Frost Ring Arena Overview

In this article I'm going to give a brief overview of the Frost Ring Arena.  This will serve as reference for future articles, including one later this week regarding my general impressions from the Server Test this past weekend.  If you didn't get the chance to participate in the Test Server, you can check out some of the cards and equipment that were spoiled from the Arena at the following links:

Hex TCG Browser PVE Cards
King Gabriel's Equipment List

The Frost Ring Arena is the first piece of PvE content that will be available in Hex.  The patch that implements the Arena will also feature the ability to build decks specifically for PvE using cards like Lightning Elemental or Death Cap, as well as the ability to use equipment in conjunction with your cards.  During the Test Server Weekend (February 5th-7th), players in the Beta were able to try out the Frost Ring Arena at its current state of development.

Deck Construction

Deck Construction for the Arena is similar to that for PvP, with two major differences.  The first is that in addition to cards from Shards of Fate and Shattered Destiny, players will be able to add PvE exclusive cards that cannot be opened from boosters.  These cards can be obtained by completing battles in the Arena, spinning the Wheels of Fate, and opening chests.  The upper-left corner of a PvE card will have a distinct filigree pattern along the card name and resource cost.  (See Shiitake Chef and Honeycap below for a comparison)

The second major change in deck construction is that players will be able to equip items to their champion.  Each champion has six slots for items: Head, Chest, Hands, Feet, Weapon, and Trinket.  Every piece of equipment in the game fits into one of these slots, and provides a bonus to a specific card.  In the example below, you could equip the Starfire Headdress to your champion to give all Starfire Totemist cards in your deck Lifedrain.

This presents an added wrinkle to deck construction, since you could have several cards in your deck that would benefit from different pieces of equipment, but you can only equip one of each type.  So if you wanted to use another piece of "Head" equipment, you wouldn't be able to use the Starfire Headdress.  Most cards have between one and three pieces of equipment associated with them, so utilizing equipment can allow you to create one or two really powerful cards or spread out the buffs among multiple cards in your deck.  Even cards that aren't very powerful in PvP might have equipment that completely changes their power level in PvE.

Arena Deck Construction will still utilize the 25 PvP champions that are available in PvP, like Lady Elizabeth, Kishimoto, or Running Deer.  Later dungeons will require players to create their own characters with a specific race and class like traditional MMOs.  Players are not allowed to change their deck during the Frost Arena, and as matches are single games there is no Reserves or Sideboard option.  Mercenaries will be implemented into the Frost Ring Arena sometime after launch.  Mercenaries are similar to champions, but can only participate in one or two matches throughout the course of a dungeon--you can "tag them in" when you are facing an opponent you don't feel your main deck can defeat.

Frost Ring Arena

Once you have your deck you can access the Frost Ring Arena on the main page.  After an introduction from Hogarth, the Keeper of the Frost Ring, you will get to play through the Arena, which is broken down to twenty matches divided into four tiers.  Each tier contains four Regular Battles with one Boss Battle at the end.  During the First Tier, Hogarth will start your first four opponents at 15 Health to ease you into the experience.  Each Tier afterwards will have them starting at 20.

One of several potential champions you
could face in regular Frost Ring battles.

The opponents for Regular Battles are drawn from a general pool at random, many of which represent in game cards like Wild Root Dancer, Dragon Guard Stalwart, and Zodiac Shaman.  Each opposing champion has a Charge Power similar to PvP champions, and a Passive Power which provides a benefit strategically tied to their deck.  Some of these Passive Powers trigger once at the beginning of the game, such as that of Wild Root Dancer, which allows both players to select a Troop in their deck and create four additional copies of it to shuffle in.  Others are effective throughout the entire fight, such as that of Zodiac Shaman which makes it so players cannot play cards during opponents turns.  Take that Countermagic!

Boss Champions are based on Unqiue characters in Hex like Eurig the Robomancer and Zoltog.  Each has an Active and Passive Power similar to standard opponents, but are often much more powerful.  Zoltog's Passive, for example creates a Savage Raider whenever an Orc troop he controls damages you (thankfully, this ability is only active when he has two blood and two ruby threshold).  All Boss Champions start at 25 Health (first tier boss only starts at 20), meaning you'll have to do a little more damage to bring them down.  Additionally, Boss Champions have their own Equipment attached to them which will affect some of the cards in their deck.

