AKA Plagueheart's Guide For Kids Who Don't Arena Good
Welcome!! If you are struggling with the seasonal Arena, I am here to offer a strategy for getting through it with minimal thought. This may not be a 100% optimal strategy and I am happy to take suggestions on optimization! But hopefully it'll help people who feel daunted by these tasks.
A warning: This guide is not meant to teach you how to play regular Arena well. This is for grinding seasonal Arena activities as efficiently as possible, so you're going to do some weird things I would not recommend for regular Arena. (Though they do help with speeding up your progress on some Arena achievements!)
With that out of the way, onward!!
TERMINOLOGY I WILL PROBABLY ACCIDENTALLY USE
Passive - An Arena unit's FIRST SLOT ability that (generally) gives them some kind of passive bonus, like 20% extra dodge.
Autoattack - An Arena unit's SECOND SLOT ability that is (generally) the way they cause damage and generate energy every round.
Ult(imate) - An Arena unit's THIRD SLOT ability that they (generally) use immediately whenever they have full energy.
There are exceptions to all of these and it's annoying.
Affinities - The little symbols at the top of an Arena unit's card. Put enough of these on your team & you will fill out your affinity bars and get a neat team bonus.
Pack Mentality / PM - A passive found on Lupin, (Alpine/Furlog) Deer, Macauco, Colpach, Gaudrey, Grimalkin, Murkwood Enderling, Echecara, and Algeel units. It grants 10% damage to every other unit in your team with Pack Mentality.
Coordinate - An ultimate found on Thrasher, Torcine, Varani, Vortexcanis, Aurochs, and Folium units. When used, it causes the enemy team to skip their next turn (not the current turn you're on) so only your units act.
HOW SEASONAL ARENA DO
If you are already familiar with how an Arena do, skip this section. The only thing you need to know -- if you are coming from regular Arena to Seasonal for the first time -- is Seasonal is completely PvE with four bot opponents, you are fully in control of when rounds start, and (right now) all the enemies are Consumed variants so they always have Consumed synergies instead of their other passives.
If you are not familiar with Arena: Arena is a fundamentally simple game. You have your five-slot team (like Campaign) but you don't get to fill it out all at once. Instead, you buy units from the Arena shop (the box on your screen with four unit cards in it) to fill out your team. You will start with one open slot and progress to five automatically over the course of the game. A round in Seasonal Arena starts when you click the "Start Next Round" button. During a round, your units will automatically fight the enemy team.
Your job is to build a team that will DEFEAT the ENEMY. You do this by buying units from the Arena shop with paws, a currency you get a small amount of every round (with bonuses for winning, being on a win/loss streak, and holding enough paws to generate interest). Your units start weak, with only one star, and can be made STRONG by buying more copies of the same unit. Three copies of the same unit at the same star level will combine automatically to create a unit of the next star level. Stars go up to 3, so you need to buy in total 9 copies of the same unit to max it out.
THE ACTIVITY BOYS -- YOUR TARGETS
Win 10 / 20 rounds in (Seasonal) Arena - these say you need to win rounds but you do not!! You actually just need to survive the round, so they are really just tracking how many times you push the "Start Next Round" button.
Buy 20 pieces in (Seasonal) Arena - A pushover. You will buy so many pieces, but I will also recommend a trick for getting this done REAL fast.
Combine 20 pieces in (Seasonal) Arena - Annoyingly only counts a combine for a three-star as one combine, not two, but we're going to focus on two-star combines anyway.
Place top 3 in (Seasonal) Arena - The slightly hard one, but stick with me.
Preliminaries:
Some things to keep in mind for Optimal(ish) Arena grinding, before you get into the meat n potatoes strategies below.
- Always try to wait for 2-3 Arena activities before starting play. That means you get more done each game.
- You CANNOT get 6 Arena activities, so don't fixate on trying to go over 4 before you start.
- Keep an eye 👁️ on what activities you have. You don't want to be pointlessly buying lots of pieces if you don't have that activity.
- If you finish all but one Arena activity, take a break and Campaign until you have a couple more Arena activities! Unless, like, you're one round away from completing that last one -- then you may as well wrap it up.
- Don't worry about losing rounds!! All but one activity can be completed even if you lose every round. It will be quicker if you win rounds (more paws) but not impossible.
- As always, take care of yourself -- drink water, take non-Lorwolf breaks, etcetera.
NOW... HOW TO GRIND ARENA...
To get your activities done as fast as possible, you are going to:
- Focus on buying the right units for the first 12 rounds to not lose too much.
