Hi all,

I see quite a few questions on farming coins/tasks with the beta bot so I decided to make a little mini HOW TO with how I got all mercs to level 30, 80% maxed abilities and 70-80% tasks done.
Tested this with a new account to make sure it is correct.

First things first. For the reward track Mercenaries is not the place to farm. You do get some exp after each fight but if you want to level up the reward track it is better to make a stall deck and go to regular hearthstone.
Second; This is how I do it. By no means the best way or most tested way but the way I found working for me. I just write it down and maybe it helps someone.

How to get mercs to 30
The first thing you want is getting Mercs to level 30 ASAP so that is out of your way.
Even if you draw a new one from packs it can just hang arround the normal crew and catch up to 30.

At first I kept the bot at full random. This seemed slow leveling to me so I changed to 1-1 Heroic with random mercs.
This gives you a steady supply of coins since you get at least one batch of coins for a merc in your team. Regardless if it's a epic, legendary or whatever.
So while leveling you slowly also gain coins.

I keep track of the bot and manual select the mercs that get left out. After 2 hours my poor diablo was still stuck at his level so I manual selected him until he was 20.
I repeated this for some other mercs that where left behind.

Once the majority of your team is 25 (or you have 3 pretty strong mercs that you make your main team) you can start farming tasks.

How to farm tasks
Tasks are coming from the mysterious stranger. My favorite bounty for this is Banehallow. (2-6)
When farming manual we tend to reset the match if the node is to far away. The bot can't do that (for now) but it also does not really matter.
My mercs are all 30 and a lot of them are maxed/high abilities by now so I just random this bounty with mercs. As long as you have the majority of 25's (or a fixed 3 strong team) you can make it till the stranger.
If you have a lot of weak mercs but at least a steady 3 you can select those in the bot and let the rest go random.
Depending on how strong your team is you go normal or heroic.

I use firestone to track my progress.

As you can see I only lost one of the 2-6 bounties on normal. That still does not matter since the bot made it all the way to the mysterious stranger. So I got my tasks, some random coins and I can go again.
When you win the majority of the bounty runs like this example you can switch up to Heroic Banehallow (or stay at normal if you want to, the difference is neglectable).
I just go to heroic to get more coins cause even when you fail to get the boss you still get coins.

Heroic is a bit harder and you won't finish the bounty much if the majority of your mercs aren't strong enough. But again, I don't care. I want tasks.
As long as the bot makes it to the Mysterious stranger I am happy. One would say that not making it to the boss is faster since it starts the run again and get's another shot at the mysterious stranger.

Managing Tasks
There is a chance you are running normal bounties that can't finish the heroic tasks, your mercs are not strong enough to finish the heroic 2-6 or you have annoying quests that the bot can't finish.
I always take task 12 from Antonidas that I can't even complete against A.I. and I just use and alt account to do a friend battle to clear it.
Yes, you can clear tasks in PvP against friends.

How do I manage the tasks? Again I resort to Firestone. Firestone not only tracks the current tasks you are on (in case you want to force the bot to go to task 17/18 for the bonus pack) but it also shows the current tasks as an overlay. I don't need to stop the bot and see what tasks it is doing at the moment. I can just track it by hovering my mouse over it.

These 2 tasks can easy be finished with the bot so no action needed. It also keeps filling up since I am running Heroic 2-6. So the tasks are getting filled and cleared on a steady supply.

Would I be running normal or would the current team the bot drafted not be able to clear 2-6 Heroic (again I use Firestone to track this) I just edit the bot setting.

For example if I would have the "Finish 2 heroic bounties" I just go to the settings of the bot and set the map to Heroic 1-1. Wait a few minutes and revert it back to what I was doing. (Probably Heroic 2-6).
Like in this case I can clear 3 tasks at once by changing the bot to 1-1 Heroic and wait a few minutes and switch back to heroic 2-6. I can also wait it out since the current team the bot drafted can clear Heroic 2-6 around 70% of the time.


If you are really lazy you could just put those maps in there. No control or check is needed. You just check Heroic 1-1 and Normal 2-6 and it will clear the majority of the tasks.
Whenever I don't want to keep an eye out on the bot I go this route. It's slower but requires no interaction since it fixes the "Clear a bounty at level 30" and the "Finish heroic bounties/bosses" eventually and with heroic 1-1 you keep getting coins for at least 1 merc of your current team. So it's a win-win-win lazy run.

