I have no idea what to do with myself anymore. As a casual Hearthstone player, I’m not terribly interested in competitive play so much as just enjoying the game when I have the time. Working a full-time job means that I play a few hours of Hearthstone each week, mostly thanks to being able to play on my mobile, and that’s basically all the time I can commit.
In the past I’ve worked on climbing the ladder for two reasons: I love to get the new card backs and I like getting the prizes at the end of the month. For reaching rank 14 in October, I got a gold common (50 dust), a gold rare (100 dust), and ten dust for a total of 160 dust. For someone who doesn’t have a ton of time to play, and doesn’t want to spend any money on the game, this reward is certainly worth the effort.
But maybe not anymore thanks to the recent changes to daily quests. There are now way more quests than there used to be, and more importantly there are way more 50, 60, and 100 gold quests. This means free-to-play players can really rack up a lot of gold. I’ve actually been saving up gold and going back and finishing off League of Explorers to add those cards to my collection. Now with these improvements I may even go back to collect Blackrock Mountain. (I stopped playing after Gnomes vs. Goblins and returned for Whispers of the Old Gods.). However, there’s a catch: the new quests aren’t necessarily conducive to climbing the seasonal ladder.
The November 2016 Seasonal Card Back Award
Obviously those 100 gold quests are where you want to be. They’re Murlocalypse, which requires you to play 75 murlocs, and Cry Havoc, which requires you to play 75 battlecry minions. Those actually require a lot of effort, and you may not really be able to climb the ladder quickly if you’re playing a murloc deck. There’s also a whole new class of quests which require playing 50 class cards of a specific class (e.g. Priest) which may also make it difficult to complete while climbing the ladder if you don’t have a competitive deck for that class.
So what can you do? Well you can obviously continue cycling daily quests until you get ones that you can complete on the ladder. Or you can build decks to complete the quests, jump into the ladder, and hope for the best without worrying about dropping in rank. Or you can ignore the ladder entirely and just play casual games.
But maybe I’m overreacting. After all, I’m going to be collecting at least 50 gold a day now, maybe even more. Why can’t I build a murloc deck that’s competitive on the ladder? Why can’t I have a reasonably competitive deck for each class? At the very least it’s something to work towards.
If you have the time, I recommend building decks to maximize each quest. Have a deck for each class that has 30 class cards and no neutral cards. Have a deck with 30 murlocs and another with 30 battlecry minions. This way when those quests come along I can complete them as quickly as possible and get back to climbing the ladder with my beloved Discolock deck.
If you’re really only able to play a few games a day (or less) and want to climb the ladder, you should cycle through daily quests until you get ones you can complete while playing your favorite decks. You should still get more gold than before. Giving up that 100 gold murloc quest isn’t the end of the world when you can reroll it into one of the many, many 50 or 60 gold quests.
All in all I think the new daily quests are going to be great fun for casual players. It’s been a long time since I had a reason to play murlocs. I hope I see a lot more variety in the lower rungs of the ladder this month. Maybe it won’t be all mid-range Shaman this time around.
Rich has been playing Hearthstone on and off since the closed beta and has a golden E.T.C. to prove it. He enjoys playing Warlock on the ladder and wishes he could get more than five wins in an Arena run. He’s trying desperately to figure out how Hunters always seem to have Call of the Wild on curve.