Challenges

Once per tier Hogarth will present a challenge to you during one of your regular matches, which is a side-condition you have the option to try to accomplish during the match.  You won't receive a penalty if you fail the Challenge, but if you manage to pass you will receive a bonus during the Boss Battle of that tier. These bonus vary, through most of them take affect at the start of the game, such as beginning with a free Resource or Arena Brawler in play.  Here's a few challenges I ran into to give you an idea of what to expect:

Kismet's Luck Challenge: Hogarth plays Kismet's Reverie at the start of the match.  You complete this challenge simply by winning.

Ivory Pawn Challenge:  Hogarth gives you a free Ivory Pawn at the start of the match.  You complete this challenge by winning the game while above 30 life.

Mastery of Time Challenge:  Hogarth wants you to finish the match quickly and plays Mastery of Time on you.  You complete this challenge by winning the game before your extra turn ends?

Loot

One of several prize cards
available from prize chests.

Every Victory against a standard opponent will net you gold.  Defeating a Boss will grant you gold and a prize chest, which is either a PvE card or Equipment.  Additional prize chests are awarded for a Perfect Tier Bonus (completing a tier without a defeat).  Though these amounts are not set in stone, the total amount of gold players received for a full run through the Arena was around 16,000 gold, near the amount you receive for finishing second in a Booster Draft.

You are allowed three Defeats in the Arena before you are eliminated.  Defeats against a standard opponent are marked against you and you progress past them, but do not collect gold for lost the match.  Defeats against a boss are marked against you, but you cannot progress until you defeat them.  You may withdraw from the Arena and take your winnings with you at any time.  You can also save your progress in the Arena, picking up where you left off later on, however you are not awarded any gold or chests until you Withdraw or Complete the Arena.

Time & Difficulty

As introductory PvE content, the Frost Ring Arena isn't terribly difficult if you have a decent deck.  With the reduced health, players with only the cards from their Starter Trials and no equipment should be able to clear the First Tier with little difficulty.  Factoring in the AI still making questionable plays on the Test Server, it is difficult to judge just how formidable the rest of the opponents will be for newer players, but the variance in opponent's decks will be an eye opening experience for those new to the genre to the depth of strategies available.  There was also mention of a Hard/Heroic mode for the Arena, but this was unavailable during the test.

Assuming minimal lag (which was not the case on the test server) a strong mid-range deck should be able to clear the twenty matches of the arena in about three hours (this assumes about 8 to 12 minutes per game).    This run time could be cut significantly with an aggressive deck and a little luck, and for players looking to speed run the FRA, this will likely be the first thing they attempt to optimize.  Many players will want to collect four copies of a particular card and the associated equipment, if not every card available (about two dozen).  So the Arena will probably offer many hours of content as some people look to repeatedly grind it, and the random generation of opponents could make it seem fresh for at least the first few times through.

Card Images from Hex TCG Browser

Potential Intensifies

This weekend is shaping up to be a perfect storm of gaming for me, so this is going to be a more sporadic update from me as opposed to the general Hex strategy article.  Hex is certainly headlining the weekend though.  If you haven't read the official news, you can find it here, but I am proud to announce that I can finally add the PvE tag to the blog.  The short of it is Cryptozoic is opening a Test Server that players currently in the Beta will have access to for the weekend.  The Test Server will be available from Thursday, February 5th to Saturday, February 7th with mirrored accounts that feature your current collections, but with the added bonus of 20,000 platinum and some PvE cards.

If you haven't played Hex since Alpha and want to try out some of the new cards in Shattered Destiny without having to cough up the cash, that 20,000 platinum will easily buy 100 boosters (and maybe a few Primal Packs) for you to tear through.  You won't get to keep the cards you buy during the Test Weekend, but on Saturday at 3:00pm Eastern Time there will be a Free Sealed tournament for those in the Test Server.  Participants will get a Free Constructed Queue Entry Ticket and up to 10 Shattered Destiny Boosters based on the number of wins you manage to get in the tournament.  This is another massive stress test for the Tournament Servers as they look to expand the maximum tournament entry beyond its current 128 players.  

The main reason people will be (and should be) playing is that PvE content will finally be available to test.  Players will be able to build PvE decks and equip gear to their champions.  Gear gives bonuses to certain cards in your deck while they are equipped to your champion.  Each card has between one and three pieces of equipment specifically tied to it, but each champion can only hold six pieces of gear, which adds another strategic wrinkle to deck building in a similar way that gems and socketed cards do.

