Hearthstone’s next expansion, Into the Emerald Dream, releases March 25, boosting Hero Powers and Discover effects

We’ve already known for a while that Hearthstone’s next expansion is gonna be Into the Emerald Dream, but now we have an actual preview of some of its mechanics, as well as a release date: March 25. The expansion will put two opposing forces in the denizens and defenders of the Dream itself — including Green Dragons commanded by Ysera and Wild Gods — and those who seek to corrupt it into the Emerald Nightmare, led by the Old Gods, who can turn Wild Gods against their own allies, giving them twisted, chaotic forms.

So settle in and let’s learn all about Into the Emerald Dream, which brings a new Keyword that makes your Hero Powers extra powerful, and a new mechanic that makes your minion Discover effects more exciting.

New Keyword: Imbue

The six classes that are aligned with the Emerald Dream — that is Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, and Shaman — will make use of the new Imbue keyword. However, the keyword is also present in Neutral cards, so it’s yet unclear if it will also affect the Hero Powers of the other five classes. I’d assume it will, but we’re waiting on confirmation.

Imbue completely changes your Hero Power into something better, and it keeps getting better every time you use Imbue again. Text and numbers will be displayed in bold in the in-game hero power tooltip to make it easier to notice the current effect level: that bolded number increases with each new Imbue you use. We know of a couple of them so far:

• Shaman: Blessing of the Wind
  • Transform a friendly minion into a random one that costs (1) more.
    • Each new Imbue increases the cost of the minion the target is transformed into by one.
• Hunter: Blessing of the Wolf
  • Give a random Beast in your hand +1 Attack. It costs (1) less.
    • Both the Attack increase and the cost reduction are incremented by each new Imbue.

There are also new cards that have extra effects after you’ve Imbued your Hero Power a certain number of times that game, such as the Neutral Legendary Malorne the Waywatcher, with a Battlecry effect that, in addition to allowing you to Discover a Legendary Wild God, also sets your Hero Power’s cost to (1) if you’ve Imbued it four times that game.

New Mechanic: Dark Gift

On the opposing side, the five classes that are aligned with the Old Gods and trying to corrupt the Dream into the Emerald Nightmare — Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Rogue, Warlock, and Warrior — will have the new Dark Gift mechanic in some of their cards. Dark Gift comes attached to your Discover minion effects, adding one of ten extra powers to each of your Discover options.

Each minion is tied to its own Dark Gift power, so you can’t mix-and-match: as soon as you use the Discover effect, the minions and their attached powers are already decided, so all you need to do is pick one of the options on the screen, as usual. The Dark Gift effects will be clearly displayed underneath each minion.

Although this mechanic is primarily for those Nightmare-aligned classes, we do already know that there will be Neutral cards with Dark Gift as well, such as Raptor Herald, a 3 mana 4/2 Beast with “Battlecry: Discover a Beast with Dark Gift” — in fact, this card will be part of an in-game event to celebrate the start of the Year of the Raptor in a few weeks.

Each class gets a Wild God as a Legendary — though some have been corrupted

The Emerald Dream vs. Emerald Nightmare theme wouldn’t be complete without Wild Gods fighting to protect the Dream while some of them fall to corruption, much like we’ve seen a few times in World of Warcraft. And here they are:

• Wild Gods
  • Druid: Cenarius
  • Hunter: Goldrinn
  • Mage: Aessina
  • Paladin: Ursol
  • Priest: Aviana
  • Shaman: Ohn’ahra
  • Neutral: Malorne
• Corrupted Wild Gods
  • Death Knight: Ursoc
  • Demon Hunter: Omen
  • Rogue: Ashamane
  • Warlock: Agamaggan
  • Warrior: Tortolla

It’s definitely worth watching the video announcement of this expansion, not only to get to see all the details, but also to really appreciate some of the awesome animations the team has carefully crafted — you can always smell the fresh mint coming from the screen with the Emerald Dream spell effects, while by contrast, the dark and red Emerald Nightmare powers, full of brambles and thorns lashing out, feel brutal.

We cannot wait to hear more details about this expansion in the following days, until it finally releases on March 25. Expansions usually release on PC at 10 AM PT, though it can take a few minutes for your client to update (and you may need to leave the game in order for it to do so). Mobile updates usually go live a few hours later.

We’ll see you in the Dream — and make sure to open your game client right now to get a free Legendary from the expansion, the new version of Ysera, and also check the in-game shop for another couple of freebies!