Illuvium: Arena Ascendant Guide

Ascendant Arena: A Quick Guide

Before you unleash your team in the Arena, take a moment to read this guide. It's designed to give you a competitive edge and enrich your overall experience in the Ascendant Arena.

Select Your Game Mode

Upon entering Illuvium: Arena, you can choose the Ascendant or Survival modes. Note that Leviathan is currently unavailable in this Beta. If you want to practise, the Survival arena offers endless AI opponents. For those ready for PvP action, Ascendant mode offers Ranked, Casual, and Custom Matchplay. In Ranked, your performance is tracked on a leaderboard, while Casual allows for stress-free gameplay. If you want to play with a friend or even host a tournament, Custom Match will give you a unique code so that someone can connect directly.

Team Selection and Strategy

After choosing Ascendant mode, you'll need to select your team. You can create your teams in Teambuilder or use a premade Starter Team. Creating your Team is highly recommended if you want to compete and does not require you to acquire via the Overworld in this beta. 

Assessing Your Opponent

In Ranked or Casual, once you click "Find a Match," you're placed in a queue. Upon finding a match, you can briefly evaluate your opponent’s team. If you choose Custom Match, you can create a Match and share a unique code with your opponent so they can connect directly to you, and then you will move into evaluating your opponent's team. This valuable insight can inform your bidding strategy during the Legendary Augment phase and shape your opening rounds. 

The Legendary Augment Bidding Phase

Legendary Augments offer a game-changing advantage and are exclusive to Ascendant mode. During this phase, you and your opponent bid against each other for these powerful augments. With the impact any of these augments can bring, you should react and change your strategy around which are present. But remember, it's not just about what is good for you; you're also bidding against your opponent. You can keep powerful augments out of your opponent's hands by outbidding them or even tying bids and destroying the augment.

Initiating Battle Rounds

With the bidding phase complete, placing your Illuvials on the board is time. Each round will continue until one player's units are entirely defeated. Your Companion Drone's health serves as your life pool, and the match continues until one drone's health is depleted.

Key Gameplay Elements

Mastery Points: You start with 120, crucial for sending your team out to battle.

Moving Illuvials: Repositioning costs 15% of the Illuvial's total cost, including any Augments.

Recall Mechanics: You can recall an Illuvial for 75% of the total cost, including Augments.

Unit Classes and Affinities: Understanding these can make or break your strategy.

Augments and Armaments: Equip your team carefully; Illuvials can be equipped with Augments, and Rangers can equip powerful Weapons and Suits by dragging and dropping them onto your ranger.

Advanced Strategies: Classes and Affinities

Understanding your team's Class and Affinity synergies can provide a significant advantage. These synergies activate bonuses that can tip the scales in your favour.

Hyper and Omega Abilities

Hyper Abilities: Each Unit has a Dominant Affinity; playing a Unit against opponents whose Dominant counters causes them to gain Hyper over time. Units gain a unique Hyper effect when they reach max Hyper based on their Dominant Class.

Omega Abilities: These are charged via an energy bar and can turn the tide when activated.

Using your Drone

Moving Your Drone: Control + Left-Click at the desired location to move your drone around the game board. Use this feature to interact with your opponent – tease them with emotes or express your feelings about the game's progress.

Using Drone Emotes: Want to show off your drone's emotes? Just left-click on the drone to bring up the emote menu. For now, in Beta 3, we've set a range of emotes, but in the future, you can use emotes that you've earned or bought for your battles.

With this guide, you're not just entering the Ascendant Arena but learning to command it. Good luck, Ranger.