The following is being posted on behalf of Mitchell Loewen, Lead Designer on the Battlegrounds team.
Greetings everyone!
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Battlegrounds preview event, and that you’ll check out Trinkets when they launch tomorrow!
One of the core concepts of Battlegrounds design is to keep the game accessible to everyone, but full of depth for our super-engaged players. To that end, Season 8’s Trinkets were designed so that they “just work” without extra homework. If you want to learn the basics, check out our Battlegrounds Season 8 Announcement blog, or just hop into a game!
But… we knew that some of you regulars in Bob’s Tavern would want to know more. This post is to share those types of nitty-gritty details you can use to make the most of Trinkets and push your way up the leaderboards.
Four choices of Trinkets are offered on Turn 6, and then again on turn 9, and bought with Gold. The four choices are always distinct (you won’t get offered two of the same Trinket at the same time, or a duplicate of a Trinket you already have through something like Marin’s Hero Power), but some Trinkets have a Lesser and a Greater version of themselves and you can get both of those.
Here are some more special rules that define which Trinkets you get offered:
- The overall pool of Trinkets you can get is modified by the minion types in the game, your warband, and your hero power.
- Each time a Trinket is offered to you, it is randomly pulled from that pool of possible options. At launch, all options in your pool are equally likely to appear, but we may adjust this if we want certain Trinkets to appear more or less frequently later on.
- Some Trinkets have an internal tag that ties them to a particular minion type. In each Trinket offering, you’ll get at least one Trinket that has a type tag and at least one that does not have a type tag.
- Typed Trinkets include both obvious stuff like Dragonwing Glider and less obvious stuff like Glowing Gauntlet. Un-typed Trinkets include things like Innkeeper’s Stein and Token of the Old Gods.
- Some of the typed Trinkets can only be offered if you are “in” that type, meaning you have at least 2 minions of that type. You can be in multiple types if you have 2 or more minions of unique types. Going deeper into a particular minion type won’t change how likely you are to see Trinkets relating to that type.
- Dragonwing Glider is an example of a typed Trinket that will only be offered if you’re “in” that type, while Glowing Gauntlet is an example of a typed Trinket you could always get.
- Certain heroes always have particular typed Trinkets in their pool, even if they don’t have minions of that type in their warband (like Azshara always has access to Naga Trinkets).
- Having 3 or more distinct types will place you “in” the menagerie type.
- You won’t be offered more than one Trinket for a minion type that isn’t your most common type. If you get offered a Trinket for a minion type that you don’t have at least 2 of, the cost of that Trinket will be reduced by (1).
- Most Trinkets cost 1-4 Gold, but some cost more or less than that. In each Trinket offering, you’ll be offered at least one that costs 2 or less.
- There are also a few other Trinkets with special rules to be included in your pool, but we’ll leave those for you to find.
With these tips under your belt, you’re ready to make the best Trinket buys once the shop opens. Let us know what your favorites are. We hope you enjoy Trinkets and we’ll see you in the Tavern!