The last and biggest addition is that participants will get to test out the Frost Ring Arena.  We've been getting bits and pieces of the arena sprinkled in Friday Updates for the past few months, but this will be the first time we actually get to try it out for ourselves.  Hex has warned that this is very much an unfinished version of the Arena, and the new UI and improved AI won't be incorporated.  For those that haven't faced the AI in its current state, it will do random things like play Suppressive Fire with no targets or Bombsmith their own Troop.  It has improved somewhat since Alpha, but it is far from where it needs to be to make PvE an enjoyable experience.

This sort of launch is the best thing Hex could have done for me personally.  I've wanted to test out the Equipment and PvE Cards in Hex for ages, since that is what really drew me into the game, and where I think the game really stands out from other CCGs.  While the MMO part of this MMOTCG has seemed to ebb further and further away, the full deck building experience was cut short with the exclusion of equipment.  Getting to have access to equipment for a weekend of hands on testing will help innovators to find combos that don't exist in PvP, and with the community compiling lists of equipment we see, it will give players something to talk about long after the Test has ended.  I want Hex to take their time with the Dungeons and Raids, particularly the AI, because I want a good degree of polish when this content is officially launched so I can enjoy it without having to worry about getting bogged down by bugs.  But I also want to try this stuff out while it's still broken and tinker with it, so the Test Server option is the best of both worlds for me.

If you don't feel like playing but still want a peek at what's going on with this Frost Arena Test, there's a day long stream from some of the personalities in the Hex community on Wednesday (today) on the HexTCG Twitch Channel.  I will also try to stream the Arena during the weekend if/when I have time on my Twitch Channel.

Guild Wars 2

This past weekend was also a big one for Guild Wars 2.  At PAX they announced the first official expansion Heart of Thorns to be released later this year.  I played this game quite a bit the first year it was out, but gradually phased out of it do to school and lack of people to play with.  My friend recently picked up the game when it was on sale for $10 during the announcement of the expansion, and I've been teaming up to carry his little Asura through the leveling process (which isn't long, and is actually very enjoyable).  I have some Season 2 Living World stuff to catch up on and three more characters to get to 80 (My Elementalist, Mesmer, and Guardian are already there).  It's been a while since I've played, and in September they overhauled the daily system.  You get rewards just for logging in, and only have to do three relatively easy to complete daily quests, so despite the Arena I'll probably be peeking my head in there during the weekend as well.

LCS

While I'm playing in the Hex Sealed Tournament on Saturday I will have the NA LCS on Twitch in the second monitor.  This split is shaping up very well and I'm 2-0 in my Fantasy League, thanks in part to focusing on CLG (3-1) and SK Gaming (4-0) during the draft (first pick Aphromoo baby).  I started following it pretty heavily at the tail end of Season 3, and since I always cheer for the eternal underdog, I'm hoping CLG finishes well.  They have a lot of strong players on their team with the addition of Zionspartan in Top Lane and XSmithie in the Jungle.  CLG fans are wary of being disappointed by a team with unlimited potential but that always finds a way to fall short, though (and it's been said before) this might just be the year.  

The two newest teams to the NA LCS, Team 8 (2-2) and Gravity (3-1), have also been doing surprisingly well, stealing games off TSM (3-1) and Cloud 9 (1-3) respectively in the first week.  Cloud 9 has been performing very poorly this split, though they are facing Team 8 and Coast (1-3) this week, so if they are still the caliber of team from Worlds they should be able to even up their record after this weekend.  Dignitas is another veteran team that has been performing poorly, and it's unlikely to turn around soon.  Their jungler Crumbz stepped down from the team earlier this week, and they face TSM and Liquid (2-2), two very strong teams looking to cement their place among the top teams.  

Matches to watch this week:

Thursday 2/5 Match 4: Roccat (1-3) vs Giants (2-2)

Friday 2/6, Match 5: Elements (3-1) vs SK Gaming (4-0)

Saturday 2/7, Match 2: Cloud9 (1-3) vs Team8 (2-2)

Sunday 2/8, Match 2: CLG (3-1) vs Gravity (3-1)

Full Schedule

I didn't even get into the new chapter of Telltale's Game of Thrones that launched yesterday, which I probably won't get to play until after the weekend.  I also haven't mentioned a few board games I had the opportunity to play recently (Kanban, Archipelago, Fields of Arle), but that requires its own article.  Next week I'll probably have an a reaction to the Frost Arena Test Server.  

Card Images from Hex TCG Browser