During BlizzCon 2017, we got to sit down with Mike Donais, Hearthstone's [Free] Principal Game Designer, and Jomaro Kindred, Senior Concept Artists at Blizzard, and talk about the upcoming Kobolds & Catacombs expansion. We talked about the evolution of the Dungeon Run mode, the way the loot system works in more detail, the various inspirations behind the expansion's art, and much more. As always, this was a cool opportunity to see the thought process behind a Hearthstone set, and this time it was even more interesting than other times because of the addition of the brand new Dungeon Run mode. And I've played enough of Dungeon Run at BlizzCon to know that they really knocked it out of the park with this one.

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I first asked about the origins of the Dungeon Run (the new expansion's single player mode), and Mike Donais said that they recently increased the size of the team that does the mission content, so they were able to experiment with different ideas. They really liked the idea of a single player adventure where you can level up and make your character better. The team enjoyed this mode so much that many would play it after office hours. The expansion's main themes were treasures, adventuring, dungeon crawls, so the team decided it was the perfect time to do this single player dungeon crawl mode. Donais went on to talk about the influence of World of Warcraft lore in this expansion, and said that the addition of Dave K...