Make Trial by Felfire Challenges Wild and Other Suggestions

Singleplayer Discussion
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I’ve been very busy this year, and I didn’t have time for Hearthstone from right before the release of Journey to the Sunken City to right before the release of March of the Lich King, but I had been hoping that when Journey to the Sunken City came out and the Year of the Phoenix sets rotated out of standard that the Trial by Felfire Challenges would become wild, considering that the set that the adventure was made for was becoming wild. I now see that this has not been the case.

Could you please let us use wild decks in the Trial by Felfire Challenges now? It doesn’t make thematic sense to disallow cards from Ashes of Outland from being used in the Ashes of Outland: Trial by Felfire Challenges. If you really want people to earn the reward using standard decks I understand, but could you please at least make it so that those of us who have beaten all of the challenges with standard decks have the option to play with wild decks for fun? I like going back and replaying all of the constructed-deck adventures each set and mini-set, using wild decks that contain both new and old cards.

This might or might not be easily doable, but could you please also consider finding a way to make it so that after completing a character’s story in the Book of Heroes+Demon Hunter and Death Knight Prologues and Book of Mercenaries, we can go back and challenge the story with our own wild decks of any class, just for fun? The same goes for theoretically making it so that those of us who have completed Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt, Rumble Run, The Dalaran Heist, and Tombs of Terror can challenge them Duels-style using a starting deck of any 10 cards from our collection. For adventures without multiclass characters, we could choose any class, including demon hunter and death knight. For adventures with multiclass characters, we would be able to choose an existing character, making a deck with cards from their class(es), or use a single class not represented among those heroes. In other words, in Monster Hunt, we would be presented with the usual four heroes, as well as our current “favorite” paladin, priest, shaman, warlock, demon hunter, and death knight, while in Tombs of Terror, we could choose to be one of the explorers, or just a warlock, demon hunter, or death knight. As the usual heroes in both of these adventures have special hero powers, choosing a class from outside the adventure should give us an upgraded version of the usual hero power. For Monster Hunt nemeses, when using custom decks, any character/class could randomly encounter any final boss, including anyone’s nemesis. As for Monster Hunt’s Final Challenge and Tombs of Terror’s Inner Sanctum, we would choose any 4 characters and/or classes and make a deck for each of them, then use those 4 decks during the final boss fight.

I’d of course prefer to get these options for as close to free as possible, and I doubt that there are that many people who would want to pay for these options, especially for The Dalaran Heist and Tombs of Terror, which we’ve already payed for, but I personally would be willing to pay up to $25 each for Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt, Rumble Run, Book of Heroes+Demon Hunter and Death Knight Prologues, and Book of Mercenaries Challenge Modes, even if they provide no additional rewards, though if you were to make and charge money for these, then a new card back for completing each adventure’s challenge mode might be a good idea. Or if you don’t think enough people would pay for that for it to be worth it, you could let us earn hero skins of all of the final bosses of each of these adventures through such challenges, or in the case of Monster Hunt, the heroes and bosses. If you made The Dalaran Heist and Tombs of Terror challenge modes without earnable hero skins, I don’t think we should have to pay more than $5 for them, even if we could earn special card backs. I would hope that most of these things wouldn’t take too much effort as I’m not asking for any changes to be made to the encounters themselves. I want them to be exactly the same, with the exception that we’d have the option of using our own cards of the class(es) that we’ll be using, instead of the usual starting decks, which we would also still have the option to use.

Please also let us challenge the Lich King’s priest encounter with demon hunters and death knights for fun, without having to use Whizbang, or let us pay a small amount for specialized demon hunter and death knight (and future class) encounters with the Lich King.

Going back to the Trial by Felfire Challenges, if you don’t think that anything that I’ve said above seems feasible and you insist on Trial by Felfire remaining standard-only, then could it at least become Year of the Phoenix standard-only, so that we can actually go back and re-play it with the same sets that were out when it was released (and maybe the fun cards from Scholomance Academy, Madness at the Darkmoon Faire, and Darkmoon Races)? Either that, or make a custom “neo-wild” format for it, containing appropriate cards from the legacy set, and all cards that have been released since Rise of Shadows. (The oldest non-classic set in standard when Ashes of Outland came out.) True wild would be preferable, but this option would still be better than how it is currently. Like I said, it’s really weird not being able to use Ashes of Outlands cards in the Ashes of Outlands: Trial by Felfire Challenges.

I realize that I’m likely (one of) the only player(s) who cares about Hearthstone’s solo content to this extent, but most of the things that I’ve proposed don’t seem like they’d be too hard to implement, so please consider at least some of these ideas.

