In Hearthstone a new grind has started. You need to play a lot – up to 720 losses are required for a card.
Although the expansion “Gespalten im Alterctal” is still a few days away, you can already start completing the long – and extremely extensive – questline. This is advisable, as you may have to accumulate a whopping 720 losses to receive all rewards.
What happened? Actually, the questline around “Gespalten im Alterctal” was supposed to start only with the launch of the expansion on December 7. However, the latest hotfix has activated the questline now, allowing all players to start working on earning the necessary honor.
How do you earn honor? You earn honor in various modes after choosing between the Horde or Alliance. This prompt automatically occurs when starting the game and is determined by whether you select Vanndar (Alliance) or Drek’thar (Horde) as a card.
Then, you receive honor for each completed match in these game modes:
- Traditional Hearthstone
- Arena
- Duels
How much honor is there? That depends on how well you perform in the matches and which enemies you face. The basic rule is:
- Each match gives 10 honor – even in a loss
- A win gives an additional 10 honor (total 20)
- A win against an enemy of the other faction gives an additional 20 honor (total 40)
In the best case, you can receive 40 honor per match when you win against a player of the opposing faction.
How much honor is needed? That fundamentally depends on which rewards you want to earn. If you want to snag all the rewards, you will need to collect a proud total of 7,200 honor.
In the worst case, it means that you may need to lose a whopping 720 games to unlock the final card of the questline. In the best case, you would only need to win 180 games if you faced a player who chose the other faction every single time.
Since it is highly unlikely to win 180 games that are played against the opposing faction or to lose 720 games in a row, the outcome will ultimately lie somewhere in the middle.
What rewards are there? In total, there are 13 golden cards (via playhearthstone.com) that can be earned through the honor questline. The first card is already available after 40 honor, but the amount increases rapidly. The highlight, however, are the final cards, for which a total of 7,200 honor must be collected. Alliance players receive a golden Drek’Thar, while Horde supporters receive the golden Vanndar Stormpike. So each gets the card they initially snubbed at the start of the event.
However, the questline will remain available until the end of the expansion, which lasts just under four months. Basically, this makes it a “second reward path” where players can earn even more cards than are available in the standard reward path present with every expansion.
However, you should not underestimate the grind for this task. If you want to spread the workload over the approximately 120 days of the expansion, you need to complete between 1.5 and 6 matches per day. A considerable amount for a game that is often played “on the side”.
Will you grind that much honor? Or is this questline a bit too grind-heavy to really want to tackle it?
