mode was all about with most people expecting it to be a roguelike deck-builder like Slay the Spire (it is not). There were pre-release interviews where the developers told us that you would spend tens of hours getting your full collection ready, whereas you actually needed hundreds of hours even if you paid money. On top of that, Blizzard made progress more difficult just weeks after launch as players were still progressing too fast for their taste.

Blizzard could not have sabotaged the launch of Hearthstone Mercenaries more even if they tried. But out of these smoking ruins, Blizzard has been releasing more content for Mercenaries for a year, and the game is in better shape now than when it launched. There have also been promises to add key new features later this year and early next year. Perhaps this game mode can yet be salvaged?

In this article, I take a look at what Hearthstone Mercenaries really is, what has been added over the course of the past year, and where Blizzard has promised to take the mode in the future.

What is Hearthstone Mercenaries?

I would describe Mercenaries as Pokémon meets Darkest Dungeon and Raid: Shadow Legends in a Warcraft world.

The basic combat in Mercenaries resembles that of Pokémon or Pet Battles in World of Warcraft. You bring a team of six characters, of whom three are on the board simultaneously. In PvP, you meet another similar team, whereas, in PvE, you often meet only three enemies. PvP battles are about using your entire team of six to defeat the opponent’s team of six regardless of your own losses. PvE battles are about choosing the right three Mercs to defeat the enemy team that you see without losing anybody so that you can maintain your strength to move through multiple battles.

Collecting and upgrading Mercs is a key gameplay loop. A big collection enables you to build many different teams, but you also need to upgrade your Mercs so that they are actually useful and not just cannon fodder. You upgrade your Mercs with coins that you get by completing tasks and bounties. Tasks ask you to do a specific thing, such as using one of the Merc’s abilities five times. Bounties are the main PvE challenges, where you fight through multiple battles to reach a specific boss fight. The team you bring to the bounty needs to be able to handle the climb with minimal losses and then take on the boss. You know the boss in advance, so you can choose the right team to bring.

Still Mostly a PvE Game Mode

Mercenaries is mostly a PvE game mode. It has a conflicted approach to PvP, and so far Blizzard has not managed to make up their mind about proper PvP support.

On one hand, many of the new Mercs have abilities that are clearly targeted at PvP use. Blizzard also makes balance changes in Mercs largely based on the PvP meta.

On the other hand, you need to play a lot of PvE to properly access PvP. Grinding PvE for hundreds of hours to have viable PvP teams is not an experience a PvP player is interested in. Blizzard even has a maxed bonus for Mercs that gives them additional stats when you have unlocked all the possible upgrades for them. You can think of this as a minor perk, like giving Golden cards +1 attack or -1 mana cost or something like that. This bonus is more important for PvP than for PvE, and yet it requires the biggest PvE grind of them all.

This struggle should not come as a surprise to Blizzard. World of Warcraft has struggled to balance the need for PvP players to participate in PvE since the beginning. Blizzard has gradually moved towards PvP being more and more self-sufficient in that game, including making abilities function differently in PvP and PvE to ease overall game balancing.

In Mercenaries, Blizzard is giving PvP some token support, but still lacks a clear vision of Mercs as a PvP game with increased accessibility and possibly separate balancing.

The Grind Is Easier, but Still Here

Mercenaries is notorious for its grind. In some ways, it is a matter of perspective. A dedicated Mercenaries player can actually have everything in the game while remaining completely free to play. If you think about many other F2P games, this is not possible simply because of time restraints: you just cannot find enough time to play the game, even if you theoretically could earn everything given unlimited time. In Mercenaries, we are talking about hundreds of hours to get everything. Hundreds of hours is a LOT of time. It is nonetheless doable, should you want to use so much time on something.

Real money is of limited use in Mercenaries. Spending tens of dollars can help you get started as you unlock new Mercs faster and can get to work on their tasks. Beyond that, you need to spend hundreds of dollars to really shorten the grind. Anything in between produces hardly any results.

The grind in Mercenaries is mostly boring. You complete tasks for your Mercenaries. The tasks are simple and repetitive and best done in one of the earliest bounties to avoid any difficult encounters. You can also speedrun one of the earlier bounties (usually the first Heroic bounty in Barrens) for coins. The sole upside of this grind is that it requires little effort, so you can watch a TV show while doing it or something. I watched all seasons of The Expanse myself at one point during my grind. Time clearly well spent.

Blizzard has made the grind more bearable during the first year though!

I probably should first mention how initially, Blizzard made the grind more difficult with the infamous Air Elemental nerf. In that nerf, Blizzard changed it so that you cannot get new tasks from easy bounties, the favorite of which was Air Elemental. That was generally a terrible move and caused many of the initial players to quit the game.

However, after several months, Blizzard partially corrected their course when it comes to the grind.

First, Mercenary tasks were changed to be unlocked as task chains. All Mercs have 18 tasks available to them. Originally, you needed to find each task separately, but now you are automatically offered the next task in the series when you complete one. So, when you get task 1 for a Merc, you can keep completing tasks all the way to 18.

