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Hearthstone Details Trigger Changes Coming in October 2017 Update

And the Hearthstone community lived happily whenever after.

Ozzie Mejia

October 12, 2017 12:25 PM

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Hearthstone is preparing to hold its Summer World Championships this coming weekend, but once that's finished, the focus will be on the game's October 2017 update. And Blizzard is hinting at some noteworthy changes.

Hearthstone Gameplay Engineer Josh Durica explained some of the major changes set to hit Blizzard's collectible card game soon. These changes include the following:

1. Minions with "after" text on their description will only activate if they're present for the spell being cast. The example used in the video below involves having a Violet Teacher on the board and summoning a Wild Pyromancer with Mindgames, only to have the Wild Pyromancer's effect clear the board.

2. An in-play trigger will no longer activate an in-hand trigger. To explain what this means, Bolvar Fordragon (Whenever a friendly minion dies while this is in your hand, gain +1 Attack) is given the Spirit Echo spell (Give your minions "Deathrattle: Return this to your hand). When Bolvar is immediately killed, he is returned to the player's hand with an extra Attack point, since the original Bolvar's death triggered the new Bolvar's effect.

This patch promises to fix these major interaction bugs, with more examples available in the wild. This includes a similar interaction involving the pesky Unlicensed Apothecary bug, which Blizzard previously pledged to fix in the next update.

For more information on these fixes, including a fascinating explanation on how triggers work with minions containing the "Whenever" and "After" text, check out the video below. Look for the Hearthstone October update to hit in the next few weeks.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?