I took out 9,000 enemies and made 20,000 silvers in the process. I got all the combat skills I ever intend to have and got the weapon proficiencies in the four major groups up to at least 240.
Click to enlarge:
You've probably already figured out there's only one way to do this: I walked into the arena a boy and came back out a man.
Why I did it: Every time I start a new game I always go win all the tournaments available on day 1 (The number is random but is sometimes as high as six). It's super hard because I don't have full-developed combat skills, and I'm trying to develop basic Leadership and Trade skills at the same time. This time I decided I'd get a full complement of skills before I left the arena.
I'm also going for a build where I'm going to get to 38th level before I do any serious conquering. (I'm going to get Cha up to 15, and then get Int up to 27. Raising Cha skills to max, and then getting 10's in Tactics, Engineering, and Persuasion.) I thought this would be a little easier if I got the low levels out of the way quick.
Why I'm telling you: Some people will have never thought of doing this or might believe it isn't possible. Well, I'm here to tell you I did this in maybe ten hours of game play. Other people will say that this is boring. I think the melee fights in the arena are the purest form of Mount & Blade- a mini-game that is a distilled version of the game generally. It's random. It's brutal. It's a grind, but you see the reward in things taking shape right in front of your eyes.
I play the native game (actually Diplomacy but they didn't change the arena) on full difficulty and do most of my arena training in Praven. The other arenas are different sizes and shapes which changes play (in my experience for the worse), but I haven't played in all of them so maybe I'm missing something good.
Remain calm: Even after you've developed full-bodied combat skills, you are going to get punked (taken out without having made a kill), you are going to get humiliated (at full Hit Points engage a Novice Fighter who for some reason just has your number and takes you out 1, 2, 3 without you ever getting in a hit), you will feel like you're perfectly safe and then someone attacks you from behind, you are going to be doing the zig-zag run for archer defense and the archer will hit you anyway, you are going to win the championship twice in a row and then get punked the next game, humiliated the game after that, and then barely squeak out 3 kills in the next three games. These are things that happen in the arena. Without superior armor and superior weapons you really aren't that superhuman. You are going to lose, and getting angry will not help you. You need strong focus, calm concentration. It will help a lot if you-
Know the rules: The arena in Praven a long rectangle with a side ratio of about 1:4. There are 8 spots where fighters can spawn. I call them "portals." Each portal only brings in fighters with one type of weapon. Like this:
S+Sh Archer Staff
2-H S+Sh
Staff 2-H Staff
When the game first starts, it randomly assigns the character to one position. It then assigns six other fighters to random portals other than the one the character came from. The fighters typically attack the closest target, but there is a random factor there too. They may decide to attack something other than their closest enemy.
The part that should give you comfort is that there is no effort made to make this a fair fight. It is frequently the case that you will start with two fighters on your right and three fighters on your left and they will all decide to attack you. It is impossible to get out of such a situation unscathed. Very likely, you'll be dead before you know what hit you.
When all fighters are placed, it starts a clock. After 20 or 30 seconds, another fighter will spawn from a random portal. (If you are standing on a portal, the game will not choose that one as a spawning point, so you can prevent archers from spawning by standing on the archer portal.) If you clear the field, another fighter will spawn and the clock will reset.
The important part about this is that through the mid-game there will only ever be one enemy on the field. (And there will *always* be one enemy on the field.) If you know where the new fighter spawned, it is not necessary to check the rest of the field. You have 20 or 30 seconds to take him out before another will spawn. I used to a waste a lot of time looking around for other fighters when there was no possibility that there was going to be one.
From the beginning of the game, you'll see an "Opponents Remaining" counter in the upper-left of the screen. If you're the last man standing when that counts down to zero, you win the championship (200 XP, 250 silvers). Towards the end of the game, the spawning rules change. I call it "The Show." I think it starts when the Opponents Remaining counter hits a certain number, but I've never been able to figure out exactly what it is. I usually have about 18 kills when the show starts. Fighters will start spawning every five seconds or so, and they all seem to go to the center of the arena and attack any fighter that gets near them.
