Hearthstone 36.4.2: The Food Chain nerfed without changing a word — Agamaggan removed from Shokk's pool, dust refund until September 17

Hearthstone's 36.4.2 update fits into five table rows on the constructed side of the game, and yet it transforms an entire deck. Its patch notes were published on Thursday, September 3, 2026 at 15:55 UTC, i.e. 17:55 Paris time — our conversion, as the page only displays UTC.

The block in question is titled The Food Chain, named after the Hunter quest that the French client calls La chaîne alimentaire. Neither its text nor that of its reward changes by a single word: no "Previously / Now" line is devoted to them. It's three other cards that get their stats changed, and it's this shift that weakens the quest. Blizzard admits as much: "Overall, these changes are intended to be a net nerf to The Food Chain" — a net weakening, in our translation, as there is no French version of these notes.

Second consequence, more pressing: the quest, Jeune araignée and La Séquence interdite can be disenchanted for full dust value until Thursday, September 17, 2026.

The five constructed-mode changes, line by line

The French labels below are not our own: they come from the official French card database, queried by ID. The images inserted in the patch notes carry this ID in their file name, "WARLOCK_EDR_489_enUS_Agamaggan" for the first row.

The first three are Beasts: that's all that matters for what follows.

Why the quest loses power without losing a single word

In the French client, the quest reads as follows: "Quest: Play a Beast with 1, 3, 5, and 7 Attack. Reward: Shokk." Its reward, Shokk, tyran de la jungle, is a five-mana 9/9 whose text is the true engine of the deck: "Rush. Battlecry: Discover random Beasts with 8, 6, and 4 Attack, respectively. Set their Cost to (2)."

Three Discovers, locked onto three exact attack values. The English version specifies "any 8, 6, and 4-Attack Beast": the pool draws from all classes. A card enters or leaves this pool based solely on its attack — a criterion no one would think to check on their own.

Hence the maneuver: "We're making a unique adjustment to The Food Chain by changing Shokk's Discover pool." The studio isn't removing Agamaggan from a list, it's adding an attack point to it. At 8/9, the legendary demon hunter met the "8 ATK" criterion; at 9/9, it didn't. Conversely, Terrorscale Stalker goes from 9/6 to 8/8 and Seismopod becomes an 8/8 for eight crystals: both now enter a pool they previously didn't qualify for.

The stated reason is explicit: Agamaggan's ability to "generate massive burst damage immediately after Shokk was played" produced the deck's most frustrating outcomes. The mechanism is readable on the card: Shokk brought its cost down to two crystals, and its Battlecry causes "the next card you play costs Health instead of mana to your OPPONENT (up to a maximum of 10)". The replacements offer nothing of the sort: Terrorscale Stalker has Taunt and steals three times three health points from an enemy minion; Seismopod combines Taunt, Elusive, and a Deathrattle that gives +3/+3 to the minions in your hand and deck. Blizzard is announcing "slower, more defensive play patterns": the deck no longer closes things out in one fell swoop.

Keep or disenchant: two regimes, one single date

The two Blizzard paragraphs need to be read in order. The first restates the house rule: "our standard dust refund policy only applies to cards that receive direct balance nerfs". Now, The Food Chain hasn't undergone any direct weakening. Hence an exception, "for a limited time", which "should not be considered a change to our standard refund policy". The second sets the scope: "The Food Chain, Spiderling, and The Forbidden Sequence will be eligible for a full dust refund." Three cards, not five.

On the date, caution is warranted: "two weeks following Patch 36.4.2", with no time or timezone specified. Two weeks after September 3 would place the closing on Thursday, September 17, 2026, without knowing at what moment the button disappears. The French patch notes for 36.2.2 weren't any more precise: they promised "the full value in dust" over a window running, as Blizzard wrote, "for two weeks following the rollout". Don't aim for the last evening. No dust figure appears in these notes either, for that matter.

One detail remains unresolved: Spiderling is a druid card and The Forbidden Sequence a mage quest — neither can appear in a hunter deck built around The Food Chain. Yet the notes group them under the same subheading, with no development commentary. In our view, they fall under ordinary policy, with the exception applying only to the hunter quest.

The trap: notes that only exist in English

36.2.2 and 36.4 do have a French-language page on the official website. 36.4.2 does not. Verification carried out on Sunday, September 6, 2026: the two French addresses for article 24296231, on both news.blizzard.com and hearthstone.blizzard.com, return 404, while the English version returns 200. The client, for its part, has indeed received the changes: the French card database already shows Agamaggan at 9/9 and "discover 8 cards" on the mage quest. Your collection speaks French, the documentation doesn't.

This isn't just a reading inconvenience. The Arena adjustments list mentions a card named Torch, and two cards bear that name: Torch (AV_761t1), a non-collectible neutral spell, and Torch (CATA_585), a one-crystal warrior spell from Cataclysm, which is collectible. A non-collectible card cannot be drafted, and this section of the update targets the warrior one: it is Torch (CATA_585). Writing "Torche" would be a mistake — the kind of error a rough translation produces.

Earthquake Hydra wins on both fronts

The same patch touches it elsewhere: in the Arena section, Earthquake Hydra is among the four druid cards whose appearance rate increases, after having gained a cost reduction crystal in Constructed. Conversely, the seven cards whose rate decreases belong to only two classes — five warrior cards, including Torch, one death knight card, and one shared between death knight and demon hunter. Blizzard explains it: "Warrior and Death Knight have emerged as clear performance outliers". A bug was also preventing cards from Escape from Durnholde from appearing in drafts, even though this set was scheduled for the Arena season that opened on August 25, 2026 with 36.4.

What to remember

The food chain remains playable and its text is unchanged: this is what makes the nerf so hard to notice in-game. What's disappearing is Agamaggan's explosive two-crystal finish; what replaces it, two Taunt minions.

The only decision with a set date is the refund, and it only concerns three cards: the hunter quest, Baby Spider, and Forbidden Sequence, until Thursday, September 17, 2026, with no published time. And if you're looking for French-language notes for this update, none exist.