Arena Modes

Arena modes are authorable match rulesets built on top of instancing. You mark a map as an arena, answer a short wizard in plain language, place what the mode needs by clicking the map, and players get a real match with a scoreboard and prizes.

Matches are fully instanced: nothing you earn inside carries back to the persistent world except the rewards you authored. No gear loss, no farmable world XP or loot.

The Seven Modes

Authoring

The arena wizard is written for people who have never built a game mode:

1. Pick the mode — plain-language descriptions, not jargon 2. Answer the questions the mode asks — team count, score target, time limit, wave count, ring timing 3. Place what the mode needs by clicking the map — team spawns, flag stands, capture zones, monster gates, lanes, towers, the core 4. Work the readiness checklist — it tells you exactly what's still missing before the arena can go live 5. Set the prizes — XP, items, silver or gold, for winners and for participation

Every reference is picked by name from your authored content — never typed as an id. "Ways to win" read as sentences you can combine with and / or, so "first to 30 kills or highest score after 10 minutes" is something you assemble, not script. Placed arena markers and lane polylines draw directly on the editor map.

What towers and cores look like

Towers, barracks and cores are all the same thing under the hood — a structure — and a structure is spawned as a stationary monster. That's what makes it targetable and destructible, so its look comes from the monster you point it at:

Graphic and Tint are what let a single authored tower monster serve every team — tint it per team instead of cloning the monster definition. Combat is untouched either way: it's still the same monster, so targeting, damage, death and the "destroying it wins" condition all behave identically.

The editor's on-map markers stay schematic (team-tinted markers), so you'll see the real tower art in a playtest rather than in the editor.

Match flow

• Queue or walk in — the arena browser panel, an authored portal, an NPC, or an event command
• Warmup lobby — teams spawn behind a barrier, rosters show on the scoreboard, and a countdown runs
• Gear — players bring their own, or an authored loadout kit equips everyone identically for fair play
• Practice bots — fill empty slots with player-like NPCs that wear real equipment, score on the board, and count toward win conditions, so a solo creator can still test a real match

Starting a match short-handed

A team arena normally wants two full teams before the matchmaker will form anything — with the default team size of 4 that's 8 players, which is why a solo creator used to wait forever with nothing happening.

Pick a Practice bots count in the Instances panel before you hit Enter or Join Queue and the match starts with just you: the bots you asked for count toward the roster, so one real player is enough. The stepper reads (per team) for team modes and (total) for free-for-all, Battle Royale and Horde.

You don't have to author anything for this — a bot count chosen here works even on an arena where you never enabled bots, and it overrides the authored per-team count when you did. The bots still take their look, level and gear from the arena's authored bot settings when those exist.

Leave it at 0 to queue normally and wait for real players.

Practice matches don't pay out

A match that pays prizes has to be contested by real people, or an arena you can start alone against bots becomes an unlimited source of whatever you authored as rewards. So no prizes are granted when:

• any practice bots took part, or
• no other real player was there

The victory screen says which of the two applied, so a practice run reads as a practice run rather than as a bug. Scores, placements and the scoreboard all still work normally — it's only the payout that's withheld.

Horde is the exception. A bot-free Horde run pays out solo, because Horde is authored co-op content that's meant to be beatable alone. Add bots to a Horde run and it stops paying, like any other practice match.

One Map, Several Modes

The same map can back more than one mode. Open ⚔ Arena on the map, choose + Add another mode, and answer the wizard again. Each mode keeps its own rules, prizes and win conditions.

What they share is the map and the markers on it. That helps in one direction: the four spawn points you placed for Free-for-All already count toward Team Deathmatch. And it stays clean in the other: each marker is only live in the mode it belongs to. A Siege Core placed on the map is scenery during a deathmatch, a flag stand does nothing in Battle Royale, and a capture zone earns no points outside Control. Modes never bleed into each other — only the geometry is shared.

Match Rules: what players may bring

The simplest way to make a fair fight, and it touches nobody's character: cap the gear, and the match balances itself.

A match rule set says what a player may bring in — gear, potions, abilities, pets and mounts. It is authored once under Database → Match Rules and then pointed at from any number of arenas, so "Even Footing" can govern every ranked map you run.

Pick one in the arena wizard under Match rules. It applies whatever else the arena does — you do not have to use "Start with nothing" to get a fair match.

Start with the ceilings

Ticking five hundred items by hand is nobody's idea of a good time, so each section leads with limits that do most of the work:

Gear and Consumables each get their own set. Capping consumables is usually the first thing worth doing — a deep bag of heals is a second health bar. Abilities take lists only, and pets and mounts are simple on/off.

