Ok, first of all: The difficulty screen is greyed because difficulty is not implemented on the PS4 version yet - you are allways playing on normal difficulty (which is the easiest option as soon as difficulty is selectable).
Back on topic: When i first started, Arena was the way to go to get out of that beginners struggle. With some knowledge about team-synergy (given the choices of troops) you can almost allways reach the 8 wins - often without loosing a single game.
Sure, there were occations where i lost the first two matches due to bad team options and/or really bad luck, but in generel you should win almost all arena matches due to the following advantages (while having same choice for troops/level etc.) over the AI:
a) Combo-Breaker: The new stones do not completly drop in random. There is an algorithm which prevents the AI from getting 3-Skulls or 4-matches floating in from the top UNLESS you had the same amount of luck with skulls and matches floating in beforehand.
b) Checking the upcoming move: As player, you should allways check if your move leaves a 4-match/skulls for the opponent or if your turn creates a match-4 for you indirectly elsewhere. The AI simply does not do that.
c) The AI is naive. It allways uses the following order:
- Are there 5-matches, if yes, do them
- Are there 4-matches, if yes, do them
- Are there 3-skull matches, if yes do them
4a) Are skills ready and āusefulā (heal only on damaged troops etc), if yes use them
4b) Make a random match-3 (most often, own mana needed or mana needed of enemy)
where I do not know exactly why sometimes the AI prefers 4b) over 4a). Anyway, this gives you the following advantages:
- AI will not use spells inbetween, even if those whould give an extra turn but isntead use the match-4 skulls before and waste the spell-usage inbetween
- AI will allways target skulls, even if entangled or with 0 damage (which makes one of the challanges of Broken Spire with Fortress Gate in Front a good challange to farm with alchemyst, just let the enemy have all the skulls and dont kill fortress gate)
An the last big advantage you have (or at least which i remember right now): You allways start. Since the starting board is generated at random, you can collect all the match-5 and match-4 before the AI even gets a turn.
Ok, some more general tipps for you:
a) get into a guild - you get free gems, keys, souls, maps and double daily reward for free
b) get yourself a farming team - without this every match in the beginning will loose you gold, even if you are winning, so you need it when you do not want to wait for daily reward and income after each game
The standard farming team is something like that:
Filler
Alchemist
Valkyre
Banshee
where you use Alchemist to transform the board to yellow to fill valkyre and banshee, valkyre creates blue and banshee transforms the blue back to red to fill alchemist and valkyre. It needs some training to know when to use abilities but afterwards you will win games against enemies which are a lot higher then you - simply because they wont get a turn. And even if you loose, the Alchemyst will have generated enough gold to compensate the loss. This team even gives often enough treasure maps to generate additional income. (Filler is any troop which does not steal mana for the others and collects the blue of valkyre, most often hero or treant or things like that)
Even if you dont have that full lineup yet, try some combos with alchemist, his gold generation will pay ofā¦
You will even find some guides here in the forum about Soul-Farming teams and Arena.
I hope i could be of helpā¦
