Overview
The best way to learn the ropes is the arena. This guide will help you get going in the arena and help you avoid wasted effort while doing so.
Before your first fight
(This guide written June 15, 2017 for Exanima version 0.6.5.4)
This section covers hiring a manager, how to interact with the world, getting the Pugilist’s Gloves, and recruiting your first fighter.
After you press Arena > New Game from the main menu you’ll be prompted to create your character. Be aware however that character death is permanent in Exanima and this character is the one everthing that this arena session of yours will be tied to. This means if they die you lose all of the work you’ve put in for that arena game. Instead it’s a lot smarter to just regard this character as the manager of your real fighters so that you don’t endager all of your progress.
If one of your fighters gets killed you lose that character and the skills they’ve picked up along the way. However their equipment will return to the general pool and you’ll be able to carry on with another. It’s a setback for sure but nothing like essentially wiping your save.
In any case to start with just create a manager character and gear them up however you think looks best as that’s the only thing that will matter for that character.
Here’s Clem, my manager. The red circled part is where you select a skill to begin learning. I’ve chosen Remise for the manager as the no-risk pugilism matches I sometimes involve them in to get a level up (to wear better looking clothes later on) only really benefit from that skill.
After creation you’ll find your manager standing in a room. Almost all of your interaction here will be clicking one of the three circled objects.
At left is the Roster. This is where you go to Recruit new fighters, hire mercenaries to fight on your side for team matches, and to manage equipment for fighters you’ve hired (and your manager).
Top left is the Shop. The shop generates items mostly randomly, sometimes with better prefixes if you’ve just won a more remarkable contest. The shop generates items fairly slowly. As far as I can tell it generates one new item and gets rid of the oldest one with each fight. Additionally almost every piece of equipment is restricted to certain ranks of fights in the arena so a lot of it will be useless to you. For now it’ll have to be good enough but we’ll soon Hire a merchant who will do a much better job of finding equipment for us to buy.
At right is the Current Matches board. I’ll discuss this more in the next section, Your first fight, but basically it brings up a list of your fighters and which matches they can take so you can arrange for a fight. Before we get to that though let’s do one more quick thing here in the hubworld.
There’s only one hidden thing of note in the hub world, The Pugilist’s Gloves. They’re an easter egg and are the only piece of hand armor you can wear for your first two combat ranks. They also make your hands larger for pugilisim matches which makes landing punches a little easier.
To find them run around in the hub stage and find the fireplace with a basket in the corner.
To get the gloves move the basket circled in red (you have to be close enough to interact with it, just click and drag it to move it once you are). Then in the shadows there will be gloves you can get. To get them press I to open your inventory and drag them into your item box.
Your first fighter will need them more than your manager. To make the gloves available to him run back to the Roster, click it, highlight your manager (should be the only name on there), and click Manage.
Drag the gloves from the character’s Inventory into the general item storage area. Note that in the future if you find equipment you want your manager to wear you go back to this screen, drag the item into the green Inventory box, then open the character’s paper doll by pressing I and putting them on your manager. It’s a little clunky but that’s how it’s done.
You can also sell itmes in a similar fashion. Drag things into the green inventory box (the bottom one doesn’t show up for any other interaction, it’s a hidden inventory box outside of this screen). Then go over to the shopkeeper and sell them. You won’t do this much as you’ll need the lower ranked equipment still on your characters in case there’s a juicy lower ranked match you want to do as their higher level gear won’t be allowed. But again, that’s how it’s done.
Go back to the Roster and click Recruit. This costs one silver which is most of your money right now but your new character will come with gear that’s perfectly good enough to get through the beginning fights. I have a few suggestions for your first fighter.
He should be as tall as possible, have a moderate build, and take Remise as his first skill to begin training. Remise adds an additional attack method. The other skills are fine too (many people like Fend as a first skill) but I personally think Remise is much more useful than any of the others, especially at low tier matches.
By far the best starting weapon is the Metal Bar. You can only pick one of the starting options and this one has good range, hits very hard, often knocks opponents down leading to a free hit and is the easiest weapon to learn on. The quarterstaff is a little faster but hits like a feather. The one handed options are almost pointless being that sheilds aren’t allowed in the first arena rank matches.
Give him a set of clothes, too. They don’t add much armor but they do add some.
Your first fight
This section covers a little more setup, match types, and what to do if you’re having a lot of trouble winning fights in the arena.
Let’s talk about the Current Matches board.
The first thing to do is to make sure it isn’t your manager that’s going to step into the fight which will be the default the first time you open this screen. Drag your fighter into the right box at bottom.
My fighter, Gob, is currently at Inept rank. This means he can participate in any fight at Inept rank or lower, but Inept is the lowest rank. Note that Rank is the third column, not the second one, and actually there are a lot of choices for our first fight. All of the Pugilism matches are always at Inept rank and sometimes higher level fighters will organize fights at the Inept level, which means they agree to use only low level equipment, but will still employ their better skills and, for the computer, much better AI. Note that both of the Master tier fights have actually been set up this way on this screen.