I usually wait the show out standing on the archer portal. A mob of fighters will form at the center of the arena. If you get close to one of them, he'll turn and attack you. But if you just stand at the edge, they'll ignore you. If you watch, you'll see teams begin to form in the chaos. Groups can get as big as seven or eight, and they'll gang up on newcomers. This is a big decision-making period because if the group runs out of other fighters to attack, they will all turn and attack you. If the group is too big, you will lose the championship. So you should watch forming groups and if one starts to get big, go attack them from the rear before they run out of other fighters. Timing is crucial.
The quality of fighters may be Novice, Regular, Veteran, or Champion. And they have offer experience rewards ranging from 4 to 20. The distribution is random is but it is weighted so that later in the game there are more experienced fighters. So, that mob that forms in the show is all champion fighters with a few veterans mixed in.
The Paradox of the Bow: By far the easiest way to win the championship is having a bow, but the weakest way to start the game is having a bow. Your side weapon is a dagger that is just silly. The thing is so short you have to lunge at your target in order to hit with it which means if his swing connects first, you're going to take massive damage. And you're engaged in this silly fight while constantly worried about being attacked from the rear. It is positively disheartening how frequently you start with a bow and end with zero kills. The best way to survive with the bow is to take out a sword and shield guy and pick up his gear. You need to switch to the dagger, pick up the shield, and then pick up the sword. That way, you drop the dagger and not your bow. Make sure you have enough time before you do this. Getting caught and killed in the middle of the operation is a common pitfall.
One thing I just discovered and was amazed to see work a few times is that you can run away. If you have an Athletics of 5, you can outpace anyone else on the field. So if your starting position is going to be quickly overwhelmed, run and don't look back. If you run near some other fighters, they might just attack the guys chasing you. It doesn't always work. Sometimes you get cornered. Sometimes the guys in front of you start attacking you, and you can't get free. But one occasion stands out in my memory: I ran the length of the arena, turned around to see I was still being followed closely by three guys, ran back to my starting point, saw that they had fallen behind, started shooting, and ended up winning the championship.
For a long time, I thought the only way to end with a bow was to start with one. You can take gear from fallen enemies, but archers always switch to the dagger when you get close. I was wrong. You can get bows from archers. There are three ways it can work: 1) Sometimes the archer will move off the archer portal to get a better shot at you. You need him to move quite far away, so you may run to the other side of the arena. If he's about halfway down field, another archer might spawn and start shooting at him. If either archer shoots and kills the other, they will leave their bow for you to take. But if they're too close to each other, they'll switch to daggers and you get nothing. 2) An archer focused on another target may be attacked from both sides by staff-wielders or sword and shield guys. If they attack in quick succession, the archer may not have time to get out his dagger. 3) An archer focused on another target may be one hit killed by a two-handed sword wielder, and sometimes he doesn't have time to get his dagger out. You may be one of the attackers or you may be the other target.
After I saw that it was possible to get bows from archers, I started going to extreme lengths to try to get them. I would leave archers alive even though they were shooting at me and even defend them from other fighters. I kept running to the far side of the arena trying to get them to chase me. But the fact is that it is very rare for you to get a bow from an archer no matter how hard you try, and it is quite common for you to get killed by an archer you're trying to defend. So I don't really try anymore, but I do watch for the right conditions to arise.
Kill stealing: I didn't make this to give general combat advise but rather to give specific advise about the arena, but kill stealing is a situation in the arena that needs attention. Whenever I hit a target and someone else kills that target, I call that "kill stealing." That guy was mine, damn it. Especially at the beginning of an arena game, it is quite common for a guy to be charging you with another guy behind trying to attack him. This a problem and an opportunity. Frequently if you attack the frontrunner, the guy behind him will steal your kill. Alternatively, you can wait until the guy behind attacks and then steal his kill. Aside from having your kill stolen, there are two possible perils: either the guy in front hits you before the guy behind hits him or you kill the frontrunner and the guy behind hits you with the attack that was meant for the kill you stole. In the real world this wouldn't be a problem, but the game mechanics make it a problem. There's no hard and fast rule here, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn't warn you. It's awfully tempting to step in and steal someone's kill, but you might want to think twice about it. You might be giving that guy a free hit on you.
Keep looking for better solutions: Don't just mindlessly keep doing the same thing over and over. If a tactic isn't working, try something else. Many of the things I've mentioned here were not obvious to me when I started playing. It is by thinking about the situation and trying new ideas that we arrive at best practices.
