In preparation for both the Year of the Mammoth beginning at the end of March and the next expansion of Journey to Un’Goro, Hearthstone has today had a patch to set up the foundation for both, as well as addressing some bug fixes and a few balance issues to Small Time Buccaneer and Spirit Claws. A number of tweaks are also in now, fitting some of the changes proposed during a Developer Q and A a few weeks back.

Patch notes are as follows:

• This update begins preparations for the Year of the Mammoth celebration that kicks off at the end of March.
• Pre-purchase for Journey to Un’Goro, Hearthstone’s latest expansion, is now available! You can pre-purchase 50 card packs and get the Fossil card back for $49.99 USD.

• Ranked Play
  • Upon achieving certain milestones in Ranked Play, it will no longer be possible to lose ranks beyond those milestones for that season. The milestones are Rank 20, 15, 10, 5, and Legend.

• Arena
  • Creating decks for the Arena will now feature Standard cards only. Arena runs that were started prior to the patch will still include Wild cards.
  • Rares, Epics, and Legendaries will be offered more frequently during Arena deckbuilding.
  • Spells will now show up with a higher frequency.
  • Neutral Basic / Classic cards will appear less often.
  • If you own a Golden version of a card, the first copy you draft will be Golden. If you own multiple Golden copies of a card, all copies you draft will be Golden.

• Balance Updates
  • Small-time Buccaneer’s health reduced from 2 to 1.
  • The mana cost of Spirit Claws increased from 1 to 2.

• General
  • Added some memory optimizations.
  • Improved matchmaking for new players.
  • We are testing an update to the account creation process for mobile players. This will minimize the overhead associated with creating a new Battle.net account, and will be available in limited release.
  • Maximum in-game music volume has been capped in order to retain the best audio quality.
  • [Android] We made some optimizations to Android distribution, allowing for a smaller install size and smoother patching in the future.

• Bug Fixes
  • Resolved inconsistencies in the way that Small Time Buccaneer’s Attack interacts with effects such as those generated by Humility, Keeper of Uldaman, and Crazed Alchemist.
  • Resolved an issue where a Kazakus potion spell cards could appear blank when copied by a minion or spell effect.
  • Knuckles will now correctly use its effect when under the effects of Misdirection.
  • Addressed an issue with the interaction of Wrath’s card draw timing in conjunction with Daring Reporter.
  • Snipe will now correctly trigger after Potion of Polymorph.
  • Djinni of Zephyrs will now correctly copy spells buffed by spell damage.
  • Bouncing Blade will now correctly continue bouncing after clearing a Divine Shield.
  • Resolved an issue where seasonal reward cards could take a while to show up in the Collection Manager.
  • Searching the Collection Manager with a class name will now correctly display Tri-Class cards.
  • Resolved issues that could slow or stop payment authentication when using the in-game Shop.
  • Fixed many minor visual issues and some card text inconsistencies.

It’d already been speculated that Hearthstone’s next expansion would be taking us to Un’Goro, and today that was confirmed along with the title which is Journey to Un’Goro, not Lost Secrets of Un’Goro as had been previously though (although there’s every chance that Lost Secrets had been its work-in-progress title).

Like every expansion so far, a whole load of new cards will be coming into the game – 135 this time. It will also add some new mechanics to the game, as well as a new ‘family’ of Minion.

The first of the new mechanics are a new type of Legendary card – Quest cards. Previously all Legendaries were Minions, but Quest cards are like spells you can play to start a ‘quest’. Each ‘quest’ has an objective you need to complete along with a reward that comes from it, and the quest is visible to both players so it’s perfectly possible for your opponent to take measures to try and thwart you in it. So far the only one that’s been revealed is Awaken the Makers, with special Legendary Minion Amara, Warden of Hope as the reward for completing it. As you can see below, a 5-cost 8/8 with Taunt and a Battlecry that sets your Hero to 40 hitpoints? Quite the powerful card.

Another new mechanic being introduced with this expansion, and in a way fitting for the theme, is a new keyword: Adapt. When an Adapt card is played, you are given a choice of 3 randomly chosen buff options for the card from the pool of ten different buffs, and you can choose one to apply. This could lead to Minions and Spells that could be used in any number of different ways in the same deck, although some might be put of with the RNG nature of it.

Finally, the new ‘family’ of Minion is the Elemental. Obviously we’ve had some Elementals introduced in previous expansions (and I guess they’ll be updated when Un’Goro goes live), but now we have our first designed-as Elemental Minion – Pyros, who keeps coming back stronger and stronger each time they are killed for up to 3 different versions.

Like with previous expansions you can purchase a 50-pack-bundle of Un’Goro packs before the release for $49.99/£34.99 and get a unique card back too. The expansion will be coming out some time in April, and we can expect to see more card reveals in March.