There are a few different sorts of fights you can do. Your options are randomly generated with each match and you can mostly tell what they’re going to be like from the Current Matches screen but here are all the options.
There are four types of fights you’ll do the most of.
- Duel – Your most basic fight. One v. one. Quick to do at least.
- Fray – The safest matches. This is six people in the ring at once, last man standing wins. The thing is though that you can step back and the computer will go after whoever is closest. By staying away for most of the fight all you have to do is finish off one person at the end and he’ll likely be very weakened from all of his fights. Additionally you can run over to a fallen enemy, hit Tab to go into interact mode and I to open you inventory, then double click the fallen foe and quickly put on their armor to gear up temporairly.
- Elimination – These are difficult fights, it’s one v. one but you have to win six or so matches to come out ahead. The armor looting trick still works. The payouts are very good though.
- Challenge – These matches don’t have level or equipment restrictions. You can enter a Challenge match vs. a Master level fighter but he’s going to come at you with his best equipment and whatever AI his Tier is. If you’re confident in your skills you can sometimes make a faster buck than you otherwise would in these.
And four other types you’ll only do rarely.
- Pugilism – Boxing matches. These are always open to any character and you can’t take fatal damage in them. The general strategy is to backstep a punch and then come foreward with your own, then reset.
- Doubles – 2 v 2. The problem is that you must hire a mercanry to fight by your side to enter these. Mercenaries can be Hired in the Roster but because you have access to all of their gear they’re very expensive to prevent exploits (but long run this is good because it also allows you to arm them as you wish once you have the funds). Save these for way later when money isn’t such an issue.
- Skirmish – 3 v 3, as for Doubles.
- The Beast – Three of you vs one large, heavy hitting ogre. He is armored and carries better weapons at higher tiers. The main obstacle here is getting two mercenaries first. Additionally the lowest risk beast to fight is actually the Master level one as by that time you’ll be armored so well there’s only a tiny chance he’ll kill your character outright. In any case it’ll be a long time until you have the funds to afford the mercenaires you need to even enter these matches. When you do fight The Beast I suggest never fighting the Novice beast becasue at that level you can’t get enough head armor to be safe. When you fight him at Adept and higher always have on a good quality arming cap, coif, and helm — anything less and you run an unacceptable risk of eating a big headshot and dying. With three layers on you might lose but there’s basically a negligible chance of dying. It’s well worth going light on your chest armor to allow for this.
I mostly do Fray or Elimination matches with the others thrown in for spice. In any case make sure your fighter is the one who will be fighting and pick whatever type of match strikes your fancy, and go ahead and go at it!
Good luck!
If you haven’t learned how to fight in Exanima yet it’s likely you found even controlling your guy difficult. There’s a better place than Arena to learn that in, though, since every match costs you money to enter. Fortunatly I’ve already written a guide for the best way to learn how to fight in this game, which you can find here:
[link]Arena life
This section covers healing up, avoiding unnesscary death, and what equipment to look for right at the start.
Here’s Gob a few matches through an Elimination match. I’ve picked up some armor and a different weapon (although I prefer the Metal Bar to it overall).
At the bottom of the screen is Gob’s health. The yellow portion is what’s left — if I’d lost that I would have been KO’d. The transparent part is damage I took during the fight. The red part is injury damage.
You get injury damage by taking big hits or when edged or sharp weapons get through your armor. Injury damage heals very slowly. When you enter a match you can only have as much yellow HP as up to your injuries, so if you enter a fresh match your old injuries will make you a much softer target for your foe. Addtionally the more you are injured the slower it heals — if your main fighter takes a lot of injury damage he’s going to be almost unusuable in fights for a long time.
Because your armor is very bad early in your arena career you’ll need a way to pass time between a given fighter’s fights so that they have time to heal up their injuries. The only way time passes is if fights are going on. In practice this means you need a second recruit to rotate between with your regular guy to keep everyone from having to fight too injured.
Here I’ve recruited a second fighter, Goob, who is now filling in for injured Gob. He’s got the same build and will gear up in the same way. Switching gear between fighters is a lot of hassle so he’ll also eventually get purchased a whole second set of mostly the same equipment. It’s worth it so go ahead and get as second fighter early on, ahead of trying to get gear from the shop. Two is enough if you’re careful.
If your character gets his bar filled up with injury damage he dies. There’s no healing this, the character will disappear from your roster and his equipment will be put back into the general pool but the XP and skills he’s earned are gone.