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Good point, and I think it might have already been raised.

Indeed, with Ashes of Outland having rotated into Wild, there’s no reason to require Standard decks anymore.

What ‘priest encounter’? :face_with_raised_eyebrow: Do you mean the one in Icecrown?

As for solo adventures with premade decks or monster hunts — I don’t think I share your enthusiasm, since using custom decks would defeat the purpose of these, in my view.

Yeah, the additions in brackets are probably appropriate.

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I know that people requested that the Trial by Felfire Challenges be made wild before Ashes of Outland left standard, but when I tried searching for newer threads on the topic, I couldn’t find any, hence why I started this one.

Also, yes, I do mean the Icecrown Lich King fight(s). As for the Dungeon Run modes, I’m not asking for full 30-card constructed decks to be allowed in those adventures (aside from the final battles of Monster Hunt and Tombs of Terror, which have preconstructed decks). I just thought that after beating them normally, it would be fun to be able to go back and choose your 10 starting cards and then earn new ones as normal along the way, like in Duels. It would also make it much easier trying to use new cards in old Dungeon Run adventures, which would also add more variety to these types of adventures. While many people have said that they prefer the Dungeon Run-type adventures because they feel like they have more variety than constructed-deck adventures, I’ve played the Dungeon Run-style adventures enough that to me they feel like they have less variety with each new expansion than constructed-deck adventures. This is because while some new cards are mixed into the buckets you can’t get many new cards that way, where when you make your own constructed decks, you can put in as many new cards as you want. For this reason, while I did really enjoy playing the Dungeon Run-style adventures over and over until I beat them, I don’t feel like replaying them as new sets come out. Instead, I prefer the constructed-deck adventures and replay all of them for every new set that comes out. That said, I’d still be interested in going back to the Dungeon Run-style adventures if they were partially constructed, because then they’d feel truly re-playable for my purposes.

I’m sure that basically no one else replays the adventures enough to think about wanting more ways to replay them, but if Blizzard could put in some minimal effort to give the adventures even more evergreen appeal, I’m sure at least some people would be interested in trying things like the challenge modes from time-to-time. There are digital and physical card games where the entire content is solo/cooperative adventures like Slay the Spire, Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, and Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I am very biased as someone who really likes solo customizable adventure games, but there is a market for them, so if Blizzard can improve their existing adventures through what would probably be much less effort than making a new one, I’m sure that at least some people would appreciate it. It’s not like I’m asking for them to go back and make a full adventure without earnable cards for every single past expansion. I would love that, especially for the Old God sets so we could fight Yogg-Saron bosses whose hero powers are their battlecries, but I know that that would be way too much work for Blizzard when I’m the only one who would want to buy all of them. While the things that I want are overly unreasonable, my expectations of what’s possible are much closer to being realistic, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t occasionally ask for more than what might be possible all at once, out of the hope that something might stick.

Anyway, happy holidays. May your trees and felfire be evergreen.

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Isn’t that like bringing a sword to a fish-fight? :grinning:

PS Let me clarify my point here: I thought that the allure of the mode is that you’ve gotta make do with what you ‘find’ in the dungeon, not use your ‘OP’ cards and trivialise the whole run. However, if it’s actually about more variety, as you subsequently suggest, then it might be something to consider.

Let me add: I wouldn’t mind that as an option, but an advantage of the current format is that they do not demand anything of the player’s collection. It would probably be best to keep that, too.

I’m always against such over-generalisations, especially since they tend to be wrong, logical mistakes of a hillbilly kind most of the time.

:grinning: You can actually do something like this in Mercenaries, although it’s a bit of a different format.

I see nothing unreasonable with them — these are you suggestions and opinions, perfectly sound.

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Thank you.

Exactly. I’d never want them to take away the way that we played the adventures originally (which is one of the reasons why I’d like to be able to go back and play the Trial by Felfire Challenges with Ashes of Outland cards). I’m also not asking them to make the adventures easier by giving us the options that I’m asking for until after we’ve defeated them normally. It’s just that after beating them normally, I’d like to have the option to choose between doing them normally and doing them with my own cards for fun, and I do mean fun. While sets do tend to be getting more powerful over time, I never make decks to be competitive on purpose. I usually make at least one Randuin Wrynn-like deck for every class, every expansion, and it is these and other fun theme decks that I like to send back through the past adventures that allow me to do so. At least in my case, I wouldn’t automatically be having an easier time , because I’d generally be intentionally handicapping myself with random and otherwise less-than desirable cards and seeing how well several of my various unconventional decks would fare in each adventure.

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