Click to enlarge:
You've probably already figured out there's only one way to do this: I walked into the arena a boy and came back out a man.
Why I did it: Every time I start a new game I always go win all the tournaments available on day 1 (The number is random but is sometimes as high as six). It's super hard because I don't have full-developed combat skills, and I'm trying to develop basic Leadership and Trade skills at the same time. This time I decided I'd get a full complement of skills before I left the arena.
I'm also going for a build where I'm going to get to 38th level before I do any serious conquering. (I'm going to get Cha up to 15, and then get Int up to 27. Raising Cha skills to max, and then getting 10's in Tactics, Engineering, and Persuasion.) I thought this would be a little easier if I got the low levels out of the way quick.
Why I'm telling you: Some people will have never thought of doing this or might believe it isn't possible. Well, I'm here to tell you I did this in maybe ten hours of game play. Other people will say that this is boring. I think the melee fights in the arena are the purest form of Mount & Blade- a mini-game that is a distilled version of the game generally. It's random. It's brutal. It's a grind, but you see the reward in things taking shape right in front of your eyes.
I play the native game (actually Diplomacy but they didn't change the arena) on full difficulty and do most of my arena training in Praven. The other arenas are different sizes and shapes which changes play (in my experience for the worse), but I haven't played in all of them so maybe I'm missing something good.
Hints for Success in the Arena
Remain calm: Even after you've developed full-bodied combat skills, you are going to get punked (taken out without having made a kill), you are going to get humiliated (at full Hit Points engage a Novice Fighter who for some reason just has your number and takes you out 1, 2, 3 without you ever getting in a hit), you will feel like you're perfectly safe and then someone attacks you from behind, you are going to be doing the zig-zag run for archer defense and the archer will hit you anyway, you are going to win the championship twice in a row and then get punked the next game, humiliated the game after that, and then barely squeak out 3 kills in the next three games. These are things that happen in the arena. Without superior armor and superior weapons you really aren't that superhuman. You are going to lose, and getting angry will not help you. You need strong focus, calm concentration. It will help a lot if you-
Know the rules: The arena in Praven a long rectangle with a side ratio of about 1:4. There are 8 spots where fighters can spawn. I call them "portals." Each portal only brings in fighters with one type of weapon. Like this:
S+Sh Archer Staff
2-H S+Sh
Staff 2-H Staff
When the game first starts, it randomly assigns the character to one position. It then assigns six other fighters to random portals other than the one the character came from. The fighters typically attack the closest target, but there is a random factor there too. They may decide to attack something other than their closest enemy.
The part that should give you comfort is that there is no effort made to make this a fair fight. It is frequently the case that you will start with two fighters on your right and three fighters on your left and they will all decide to attack you. It is impossible to get out of such a situation unscathed. Very likely, you'll be dead before you know what hit you.
When all fighters are placed, it starts a clock. After 20 or 30 seconds, another fighter will spawn from a random portal. (If you are standing on a portal, the game will not choose that one as a spawning point, so you can prevent archers from spawning by standing on the archer portal.) If you clear the field, another fighter will spawn and the clock will reset.
The important part about this is that through the mid-game there will only ever be one enemy on the field. (And there will *always* be one enemy on the field.) If you know where the new fighter spawned, it is not necessary to check the rest of the field. You have 20 or 30 seconds to take him out before another will spawn. I used to a waste a lot of time looking around for other fighters when there was no possibility that there was going to be one.
From the beginning of the game, you'll see an "Opponents Remaining" counter in the upper-left of the screen. If you're the last man standing when that counts down to zero, you win the championship (200 XP, 250 silvers). Towards the end of the game, the spawning rules change. I call it "The Show." I think it starts when the Opponents Remaining counter hits a certain number, but I've never been able to figure out exactly what it is. I usually have about 18 kills when the show starts. Fighters will start spawning every five seconds or so, and they all seem to go to the center of the arena and attack any fighter that gets near them.
