Hearthstone Mercenaries Bug Compilation - 25.4

I was proposing that any kind of community’s bug compilation include bugs that are confirmed or verified at least by someone from the community, lest this become a dump. This proposition pertains to everyone interested. If you’re after suggestions regarding an optimal way to post bugs, I would suggest doing a search on the forum or other media first, then opening a topic related to the bug and finally contributing to the collection once the issue has been confirmed.

Am I not a part of the community?

Excuse me? Would you elaborate what you mean?

If it’s my somewhat less than pedantic formulation above, let me clarify: I was referring to bugs verified by someone else from the comminuty — just to be sure. The reason for this was solely a large number of ‘false-positive’ reports on this forum, some of them from the area of ‘frequently asked questions’ rather than actual bugs, — not the desire to exclude anyone personally.

As of 24.6, Emerald Dream is a nature ability allowing to choose one of three cards. It’s a bit confusing, but shouldn’t all the options be affected by nature speed modifiers?

Interestingly, though, Ysera Awakens — also a Nature ability — triggers the Liferoot Staff only once, just like the the other options (Emerald Drake and Nightmare). I guess it makes sense, though, and the Nature tag is there for damage modifiers.

Emerald Dream was always considered a nature ability on the base card, however the Nightmare option is shadow. The patch notes stated “Fixed a bug where Ysera’s Nightmare Ability was being treated as a Nature Ability instead of a Shadow Ability.”, however it still functions identically to before. The only change is that the enchantment description was fixed, and Nightmare now no longer says that it will deal extra damage when you have shadow damage (even though it never actually increased the damage dealt, when mechanically it should).

Addendum to the Rattlegore Deathrattle bugs.

If you use Bwonsamdi’s Deal of Fear and Rattlegore’s Confusing Bruising, the results are different depending on your cast order.

If you cast DoF first, Rattlegore bugs out, shows as in reserve, but can’t be selected, and his Deathrattle doesn’t occur, including the one(s) where he revives. In pve, he stays dead.

If you cast CF first, with the ‘spawn skeletons’ treasure, then you get a full board of skeletons, which is as expected, and the way it should presumably work in both cases.

This is due to how end of turn effects work in Mercenaries. Most occur in the order that the effect came into play, for example, if Neeru summons an imp on the first turn, and on the second turn Bwonsamdi uses his Deal of Fear, then Neeru summons another imp on the same turn, the first imp will fire, then the bounce will occur, then the second imp will fire.

There are exceptions to this rule, such as Neeru’s fireblade portal always occuring before other end of turn effects, however this is not a common occurence.

There is something to be said about whether or not deathrattles “should” occur if a merc dies on the bench, as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Think of a mechanic like discarding in Traditional Hearthstone, but the bug in question is just the fact that the merc on the bench does not disappear or have some sort of visual animation to show that they died while not in play.

It just seems like when he suicides and is sent to the bench, he should either not die, or his Deathrattle should trigger, and not die without triggering.

This goes heavily into the point of

I’m not suggesting that all enchantments should work from the bench, such as Rattlegore’s end of turn effect of dying, but I think there should be either some consistency, or clarity. It makes sense to me why this occurs, because I expect most enchantments to work from the bench, as many do, however it does lead to bugs such as this one.

I’d be okay with the current mechanics of Rattlegore and Samuro’s illusions when they are sent to the bench, if there was a visual animation to go alongside it, such as the card being brought out and burnt, similar to an overdraw effect, but as it is now, it is pretty confusing for players who would otherwise be unaware of how the game works.

As for the point that they should not die without triggering, I disagree. I’ll fully admit my reason is a biased one, but currently it works the same way as Traditional Hearthstone (save for the visual bug). If a card in your deck is destroyed, the deathrattle doesn’t proc. It’s what I’m personally used to.

Not anymore as of 24.6, according to its description, which has probably been amended. Now it appears as an ability without school, just like the other option — Emerald Drake. Thus I assumed this particular point (about Shadow etc) is no longer valid.

I see what you’re saying. That does make sense as to why it’s no longer claiming to gain increased damage, however it does not match the patch notes statement which is that “Ysera’s Nightmare Ability was being treated as a Nature Ability instead of a Shadow Ability”, key word, instead. I’ll keep it listed until we receive further clarification. Additionally neither Emerald Drake nor Nightmare should probably be affected by Nature speed mechanics, as they are typeless at the moment. It’s effectively a discover mechanic, and in those cases they inherit the spell school of the chosen ability, such as with Tess’ third ability.

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You’ve got a point, but I don’t see what ‘speed’ means for these, since they are not standalone abilities and are cast immediately when Emerald Dream is.

Alas, communication and clarification, as well as documentation, has been a week point, but I agree that we could keep that for reference.

Hmm, come to think of it, they might have fixed it by no longer having Nightmare as a Shadow ability.

Is it? In Mercenaries, if memory serves, the speed of an ability with the ‘Discover’ keyword depends on what it discovers, unlike Emerald Dream, which has a fixed Speed… Although dicsovering has been messy, reminds me of another old problem, for example: Fish feast doesn't give HP if Finley discovers it (I wonder if it still persists, haven’t tested it yet — although it has been present for some time throughout a few patches).

As for other Ysera’s abilities, by the way, Verdant Breath still broken, as I’ve written above — tested in 24.6.