Your screen would look something like this:


More managing can speed the bot up but is not really needed. Task 16 for example is always "Deal 900 damage to the merc's critical destination role"
While eventually the bot might clear this it might take a while. So when, for example, Tyrande gets this and I need to deal 900 dmg to casters I just edit the bot settings and add Heroic 1-2 to the mix.
(1-2 gives 2 casters as a boss so faster clearing. I also take Heroic so they have more HP)
Again, this is not needed since the bot eventually does this amount of damage to casters on 2-6 but it just takes longer and I want that task slot to be open asap.

Unclearable tasks
Some tasks just cannot be cleared by the bot now. For example Mutanis "Devour "or Antonidas "kill three enemies in one turn using fireball storm".
Depending on the mood I am in I let the stick in the task window to clear them later myself or I just pause the bot and remove this task from the campfire.
This is where Firestone comes on handy again. If I see a quest I know the bot can't clear I just pause it and remove this task so the bot can start gaterhing new ones.

The tasks are always the same so when you take a look at the current/coming task you can make a good guess when your interaction is needed.
1 Using skill 1
2 Using skill 2 (rewards equipment, don't forget to equip it)
3 Using skill 3
4 Deal 150 damage
5 Finish bounty on level 30
6 Destroy 40 minions
7 Finish 2 heroic bounties (rewards equipment, make sure to add heroic 1-1 to your bot if you can't clear Heroic 2-6 with your current team or are running normal 2-6))
8 Use 2 boons for class / 4 healer (bot eventually clear this)
11 Deal/heal 450 damage (Only had BW so far but it cleared this task for me by healing)
13 Finish 4 heroic bounties with that merc (Same as Task 7, add Heroic 1-1 to your bot list if you can't clear heroic 2-6 or are doing normal 2-6)
15 Finish 6 bounties with that merc
16 Deal 900 damage to the merc's critical destination role (Bot will clear this eventually,if you want to speed it up pick the lowest Heroic that has a boss for your ciritcal. i.e. Tyrande add 1-2 to your list (heroic or normal)
18 450 damage to heroic bounty bosses (add heroic 1-1 to your list if you can't clear heroic 2-6 consistant with your current team)

You can also just have an overview/track with Firestone and see how long it takes a certain merc to get to the tasks that gives packs and select them manually if you are in need of packs for that new Valeera:


Why 2-6 / Banehallow?
Statisticly speaking Heroic 2-6 is on average the map to get the mysterious stranger consistenly.

As you can see the further away the nodes are the higher the chance for a mysterious stranger. Since we don't care about clearing the map it does not matter if you can't finish the last boss.
We don't want to clear it, we want tasks. And as mentioned before, failing it still gives coins.

Why Firestone?
As I mentioned in the chapters above.The tracking is insane. You can see how much you win/lose the bounty, what tasks your mercs on (so you can easy see if you get enough tasks done during a farming session to make you happy) and can see the progress and current tasks without pausing the bot. All in all, great to keep the bot running as long and smooth as possible.

TLDR;
- Do Heroic 1-1 until most mercs are level 20-25-ish
- Do Normal 2-6 until most mercs are level 30 and have higher/maxed leveled abilities
- Do Heroic 2-6 until you are out of tasks
- Use Firestone and adjust the tasks/bot to clear certain tasks.
- Don't forget to remove tasks that the bot can't clear
- Don't forget to equip and level up your abilities

Awesome post! From the table you shared, it looks like the chance of mysterious stranger is mostly correlated with # of fights, not the # of nodes. For anything below 3 fights, on average you take 5 fights in order to get a mysterious challenges (i.e. doing 1 fight for 5 times, or 2 fights for 2.5 times since drop rate is 40%, or 3 fights for 5/3 times since drop rate is 60%). This is a great discovery! The data will even benefit the hearthstone community as a whole if you share it in places like hearthpwn.

