Arena Duel
Three fighters, six gates, and an altar in the middle that heals your side alone.
Arena Duel is the mode in Sol Ultimus: The Eclipse War where you pick three fighters, put them on the altar of an orc fighting pit, and beat the challengers that come out of its six gates. It is the fourth button on the main menu, next to the campaign, the skirmish and online play. There is no hero screen and no map to choose: you pick one of two modes, tap three fighters out of a roster of twenty, and press FIGHT. The pit is the map of chapter 21, The Orc Arena, a twelve-sided palisade of sharpened logs with the stolen moon altar in the middle. A run is one fight or four rounds, depending on the mode, and it ends when one side is down. Free in the browser at solultimus.com, with no download and no account.
The Arena Duel button opens straight into the fighter picker. You choose the mode first, then three fighters. Each fighter can be taken only once, so your team is always three different types, and FIGHT does nothing until you have exactly three.
The three of them start standing on the altar in the middle of the pit and the south gate shuts behind them. Nothing comes yet. The first gate opens four seconds after you move a fighter off the altar. If you stand still instead, a ten-second clock runs out and the same four seconds start anyway. The last five seconds count down large on screen.
There is no base, no mine, no building and no reinforcement. The three fighters you picked are the whole team. When the last of them falls the run ends in defeat, and if you took your own Paladin, his death alone ends it whether or not the other two are still up.
Arena Duel is single-player. The challengers belong to the pit, not to another commander. The fight runs on the same authoritative server as the rest of the game, at ten ticks a second.
The picker puts the two modes above the fighters, and the difference is how many fights you get and how hard they scale. ONE DUEL is a single 3 v 3. GAUNTLET is four fights in a row out of four different gates, each one heavier than the last.
Both use the same pit, the same gates, the same cages and the same altar. Only the challengers and the multipliers change.
| ONE DUEL — 3 v 3 | GAUNTLET — 4 rounds | |
|---|---|---|
| Fights | One | Four, back to back |
| Challengers | Three, all different types | Three per round, all different types |
| Drawn from | The dark-elf tier and the heavy tier, eight types in all | Round 1 light, round 2 light and dark-elf, round 3 dark-elf and heavy, round 4 heavy only |
| Health multiplier | ×1.1 | ×1, then ×1.15, ×1.3, ×1.45 |
| Damage multiplier | ×1.05 | ×1, then ×1.15, ×1.3, ×1.45 |
| Between fights | None | Eight seconds, with the altar healing at full speed |
| You win when | Yours is the last team standing | You clear all four rounds |
Named characters. Your own Paladin, the freed champion Ser Gareth the Red, the Moon Champion, The Old Wizard and Warlord Tiberon. The Paladin is the only pick whose death ends the run on its own.
The big monsters of the campaign, from the 700-health Goblin King up to the 1750-health Orc Giant. Slow, long-reaching and very hard to kill, but under your banner they bring nothing to the fight except their own weight: the rage and the ground slam only work for the pit's own monsters.
The buildable line of both peoples: man-at-arms, archer, knight and cleric for the Sun Order, raider, archer and knight for the Moon Elves, plus the war rhino, the dire boar and the battle cat.
Twenty fighters, three picks, no duplicates. Health and damage below are the values the server uses.
| Fighter | Group | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Paladin | HEROES | Your own hero. In the arena he arrives at campaign rank 11, with all five spells and all seven relics. |
| Ser Gareth the Red | HEROES | The champion you cut out of the cyclops den in the campaign: a knight under his own banner, raised to 420 health and 40 damage. |
| Moon Champion | HEROES | 720 health, 34 damage, and the quickest hero on the list at speed 3.9. |
| The Old Wizard | HEROES | 320 health and 14 damage at range 6. Slow on his feet at speed 2.1, so he needs a body in front of him. |
| Warlord Tiberon | HEROES | The old commander of the Sun Order and the toughest hero here: 950 health, 44 damage. |
| The Orc Chieftain | CHAMPIONS | 900 health, 40 damage, reach 1.7. A slow heavy axe that trades blow for blow. |
| The Goblin King | CHAMPIONS | 700 health, 32 damage. The lightest champion and the quickest of them, at speed 3.2. |
| Cave Troll | CHAMPIONS | 1500 health, 44 damage, reach 3.4. A wall with a long arm — though in your hands it never works itself into the fury it shows as a challenger. |
| Cyclops | CHAMPIONS | 1450 health, 52 damage, reach 3.2. A two-handed hammer on legs that move at speed 2.2. |
| Orc Giant | CHAMPIONS | The heaviest pick in the game: 1750 health, 56 damage, reach 3.8, speed 2.0. |
| Man-at-Arms | TROOPS | 120 health, 10 damage, and ×2 against knights. Can ride on the back of a rhino or a boar. |
| Archer | TROOPS | 90 health, 12 damage at range 8. Hits ×1.8 against thick hides, which covers most of the heavy challengers. |
| Knight | TROOPS | 280 health, 28 damage, and ×1.75 against archers. |
| Cleric | TROOPS | 80 health and no attack at all. Heals the worst-wounded ally within 6, without pause. |
| War Rhino | TROOPS | 1400 health, 60 damage. The wall of the list, and it carries two riders on its back — a man-at-arms, archer, knight or cleric, never a hero. |
| Battle Cat | TROOPS | 900 health, 36 damage and speed 5.6, the fastest thing you can field. One saddle, and only the Paladin may take it. |
| Dire Boar | TROOPS | 1300 health, 56 damage. The Moon Elf war beast, a shade quicker than the rhino, and it carries two riders as well. |
| Dark Elf Raider | TROOPS | 120 health, 11 damage. The moon side's line infantry, with the same ×2 against knights. |
| Dark Elf Archer | TROOPS | 90 health, 12 damage at range 7.5, with the same ×1.8 against thick hides. |
| Dark Elf Knight | TROOPS | 280 health, 26 damage, and ×1.75 against archers. |
The arena is a twelve-sided palisade of sharpened logs, with a tusk on every corner, skull cords along the walls and sand underfoot. A stone ring runs around the outside of it, seven metres deep and 5.4 metres high.
