Hearthstone Mercenaries FAQ: 5 things you need to know about it

Mercenaries, Hearthstone’s latest game mode is live and we have much to talk about it. As an introduction, we will talk about five important topics most new players will wonder about, so here are our answers to the frequently asked questions.

Hearthstone Mercenaries is intended to be a free-to-play game. However, it has some monetization behind it. You can spend money to buy packs and get mercenaries without the need to grind. Furthermore, you can spend gold to construct and improve your village.

So far, the fully upgraded version of your Mercenaries village costs 900 Hearthstone gold. This will allow you to get into both Basic and Heroic PvE bounties, play in the PvP Fighting Pit, and fully upgrade your Campfire to get the most value out of daily tasks.

As we mentioned, free-to-play users can approach the game mode and get the full experience. Upon completing the tutorial and first couple of Story Tasks, you will get 8 free Mercenaries. Furthermore, the Story Tasks that are given by Valeera & Kazakus will help you earn 11 Mercenaries Packs.

Is this enough to play Hearthstone’s Mercenaries? According to calculations made by many community members, you are likely to get all rare mercenaries after opening only 12 packs. If you aim to complete the epic Mercenaries collection, you will need to open approximately 80 packs. With this, you will likely get 4 Legendary Mercenaries on top.

I must say that it is not necessary to buy 80 packs to play, it is possible to be completely free-to-play. If you grind the game, tasks will provide you with over 150 packs and 76500 coins over time. Furthermore, the coins granted by bounties will also help to boost your collection and characters.

Mercenaries packs work similarly to regular Hearthstone packs. Each costs 100 gold and gives you 5 items that can be Mercenaries, portraits, or coins. There is duplicate protection where you won’t open mercenaries you already have in new packs. Furthermore, there are pity timers for Legendary Mercenaries (40 packs) and Epic Mercenaries (10 packs).

These are the basics, however, the pack system is complex as it can be. I would explain it, but I’m not even sure I fully understand it. But fear not, if you are interested, Ridiculous Hat got us all covered. Although It is not official information, he is a dedicated community member who took the task of explaining this mysterious aspect of the game.

Similar to other games -cough, pokemon, cough-, your characters have roles that interact with each other. There are three roles: Protectors (Red), Casters (Blue), and Fighters (Green). The three roles counter each other by dealing critical damage. Protectors deal double the damage to Fighters, Fighters deal double the damage to Casters, and Casters deal double the damage to Protectors. Critical damage includes both Attack (melee) and Spells abilities.

This mechanic intends to reward variety in roles and to prevent extreme strategies. Synergies are a great part of the game, just be sure you have the right tools to prevent critical damage from your opponents.

Last, but not least, every character has abilities with different speeds and cooldowns. The lower the number, the faster the ability. In PvE, you can hover over your opponent’s mercenaries to know what ability they would be using and how fast it is. This is extremely helpful to plan your turns and take any edges you can get, leveraging your faster characters.

What happens if two abilities have the same speed? Well, if both you and your opponent choose a Speed 4 ability, it will be random which one triggers first. However, if you have two mercenaries with abilities with the same speed, then the order in which you select them will be the order in which they will execute.

With every patch, we get some unwanted bug lists. This major patch has already seen a couple of hotfixes. However, some bugs still haven’t been fully solved. If you think something is not working as intended, or if you want to be ahead of that, make sure to check the official thread.

In this official post, Blizzard reports and updates all the known issues of the 21.4 patch. The team has also been addressing posts on Twitter, but that is harder to follow.

This will be all for now, I need to rush to the Campfire and work on some tasks. Make sure to check our Hearthstone Mercenaries news and guide section in Esports.gg for more content.