The way you usually get killed is to enter a match your character is newly able to fight in with old gear when he already has signifigant injuries. The weapons in the next rank up do more damage and you don’t have the gear to cover it which means a lot more red damage than usual. Your head is especially vulnerable as overhand shots do more damage and early on you don’t have any kind of helmet or just a little cap at best. Most character deaths are from entering a fight with a half bar of injury damage, stepping in to land a blow, and taking a big overhand shot in the head on your way in.
Having any kind of head covering at all goes a long way to preventing this. You also have to be careful if you have acquired a lot of injury damage and see an opponent with a strong thrusting weapon, like a dagger. You can hit Escape and forfeit a match if you need to — you’ll lose a lot less progress doing that than getting one of your characters mulched.
In any case buy weapons first, but buy helmets second!
Here are a few good things to look for early on in the shop.
The weapon is really rare — it’s the iron shod Quarterstaff and it hits as well as the Metal Bar but as fast as the starting junky quarterstaff. Note the little iron sheafs near the tips — you can also check the description to see that it’s “iron shod.” Other things you might want to try out are the Cudgel (a wooden two handed hammer) or the Hook (a polearm you can see me using at the top of this section).
You also want a coat and a jacket. There are three layers of chest armor and along with your cloth shirt the coat and jacket are the other two. There are other options but the two in the purchase area happen to be pretty good ones. A pair of boots and a belt would round things out as well but for one shop this is a fantastic haul!
If you click something you can see the stats on it before you purchase it. Pay close attention to the Coverage stat on armor as armor does you no good in Exanima if your opponent hits a part of your body the armor isn’t on. Also watch out for what ranks the gear is allowed in — the shop stocks stuff from every rank and you could waste a lot of money on something you won’t be able to use for a long time if you aren’t careful. If you click a stat window while its open it’ll stay fixed — you can open multiple windows this way to compare pieces of gear.
To equip your purchases go to the Roster, highlight the character you want to equip the item on, and click Manage. The character management screen will come up — go through the tabs at right until you see the thing you want to equip.
I’m putting my new stuff on Goob here, my second recruit, as Gob is pretty banged up. I’ve put the gloves on that I forgot about earlier and the armor I just purchsed, when I drag the iron shod Quarterstaff onto the paperdoll he’ll equip it.
Pay careful mind to the Rank tabs at top left! You need to manually select a set of gear for every rank you are fighting in or else your character will enter the match buck naked. This is easily forgotten when you move up a rank, so maybe slide that tab over to Aspirant and equip him at least with his old Inept gear so this doesn’t happen when you go to move up. Just a reminder from earlier however is that taking big headshots is a good way to get your character dead and often at a new level there is a new helmet available. Conisder shopping for the improved hemlet before shoving someone into the meat grinder, especially when you go to enter Novice level where weapons start getting reliable deadly if they aren’t countered with enough armor — the arming cap is way better than the leather cap and well worth a delay.
Progressing
This section covers how to improve your shopping options, ranking up and choosing skills, and gives some advice about improving your own abilities in the game.
The shop restocks incredibly slowly and it’s especially hard to find the weapons you want by just waiting around for them to show up. We can fix this by hiring a merchant.
Check in betwen matches in the Hire menu on the Roster. In addition to Combatants there is occasionally a Merchant you can hire — cycle though the availalbe hires to check for one. They cost around 6 silver to hire initially, the exact amount varies based on the clothes they have. There’s also a one copper maintnece fee for them which is totally negligible, even early on.
After you purchase a merchant he’ll be standing in the hub world. You can change their clothes by going to the Roster and Managing them, but most of your interactions with the merchant can be done just by clicking on him in the hub.
By going through the toggles you can choose which items your merchant will find and stock after each match, one at a time, but at least from the pool you’re interested in instead of randomly from all pools as in the shop. I’d suggest picking Inept > Weapons and picking up the iron shod Quarterstaffs you need if you haven’t found them yet, then Aspirant > Weapons to find a couple of Bills, and then Aspirant > Clothes and Armor to find some leather caps to cover heads with. After a few runs through some matches this is what my merchant had in stock.
All the weapons I’ve been looking for (plus a few leftovers from the inital random stock)!
Sometimes when you look at the Roster you’ll notice a + next to one of your fighter’s name. This means they’ve learned a new skill (the one you told them to train earlier) and are ready to be told which skill to train next. Skills train during fights.
Highlight the character and click Manage. On the bottom right is a button labeled Skills that toggles the item display on the right to the Skills display.
Click any of the plusses to get popups for the skills to add on. Note that only Close Combat, Armor, and Shields actually have skills associated with them as of this build but I’m sure the others will get filled in eventually. For every two skills you gain you will rank up and be able to enter more challengingly ranked matches.
Here’s the skills and my opinions of them.
Close Combat
- Remise – **** – Lets you chain a first swing into a second. This lets you get aggressive opponents off of you by swinging twice while moving foreward, gives you easy shots at an opponent’s back with clever movement, etc. It’s a great option to have and I almost always take it first apart from for thrusting oriented characters.
