Little help for a new player to HS making his way through Witchwood. Have seen posts suggesting it used to be easier but due to later nerf’s is now next to impossible? Have also read many guides and learned how to select the best treasures and card combos. Frustrating to play a bunch of times where the best options are not even presented but even more frustrating to get those options and still get obliterated within 3-4 turns by a higher level boss who gets a great draw combined with some OP power (think Face Stealer, Gnomenapperor the level 8 Hard Counter Boss).
Played many other games and single player mode is always the challenge for the developers. The lazy ones just through a bunch of OP crap together because they don’t want to take the time to build and test. Success is based on luck more than skill. The good developers take time to find the right balance so playing single player mode is entertaining as success is correlated more with skill than luck (In my experience, the Civ series is a great example of a well designed AI).
My experience with thus far is their single player modes are just lazy (though trending a little better over time). Am I missing something?
And, the key question, in January 2020 is Witchwood winnable with all four hero types or have nerfs changed the balance?
Even if winnable, assume there are still many unwinnable situations so success requires countless iterations hoping the Boss gets a poor draw while I get the right choices? Currently at 100 bosses defeated with Canooneer and best result was getting to level 8 only to lose in 4 turns with 1 damage delivered 
Looking for a sanity check- appreciate feedback from more experienced HS players
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I’m a huge fan of the Dungeon Runs (including Witchwood). But its hard for me to judge how difficult Witchwood is for beginners because I’d played Dungeon Run so many times before I played Witchwood (Beaten it at least 6 times with every class).
Of the Witchwood classes I found the Tracker and Cannoneer to be easier (6 completions from about 75 boss wins each). The Time-Tinker and Houndmaster are harder (6 completions from about 150 boss wins each).
I haven’t played Witchwood ages so I can’t remember any Cannoneer tips. I’ll try to play again and get back to you.
I wrote some tips in another forum for Tracker Tess Greymane, I’ll copy them in here and hopefully it might help you out:
- My advice for Tess (and this also applies to Toki too). Draft a much lower cost curve then your instincts might tell you. Tess’s power means you will never run out of cards to play, you will always be bottlenecked on mana, not cards. So go for mana efficient cards and avoid stuff like card draw.
- Grab Jade Shuriken any chance you get (even if you’re not drafting Jade in general). If you draw the shuriken early, just keep using you hero power as often as possible to fill your hand with shuirkens, and play the shurikens whenever you can combo them.
- You can pull off similar tricks to fill your hand with Preparations, and then go nuts. Works great with Edwin VanCleef, with Backstabs, and Small Rocks (generated by hero power).
- Avoid Kingsbane. Its a fun deck to draft, but hard to win with.
- Don’t feel the need to draft lots of spells. You want mostly minions, and just a few good spells to recover over and over using your hero power.
- Cult of the Wolf is the best passive (1 cost hero power, use it twice a turn)
Other great passives are: Crystal Gem, Entrenchment, Sticky Fingers (with Cult), First Aid Kit (with Entrenchment),
OK Passives, if none of the above are available are: Sticky Fingers, First Aid Kit, Glyph of Warding, Expedite.
- Frenzied Trapper and Pristine Compass are great treasures. But there are lots of other excellent treasures. Any big removal or stuff that fills your board with minions is probably great.
- Don’t be discouraged if a good run get smashed by the Face Collector or Sazzmi Gentlehorn. They are both brutal if you don’t have the right cards in hand. Also any boss that drops a powerful treasure card on curve can bring your run to an abrupt end.
- Most of all, just try drafting a low mana curve and rely on that hero power to give you stuff to do later on.
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For Toki you need to constantly think about whether and when to use her Hero Power to reroll a random result that didn’t go your way.
I have been working on Witchwood almost since it’s release. Haven’t cleared it yet. It’s another adventure that ended up being too difficult as a result of both insane bosses, but also RNG. You have to have the perfect hand. The boss must have a bad hand. You cannot make mistakes.
What’s frustrating is that blizzard has failed to balance the adventure now too. They went from extremely difficult to extremely easy. Why am I still working on adventures released years ago but GA i one shot almost all of the encounters and was finished in 15 mins or less?
Blizzard has gone full retail on HS now too
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IMO, Witchwood is fine. It’s a bit RNG based, but it’s great if you can pull great card buckets and treasures. I just finished all four heroes and the final challenge, which was the easiest for me. Tess is very strong, so I suggest starting with her maybe.
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Because Galakrond’s Awakening has cards gated behind its encounters and the “Run” style PvE offerings don’t. If the basic encounters were at all difficult, some players wouldn’t be able to claim the cards they basically paid for. Heroic mode is the real content for anyone who wants to be challenged by Galakrond’s Awakening.
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There are plenty of adventures similar to GA that gave cards; Nax was FAR more difficult and gave cards that were impactful to the meta. I just recently beat the Lich King as a result. It took a while to build decks to beat the encounters
I just played Darius the Cannoneer twice. Got to the second-last battle on first attempt and won the second attempt. I don’t think that patches have made much of a difference to the difficulty of Witchwood. Its just that: 1) Sometimes you just get screwed 2) Learning all the later bosses can help you avoid some of the potential screws.