- Rack up a bunch of paws very fast by hitting "Start Next Round" and then immediately refreshing.
- Spend your big hoard of paws in a slightly weird way to optimize purchases & combines, if you have those activities.
- Otherwise, try to get through rounds REAL fast to finish the "Win x rounds" activities and (hopefully) the "Place in the top 3" activity ASAP.
What to buy!! (Current Seasonal: Murkwood)
There are good, situational, and bad units in Arena. The lists below are my rankings on what works very well for me -- you may have some refinements (and if you do, please share them), but in general if you get five things off this list and work on getting them up to even just 2 stars, you will probably do fine.
I don't have pictures of these RIGHT NOW but I will shortly do that so you don't have to peer at the name on everything and can just mash pretty pictures real fast.
Terminology notes (oh no, more) --
"PM team" means a team where you're trying to get as many Pack Mentality units as possible.
"Tactician team" means a team where you're trying to get Tactician [purple joystick] (5) synergy, which gives your team a ludicrous 50% chance to crit.
"Front" means the unit works best if you stick it on your front line where it gets punched in the face more.
BUY THESE ALL THE TIME [1]
direwolf, vulkira (front), sludgemander (front), quillara, colpach, grimalkin, icefisher stork, thrasher/torcine (front)/(varani if tactician team) (recommend 1 of these), algeel, murkwood enderling, hydra (front)
THESE BOYS ARE SITUATIONAL
kickstarter krane, jocol, lupin (PM teams only), kit, moorbear, rockbreaker ox, varani (not tactician team), grab crab pincher (front), bracchus, gaudrey, nytha, teufel, broch (front), rodill, basidio (front)
DO NOT BUY THESE*
mullvad, lupin (not PM teams), zerda, keboko, machaira, pandosa, mutterbird, orthrus, golden unicorn, volmyr, aurochs (please do not put an aurochs on your team I am begging you)
* If you have absolutely no choice in the matter -- it sometimes happens you get a REALLY weird unit spread, or you only have these options in round 0 -- try this priority list:
mullvad/lupin -- keboko/machaira [2] (put in front) -- pandosa/mutterbird/orthrus (only one of these on your team) -- golden unicorn/volmyr/zerda/aurochs
[1] Keep in mind you will NOT see all these units in rotation every game -- it seems to pick what will be available at random, so do your best on what seems to be available to you. Do not be afraid to double up on most of these guys! I have seen some very odd games where there seem to be maybe six units in the pool, so I'll end up with three copies of the best one. Just keep in mind if you have two two-star units of the same type on your team, you WILL have an open spot you need to fill when you make them into a 3 star.
[2] The Keboko and Machaira are not actually bad units, but Retaliate is bugged and sometimes refuses to do damage for the entire game. If you want to try one out, go ahead, but I recommend watching your rounds to make sure it's actually doing damage with Retaliate after being hit. If it's not, replace it.
How to do your Arena rounds!!
Round 0: Buy the best unit available to you. Start the round.
Round 1-2: Buy any other good units available, especially if you'll get a combine. Use your free refresh and buy down all your paws. Start the round.
Round 3: Your third slot opens. Put another unit in it. Do a little more buying. Start the round.
Round 4-6: Start the round and refresh immediately four times in a row, until your fourth slot opens.
Round 7: Buy a bunch of stuff! Fill out your fourth slot. Focus on getting good units you'd like to use right now. Start the round.
Round 8-10: Start the round and refresh immediately until your fifth slot opens.
Round 11: Fill your fifth slot. Buy a bunch of stuff until you're out of paws -- focus on building your team up to 3 stars, then start the round.
Round 12-end game: If you're low on paws, do a bunch of rounds real fast to build up a stock. Then focus on whatever activities you have remaining:
- If you still need to buy units, buy everything you see and then sell it back. Hold stuff you're seeing a lot of if you need it for combines.
- If you still need combines, only buy what you're seeing a lot of OR any doubles/triples that appear (happens pretty frequently). Sell back the two-star units you make unless you need them.
- If you just need to complete rounds/win the game, this is a good place to stop playing Arena and go play campaign until you get the other two activities back up!
extremely pathological gameplay tips if you only want to play one arena game to do all your tasks at once
- you can sell your entire team while the last round is in progress (toward a win, preferably!) and buy more pieces for combines
- need more rounds completed but about to win? move your entire team to your inventory! lose a couple of rounds, then put em back
OKAY I think that is about everything I've got. I will streamline this & add companion images later, but for now I am just trying to get this out there.
Bloodguile
