Hearthstone’s new expansion coming soon, more updates to follow

Blizzard is releasing a new expansion for Hearthstone called Forged in the Barrens. It’s coming to all platforms later this year to coincide with its celebrations for Year of the Gryphon.

Forged in the Barrens introduced 135 new cards to play which are themed around the same iconic location from World of Warcraft. There are also new keywords and game mechanics being added too, as well as ten Legendary Mercenary minions that each represent a different class in Hearthstone. “The Year of the Gryphon will be yet another exciting and eventful year filled with new content and new experiences in Hearthstone,” said J. Allen Brack from Blizzard. “Forged in the Barrens will take us to a place straight out of World of Warcraft that’s dear to us and to many of our players, the new Core set will continue to shake up the game on an annual basis, and Hearthstone Mercenaries and the new Classic mode will introduce even more awesome ways to play.”

The new Mercenaries mode that Brack refers to will be coming to Hearthstone around the same time as the new expansion. This is a singleplayer and multiplayer mode where you collect, upgrade and battle powerful characters from across the entire Warcraft franchise. You then gain experience, level up, gain new abilities and equipment and evolve into stronger versions of these characters by completing the randomly generated roguelike missions.

Forged in the Barrens is available for pre-order now as a bundle costing £44.99 featuring 60 packs from the expansion, two random Legendary Cards, and the Hamuul Runetotem card back. There’s also the Forged in the Barrens Mega Bundle which has 85 card packs from the expansion, five of which are Golden Card Packs, and two random Golden Legendary cards.

You can download Hearthstone now from the iOS App Store or the Google Play for Android store.