Download older client - HearthSim/Firestarter GitHub Wiki
The official servers only provide an archive of the latest Hearthstone build. Sadly this build isn't of much interest to us, because the project's server targets one specific version: v1.3 (build 6898).
Within this post I'll explain how to retrieve an older version of the client.
People within the HearthSim community have collected and indexed a lot of HearthStone client builds.
There is the HearthSim community index, or the Topher mirror. The information you get to see will look nonsensical at first, but bear with me.
Each client build is uniquely identified with a build number, like 6898. There is also a corresponding human-friendly version identifier for each build number, e.g. v1.3, which is actually only used in blog posts and the bnet launcher.
This build number mapping is difficult to remember so keep this table close at hand while you're reading this post.
Let's download the HearthStone client at the before-mentioned build 6898. This will require us to download several! archive files containing the data we want. These archives use a special compression format called MPQ.
To open/handle MPQ files you need a compatible reader, similar to a zip program. I used MPQEditor, download here: http://zezula.net/en/mpq/download.html#StormLib.
More information about this archive format can also be found on that website.
Browse to one of the index sites: HearthSim community index or the Topher mirror.
Both sites contains a bunch of 'DDDD.direct/' folders. Each of these folders contains a 'base build' of the client and incremental patch archives. DDDD is a placeholder for a numeric build number.
The game data archives, which we'll need, end with .MPQ.
The 'base build' can be recognized by the word base within it's name, there should be one for each language.
Base build archives contain a full snapshot of the client's data files, while the other archives contain incremental patches.
The patch archives can be found within the sub-folder Updates (located underneath the DDDD.direct/ folder).
You've probably guessed it; to retrieve build 6898 we need to start with the highest base build (='direct' version) below 6898.
Open the folder 4944.direct/ and start downloading the base build archive. If no language is present within the filename, English is presumed.
Now that we have build 4944, patches towards 6898 need to be downloaded as well.
Patch archives are located underneath the folder called Updates. Each patch is numbered following the scheme hs-[build-from]-[build-target]-[platform]...
0 has a special meaning; it refers to the 'base build' in the parent folder.
The same trick we used for selecting the proper base build can be applied to the patches as well, aim for the highest '0 to XXX' build which is still beneath our target.
Patches required to reach build 6898 are listed below for simplicity.
I omitted language and platform for readability, so keep these properties in mind for you own purposes.
- 0 to 5314
- 5314 to 5435
- 5435 to 5506
- 5506 to 5834
- 5834 to 6024
- 6024 to 6141
- 6141 to 6187
- 6187 to 6284
- 6284 to 6485
- 6485 to 6898
Download all these MPQ archives somewhere together on your local computer. Next up is extracting them all at once to get the actual game files.
Now is the time to open the MPQ Editor program which you (probably) already downloaded, if not follow this link.
The editor supports base and patch images, so extracting the files of our specific build is easy.
Click on the button that says 'file', in the upper left corner of the program. Move your mouse over Open MPQ(s) and click on the option 'Custom Open MPQ'.
In the File-Open dialog browse to your base image archive and open it. A custom dialog opens with the base image list already populated.
Right click in the (empty) patches list and click on 'Add MPQ(S) ..'. This brings up a second File-Open dialog where you can select all the archive files, see above, to patch the base image towards the target build. Open these files and the Patches list is now populated with these files.
Enable the option 'Deep file verification' and click the 'ok' button. Loading and verifying the files wile take some time.
The custom dialog closed and you're now seeing a basic file explorer for the archives you picked. Select all the files and folders you're seeing and click on the 'Extract' button in the ribbon-menu. Choose a destination for these files and click 'ok' to extract.
The extracted files are the entire client at the target build version, congratulations!