The Echo Arena
The fight you choose. Stake gold, pick an opponent off the board, and climb a ladder that resets every Monday. Nothing outside the arena is ever at risk.
Everything on the PvP page describes fights you did not ask for. The Echo Arena is the opposite. You choose to walk in, you choose your opponent, and nothing out in the world changes when you lose.
What you fight is an Echo: a copy of another player's fighter, wearing exactly what they wear. The real player does not need to be online, and neither of you can lose anything you own.
Getting in
The arena opens the moment you conquer Duskfall Ruins, the same clear that opens the second zone. Once open, it never closes again.
Guest accounts can read the ladder but cannot fight in it. Claiming the account opens the gates.
A fight costs a ticket and a stake
Tickets are the meter
on how often anyone can fight. You hold at most 5, a new one arrives
every 2 hours, and they cannot be bought with anything. Everyone
regains them at the same speed, however rich they are.
The stake is gold, shown on the
fight before you commit. It rises as you push deeper into the campaign, so it stays in
step with what you earn there.
Losing costs the stake, and your arena rating falls. Nothing else moves: no health is lost, your gear is untouched, and your reputation out in the world never hears about it.
The Challenge Board
The board offers 3 opponents at a time, drawn to sit near your rating and your gear. You can pay gold to sweep the board and draw a fresh one, and each sweep in a day costs more than the last.
One poster on every
board carries the Marked seal, placed at random. Beating a Marked opponent pays
double Glory. Some days the seal sits on the easy fight, some days on the frightening
one.
If someone beats the Echo you left behind, they can appear on your board as a revenge fight. Beating them pays a quarter more.
Nobody holds the controls
An arena fight is the same blow-by-blow combat as everywhere else, but neither side can step in. No potions are drunk, and Foresight never appears. What the two fighters are wearing decides the whole thing.
Glory
Glory is what the ladder
counts, and it only ever goes up. A win starts from 100 and grows or
shrinks from there.
Your arena rating is the other number that moves, and it goes both ways. It climbs when you win and falls when you lose, further when the result was a surprise. Rating decides who you are matched against and which division you race in. Glory decides where you finish.
- The opponent. An even fight pays the full amount. Beating someone rated above you pays up to 2 times as much. Beating someone far beneath you pays a fraction of it, so farming the helpless pays worst.
- Your streak. 2 wins in a row pay 1.2 times as much, 3 pay 1.5 times, 5 or more pay 2 times. One loss resets it.
- The Marked seal doubles the total.
- Revenge adds a quarter.
A loss still pays 10 Glory. Every fight moves your Glory forward, however it went, even while a bad night is costing you rating.
Your Echo fights while you are away
The Echo you leave behind stands on other players' boards, and those are real fights for you too. Each one it holds pays you 5 Glory, and every defence moves your arena rating, held or not.
Whatever happened while you were gone is waiting in your Journal when you return.
The week
The ladder runs Monday to Monday. Your Glory races everyone in your division, a band of players whose ratings sit near each other. The people you are ranked against are the people you can actually be drawn against.
At the reset the week pays out in PvP Tokens. Winning a division pays up to 100, the amounts step down through the table, and anyone who earned any Glory at all receives 3. Higher divisions pay more for the same finishing place. Then every total returns to nothing and the race starts again.
Each win also pays
1 token on the spot, exactly as a win out in the world does. Tokens
buy appearance at the Gravekeeper and nothing else.
On a quiet ladder you will see bots filling out the ranks so there is always someone to fight. A paying place only ever goes to a person.
What the arena never pays
Gear. Nothing echoes here, no item is ever copied, and no experience is earned. The arena keeps its own rating, starting at 1000, and it never touches your reputation outside. You walk out exactly as you walked in, lighter by the stake and richer by some Glory.