Second, Mercenary tasks were made easier to complete. Some of the most repetitive old tasks had their requirements eased, and new Mercs have easier tasks in general.

As a result of these two changes, I can now complete the entire task chains of four Mercs in around three to three-and-a-half hours. That’s more than 20 tasks per hour. Before these changes, I was able to average 7 tasks per hour. The task grind part has been reduced by two-thirds!

Finally, Blizzard has also changed the way you get coins to upgrade your Mercs from bounties. For the latest batches of new Mercs, there have been more bounties that offer coins for them. This means that existing players who only want coins for the new Mercs now have multiple new bounties that they can grind to get coins instead of doing the most simple content over and over again.

The Mercenaries grind still exists, and you may still find it unbearable. That’s actually a little scary. The current grind is perhaps only one-third of the old grind, and it is still a deterrent.

More Decisions, More Complexity

As new Mercenaries have been added to the game, the ability pool has grown and the game has become more complex.

The first part of added complexity is speed manipulation. While the original batch of Mercs had a couple of abilities that could change the order in which actions take place during combat, there are now far more abilities that manipulate the speed of abilities and therefore who acts first and who acts last.

The second part of added complexity is role changes. Mercenaries has a rock-paper-scissors (or fire-water-grass) role system where each Mercenary is strong against a specific type and weak against a specific type. However, there are now multiple Mercs who are able to change their role or change the roles of the opponents. This creates new dynamics as you may lose or gain your role advantage during battle.

The third part of added complexity is bench-board mechanics. Originally, you entered the battle with three Mercs and brought in new ones as your initial Mercs were defeated. Now, there are many ways to send Mercs to the bench to make space to summon new ones, or to summon Mercs from your bench when you perform specific actions. Some Mercs can also bounce opponent’s Mercs back to the bench and even prevent them from being resummoned for a time.

These additions show that there has been plenty of design space left to add more decision-making to the game, and I believe there is more still to come.

Plenty of New Content During the First Year

Looking at the amount of new content Hearthstone Mercenaries received during the first year, the content in the game more than doubled from its launch status:

• 63 new Mercs (launched with 51, currently 114)
• 59 new Bounties
• 6 limited-time events (Chi-Ji, Leeroy, N’Zoth, Y’Shaarj, Yogg-Saron, C’Thun)
• Training grounds building in the Village
• Cursed loot and Bonus loot options for the Mystery node in Heroic Bounties

New Mercs and Bounties were initially added every month, but in spring, Blizzard moved to a new four-month content cadence. We got a batch of new Mercs and bounties in May, and then the next one in September. The amount of new content has also slowly been going down.

Limited-time events were first introduced in February 2022 with the Chi-Ji event in patch 22.4. The Chi-Ji event was followed up by multiple events in the subsequent months, but now we have received no new events in September and October.

Limited-time events have been one of the glimmers of hope for the mode, as they clearly increased interest in the mode. The first few events suffered from multiple game-breaking bugs, but the last two events went smoothly as Blizzard was able to iron out all the issues with task recognition. I would have expected them to keep adding events now that they have the process for them well in place, but right now we do not know if more events are coming.

Excess Coins Fix and PvE End-Game Mode Are Coming

The next big things Blizzard has announced for Mercenaries are a fix for excess coins and a new PvE end-game mode.

Currently, you keep receiving Merc-specific coins that are used for upgrading the Merc’s abilities even when your Merc has nothing left to upgrade. Out of all the coins I have earned during my Mercs career, half are useless. Blizzard has been promising a fix for this for many months, but it is still not here. However, they have said that it is coming in the next patch!

Starting from patch 24.6, you will be able to convert your excess coins to a new resource, the details of which are yet to be announced. This resource can be further exchanged for new coins for Mercs who can still use them. At some point, a new PvE end-game system will be launched, and the new resource can also be used in that system in some way.

This is all still quite unclear, but these are basically the next big things people are waiting for. Making all coins useful will ease the grind and prevent many feel-bad moments when opening packs or completing bounties. A new PvE end-game can hopefully bring more variety and fun into the game mode.

Is Mercenaries a Better Game Now Than at Launch?

Well, yes, Mercenaries is without a doubt a better game now than it was. It is less grindy. It has a lot more content. It has more decision-making.

But is it good enough?

There are still severe issues with PvP accessibility, and it is difficult to recommend the game for PvP if you do not also enjoy the PvE part of it because you will be doing a lot of PvE in order to be able to face other players.

On the PvE side of things, the amount of time you spend clearing trash fights in bounties is considerably higher than the amount of time you spend fighting bosses. The novel parts of the game are still locked behind many meaningless battles.

If you are committed to the game, the rewards you get become worse and worse over time as you start to accumulate excess coins that cannot be used for anything.

Blizzard has promised fixes for two of these main issues. Coin exchange should help with excess coins. A PvE end-game mode should help by providing a more meaningful PvE experience. The first of these fixes is weeks away, while the other is probably still months away.

Removing barriers to entry to PvP has not even been discussed, so I have no high hopes for that one.

Overall, then, Mercenaries remains incomplete one year after its launch. A number of improvements have been made, and more have been promised. It is still up to Blizzard to deliver.