- Feint – ** – You can feint normally but this lets you go into an attack after a feint much faster. The computer reacts to feints but I rarely use them. Maybe I need to experiment more?
- Fend– *** – Allows you to abandon an attack in order to defend. More important the shorter the reach of your weapon. A good pick.
- Riposte – * – Allows you to swing again sooner after blocking. You have to be using a very fast weapon vs a very slow weapon for this to matter, blocking then attacking on its own isn’t enough to get a hit in, you still have to employ your usual tactics.
- Dual Wield – ? – You can’t pick this one out of the gate. I haven’t experimented with it, computer opponents can attack very quickly when using it so it’s interesting.
Armor
- Manoeuvering in Armour – * – There are three ranks. These skills are great in Story mode but hard to notice in the Arena. After a certain amount of encumbrance instead of just moving slower you begin to swing your weapons very slowly too — if this happens to you these skills will make a very noticeable difference.
- Deflection – *** – Allows you to sometimes take a shot to an armored area instead of an unarmored one. Taking hits to unarmored areas is pretty bad so this is a skill I like to take.
- Security – *** – Lets you continue with your attack when you get clipped in battle. Won’t let you power through heavy blows. Worth having, but of course it’s better to not take the hits to begin with.
Shield
- Counter – * – Just as for riposte in the Close Combat section this doesn’t make you fast enough to hit after blocking on its own. But you’ll probably take it to move on to other shield skills.
- Persist – *** – Lets you carry through with an attack in progress if your shield takes a shot in the interim. If you’re using a shield this is an obvious get.
- Synchrony – *** – Lets you initiate an attack while taking a shot on your shield. Another obvious choice if using a shield.
- Endure – ** – Shields have an associated stamina bar and this causes you to lose less stamina on taking shots to your shield. If you have no stamina you take damage when they hit your shield almost as though they’ve hit your arm. This makes a difference vs the fast swinging aggressive opponents later on but if you’re aggressive enough yourself that will help give your shield arm a rest.
- Mobility – * – Lets you move better while using a big shield. If you have nothing else to take go ahead. Pretty useful in story mode, not so good in Arena. If you hit a certain level of encumbrance you begin to swing you weapon very slowly as well and if that happens you should much more strongly consider this.
As you play the game you’ll soon get into a rut with your preferred attack pattern. For most people this involves stepping in and out of range and clipping foes with well timed shots. But that’s not the only way to get things done.
Learning how to use thrusts, overhands and backhands are all well worth it. Learning how to work around a foe in a circle instead of back and forth in a linear way can lead to you cutting down opponents in record time as it makes for so many more openings. Try one handed weapons, thrusting weapons, everything. It’ll make you a much more effective fighter and it’s a lot of the fun of the arena. Playing around with all the combat options you have is a large part of what makes the arena fun and most of the time the trickier a move is to learn the more devastating it is to your opponents.
Just as I suggest having two main fighters with skills oriented toward two handed fighting to swap between when playing that way in the Arena I also suggest having two dedicated shield users to swap between when you want to start learning how to fight that way as well. I suggest leaving them tall to start but short characters are actually interesting here because a shield covers a lot more of their body. By the time your two handed fighters have moved up the two silver to recruit two new fighters will be nothing.
On the flip side, a major issues for most players is learning how to defeat enemies using shields. This is because your default attack launches pretty much straight at their most protected angle. The key to getting past it is experimentation, but if you need some help I’ve also written a guide on how to beat opponents using shields.
[link]Weapons and armor
This section has some brief reference info on equipment for the arena.
There are four types of combatants I’ve tried out in the arena. Through experimentation I’ve established some preferences for weapons for each type. Because I’d previously compiled this stuff into a document I’m just going to present the info as a couple of big images. Click the images below to blow them up to a readable size, or the following imgur link if you wanted the whole image as one:
When picking one weapon over another I generally prefer reach over damage (so long as the damage isn’t dismissable) and damage over any other factor. Slow weapons aren’t so bad in Exanima. Of course this depends a lot on your fighting style, so feel free to disagree.
When you’re new to the game it’s hard to keep track of which armor pieces go into which slots, especially since there are three layers for the chest, legs and head, etc. As above I had already made a document about this to help keep things straight. As before click to enlarge the image if you wish, or use the imgur link:
(s) is the skin layer, (m) is the middle layer, (o) is the outer layer.
Steam user Hortie compiled a ton of images of equipment and made his suggestions about equipment for the arena. I do some things differently and you will too but if you’re looking for a place to start it’s a good place to go. There are a few very minor changes to some of the equipment from what’s in his guide but nothing that makes it out of date.
[link]
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Rating it makes it more visible to others and encourages me to keep it updated. Thanks for reading!