What happens to something not allowed

Players are always told by name what a rule set took and why — "Held at the door until the match ends: Steel Sword (above the tier 5 limit)". Nothing is ever taken silently.

The rules keep applying inside the match too: a banned sword cannot be pulled out of a bag and equipped, and the match shop will not sell you something the rules forbid.

Gotchas

• A rule set with nothing set restricts nothing. The editor warns you when you save one that would have no effect.
• Rule sets are content — they only reach a live server on publish, like items and abilities.
• Deleting a rule set an arena uses does not break the arena; it falls back to no restrictions. The list shows how many arenas use each one before you delete.
• Start with nothing already takes everything, so the Match rules picker is hidden for those arenas — there is nothing left for it to hold.

Start With Nothing: the Match Economy

Set Gear to Start with nothing in the wizard and the match becomes a closed world, the way a MOBA or a battle royale works:

• Players' real equipment and their bags are stashed at the door and restored — exactly as they were — when they leave. Bare means bare: no potion stash, and no re-arming from your own pack.
• Match gold is the only currency inside. Set the starting gold, the gold per creep kill (the farm loop), and the gold per player kill (the bounty). It is never real silver, and it vanishes with the match.
• The shop rows sell items and spells for match gold. Players open it with N (or the gold button, top right). Everything bought — and everything looted — evaporates at the exit teleport. Nothing a match grants ever reaches the world outside; prizes remain the only thing a match pays out.

Siege: the Lane War

Siege plays like the classic lane-pushing games. Towers, lanes and waves are all yours to author:

• Towers are structures with a monster body — they attack enemies in range and never their own side. Kill order comes from Protected by (an inner tower is invulnerable until its outer one falls).
• Lanes are drawn point by point: select a creep spawner, press Draw lane on its card, and click the route out on the map — each click adds the next waypoint, Esc finishes. The lane renders as a line while you draw, and the card lists the points for reordering or removal. Waves march the path, fight the enemy's creeps, players and towers on the way, and push the nearest structure they're allowed to hurt at the end. A spawner with no lane is a monster gate instead — its monsters hunt players like a horde wave, and the checklist warns you about it on a Siege map.
• Towers telegraph: their attack radius is drawn on the ground when you're near — red for enemy towers (hot when you're inside it), faint blue for your own — and a warning flashes the moment a tower switches its fire to you.
• Wave composition over time: give wave rows a from wave number and the lane switches to the stronger set when that wave arrives — "3 melee + 1 ranged, and from wave 20 the super versions."
• Killing the spawner's barracks structure stops that lane's waves, and destroying the enemy Core ends the match.

Battle Royale: Loot Up or Die

Set Gear to Start with nothing, place loot area markers, and the loop is complete: drop in bare, loot, survive the circle.

• Each loot area names a treasure rule (the same system as world treasure chests), a chest count, and a window — match start chests appear when the fight begins; ring phase areas drop fresh chests each time the circle starts closing.
• The safe circle is drawn on the ground — amber while it holds, hot orange while it closes. Outside it you take damage that pierces shields.
• Everything looted disappears when the match ends. Only authored prizes leave with the winner.

Publishing Your Arena

An arena is not playable until it is published. Press Save arena, then publish the project as you would for any other content — the arena's rules travel with the map.

Until you do, players open Dungeons & Arenas and see "No dungeons or arenas are available yet", and queueing answers "That content is not available in the queue." Both mean the server has not been handed the arena yet.

> Gotcha: the Siege checklist counts any structure, so it turns green on two Towers — but "Destroy the enemy Core" needs a structure whose Role is Core, one per team. If the checklist is complete and the arena still refuses to start, check the Role on your structures.

> Gotcha: every monster gate and creep spawner needs a monster party, and every structure needs a monster to define how it looks and fights. Because markers are shared by the whole map, one unset spawner blocks all the modes on it — including modes that never use it.

In Game

Players get a live score bar, objective callouts, a kill feed, a Tab scoreboard, and a victory screen listing exactly what they earned. All of it follows your HUD theme.

> Licensing: building arenas requires a Studio or Enterprise license. Viewing arena content stays open on every tier (so existing arenas remain visible after a downgrade), and playing in one never requires a license of your own.

> Still landing: mid-match bot respawns and the free-build layer for Battle Royale and Horde. Also, only structures currently have an in-game graphic — flag stands, capture zones, team spawns, monster gates and lane waypoints are gameplay markers that players don't see directly (you'd dress those spots with ordinary map objects for now).