Quote Originally Posted by thatoneguyfromwork View Post
Quick question since people in this topic seem pretty knowledgeable about the game. Is arena for veterans only?

I can only seem to select the top 500 to view/attack, I'm ranked 42000ish. I've only been playing for about a week so I'm nowhere near the strength of a top 500. It would be nice to do something beside campaign, espicially since I'm starting to hit a wall and I'm not having enough coins to level my castle everyday.
Arena has both the daily ladder and a weekly tournament. You should participate in both, for different reasons.

The reasons to participate in the weekly tournament are simple. It costs nothing to enter, but you get 50k copper for participating, plus 100k per match you win. The 50 koban team change fee is if you enter, then later that week decide to change your team. You can enter a completely independent team each week if so inclined. So if you enter, at worst, you get 50k copper for losing your first match. If you're lucky enough to draw an easy opponent or two, you might win more than that.

As for the daily ladder, you should participate in that, too. The goal of the daily ladder is to win ten matches in which you're the attacker, as this gets you two gold tickets. Winning matches where someone else attacks you don't count toward this total. You can only challenge people within ten ranks of your own, but you can challenge below you as well as above. If you challenge someone above you and win, you trade positions in the rankings.

The key to winning at ladder matches is to choose easy opponents. If you challenge someone, you get your offense team, while they get their defense team. For most players, their best generals and their best gear is on their offense team. People commonly don't have any gear equipped at all on their defense team, and sometimes only trot out a single general. The ladder screen will show you the icon of the leader of the defense team of possible opponents. The ranking that shows the full top 500 will show you the level of the leader of the defense team. A level below 35 is a sure sign of an easy opponent.

Ranks 491-500 are volatile, because everyone who isn't ranked can only challenge players in that range. So you'd really like to stay up the top 490 indefinitely. But if you're rank 370 and see that the player who is rank 372 has a level 1 leader on his defense team, you can challenge him ten times in a row, claim your ten wins, claim your two gold tickets, and be done with daily ladder matches for the day.