Progression System Update – Rewards Track, Quests Revamp, Achievements, New Profile Page – Releases November 12

A big part of today’s announcements is a complete revamp of the way players are rewarded for playing the game. Hearthstone’s progression system hasn’t changed much since the game’s release years ago – yes, we had some minor adjustments here and there, but never anything that big. The new system should be more clear, rewarding, and it will let you progress faster no matter which game mode you play. It will release with Patch 19.0 on November 12, which is Madness at Darkmoon Faire pre-patch. Here is everything we know about the new system so far:

Rewards Track & Tavern Pass

Starting with Madness at Darkmoon Faire, each expansion will also bring a new, 50 levels Rewards Track. Players will be able to progress through it by getting XP from all kinds of different sources – Quests, select Achievements and – of course – simply playing the game in any mode. Each level on the Rewards Track will bring another reward – Gold, Card Packs, single cards (Epic/Legendary), Tavern Tickets (tickets to Arena and the new Duels game mode) and even cosmetics. Finishing all 50 levels will give players one of 10 new Hero Skins.

But it’s not like the rewards will stop at level 50. The early announcement of Battle Pass was worrying for more hardcore players because of limited rewards they can earn. However, earning each level after Level 50 will award 150 Gold. All in all, the new system should provide more rewards in total, no matter if someone plays casually or spends hundreds of hours in the game.

And that’s not all. On top of the free rewards track detailed above, players will be able to buy “Tavern Pass”, providing an alternative, paid Rewards Track which will progress at the same time as you level on the free one. On the image above, you can see the free track on the bottom and paid one on the top. Tavern Pass track will add XP boosts and TONS of cosmetics such as Hero Skins, Card Backs and… alternative version of The Coin. That’s right – for the first time ever, players will be able to customize how the Coin they get for starting second looks like.

There will be two cosmetic Coins available in next expansion – one for leveling to 50 with Tavern Pass, other for collecting 135 cards from the expansion (keep in mind that we’ll also have a 35 cards mini-set in the middle of expansion, for 170 cards in total, so you won’t need to obtain every single card from the set).

Quests Revamp

To support the new Rewards Track system, Quests will get a complete revamp. Instead of giving players straight up Gold, they will instead award XP that will help players level up on the Rewards Track.

On top of the usual Daily Quests, players will also get three Weekly Quests (resetting every Monday at midnight). Just like with Daily Quests, players will be able to reroll one of them per day. Weekly Quests will take longer to finish, but also provide more XP than Dailies.

Another cool feature is that Legendary Quests will FINALLY be separated from the regular Quests, so they won’t override your Dailies if you have a full Quest log. However, it also means that the current Legendary Quests will disappear once the new system launches on November 12 – so you have 3 weeks to finish any Legendary Quests you still might be holding.

Achievements

Finally, after players have requested it for YEARS,  Hearthstone is getting an achievements system. Just like in most of the games, the system tracks players, well… achievements – both easy and difficult.

Achievements will be split into a few different groups – Progression, Gameplay, Collection, Adventures and Game Modes. And so, in “Progression” achievements you might get one for completing X Daily Quests or getting to Level 50 on Rewards Track, in “Collection” you might get achievements for getting all Mage cards from Darkmoon Faire expansion, and in Adventures you can get one for completing One Night in Karazhan. Some achievements will be tracked retroactively (such as your levels or collection), but some things you will need to do again.

Achievements will give players “achievement points” – so far we don’t know if they will be used for anything other than bragging rights. We imagine that there might be some rewards tied to achievements points in the future, though. Additionally, many achievements will give players XP that will progress them on Rewards Track. So if you want to level up faster, you can try finishing some of them!

New achievements will be added with every new expansion and game mode, but also with some other major updates.

New Profile Page

While not as big as the other changes, players’ profile pages also got a makeover. Tracking your progression like number of wins / level of each class, you ratings in all modes etc. will now be easier and more clear. We hope that the profile pages eventually get expanded with more detailed stats, another feature players have commonly asked for. But still, the new version looks much slicker than the old one!