How do you track the number of mysterious bonuses? I would like to test the number in different stages and find the formula behind it. Would be really helpful as I have already maxed out all the coins dropped by 2-6 boss. I would like to do 2-5 instead but not sure if the mysterious stranger rate is much lower. Is it worth it?

have you tried farming valeera? nice work btw

So far from my observation battle spoils seem to be completely random:
1. Not related to what mercs in your party
2. Not related to mercs you own
3. Not sure if it is related to the map. It is hard to collect the data unless there are some tools to record the rewards while botting.

The last point should decide which level is best to farm on.

Does heroic 1-1/1-2 bounties give you random merc coins? I didn't know that. I've never seen any legendary coins dropped from those stages.

I have collected all the rares/epics but only have two f2p legendaries (Anduin is so easy to max out using level 2-6 within a week). For all the other remaining legendaries I have accumulated anywhere between 50-350 coins, which, from my observation, are all dropped from either battle spoils or task rewards.

I think the bot is going to max out all rares and even epics you own in a couple of months at current rate, so the bottleneck is always going to be legendaries you don't own. If the goal is to collect all legendaries, the most efficient way seems to be farming battle spoils while keeping the task train going on. What do you think is the alternative to get coins for legendaries you don't own?

According to what you said, there is at most one reward (bottom right) that will give you the coins for legendaries you don't own, while in battle spoils you get 3 opportunities. Besides, as far as I learned, bounties on heroic map 1 never give you any legendaries - I have never seen one while I have accumulated thousands of coins from battle spoils. For map 2 and on, the chance that current bot can clear the bounty is pretty low, the drops from successful bounties are much smaller compared with the spoils that drops along the way. Therefore, I feel the best strategy is to focus on whichever stage that gives you most efficient battle spoils.

I could definitely be missing something. Let me know what you think and how you managed to do better..

That's a lot of text in 2 posts but i'll do my best to give my 2cents ;)



Heroic 1-1/1-2 have 3 lootboxes. One of those 3 is guaranteed a merc in your team. To target coins for mercs you have this is the best way. Make a team of 6 you want to level and one of those 6 gets the coins.
Battle spoils on H1-1/1-2 alsohave a chance to be legendar, however, this is drawn from all mercs AND even if you did get a legendary it is between 1-4 coins with the majority being 1/2 so not worth it.



As I mentioned several times before. I am F2P and have all mercs level 30. Several are maxed out with the both which I am running from the start for around 5-8 hours a day. In my opinion Battle spoils is not a good way to farm legendaries since it's to much RNG and the Mercenaries pool is to big to get legendaries on a steady pace. I got the majority of my legendaries from packs. If you browse around the Mercenaries Reddit you will see that most F2P players opt for that option as well. Farming tasks is the fastest way to get legendaries. Either as a coin or as a drop. I only crafted Diablo. All other mercs are dropped from the insane amount of packs you get from tasks. And once you have the legendary getting coins for them is easy. Battle spoils or gambling on the one slot is not viable. Either assemble a team that can finish the county with the coins you want consitently (can be normal, does not have to be heroic) or target tasks.

In my opening post you can see that I don't afk farm. I always keep an eye out on the bot and remove tasks that can't be finished (bugged or just dumb) and keep the task flow going. Tasks give 2 or 3 random coins, a high lgendary chance and after a few tasks you also get packs. That's why I mentioned to keep track of your tasks and try to focus the mercs that are on a high task level. More coins/packs = more chance for a legendary.

Also with the new patch targetted farming is the way to go if you really want a mercenary.

The change makes it so that when you finish a level 30 Heroic Bounty, you will always get at least one pile of legendary coins. This legendary coin pile will come from that bounty's pool of Mercenaries, each bounty can only award coins for certain mercs, which will make increasing the power of our harder to obtain mercenaries quite a bit easier once the high-level grind on the heroic bounties starts.

So assemble a team that can clear the heroic bounty and farm it out if you don't have the patience for coins/packs from tasks.



Agreed, especially with the new patch which guarantees legendary coins. But in the end, for me, it is slower. I rather go tasks/packs and gain as much coins as possible for as much mercs.




That's why I don't target farm unless I want a certain merc for PvP. I have done multiple accounts now and task farming is still the fastestway to unlock all mercs. The amount of coins and packs (which also give coins) is just to good to pass on.

