What you need to know about Heroes 2.0 before it launches tomorrow

Heroes 2.0, the highly anticipated overhaul of nearly everything about Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm is going live with a huge launch event tomorrow, April 25th at 1 p.m. CDT. The livestream will feature a Hanamura exhibition match, the debut of a new Heroes of the Storm cinematic, and a reveal for the next upcoming hero. The livestream will also announce upcoming in-game events.

Here are the highlights you can expect from the patch itself:

The biggest changes evident from the first moment you log in involve player progression. Instead of having separate player progression and hero progression, the two are tied together. For each hero level you gain, you also gain player progression. Both player and hero levels are now uncapped so you could, in theory, just play Murky forever and not really miss out on rewards. The reward for leveling up, instead of slightly disappointing tints or a chunk of gold, is now tied into the store, which has also received a complete overhaul.

Instead of having just 2 currencies to spend in the store, the game now has three. Gold — a currency earned in-game, used to purchase heroes — is relatively unchanged. Instead of directly using your Blizzard Balance to buy cosmetic items though, the new paid currency is called Gems (which can be purchased with your Blizzard Balance). Gems can also be used to purchase heroes, but you can only directly purchase a small handful of skins with Gems at any given time. Gems are primarily used to purchase Loot Chests.

Loot Chests are earned at certain player and hero levels and can also be purchased with Gems. Loot Chests will give you four random items, picked from every item in the game. Heroes, skins, and mounts are represented of course, but so are some new items. Banners, announcer packs, sprays, voice lines, and — yes, seriously — chat emojis all come from Loot Chests. Shards are both a potential reward in Loot Chests and are a consolation prize for any duplicates in your Chest. Shards can be used to buy anything outright except heroes.

Returning players will retain all their existing skins and tints. They’ll also retain their hero levels and therefore player levels. Don’t worry about losing out on chests, either. Blizzard is doling them out based on previously earned levels, too.

In addition to all the big revamps, there’s also a new map and new hero. The Hanamura map involves guiding a payload to shoot the enemy’s core, much like Towers of Doom. The new hero is Genji, who promises to be a skill-shotting Assassin similar to his Overwatch incarnation.

If you’re not totally sold on Heroes 2.0 by this post, let lead Heroes developer Alan Dabiri’s video convince you.

You’ll want to log in shortly after the launch event hosted by Anna Prosser Robinson to grab a Megabundle and 100 free gems to get your Heroes 2.0 off to a great start.