Posted at 2024-07-02 03:55:12 — Link
I’ve noticed that a lot of players seem to have misconceptions about how the Arena works—this used to be common knowledge (and a relatively common playstyle), but a lot fewer people play these days. I finally had enough time to throw together a guide, so here it is.
0. Basics
There are two ways to use the arena: autobattle (the “fight on arena” button on the pet’s page) and what I call hand-battling, on the Arena page. This guide focuses on the latter, because in my experience it's a better way to level pets and a far, far better way to get on the charts for gold.
Hand-battling uses your active pet. You can do this either with Battle Type set to either manual or automatic mode (I always do automatic, manual is too grindy even for me).
Click the dot next to a pet that’s being autobattled, then click on Accept Challenge. If you win, keep clicking; if you lose, find another pet to fight. Continue until you run out of energy, then switch active pets.
1. Pick your gladiators.
They should have good genes (stat boosts, useful abilities) but don’t have to be “perfect.” I recommend GP3 Lykoi with Tireless Heart, because extra energy helps a lot. I also recommend starting at level 1.
Allocate their stats so they’ll grow in the best ones. You can do this with one pet or several, depends on how stubborn you are and how bored you are by grinding. (Ideally what you want is multiple pets at different levels, but start with level 1, not level 50.)
Allocate their attacks so that the one that does highest damage will be used the most often—usually this just means checking which number is highest and giving that the most stars, but if your pet has an elemental attack they should probably be using Bite most often.
Back to levels! I know some people chart with level 50 pets. I don’t—for one thing this is how I level most of my pets. But also I don’t like wasting the exp or putting all my eggs in one basket, and I like having my gladiators be at different levels so that they won’t all be hit by the same dead spots.
Also, the one time I experimented, my level 1 gryphons did better than my level 50 lykoi despite having a lower energy cap (though the lykoi did still benefit more from the sanctuary, so they eventually pulled ahead based on that). That was just one week, though, so it might not be reliable data.
You can level as many pets as you like, but obviously no more than ten can get into the charts (and I’ve never seen the charts so dead that one person got all ten spots, though it’s possible to get several). The more gladiators you keep active at once, the more often you’ll have to replace them (if you’re retiring level 50s, anyway).
Also, how much grinding can you tolerate? The more pets you’re leveling each week, the more grinding you have to do. This can get very, very boring.
2. Grinding
Battle each morning and evening. Some days there'll be nothing at your level, or everything at a given level will be GP3 perfects. It happens. If you get an empty patch of arena, set your gladiators to autobattle. (Autobattle on its own is a lousy arena chart strategy, but as a supplement it’s better than nothing.)
(It may not be necessary to battle twice a day—sometimes I forget half the time and still get in the charts. Other times I do that and wind up shut out of the charts. It depends on how many other people are hand-leveling in a given week.)
The charts "roll over" at 00:00 server time on Sundays. Battles before that count for the "current" week on the charts; battles after are a new week.
3. Use your Sanctuary.
Have you built your Sanctuary yet? It’s the first building on the list of recipes in the Help dropdown, and it’s very useful: it restores one pet’s energy to maximum each day, so it’s like a free daily energy drink. (Build it with 10000 silver, 200 marble, and 50 amethyst. You also need a pet with Intelligence of at least 60, and of course the blueprint.)
If you can get charts to load, use Sanctuary on whichever pets place highest. Otherwise, just take a guess and use it on pets that you can battle with at that moment. You can use it once on seven different pets, twice on three, three times on two, or use it on the same pet seven times. What’s best depends on how busy the arena is, whether you miss battling sometimes, and how bored you get grinding. All other things being equal, a pet that gets Sanctuary’d seven times will beat pets that only got Sanctuary’d once, but any one pet might get set back due to arena dead spots during the week.
You can use energy drinks if you want. I don’t, personally, so you will probably beat me if you do. (I mean, if I recommended this course of action I would be doing it myself, and I think it’s definitely not worth it to buy them from the premium shop just to place. But if you have some from exploring and this seems like a good way to use them, sure, go ahead.)
Addendum: Silver.
There are players who use the arena as a source of silver rather than gold. This requires very specific pets: cockatrices with the Bet Expert gene, and lots of them, autobattled pretty much all the time. For each victory, the player gets silver.
I haven’t actually done this myself, so I don’t know how many cockatrices you need to get how much silver, or if it’s a good way to pay the food cost for large stables. But the people who do it have been doing it for a very long time, so presumably it works as they want it to work.
If you have input to that last, let me know and I’ll add it into the guide.
