Update: The expansion is now live! Enjoy!
Perils in Paradise is the second expansion of Year of the Pegasus (2024). The old scamp Marin has put his questing days behind him and is setting off on a new adventure: resort management! Tucked away in the beautiful Spiral Isles, The Marin is Azeroth’s newest vacation getaway, and it has everything: exciting entertainment, tourist traps, and even some of Marin’s old pirate buddies. Get packed and plan your itinerary, it’s nearly time for Perils in Paradise.
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 Perils in Paradise should be out on every server at the same time. However, due to timezone differences, 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 (July 23)
- 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (July 23)
- 7 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (July 23)
- 2 AM Korean Standard Time on Wednesday (July 24)
- 3 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (July 24)
Since the expansion was already pre-loaded a week ago, you won’t need to download a big patch when it launches. It 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 Perils in Paradise:
- 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.
- Marin the Manager was given out as a free Perils in Paradise Legendary in Patch 29.6. If you haven’t picked it up yet, just log in and it’ll be waiting for you in-game.
- Gorgonzormu is unlocked on Level 1 of the new Rewards Track, which means that you will get it as soon as the expansion releases.
- A new in-game event (Perils in Paradise) will launch a week after the expansion. Players can get six Perils in Paradise card packs, and a new Death Knight skin for completing it.
- Not exactly “free”, but if you plan to buy a Tavern Pass, you can get a Diamond version of A. F. Kay on Level 2. While Tavern Pass is mostly about XP boosts and Cosmetics, the extra Legendary you get at the start is also a nice bonus. If you already own a regular version of the card (you opened it in the packs), getting a Diamond copy will let you reroll the normal version into another Legendary card you don’t own.
- 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 three extra PiP packs over the first 9 levels, which you should easily be able to achieve on Day 1 (only 1550 XP is required to get there). You can get even further into the rewards track if you keep your Weekly and Daily Quests to get a jump start on the new rewards track.
- 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.
New Keyword/Mechanic – Tourist
Tourist keyword is the main new mechanic of the Perils in Paradise expansion. It’s a clever way to add a Dual-Class deck building without adding any actual Dual-Class Cards. Each class gets one Legendary Tourist card, letting them “vacation” in another class during deck building.
For example, Paladin’s Sunsapper Lynessa is a Rogue Tourist. It means that if you add her to your Paladin deck, you will also be able to use any Rogue cards from Perils in Paradise during deck building. This will let you take advantage of interesting synergies that wouldn’t normally be available.
There are some limitations, of course. You can ONLY use cards from Perils in Paradise (that includes the cards added in the mini-set in the future), no cards from previous and future expansions can be used. You also can’t add the other class’ Legendary Tourist card, you can only Dual-Class, not Multi-Class. It’s also a one-way street – Paladin can build decks using Rogue cards, but Rogue can’t build decks using Paladin cards (Rogue “dual classes” into Warlock instead).
Each class can “vacation” in a single class, ending up with a neat circle. Paladin is a Rogue Tourist, Rogue is a Warlock Tourist, Warlock is a Death Knight Tourist, and so on. Here’s a full infographic with all of the class connections:
One thing is sure, the deck building in Perils in Paradise will be way more interesting because each class has access to 9 more cards than usual, as long as they’re willing to run the Tourist card.
Other Mechanics – Drinks & Destinations
Two other recurring mechanics in this expansion will be Drink Cards & Destinations. They are not keyworded, just a series of a few cards with very similar themes/effects.
The first mechanic is Drink spells with three uses. There will be 6 of them in total. You might actually recognize the mechanic from cards like Bunch of Bananas and Barrel of Monkeys – those Drink spells will work the same way. They come with relatively weak effects, but their advantage is that they can be used multiple times at the cost of a single card.
The second mechanic is special Location cards that can re-open immediately when you meet certain conditions. Normally when you use a Location card, you have to wait two turns to re-use it. But let’s take a look at the Hiking Trail below – instead of waiting 2 turns, you can gain Armor and the Location will be usable again right away. You can even get all three uses in a single turn.
Of course, even if you don’t meet the extra condition, those Location cards will STILL open the regular way (after 2 turns). But if you run them in the right deck and time things correctly, you can get their entire value immediately.
New Signature Cards
Another batch of Signatures has been released in Perils in Paradise. They have no significant update this time, nor a specific theme. However, it doesn’t mean that they look bad. In fact, some of them are the best Signatures we’ve seen so far (in my opinion).
We’ve gathered all of the Perils in Paradise 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 Perils in Paradise launches, all players will get reset to Level 1 and will work their way up through the track again. If you were playing the game last expansion, then you pretty much know everything you need to know. Both the free rewards track and the Tavern Pass look exactly the same content-wise (of course, the exact cards, cosmetics etc. you get are different, but they come in the same amounts and rarities). And in case you’re new to the game or returning after a long break, you can learn more about the track and find a full list of rewards in this post.
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 (so, in this case, Perils in Paradise decks include cards from Festival of Legends to Whizbang’s Workshop). 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 recently 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 Perils in Paradise free decks here with our reccomendations.
Perils in Paradise Decks
Once the expansion launches, I will be compiling decks from pro players & streamers in a separate post (I’ll link it here closer to the expansion’s release). I’ll try to add decks for all 11 classes, but 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 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 usually really good at predicting some upcoming meta builds. Of course, most of them turn out to be bad (because it’s just theorycrafting), but when they get something right, the resulting build is usually pretty close to a full meta version. You can check them out here.