First run I got offered Dragonfire Ammo as my first treasure (+1 cannon damage), so a very promising start. But I faced Gnomenapper on the 2nd last battle. He dropped Sack of Gnomes on curve and I couldn’t answer so I lost.
Second run I took Tactical Reinforcements (pressing the button reduce a card cost by 2), and then Crystal Gem. I built an Inspire focused deck to make good use of Tactical Reinforcements (Muklas Champion, Kodo Rider, Nexus Champion Saraad, Kaldvir Raider).
On the second last battle I faced Gnomenapper again, and again he dropped Sack of Gnomes on curve. This time I had the right cannon shots and removal spells that I could win the board back over a couple of turns.
Gnomenapper tips:
- Gnomenapper cannot win unless he has board control (his minions and spells are not strong). So if you can control the board you win. Easier said than done though if he drops a couple of early Sack of Gnomes. Hes all tempo no staying power.
- So wide damage is strong against him. (For Darius that probably means Brawl, which I didn’t have). The cannon/s are good for this.
- The other method is to match his tempo with your own. If you can drop a number of minions your minions are likely stronger than his and you can win the board back before you die. Keep dropping minions once you win the board, he has no catchup.
- Leave any silenced sacks on the board, they take up board space and he can’t take advantage of zero attack minions like some bosses can.
The final battle I faced Groddo the Bogwarden. He likely would have beaten me if I didn’t have prior experience against him. I mulliganed away my cheap cards in favour of expensive cards. Early on I just shot my Cannon to reduce the cost of cards in my hand. Eventually the Bogwarden will end up with a board where one kill will cause a chain reaction that wipes the entire board completely. Then I dropped the best cards I had and hit face.
Sorry but two runs with Darius isn’t enough for me to come up with a set of generalised principals like I did with Tess above (I wrote that Tess guide when I was playing tons of Witchwood).
Try watching a good streamer (I prefer Trump) get some tips on how to play Dungeon Run style Hearthstone.
Appreciate the tips but really appreciate the confirmation Witchwood is still winnable today. I don’t mind iterating (due to poor draws or Bosses getting good draws) just didnt want to do that if there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Thanks for the confirmation - I will push through.
I did it with all heroes but tracker. Her deck is slow and since the echo mechanic change it is not even entertaining.
Been playing this today and you can see it was designed by people who dont play this game.
Every run has the same pattern: Easy > Easy > Easy > Easy > Easy > Easy > Impossible.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s not challenging when certain bosses have basically won by turn 5 due to completely insane mechanics and rigged draws, its just frustrating, and thats not the emotion you want when people play your game, blizzard appear to be experts at it though.
My complaint in some of the adventures has always been just that; the skill to win them is far less than the LUCK needed to win them. I don’t get satisfaction after winning a match simply because I got lucky and not because I learned the strategy.
Just cleared it with Tess using a combination of Frenzied Tracker and Arsenal.
Final boss played fell reaver and I milled his whole deck with Deadly Poison, which I was using to buff Eaglehorn Bow, which had endless charges due to Trapper antics. It was a 23/4 weapon at the end of the game.
Toki is the only one I need to do. Got to end boss twice only to lose. I wish the bosses had chippable health like the Plague Lords in Tombs of Terror. At least that way I’ve felt like I made progress or give players a save point before the boss so they don’t have to do the run over and over.
I’m close to 150 boss kills as Toki.
Toki Time Tinker luck is so trash that you need god luck to win. Plus the enemies have so much better decks than you. Hero power needs a replacement.
Where you saw this…?
There is no nerfs that impact the Dungeon Run in any damaging way. Some cards get weaker but the rest is the same.
Also, the nerfs impact some bosses too.
I just finished Houndmaster and Darius after many tries.
My advice to win is to try different treasures that works best for you.
Also never stop giving up and keep repeating and repeating until you win.
I won Hagatha with the first try though.
Here some hints if you are stuck at Hagatha:
Choose the treasure that give you one extra crystal (so you can play toki very quickly).
Play Toki
Choose treasure that your first spell casts twice
Play Darius and choose to heal your minions + 2
Play Tess
Now spam the hero power and focus on “call of the wild” and gain board control and attack face when possible.
Easy win.
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Hi :3 I have recently picked up hearthstone again and am trying to beat the entirety of the solo adventures lol. Im currently doing witchwood and won first time with Crowley (+1 attack cannons, +1 attack to minions after firing and extra cannon) and second time with Shaw (The +2 attack bloodhound and first aid kit rly helped), yet took me >100 boss fights to win as toki (tried all sorts of combos but my winning set was 6/8 picks with wild magic with 2x robe of the magi - the loads of 9dmg arcane missiles was ridiculous and the win was easy af)