The six gates sit at the middle of the sides of a hexagon, about 15.6 metres out from the altar. The order in which they open is shuffled at the start of every run, so the same team never fights the same pattern twice. A banner names each one as it swings open: GATE 3 OPENS, and the name of the wave.
Every gate has a barred niche 5.5 metres behind it, cut into the stone ring, and behind each gate that will be used the first creature of that wave waits inside where you can see it. Giants are the exception: a cave troll does not fit a niche 3.8 metres wide, so its cage stays empty.
The stolen moon altar is the middle of the pit and the ground you fall back on. Once a second it restores 4.4 health to each of your fighters standing within six metres of it, and 13.2 while a gate is shut. Nothing on the other side gets a drop of it. That makes the centre the safest ground and the ground everything runs at.
Three boulders stand about 9.5 metres out from the altar, in the gaps between the gates. They block movement, so a charging beast has to come around them and a wounded fighter can step behind one.
There is standing room on top of the stone ring, packed with orcs and goblins who jump up and roar every few seconds. Torch baskets flank the gates.
The challengers are drawn from thirteen creature types in three tiers. Every wave is three different types, picked fresh at the start of the run, so two runs of the same mode rarely send the same three.
They hunt. From the moment a gate opens they come for your fighters across the sand, and none of them waits by its gate.
Two of them change during the fight. The Great Bear and the Cave Troll both fly into a 15-second fury at 65% health and again at 30%, hitting 1.6 times harder and moving 1.7 times faster. The Cave Troll also builds up a ground slam over roughly twenty seconds: when it lands, the six nearest of yours within 5.6 metres take 38 damage each and are knocked senseless for nine seconds.
| Tier | Challengers | Where they appear |
|---|---|---|
| Light | Wolf, Goblin, Goblin Slinger, Troll Whelp, Forest Troll | Gauntlet rounds 1 and 2 |
| Dark elf and kings | Dark Elf Raider, Dark Elf Archer, Dark Elf Knight, The Goblin King | Gauntlet rounds 2 and 3, and ONE DUEL |
| Heavy | The Orc Chieftain, Dire Boar, Cave Troll, The Great Bear | Gauntlet rounds 3 and 4, and ONE DUEL |
Arena Duel is a mode in Sol Ultimus: The Eclipse War in which you pick three fighters and fight challengers that come out of the six gates of an orc fighting pit. It is one of the four buttons on the main menu, it uses the map of chapter 21, The Orc Arena, and it runs in the browser with no download and no account.
You pick exactly three fighters in Arena Duel, and each one can be taken only once, so your team is always three different types. They come from a roster of twenty split into three groups: five HEROES, five CHAMPIONS and ten TROOPS. Catapults and ballistas are not on the list, because siege engines only move with a crewman beside them.
ONE DUEL is a single 3 v 3 fight and GAUNTLET is four fights in a row that get harder. In ONE DUEL the three challengers come at 1.1 times health and 1.05 times damage, and the last team standing wins. In GAUNTLET each round multiplies the challengers' health and damage by 1, then 1.15, 1.3 and 1.45, draws from a heavier pool each time, and gives you eight seconds on the altar in between; you win by clearing all four.
Yes, the altar in the middle of the pit heals every one of your fighters standing within six metres of it, and only yours. It restores 4.4 health a second while a fight is on and 13.2 a second while the gate is shut, which is why the centre is both where you recover between rounds and where every challenger is heading.
Yes, Arena Duel ends in defeat the moment your last fighter falls, because there are no reinforcements and the three you picked are the whole team. If you take your own Paladin, his death alone ends the run, whether or not the other two are still standing.
No, Arena Duel is single-player: the challengers belong to the pit, not to another commander. Sol Ultimus does have online multiplayer as its own button on the main menu, alongside 1v1 against the computer and the 21-chapter campaign.