Voyage to the Sunken City Launch Guide – Release Time, Freebies, New Mechanics, New Decks

Voyage to teh Sunken City is the first expansion of Year of the Hydra (2022). Dive right into the next Hearthstone year and the sights and sounds of the lost ancient city of Zin-Azshari. Dredge the ocean floor for sunken treasures, dodge Colossal sea creatures, and come face-to-face with the vengeful Naga.

The expansion will add 135 new cards (with mini-set adding 35 more at a later date), as well as a variety of new mechanics and synergies. Learn everything you should know about it below!

Check out our Voyage to the Sunken City expansion guide, which contains tons of information including a full list of cards.

Release Time

Let’s start with the most important – when does the new expansion launch? For years now, Hearthstone sets have had a simultaneous launch across the globe, so Sunken City should be out on every server at the same time. However, the time it launches for you depends on where you live – some countries from the Eastern Hemisphere will have it out on April 13 instead of the “official” April 12 release date because of time zone differences. Here are some examples:

• 10 AM Pacific Time on Tuesday (April 12)
• 1 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday (April 12)
• 7 PM Central European Time on Tuesday (April 12)
• 2 AM Korean Standard Time on Wednesday (April 13)
• 3 AM Australian Eastern Time on Wednesday (April 13)

Since the expansion was already pre-loaded a week ago, you will NOT 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 Voyage to the Sunken City:

• Blademaster Okani was given out as a free Sunken City Legendary in Patch 22.6. If you haven’t picked him up yet, just log in and he’ll be waiting for you in game.
• Ambassador Faelin is unlocked on Level 1 of the new Rewards Track, which means that you can get it as soon as expansion releases.
• Not exactly “free”, but if you plan to buy a Tavern Pass, you can get a Diamond version of Sir Finley, Sea Guide on Level 1. While Tavern Pass is mostly about XP boosts and Cosmetics, you get an extra Legendary at the start, which is a nice bonus.
• The first few levels of rewards track require almost no XP, so you will earn them after just a couple of matches and Quests. You will unlock three extra Voyage to the Sunken City 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 if you kept your Weekly and Daily Quests to get a jump start into the new rewards track.

Core Set Rotation

While Voyage to the Sunken City expansion is the most important part of today’s release, another thing that’s going to affect the meta is Core Set rotation. 57 cards rotate out and 72 cards from the older sets are taking their place.

The biggest changes are the fact that we’re getting 15 extra cards compared to the previous Core Set – and most of them are Legendaries! In Core Set 2021, each class had only one Core Legendary, but the number has been upped to two per class. On top of that, we have an extra Neutral Legendary and four more Neutral Epics. That’s a really big deal, especially for F2p or new players, which will have a much bigger variety of playable high rarity cards to start with.

It’s also worth noting that a bunch of cards from the new Core Set got buffed. Interestingly enough, some of them were already playable in their original state, which means that there might be some real meta-breakers among them.

However, unlike last time, we didn’t get any brand new cards designed specifically for the Core Set. All 72 cards that move into Core Set 2022 are already existing cards from old expansions. This isn’t a bad thing per se, but at least I hoped for a few new ones to spice things up.

You can read more about Core Set 2022 and see all of the cards available in the current rotation here.

New Keyword/Mechanic – Dredge

Dredge is a new keyword/mechanic that works a bit similarly to Scry from Magic: The Gathering, but in reverse. Instead of looking at the cards from the top of your deck with the ability to send them to the bottom – you look at the bottom 3 cards from your deck and have the ability to send one of them to the top. The card you pick will – of course – be the next card you draw.

Dredge mechanic will be a great way to control your draws and ensure the highest chance of getting what you need. Not only does it give you knowledge of what you will draw next, but also of the cards that you WON’T draw because they’re at the bottom.

What’s important is that there are also cards that are synergistic with Dredge. Some of the new cards will have the ability to “sink” a card to the bottom of your deck, which you can then retrieve with Dredge. Those cards are usually quite more powerful than your average ones, but unless you Dredge them to the top, you might never see them, so that’s the pay-off.

New Keyword/Mechanic – Colossal Minions

Voyage to the Sunken City expansion also features a new mechanic called “Colossal”. Colossal minions come in a few parts – the main one + extra appendages. It doesn’t matter if you play them directly from your hand or summon them through other means, they split into multiple bodies on the board (e.g. Colossal +2 will summon the original minion and 2 appendages, so 3 minions in total).

The main body often has some special effect relating to its extra parts (or vice-versa), possibly forcing the opponent into some tough decisions regarding removals. They also tend to push class-specific synergies, so I expect to see them a lot in the coming months.

New Minion Type – Naga

It’s been a while since Hearthstone has got a new minion type. Technically one was added exactly a year ago, in Forged in the Barrens. But Quilboars didn’t have any specific synergies in Constructed and were mostly added for the sake of Battlegrounds. This time, however, Nagas are a full-fledged minion type with its own Constructed synergies.

Nagas are a spell-focused minion type, the first one of its kind. There are two kinds of Naga synergies – on Naga minions themselves and spells. Naga minions often “upgrade” in your hand and come with an extra effect if you played a spell (or a few) while holding them in your hand. On the other hand, we have some spells that have the same effect, but in reverse. They benefit from playing a Naga while holding them in your hand, so if yo build a deck with the right mix of Nagas and spells, it can lead to some powerful mid-late game turns.

New Rewards Track

The rewards track, first introduced in Darkmoon Faire, is getting another refresh. When Voyage to the Sunken City 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, since the rewards track looks exactly the same content-wise (of course, the exact packs, cards etc. you get are different, but they come in the same amounts and rarities). And if you weren’t, you can find a full list of rewards in this post.

Your daily & weekly Quests will NOT reset when the new expansion launches. It might be a good 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, 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.

Additionally, I would advise everyone to open their packs BEFORE visiting rewards track and claiming their level 1 rewards. This is because Blizzard has issued a full Dust refund for Golden Ambassador Faelin as well as regular & golden Sir Finley, Sea Guide. The reason for dust refund is that you will be able to get those cards from the rewards track, and it would feel bad to get duplicates. However, now that you can disenchant them for their full crafting cost, it’s actually beneficial to try to open them before getting copies of them from track & triggering duplicate protection. 1600 Dust is always better than a Legendary, because when you have 1600 Dust you can craft whatever you want.

Arena Rotation

New expansion also comes with a new Arena rotation. Here’s a full list of sets that will be available in Arena once Sunken City launches:

• Core Set
• League of Explorers
• Whispers of the Old Gods
• The Grand Tournament
• United in Stormwind
• Fractured in Alterac Valley
• Voyage to the Sunken City

If you have an active run, DO NOT FINISH IT! Preferably play until two losses and stay there. When rotation happens, your run will get forcefully retired, but you will get a free Arena Ticket as compensation. If Arena entries are still enabled at the time you’re reading this, it should also be worth it to create a new run and play until 2 loses for some extra free rewards (but they often close quite a while before the expansion’s release, so if they’re already closed, you’re out of luck).

New Voyage to the Sunken City Decks

Don’t know what decks to try out when the expansion launches? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Once expansion launches, we’ll spend the first few days mostly adding new decks from streamers & pro players. We always give them some time (30-60 minutes) to open packs and prepare decks and then go crazy, adding dozens of new builds over the first 24 hours. Check them out here.