What it is
Prime Arena is a PvP tournament, meaning you fight other players instead of monsters. For seven days you challenge other players, they challenge you, and every result moves you up or down a ranking.
The big difference from normal PvP: you don't lose anything. No troops die, nobody goes to the Temple to be healed, your gear doesn't break, and nothing is taken from your city. In Scorewarrior's words, losing a fight costs you "nothing but a few ranking spots."
It's a solo event. There's no clan score and nothing to coordinate with your clan. It's just you, up to five captains, your dragon and some troops. The game puts you in a division, which is a group of players it thinks are about as strong as you, and you compete inside that group.
You never fight anyone live, either. You set up a defence squad and save it. When other players challenge you, they're fighting that saved squad, even while you're offline or asleep. When you challenge someone, you're fighting their saved squad. So you have two jobs: build a squad that wins when you attack, and a squad that holds up when you're not around.
It runs non-stop for seven days, then starts again the next week.
Before launch, the new rewards showed up in the game with descriptions saying they come from the "Colosseum store," so a lot of players call this event the Colosseum. It's the same thing. It's also not the old Arenas on the world map, the ones only your hero can fight. Those still exist. Prime Arena has its own separate screen.
How it scores
Everyone in your division is on one ranking. Win a fight and you move up. Lose and you move down.
Points come from the other player. In the test run, one win gave the attacker 14 points and took the same 14 points away from the defender.
That works both ways, and it's the part people forget. Your defence squad wins and loses points for you all day, even when you're not playing. If someone beats your defence, you lose points. If your defence holds, they lose points. Your battle log lists every fight, both your attacks and your defences, and shows the points won or lost in each.
If two players end on the same score, the one who reached it first ranks higher. That's the general rule for rankings in Total Battle. Scorewarrior hasn't said so for Prime Arena specifically, but expect it to work the same way.
How to play it
- Set up your defence squad first. Pick your captains, give them their gear, add your dragon (it joins your defence automatically), choose your troops, and save. Do this before anything else, because other players can attack you as soon as the event opens.
- Build your attack squad. Your attack squad and your defence squad are two separate lineups. You can change your attack squad for each opponent. Your defence squad has to hold up against anyone.
- Tap Challenge and look at the list. You'll see five opponents, strongest at the top and weakest at the bottom. Each one shows the power of their defence squad. That number is how you judge whether you can win.
- Refresh the list if you don't like it. You get a few free refreshes a day to find a better match.
- Use all your daily attempts. You only get a set number of attempts per day, and as far as anyone has seen, unused ones don't carry over to the next day.
- Read your battle log after every fight. It shows the other player's exact squad. If you lost, look at what beat you, change one thing, and try again.
- Don't play it safe. Scorewarrior's own advice is that the mistake is treating this like normal PvP, where a loss costs you troops. Here a loss only costs you a few places, so go for it.
Ways to play it
There's no one right way to do this event. Here are four, depending on how much time you have and how strong your account is. Pick one, mix them, or switch partway through the week.
Use every daily attempt and do the daily missions. It takes about ten minutes a day and keeps the currency and Dragon Coins coming in. Good for everyone, whatever else you do.
Go for the top places, where the titles and monument pieces are. Build an attack squad for each opponent, read your battle log after every fight, and take on stronger players when you have attempts to spare. Best for big accounts with five strong PvP captains.
Put your effort into a defence squad that holds up, since it fights for you while you're offline. When you log in, check what beat you and change one thing. Best for busy players who can't be on much.
Keep an eye on what wins. When a squad beats you, save the battle report, see what it used, and share it with your clan. Nobody has a playbook for this event yet, so the players who share what they learn get better fastest.
Your week, day by day
Each day starts at the game's 17:00 UTC reset. Daily attempts probably refresh then too, though that isn't confirmed yet.
| Day | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Set up and save your defence squad before you attack anyone, with your dragon locked in. Then use your attempts on fights you can win. |
| 2 | Check your battle log. Whatever beat your defence overnight, change one thing. Use every attempt and do the daily missions. |
| 3 to 5 | Same routine: attempts, missions, claim your rewards. Around the halfway mark, look at the shop and see what your currency buys. If you're climbing, start trying players above you. |
| 6 | Get your defence in shape for the last day. Use every attempt. |
| 7 | Last day. Use every attempt, claim everything, and spend your currency in the shop before it restocks. |
Deeper in
What goes in a squad
A squad is up to five captains, your dragon, and troops. How many troops you can bring is capped by your Leadership and Dominance, the same limits that cap your armies everywhere else. You pick how many of each troop type to send, and monsters you own count as troops too. If the game says "You have selected too many troops," you're over the limit. Open the army tab and lower the numbers until it lets you save.
Your hero isn't mentioned anywhere in the rules, so as far as anyone can tell, the fighting is done by your captains, dragon and troops.
Each captain wears the same gear in both squads. The game puts it this way: "What a captain wears to attack, he also wears when defending." So you can't give a captain attack gear for your attacks and defence gear for your defence. Choose gear that works for both.
