Blackthorn Arena – How to Pass the Spring Event

Tips to Pass the Spring Event

Non-Combat Tips

• Don’t have any guards. Just keep your prisoners gladiators’ obedience high enough (7+).
• Keep everyone busy. If they are at or near full health, they should either be training or fighting.
• Get a dedicated doctor and trainer asap. The other roles don’t matter.
• Slightly combat advice, but you will be out leveled. While on easy to medium levels you can keep pace with your opponents, this is typically not possible on the hardest difficulty. So you need to have strong gladiators and a strong team composition.
• Minor combat tip, keep your tanks in defensive stance. Gladiators can neither dodge nor block while attacking, so your tanks should attack as few times as possible.

General Tips

Make sure you use your time efficiently. Always try to have your gladiators fighting, and if there happens to be no favorable matchups, then have them train. Favorable matchups are important because if you can win matches without taking much damage, you have less down time and can start earning exp and money sooner.

Also, make sure all your gladiators are doing something. If you’re about to do a 4v4 and you have one glad left over, send him over to auto battle at some other arena in a 1v1 if possible. Or have him train as mentioned above, but fights are always more desirable.

More fights = more money = better equipment = …

Don’t recruit as many gladiators as you can. I like to have four fighters for the most of my playthroughs, and maybe 2 extra, as some of the important events allow for 6 gladiators. These 2 extra may not be required for you to win these, but they are crucial for keeping your gladiators alive in extended multi-day tournaments, especially your tanks, as they tend to heal up then take more damage. I think others like to run more fighters, which is probably better, as longs as you make sure everyone is bringing money in and you aren’t spreading your experience gains too thin.

A couple other not so relevant tips that may help…

Don’t bother with a cook or a smithy, at least not early on. You can’t choose which weapons you research, so you might as well just buy them instead. Cooking is simply not worth the time and money ever, unless you’re super late game I suppose. Do get a trainer and a doctor as soon as possible, ideally within the first few days.

Don’t pay for guards. If you have any guards, fire them. As long as you keep your gladiators’ obedience high enough (7+ or so), they shouldn’t try to escape. I don’t even think morale matters.

Keeping up in level with the AI is very doable at normal difficult. It’s less so at max difficulty, but you can still win matchups where you are out leveled.