I usually wait the show out standing on the archer portal. A mob of fighters will form at the center of the arena. If you get close to one of them, he'll turn and attack you. But if you just stand at the edge, they'll ignore you. If you watch, you'll see teams begin to form in the chaos. Groups can get as big as seven or eight, and they'll gang up on newcomers. This is a big decision-making period because if the group runs out of other fighters to attack, they will all turn and attack you. If the group is too big, you will lose the championship. So you should watch forming groups and if one starts to get big, go attack them from the rear before they run out of other fighters. Timing is crucial.
The quality of fighters may be Novice, Regular, Veteran, or Champion. And they have offer experience rewards ranging from 4 to 20. The distribution is random is but it is weighted so that later in the game there are more experienced fighters. So, that mob that forms in the show is all champion fighters with a few veterans mixed in.
The Paradox of the Bow: By far the easiest way to win the championship is having a bow, but the weakest way to start the game is having a bow. Your side weapon is a dagger that is just silly. The thing is so short you have to lunge at your target in order to hit with it which means if his swing connects first, you're going to take massive damage. And you're engaged in this silly fight while constantly worried about being attacked from the rear. It is positively disheartening how frequently you start with a bow and end with zero kills. The best way to survive with the bow is to take out a sword and shield guy and pick up his gear. You need to switch to the dagger, pick up the shield, and then pick up the sword. That way, you drop the dagger and not your bow. Make sure you have enough time before you do this. Getting caught and killed in the middle of the operation is a common pitfall.
One thing I just discovered and was amazed to see work a few times is that you can run away. If you have an Athletics of 5, you can outpace anyone else on the field. So if your starting position is going to be quickly overwhelmed, run and don't look back. If you run near some other fighters, they might just attack the guys chasing you. It doesn't always work. Sometimes you get cornered. Sometimes the guys in front of you start attacking you, and you can't get free. But one occasion stands out in my memory: I ran the length of the arena, turned around to see I was still being followed closely by three guys, ran back to my starting point, saw that they had fallen behind, started shooting, and ended up winning the championship.
For a long time, I thought the only way to end with a bow was to start with one. You can take gear from fallen enemies, but archers always switch to the dagger when you get close. I was wrong. You can get bows from archers. There are three ways it can work: 1) Sometimes the archer will move off the archer portal to get a better shot at you. You need him to move quite far away, so you may run to the other side of the arena. If he's about halfway down field, another archer might spawn and start shooting at him. If either archer shoots and kills the other, they will leave their bow for you to take. But if they're too close to each other, they'll switch to daggers and you get nothing. 2) An archer focused on another target may be attacked from both sides by staff-wielders or sword and shield guys. If they attack in quick succession, the archer may not have time to get out his dagger. 3) An archer focused on another target may be one hit killed by a two-handed sword wielder, and sometimes he doesn't have time to get his dagger out. You may be one of the attackers or you may be the other target.
After I saw that it was possible to get bows from archers, I started going to extreme lengths to try to get them. I would leave archers alive even though they were shooting at me and even defend them from other fighters. I kept running to the far side of the arena trying to get them to chase me. But the fact is that it is very rare for you to get a bow from an archer no matter how hard you try, and it is quite common for you to get killed by an archer you're trying to defend. So I don't really try anymore, but I do watch for the right conditions to arise.
Kill stealing: I didn't make this to give general combat advise but rather to give specific advise about the arena, but kill stealing is a situation in the arena that needs attention. Whenever I hit a target and someone else kills that target, I call that "kill stealing." That guy was mine, damn it. Especially at the beginning of an arena game, it is quite common for a guy to be charging you with another guy behind trying to attack him. This a problem and an opportunity. Frequently if you attack the frontrunner, the guy behind him will steal your kill. Alternatively, you can wait until the guy behind attacks and then steal his kill. Aside from having your kill stolen, there are two possible perils: either the guy in front hits you before the guy behind hits him or you kill the frontrunner and the guy behind hits you with the attack that was meant for the kill you stole. In the real world this wouldn't be a problem, but the game mechanics make it a problem. There's no hard and fast rule here, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn't warn you. It's awfully tempting to step in and steal someone's kill, but you might want to think twice about it. You might be giving that guy a free hit on you.
Keep looking for better solutions: Don't just mindlessly keep doing the same thing over and over. If a tactic isn't working, try something else. Many of the things I've mentioned here were not obvious to me when I started playing. It is by thinking about the situation and trying new ideas that we arrive at best practices.