Well they are standalone abilities because they have their own card associated. Mechanically the effect is pretty much identical to Archmage Khadgar’s Triune Supremacy, even down to not showing the option chosen, which is unlike Bownsamdi.

If that was the fix I have to imagine that they’d have been more clear about that. “Ysera’s Nightmare ability is no longer Shadow” or something along those lines. The exact wording they used suggests that it is now treated as a Shadow ability.

As mentioned above the mechanic used for Ysera appears to be identical to Archmage Khadgar aside from bugs. Unless Khadgars discover changes the positions of the abilities he can select there’s really no reason that Ysera’s ability can’t say “Discover a Dream card to cast”. The only difference of note is the fact that Ysera’s Emerald Dream does not have a hidden speed value, however if you have a decktracker, you can see that despite not displaying, all discover effects have a hidden speed value. Tess’ third ability is 0 speed and Finley’s second ability is 2 speed for example. This is also why Genn’s third equipment will heal Tess and Finley when they use their discovers, even if the ability they select is of odd speed. So in actuality, the chosen ability is actually what decides the true speed, it’s just that we currently have no way to modify the speed of only one ability between Ysera’s choices at the moment to test this for her case specifically.

I also tested Verdant Breath and came to that conclusion. Glad to have a secondary confirmation though, thanks.

It hasn’t exactly been their forte, the wording.

That appears to be the case in the game.

I don’t know if such loose parallels can be drawn, but it reminds me more of ‘Choose One’ than ‘Discover’ from traditional HS. As for implementation… Well, we’ve seen examples of inconsistent coding (the forum kindly reminds me that I’ve mentioned that already) — it’s probably just as messy with these abilities as well.

I don’t use these, but I believe I’ve seen those hidden values somewhere, just can’t put my finger on it (maybe on YouTube).


On another matter, regarding Bwonsamdi and the whole bouncing to the bench. This has some strange intractions with Freeze, which I’ve discovered while doing Rattlegore’s task for the event. If the Babbling Book is frozen by Balinda’s Lesser Water Elemental, then sent to the bench, it’s still frozen on the following turn. There is also another confirmation of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v2_ToKuxZ0

If they had written it as such I would probably still be inclined to keep it listed, since it’s a typeless option being affected by Nature speed even currently, but at a certain point all of these issues start to become potential design choices which we cannot prove or disprove without communication from the team. One mans bug is another mans feature. I would have loved for example if they didn’t change bleed to no longer affect mercs on the bench as it had really cool implications with Maiev which never saw the light of day in PvP. With Bwonsamdi it could have even made its way into some niche PvE strategies today if it was around, but again that’s just my opinion.

I thought I had this bug listed, but I guess I forgot to add it. Someone in the Mercenaries Community discord brought it to my attention a couple weeks back. It is PvE exclusive. (Luckily)

I’ll add that now under Bwonsamdi. I’ll move it to General later if I can confirm that it occurs with other bounce effects.

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Azshara won’t let you use Xalatath. Even when I have it equipped during team selection, it still gives me the 3rd equipment’s ability in the match.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, some of the ‘bugs’ listed here (Lon’xin’s Starfire Blessing comes to mind… sorry, I can’t do a more thorough review now… I believe I’ve already mentioned some others here, too) are arguably bug fixes or just changes — however, the inconstistency of design principles is an overarching problem. It would appear in such cases that they rely on ad hoc solutions, rather than have these general principles.

This is such a frequently reported ‘issue’ (about equipment in general not working, that is), I’ve lost count to how many times I’ve seen this, and it’s getting a bit old. Maybe we should make a FAQ for these…

By the way, this is exactly why I proposed that any kind of community bug compilation have bugs that are additionally verified by the community.

Or it could be (don’t know if I understood this correctly) another issue — already documented here as well, by the way:

PS

Listed twice.

There’s also something wrong with that dragon — Onyxian Whelp [1], if memory serves, which might be related to that issue… It’s passive bleed is applied during the first attack, then disabled — possibly by healing.

[1] https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Mercenaries/Onyxian_Whelp_(86564)

My reasoning for that being listed here as a bug is the fact that this change was implemented without documentation in the same patch that Trigore’s Backlash was changed to ‘not’ work if he died during the same action, such as from AoE, which was documented. You could certainly argue that it was an unspoken bug fix, as this patch seems to have quite a few, but without being able to ask someone on the team directly it is difficult to confirm or deny this. Logically I simply said “well why would they change Trigore to specifically ‘not’ work if he died, but also change long’xin ‘to’ work if she died”. This would appear to be a deliberate inconsistency if this was the case. I do understand that some would disagree that it was a bug without the explanation, and so I added a short line after that particular bug to explain my reasoning a little. I do try to keep most of the reports as objective as possible though.

Thanks. Resolved.

I’ll try to find the time to test this further. Similar to Aranna’s Iambic Pentameter being disabled by Neeru’s Imps, and her own third ability, passive bleed effects may also have multiple bugs which disable them.

Another one easy to reproduce: if you search for ‘orc’ in the collection, Garona — a Half-Orc — is in the result, but another one — Rexxar — is not. Probably a spelling issue or something, allthough I haven’t looked into it in detail, neither do I know if it has implications with orc-specific mechanics in the game (I tend to play Rexxar with Beasts and not Orcs anyway).