What in the world is an arena death match?

[Irishmafia2020]

My turn began with 27 separate battle announcements relating to some kind of tournament that I have never heard of.... What is the Arena deathmatch, and how often does it happen? - I tried to do a forum search but there were no obvious answers, and there is no mention of this kind of event in the game manual....

[Poopsi]

it´s a competition of sorts. you select a hero (or even better, an hero-give him a medallion of vengeance) and send him over. If he loses he dies. If he wins he has to fight every time. You get a lousy trident as a prize, I think the biggest point in sending someone there is to give him a chance to kill some good enemy heros.

[K]

The "winner" also gets a pile of XP on top of his kills, so usually he gets into the Hall of Fame and gets a Heroic Quality (orange XP stars with extra powers for the unit).

[NTJedi]

The arena death match is a brilliant idea for adding flavor into the game, unfortunately its flawed. First the prize just isn't worth risking the life of a good commander/summon, thus mostly ignored in MP games. The second weakness is the AI opponents will blindly send their pretenders... thus multiple AI pretenders die causing their pretenders to be weaker/afflicted, AI priests wasting time doing call god and a weaker AI dominion.

[JaghataiKhan]

(or even better, an hero-give him a medallion of vengeance)

anonymous is no longer that secret.

Lost iPod, new artifact. By the time the artifact is lost, the hero kill sitself.

I am lurking, at school and studying. Modding has slowed but not stopped.

[nordlys]

Hm, what about wishing for champion's trident? Will it relieve the current owner of said item?

[Edratman]

Irish,

Most players do not enter the arena matches for a host of reasons. If you decide that you want to try it, there is one firm rule: NEVER, NEVER send your pretender into the arena.

There is a huge MP game in progress where the host has made the reward of arena combat substantial. Even then, last time I checked, there was a match with few takers.

[Amhazair]

What no one explicitly stated yet: The turn before that you saw all those battle reports of the arena, you'll have received a message telling you there would be an arena combat next month and that your chosen hero 'should depart now in order to reach the event in time' or something along those lines. For that turn only, all your commanders will have the order available to enter the arena competition.

[vfb]

Except aquatic-only commanders, they can't go (but the AI is allowed to send them, even without air-breathing gear). And I think immobiles can't go either, but I might be remembering wrong.