Changing captains for the arena doesn't change your real setup back in your city. In the game's words, it "doesn't change your actual lineup in your city." So you can arrange your arena squads however you like.
How a fight plays out
Every fight is two rounds between the same two armies. The fight plays out automatically, and you can skip the animation.
The attacker strikes first.
Same two armies, but now the defender strikes first.
Did one side win both rounds?
That side wins the fight.
Whoever has more of their own troops left alive, as a share of what they started with, wins.
That last rule matters when you build a squad. A tied fight isn't decided by who did more damage. It's decided by who kept more of their own army alive. So a squad that's hard to kill can beat a squad that hits hard but falls apart.
Picking captains for PvP
A lot of us have built our captains for fighting monsters, because that's most of the game. Monster bonuses don't help here, since you're only fighting players.
- Leave your monster specialists out. Hercules's bonuses are for monsters, and Amanitore's are for raids. Neither does much here.
- Bring captains that boost army strength. Heimdall and Beowulf are the PvP captains creators recommend.
- Wear gear that helps against players. Gear made for hunting epic monsters gives bonuses against monsters, so it's wasted here. In the test run, the player recording it lost to someone wearing seasonal gold equipment with Forest Crown and Heart of the Forest. His advice afterwards: gear that adds army strength is what wins.
Five captains is a lot, and plenty of players don't have five strong ones yet. If that's you, look at the arena shop (below). It sells a new captain made for exactly this.
Who to challenge
Scorewarrior's pitch is to attack the strongest players you can find. The one player who's recorded a full session did something different: he picked opponents whose defence power was lower than his own, skipped a player who'd already beaten him, and went from rank 71 to rank 10 in five wins in a row.
Nobody knows yet whether beating a stronger player earns more points. Until that's clear, the safest plan is the one that worked for him: pick fights you can win, and use your refreshes to find them. If you have attempts left over, try someone stronger. A loss costs you very little.
Your defence works while you're offline
Your defence squad fights every time someone challenges you. That's true when you're offline, and even after you've used up all your own attempts for the day. You can't watch those fights, so build your defence to survive, not just to hit hard. When you log back in, check your battle log to see who attacked you and what they used.
What you're playing for
The higher you finish, the more you get, and everyone who ranks gets something.
| Reward | Who gets it | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Shop currency | Every rank | Spending in the arena shop, which restocks every week, so you can buy again each week. |
| Titles | The top places | Bragging rights, plus whatever bonus each title carries. |
| Monument pieces | The top places | Building a brand-new monument for your city. |
| Dragon Coins | Ranked players | They go to your clan capital, so a good finish helps your clan too. |
| Battle-pass rewards | Anyone doing the daily missions | A reward track that ends in a new artifact for building speed, currency, Artifact XP, resources and gold. |
| What the game promised | What the item descriptions say it is |
|---|---|
| A new legendary PvP captain | Artemisia. Her army strength and health bonus only works against other players, +1% each for every captain level. It does nothing against monsters. |
| A new artifact | Mars' Twin Blades. More army strength and health against players, plus a chance to hit two enemy squads. |
| The battle-pass artifact | Minerva's Calipers, which speeds up construction. |
| The new monument | The Minerva monument, a bonus to the Conquest points you earn. |
| The new city skin | Campus Igni. |
These names come from item descriptions and creators, not from Scorewarrior, so treat the table as a good guess until the shop opens. Artemisia is the one to watch. You collect her through captain fragments from the shop, and a captain built only for PvP is useful here and in every PvP event after this one.
The test also paid out Conquest points (CP). Until now, you've mostly earned CP by killing other players' troops, which costs you troops too. Earning it without losing any is new.
When you can play
The first full week is on the in-game calendar for Monday 26 October 2026. It runs for seven days, so it wraps up on Monday 2 November, and then starts again every week.
A short test has already run, open only to players with top-tier troops (tier 9), with fewer fights and smaller rewards than the real event.
Not yet confirmed
The event is brand new. There's no official help article yet, and the only gameplay footage is from the test, which had its limits cut down on purpose. These are still open:
- Who can enter. The test was only open to tier 9 players. We don't know yet whether everyone else gets their own divisions.
- How divisions are made. Scorewarrior says you're matched with "players of equal strength" but doesn't say how strength is measured.
- How many attempts you get. The test showed 20 attempts and 10 refreshes a day, but it was a cut-down test, so the real numbers may be different. We also don't know what time attempts reset.
- Whether your hero fights. Nothing so far puts the hero in the squad.
- Troop limits. The test player said "we can only use nines for now." That could be a test rule, or it could just describe his own army. We also don't know whether mercenaries are allowed.
- How points are worked out, and whether beating a stronger player earns more.
- The full rewards: how much currency each rank gets, the titles, how many places get monument pieces, and how many Dragon Coins.
- Whether you can meet clanmates in your division and fight them.