Unlocking Arenas in Factions

What are the requirements in Factions to gain access to the Team Arenas and Heroes' Ascent? Are there both RP and PvP ways to unlock them?

IIRC, TA = 5 in a row in RA and HA = 10 in a row in RA/TA.

And that is the only option for unlocking either of them?

At least when I started playing Prophecies, you could gain access to all the arenas by getting a RP character sufficiently far through the campaign, without needing to do any PvP at all. Is there no equivalent to this in Factions?

Actually, when they added observer mode is then they added this feature. At the same time, they made it retroactive, existing accounts would keep access to the arenas without having to meet the win requirements. PVP characters should have access automagically, others assuming you met the requirements of having had previous access before the adjustment should just have to unlock the boat at kaenig center (I think). otherwise, yes, you'll have to go through the process, but it's not overly difficult.

The average player, by definition, wins half his games. If we assume those wins are randomly distributed, that means he can expect to get 1 streak of 5 wins approximately once every 60 or so fights (that is, out of ~60 fights, 30 will be wins, and one place in that sequence, 5 of those wins will be consecutive, in a "typical" sample). At 5 minutes per battle (which is isn't slow), that's about 5 hours of fighting. A subpar player (e.g. someone new to the game) can expect to take considerably longer.

That's the requirement for a brand new player to be allowed to PvP in an equivalent arena, but with his friends, rather than with random teams?

They're not exactly encouraging people to draw their friends into the game, are they?

If you win a random 50% of your games, you can expect to get a run of 10 wins every 2000 battles or so...so only a one or two hundred hours of playing for an average player.

Assuming he never needs to leave in the middle of a winning streak due to, say, real life.

I realize the actual situation is much more complex than a coin flip and may have a higher frequency of runs, but I really have absolutely no clue what they were thinking when they implemented these rules, unless their goal was to make sure that only a small percentage of the most experienced/lucky players can even enter the higher arenas. This restriction is ludicrous.


There's really no alternative way to unlock these arenas?

My old account (predating the change) got access to the Zaishen Elite automatically, which didn't exist when they made this change. My friend's new account needs to beat 5 different teams in Zaishen Challenge, which I have never done. Is free access a gift just because my account is old, or does it have something to do with my RP characters' progress?

Yep.

Unlocking TA is easier than your numbers suggest - most of the times, you'll have either

A. a "good" party (no nub w/mo, competent monk) that wins several straight
B. a bad group that loses its first match

You won't end up spending much time, if at all, with the 5-win and 4-win streak teams.

You get HA by simply winning 5 matches total in Team Arenas. These don't even have to be consecutive.

According to Wiki, the RA wins need to be consecutive, but again, thats not overly difficult. Some nights it can feel challenging and others, as easy as pie, overall though, it's usually pretty easy. The main thing RA will teach you is to be somewhat self sufficient, there is no guarentee that you'll get a monk so expecting to get one and not taking a heal is foolish, as is not taking some form of resurrect. Do those 2 things and you should get the 5 wins pretty quickly.

I play a Monk, and I can say that not bringing a Res Signet is foolish even if you know you're going to have a Monk in the party. The Monk's probably the first to die, and even if he isn't, you'd probably rather not have him take the time and the energy away from healing to cast a res spell. Signets tend to make the best resurrection skills in 4v4 arenas, anyway, because if you have more than a couple deaths, you're probably going to lose anyway--at least, I find that, going into 4v4 arenas as a Monk, even if I bring a reusable res, the fact that I'm casting it tends to signal that my party has already lost. 6-8 seconds and 10 energy is a lot for your party's dedicated healer to forfeit, especially when you're already down one ally.

if you got Zaishen Elite free (without doing aishen challenge on ANY characters - cause once done on one, its unlocked account wise) then tis a bug...Because even old accounts have to beat 5 teams in Zaishen challenge to unlock elite challenge. I know I had too...

It isnt hard though...Zaishen are soloable :\

I very definitely got the directions to take the secret route to Zaishen Elite within a minute of discovering that they had added a new area called "Zaishen Challenge."

Well I'm mad then, cause I had to do it >_>