The Arena
The one place in the world built for souls to fight each other. The Arena is an 80x80 zone out on the far frontier, reached only from the Shore and the Ashfell.
Read the next two sections carefully before you ride in heavy. The Arena has two different kinds of fight, and they cost you very different things.
Getting there
The Arena hangs off two of the wild lands. Walk to the far corner of the Shore or the Ashfell and a gate drops you in. There is no door from the Crossroads: the wilds are the only way in. You arrive in the calm apron by the south gate, where a challenge board waits.
Three rings
The zone is three regions, one inside the next.
- The Pit. A walled fight floor dead in the middle, thirty tiles by twenty two. It is where wager duels are fought and settled, and nowhere else.
- The Safe Apron. A calm ring six tiles deep wrapped around the pit. Catch your breath, read the board, line up your next fight.
- The PvP Biome. Everything else in the 80x80, the wastes between the border and the apron. Out here anyone can strike anyone, no match and no warning.
The apron is measured from the pit outward, so it swallows the pit. Read that twice, because it is the opposite of what most people assume: the pit itself is not open ground. Nobody can jump you standing in it, and nobody can jump you walking up to the wager board. The only ground in this zone where a stranger can put you down is the outer biome, past the apron's edge.
It is one of two open PvP grounds in the world. The other is the whole of Knacker's Pass except its summit.
Two ways to fight
Wager duels. Walk up to a wager board, one south of the pit and one north, and press E. Post a challenge with a stake, or accept one already resting. Both fighters put up the same stake, both are teleported into the pit, and a 3 second countdown starts. It is best of three: win a round by knocking your opponent out or forcing them out of the pit, and the first to two rounds takes the whole pot. The house takes nothing, no vig and no burn. Step out of the pit and you get 3 seconds to get back in before the round is forfeit. Post a challenge nobody accepts and it refunds you after 10 minutes.
Stakes come in four tiers, the same shape as the races:
| Stake | League | Ranked |
|---|---|---|
| free | practice | no |
| 1,000 gloo | 1K | yes |
| 10,000 gloo | 10K | yes |
| 1,000,000 gloo | 1M | yes |
A free duel escrows nothing, pays nothing and never touches your record. The paid tiers count, and rank you on the arena board after 5 decided duels.
Open fights. No stake, no board, no match. Anyone out in the outer biome can strike anyone else out there, with no warning. Step back inside the apron, or into the pit, and it stops at once.
What a knockout costs
Two different answers, and the difference is everything.
In a wager duel, you risk only the stake. A duel knockout spills no husk and no items, and never touches your death count. Lose and you lose the gloo you put up, nothing more. Ride in as heavy as you like.
In an open fight, going down drops your bag. A knockout out in the outer biome spills your entire trough and the gear you were wearing at the spot you fell, and that pile is unlocked from the first second: whoever put you down can take it, and so can anyone else who walks up. There is no owner lock out here.
What an open knockout does not cost you is your build. There is no husk, your stat points stay spent, your death count does not move, and you do not wake up across the world. You are healed, set back on your feet at the zone spawn with a moment of protection, and you can walk straight back out. It is deliberately cheaper than dying to a boar, and it still costs you everything you were carrying.
So: the pit, the apron and a wager duel are all safe. Only the outer biome is not. Stash what you cannot afford to hand a stranger before you walk out there.
The fighting is the same
The Arena uses the exact combat you learned in the wild: strike, charge, kick, dodge the crouch, answer with a counter, every move on the one stamina bar. No new controls, and the same dodge and counter still win fights. The only difference is that you are hitting another player, and what it costs to lose.
One consequence follows you around: a PvP hit locks your teleports for 5 minutes. Deal one or take one, in a duel or in the open, and recall, waystones, shards and GPS all refuse until the clock runs out, and every further hit restarts it. Losing a fight means walking away from it. Two ends short of the clock: dying clears your own lock, and a Lil Knacker kill clears it for everyone his fight touched, damage dealt or taken. A fresh hit after either re-arms the full 5 minutes, as always.
The gather nodes
The outer biome is not only a killing ground. It keeps its own gather nodes: scrap and hide. (It has bone digs too, but they are dormant everywhere in the world now that bone comes off kills instead.) No creatures roam the Arena at all, the danger out there is entirely other players. The nodes are the bait that pulls souls off the safe apron and onto open ground.