Arena

The Arena is a new game mode added to Heroes Of Hammerwatch with the Pyramid of Prophecy Expansion.

In this mode, you are placed in the centre of a crowded arena, and you are tasked with taking out 7 waves of enemies, which may pop out of the ground, enter from the top or bottom doors, or float in from over the crowd. Sometimes, you will have to fight a boss on the final wave. Each arena has a unique layout and will have some sort of trap you will have to avoid while fighting. After taking out all 7 waves, you are victorious and win the arena skirmish, which will reward you some gold, ore, experience points, and sword tokens if it is your first time clearing that rank of arena.

From time to time during the skirmish, there will be events that occur in the middle. Most often, the game will say “The Altar offers you a powerful boon!” When this happens you can go to the middle and activate the centre circle to receive a temporary buff, similarly to if you found a monolith. There are sometimes other events that will make the fight harder in some way, (examples are darkness or sandstorms) but will increase the crowd’s enjoyment. To disable these events, activate the circle in the centre.

You are fighting for the amusement of the crowd watching, and periodically they will throw bags into the arena. These bags can contain items, healing pickups, potion charges, or even bombs! At the top of the screen you can see people from the crowd, if they are happy they will throw items and other good consumables, if they are angry they will begin to throw bombs. There is also an arrow that will either be green if the crowd is getting happier, or red if the crowd is getting angrier.

Sword Tokens are a new currency earned only in the arena, and you can spend them to upgrade your armour, resistance, attack power, or skill power. The upgrades will always cost 1 sword token each and some gold, starting with 500 and increasing by 500 for each level. There is no limit to how far you can upgrade stats here, however it will eventually become quite costly. The Arena ranks also have no limit to them, as long as you’re able to clear a rank, there will always be another one following it.

As you go up in arena ranks, the enemies will start to scale as they do for NG+ in the Forsaken Tower or Pyramid of Propehcy, but at a slower rate. Every arena adds +0.2 of an NG to the scaling (ex. Rank 7 = NG+ 1.4). To see the exact formulas for enemy health, armour and resistance, and decreases to your armour and resistance, see the New Game Plus page. The attacks will also be modified when you reach a new full level of NG+ scaling (ex. At rank 5, the enemies will begin to use their NG+1 attacks for the first time).