A first look at the new Journal in Hearthstone

With the upcoming expansion, Reign of the Black Empire, Hearthstone is adding a new feature to the game: an expanded Journal that integrates story, quests, and rewards (in addition to the features that were already there). The basic idea is that each new expansion will have several chapters and parts offering a narrative, in a style similar to a visual novel (images, texts, voice acting). You can skip or replay those small sequences any time you want from the Journal itself, under the Journey tab.

They lead into expansion quests, which can be completed in more than one way. On the example we saw, we could finish the first quest, Raid the Competition, by accomplishing either “Add 10 cards that didn’t start in your deck to your hand” or “Draw 40 cards.” It’s great that they’re offering choices, since in the past we’ve had some event quests that were pretty hard to complete if you didn’t want to partake in some very particular playstyle.

Speaking of events, the Journey tab will also lead you to the event tracks, but those don’t appear to be changed at all. You’ll still see the same old track with several levels along the way, some free and some unlocked by purchasing the current pass. The main difference here is just in the presentation of the breadcrumbs that lead players into those event tracks.

The Journey tab from the Journal also offers a screen that shows the current Arena season. This is helpful because it was hard to find this information before:  the screen shows the exact card pool that is valid for the current Arena season and offers a handy shortcut to the Arena itself. Hopefully these changes will make that classic game mode more visible.

Other than the Journey tab, which has all of those new and changed features (as well as absorbing the old Event tab), the Journal also offers the Quests, Rewards, Feats, and Profile buttons on the left side menu. Those are exactly the same as they are in the current game, although Achievements was renamed to “Feats” for some reason.

All in all, it’s an improvement to the presentation of the game, offering a little more to the player when it comes to telling the story of an expansion through its events and event quests. That was already the way things worked, but the new Journey menu, with its much fancier presentation, more involved quests, and breadcrumbs to other parts of the game such as the Arena and the Rewards track.