Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 14 is huge, adding Dark Gifts, a new keyword, new synergies, new heroes, and much more

Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 14: Dark Gifts of Dalaran is probably one of the biggest patches this game mode has ever gotten. There is a LOT to unpack here, between new keywords, new heroes, new minions, new type synergies, an impactful new mechanic, a big quality of life change, and more! This huge season releases August 4.

We have a lot to unpack here, so let’s unwarp some of the Dark Gifts the Hearthstone team has saved for us!

New Gameplay System: Dark Gifts

It had been a while since we got a new gameplay system, like Buddies, Quests, Trinkets, or Anomalies. This time we have Dark Gifts, which might be familiar to those who also play Constructed Hearthstone: they’re extra powers affecting a regular minion, so that minion will still behave mostly like you know them, but they’ll do a little (or a lot) more than usual.

Starting on Turn 3, you can use the Dark Gift button to spend 3 Gold and Discover a minion with a Dark Gift. Each of the 3 minions offered will be paired with a unique Dark Gift.

Part of the strategy will be around how much you should wait before you use your three Dark Gifts, because those effects (and the minions offered) get stronger the more you wait. Should you cash in early and dominate your opposition now, or should you wait and hope you can make a spectacular come back?

Blizzard has also put out a forum post listing all the Dark Gifts we can expect to see. Early Dark Gifts simply add extra keywords or more stats, while more powerful ones might give permanent scaling, extra copies of the minion, value-generation effects, “immune while attacking,” and much more.

New Keyword: Activate

This new keyword is unlike any of the existing ones: you click on your minion during your Recruit phase, spend some Gold, and get a benefit from it. Each minion will have the gold cost listed on their Activate ability, and you can do it once per turn.

You might to not use every Activate on your warband every single turn, since that could get very costly. But it’s easy to see how compositions will probably get much stronger through them — almost like you have extra hero powers to use that game.

New Synergies: Lockbox for Pirates and Fishbait for Beasts

Pirates will now get be able to obtain Lockboxes, which are cards that sit on the player’s hand until they can be opened. They read like this:

Unplayable. In 5 turns, break this open and get a random Golden minion with a type!

A Golden minion is great, but five turns is a long time to wait. Thankfully, some new Pirates minions are also getting effects that can accelerate this, such as:

Get a Lockbox. If you alreay have one, it opens 1 turn sooner. (2 turns sooner on the Golden version.)

Fishbait, for Beasts, is similar to what Fodder is currently for Demons: they’re minions that appear on the shop and can be “consumed” by your Beasts during the Recruit phase, to give them permanent buffs.

A Fishbait is a Tier 2 0/1 Beast that reads:

This can’t gain stats. Deathrattle: Give the minion that killed this +5/+5. (+10/+10 on the Golden version.)

In order to eat those Fishbait minions on the shop, your Beasts will now be able to attack them during the Recruit phase, through specific effects found on new minions, like:

When you sell this, Refresh the Tavern with a Fishbait. Your left-most Beast attacks it.

Based on those numbers, this seems a little slower than Fodder overall, but it could add up. We’ll have to wait and see how impactful it ends up being!

Two New Heroes, Xavius and Tras’tath

Both new heroes are focused on the new Dark Gift mechanic.

• Nightmare Lord Xavius
  • Feel Devastation: Every 4 turns, Discover a minion with a Dark Gift.

Xavius’s power will definitely hinge on just how useful Dark Gifts end up being. First impressions seem positive; if Dark Gifts are already being balanced around three per game (under normal circumstances), Xavius can possibly get twice as much as that on most games, which seems impactful.

• Tras’tath, Soul Parasite
  • Void Power: At the start of the game, Discover a Tier 5 minion with a Dark Gift. It unlocks on Turn 7.

This one seems less impressive than Xavius. A Tier 5 minion with a Dark Gift could likely make a big splash, but it almost forces you to build your entire game plan around that one minion that you’ll decide on turn 1. Seems a bit luck dependent, but we’ll see.

Quality of life change: Easy-to-Read Stats

This is just a display improvement, but it’s a pretty nice one. Any number on minions that has four digits or more will now be condensed. So a minion that has 1000 attack and 1000 health will now read as “1k” attack and “1k” health.

Currently, numbers can get so ridiculous that they start becoming unreadable, and even covering or being covered by the numbers from adjacent minions. Hopefully this should solve that problem.

Refreshed pool with over 60 new minions, new Tavern spells, and new Trinkets

Many new minions, handle it! This is par for the course with a new season, so we should see some existing minions leave the roster as well, and others get rebalanced.

Chromadrakes, for Dragons, can no longer be found on the shop, but they can still be generated by existing minions and Trinkets. It remains to be seen if that will make Dragon comps visibly weaker or not.

Trinkets are staying in the game, so you’ll get to play with Trinkets and Dark Gifts at the same time — and there are some new Trinkets too. It remains to be seen if we’ll reach the point when we’ll have Dark Gifts, Trinkets, and Anomalies all active at the same time!

There’s even more stuff, like the new rewards track, and Twitch drops on July 30. You can read all the details on the official blog.

Now take a deep breath and relax, because I know it’s a lot! We’ll see you in the tavern on August 4.