Looks like Blizzard thought quest rogue was a little too uninteractive. They are nerfing it. Previously you only needed to play 4 minions of the same name to activate the quest. Now you will need 5 minions.

In an upcoming update, we will be making a balance change to the Rogue card: The Caverns Below.

The Caverns Below now reads: Quest: Play five minions with the same name. Reward: Crystal Core.

Since the release of Journey to Un'Goro, Hearthstone has enjoyed a wider variety of competitively viable classes and decks than ever before. We’ve been monitoring overall gameplay, and we’ve decided that—even though everything is varied and many decks are viable—a change to The Caverns Below is still warranted.

The Caverns Below is uniquely powerful versus several slower, control-oriented decks and played often enough that it’s pushing those decks out of play. This change should help expand the deck options available to players both now and after the release of the next expansion.

- https://us.battle.net/forums/en/hearthstone/topic/20757246514

I'd love it if we lived in a world where this also meant Blizzard would make it easier by one step to complete Paladin and Druid quest. Sadly, we live in a world where Blizzard only patches cards that are aggressively unfun. Underperforming cards underperform forever.

It's about damn time!

Praise the sun

Good, but I doubt this actually fixes it. Caverns Below is completely busted as it takes away 100% of your ability to deal with it. If they complete the quest and have an adequate hand, you're done. You can't make reactionary plays to 1 mana 5/5's and especially 5/5 chargers. Nothing in the game is balanced around having to deal with that. If you are not playing a face-deck and they manage to complete the quest before you are at a reasonable amount of mana crystals, you lose. I hate that.

@zevvion: Yeah, it's still unfun and noninteractive if they manage to complete the quest. But needing to play the minion one more time might make the deck inconsistent enough that it just sees almost zero play. It's the Starving Buzzard/Blade Flurry/Yogg-Saron type of nerf, where instead of trying to make it fair or balanced they seem to be making the card just completely unappealing. If Quest Rogue becomes a deck that is "win 100% of the time you complete the quest, but you only complete the quest 20% of the time", then it'll join the ranks of Mage quest as a fun novelty that only sees very infrequent play.

The better change probably would've been to change the quest so everything is 4/4s, which both kills you slower and there are more AoEs that can deal 4. Or even think about how much better The Curator and Primordial Drake become when they can kill two 4/4s each. Granted, some decks still have no answer to a Quest Rogue that can flood the board with 4/4s, but the slower control decks that Quest Rogue would easily beat currently would have a somewhat easier time than dealing with 5/5s. Also it would be nice if the minion buff effect from the quest was silenceable, instead of being a completely immutable buff, though admittedly very few decks would benefit from this distinction.

@bisonhero: I'd agree with everything here: 5/5 is still a really awkward size to remove for most classes and simply changing the buff to 4/4 would have kept the spirit of the quest while making it a little more manageable. And being unable to silence the quest buff has always been some bullshit.

One of the dumbest things with Caverns Below is a hexed minion turns into a 5/5 Frog with Taunt. Or Polymorph gives them a 5/5 chicken. Never understood that decision.

@mike: The whole quest is broken :( lets hope this update brings an end to seeing the deck in ranked.

Played my first game with "nerfed" Caverns Below. Beat a quest Druid. Deck is 1/1 post patch so it must still be terribly broken.

The change is fine, and I'm still going to play the deck. I think the elemental version is especially viable. It's going to struggle against aggro, but it always did.

@asmo917: I haven't seen a single quest Rogue since the patch. Was hoping to gauge it.

I haven't been playing much Hearthstone lately, but I did have both a golden and regular Caverns Below so I happily took the 4800 dust.