You can be as long as you want, it's just that it might become confusing for other people if we both start typing wikipedia pages ;)



Mostly tasks coins and a few packs. Tasks itself give 1 (later 2) bonus coins which, for me, had a lot of legendaries.
Don't forget that task coins also add up (that's why in my guide I focus on task farming with normal 2-6 instead of target farming)

For tasks (next to merc specific coins) you get:
Task 1: 20 coins
Task 3: 25 coins
Task 4: 30 coins
Task 5: 35 coins
Task 6: 40 coins
Task8: 30 coins
Task 9: 35 coins
Task 10: 40 coins
Task 11: 45 coins
Task 12: 50 coins
Task 13: 50 coins x2
Task 14: 50 coins and 75 coins
Task 15: 75 coins x2

So with 1 hero task farming until task 15 (after that you get the packs) = 16 times a chance for legendary coins. (from 13 onwards there is 2 stacks of coins which both have a chance to be legandary coins)
You can have 4 tasks at the same time so that adds up. I also try to sync my tasks so that the "kill 40 minions" "do x heroic" etc. stack and the campfire has slots open asap to start filling with tasks again.

If you are lucky you can stop opening packs once you have most coins.


That's why I have so many packs. I have all mercs unlocked and I don't care about portrait's so I just keep my packs until new mercs come, than Ill task farm those and keep the packs > repeat.


Normal 2-6 has either battle spoils or the random 1 coin chance. So together with the tasks for all mercs that should be enough to get the full roster.
I have 2 alt accounts for testing and one misses Garrosh and Diablo and the other misses Garrosh, Edward and Jaina.
All free to play and just by running Normal 2-5/2-6 after I levelled to 30 and keeping the tasks runnin. Yes you can't target effienctly but I never do that. To slow, to inconsitent.


Nope. Heroic bounties have no value for me. The increase in coins does not outweigh the capability to just do a normal clear. And the bot can clear up to Vaelastrasz with random comp for me.
Normal level 30 bounties are faster, have the same mysterious stranger chance and can also drop legendary coins. Sure it's not guaranteed as with Heroic. But what is a guaranteed coin if you can't finish the bounty?

In short:
As a F2P I stand by my point. Farm tasks on 2-5/2-6. Once all your Mercs have Task 18 cleared (or if you have no patience) open packs until you have all mercs (which should not be needed or at least a low number)

Some pack info:

Each mercenaries pack has a guaranteed Merc slot but can be a portrait -IF-
The guaranteed Mercenary slot in that pack rolled "rare", and you already have all the rare mercenaries it give you a portrait instead.
The guaranteed Mercenary slot in that pack rolled "epic", and you already have all the epic mercenaries it give you a portrait instead.
The guaranteed Mercenary slot in that pack rolled "legendary", and you already have all the legendary mercenaries it give you a portrait instead.

So in your case if you don't have all the legendaries you would NOT get anduin or an anduin portait on the guaranteed slot. You first need to have all the legendary mercs first.
That you start getting portraits. You could still get an anduin or anduin portait on the other random slots but that would be just insane bad luck and still would not matter since it does not influence your guaranteed Merc slot.

Only one slot is guaranteed "Mercenary or equivalent", and it is also the only slot impacted by duplicate protection. The other slots are all RNG and could be coins, portraits or mercs. In theory you could get a pack full of Mercs if RNG loves you.

I have mentioned and explained auto farm in my guide as well. It's not just for watching / monitoring.

Agree in hindsight, when just starting out, if time is not an obstacle then you should target farm the easy bounties that drop legendary coins to get that general and get those out of the way before opening the first 10 packs and not have that general drop from a pack.

I probably got lucky as think I had Diablo drop early and he basically is a one-demon wrecking machine on the low levels with die-ants. I focused bounties for him and then he cleared the other stuff along with xyrella and samuro. I also got the first PVP pack using level 1 generals to get the AI most of the way and also the 1 win or 3 win coin drops to also get random coins and then grinding out the last bit. The quest coins obviously give you (an albeit) random chance to collect the coins you need as well and are also one-shots like the packs.

I think I put maybe a 1000 gold / popped 15 packs and would have got coins from PVP too, but now I have all the legendaries I'm pretty focused on AFK Maxing them, hence the set-up in my post.

any tips how to farm valeera ? dont have her yet