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Duels and the arena

Two ways to fight another player without anyone dying, losing anything or getting a red name: a duel anywhere out in the open world, and the arena, Kestrel's pit under Aldhearth, where everyone fights at the same level, with a rating, a ladder and a champion every week. Both are apart from PvP (K): you need nothing switched on, and nothing you do in them marks you.

Duels

1. Right click (or tap) a player out in the open world and choose Challenge to a duel. They must be within 20 tiles, and neither of you in a town, on a floor or down a dungeon. The challenge stands for a minute, and while it stands you cannot send that player another.
2. They Accept (or decline) from the toast. A count of three runs on both screens; you are both dismounted.
3. During the count the world's rules still hold. If one of you hits anybody else, or anybody else (a player or the Grown) hits one of you, the duel is off. A yield or a death during the count calls it off too: no winner, nothing counted.
4. Once the count ends, it is just the two of you: the Grown and other players cannot touch you, and you can hurt nobody else (the Grown included: your blows, your arrows, your powers and your pet's breath do nothing to them). Swords, powers and arrows land on each other, PvP on or off, even on the safe ground in front of a town's gate. A fall, poison or lava still hurt you; whatever would kill you there is a yield instead.
5. Nobody dies. At one life the loser yields, and keeps everything: no gold lost, nothing dropped, no death. At the end both of you get back the life and the mana you had when the count ended (never more: a potion you drank is gone).

No duel out of a fight. You cannot challenge, or accept, while either of you was in a fight lately (a blow on or from a player in the last fifteen seconds, or hurt by anything in the last fifteen), and never with an orange or a red name: an outlaw cannot duel, the Watch wants a word first. A duel is no way out of a fight.

No duel as a shield. Not with a trade pack on your back ("Not with a trade pack."), and two who have just duelled wait a minute before the next. Once the count ends, a duel keeps to its ground: it is fought where it began.

A duel is over, and the winner told to everyone near, when:

Only a duel that was really fought (past the count, with a blow landed or twenty seconds of it) is told to those near and counted for the achievements.

The arena

Kestrel the Arena master stands on the Grand Plaza of Aldhearth, south-west of the Great Flame, and his pit lies under the town. Everyone fights there at the same level: 50. A level 1 can meet a level 150 and either can win. And you do not have to walk to him: you put your name down from wherever you are.

Everyone fights at level 50

In the pit your own level and your rekindlings are set aside. Everyone has what a level 50 has: the same life, the same strength, the same mana. What you carry and what you have learned still count, but evened out, so they are an edge and never a wall:

• Your weapon and its upgrades, your armour and rings, your potions, your skill tree and your origin all still work, and a better kit still hits harder and holds more. Each of your numbers is pulled most of the way back toward a level 50 in a good level-50 kit (Cinderbrand +4, cinder mail, rimeglass helm and boots, half its skill points spent), so the gap between a fresh character and the best kit in the game is about a factor of two in a fight, not a hundred. A level 50 in that kit takes about three swings to put down a level 1 with a wooden sword, where the level 1 needs four or so; a level 150 with six rekindlings and the best gear in the game has about double the level 1's strength in a fight.
• Temper, Mastery and the boons that do nothing between players (Hardy, Glass cannon) are set aside, as in every fight between players.
• A weapon's power works up to the tier a level 50 may bear (Greater), and anyone may use one there: a level 1 with a Greater power can use it in the pit, and an Ascendant power strikes and cools as a Greater one.
• You start the match with full life and mana, and when it is over you are as you were: your own numbers back, the share of life and mana you came down with (the pit heals nobody and wounds nobody), nothing of the pit saved. The Arena window and the box in the pit say "Everyone fights at level 50", the level under your portrait reads "Lv 1 → 50 here", and every fighter's nameplate carries "Lv 50".
• Duels out in the world are not changed: there you fight as you are, level and all, because the two of you chose each other.

Putting your name down

• Press Shift+K, use the Arena button in the game menu, or talk to Kestrel. The Arena window has Fight 1v1, Fight 2v2 (a group of exactly two, put down by its leader) and a spar. From level 1, from anywhere out in the world or in a town.
• Not allowed while you are down, on a floor (a rift, a dungeon's floor, a raid, an event, the pit), down a dungeon, defending a Home from a raid, carrying a trade pack, in a duel, or hurt or in a fight in the last ten seconds. You are told which.
• A box at the top of the screen shows your list and the time you have waited, with a Leave button. You play on: waiting stops nothing. If a match comes while you are in the middle of something (a fight, a floor, a waystone's channel, a map being read), your name waits for the next look; it is never struck off for that. A name stays on a list ten minutes at most.
• Every two seconds the lists are matched by rating alone (levels do not matter in the pit): ratings within 200 at first, 100 wider for every ten seconds you wait. Two names from one address are not matched while anyone else is waiting.
• You are asked first. A match found opens a box: Take it or No, with the seconds left (twenty) and how many have said yes. When everyone has, you are taken down into the pit. A no, no answer in time, or leaving the game takes that side's names off the list; the other side goes back on its list as it was, with the time it had waited. Saying yes while you are still in a fight is not taken yet: you are told and may answer again.
• After the match you are back exactly where you were, in the open world, in a town, beside a rift. If that place is gone (somebody built over it, the ground fell away) you are set down on the nearest place to stand within six tiles that is no deeper, and failing that at the waystone of the nearest town. Going to the pit and back is never depth for the Delvers' trail.

The match

• Each side comes in at its own end of the sand.
• A count of three, then three minutes. At no life you are down where you stand, not dead: nothing is lost, and you are back on your feet when it is over. The last side standing wins. If time runs out, the side with more of its life left wins (the fallen count nothing; the same on both sides is a draw).
• Yield from the box at the top of the screen (twice), or leave the game: your side fights on without you.
• Eight seconds after the end everyone is led back up to where they were.

The pit is a round floor of sand under old stone, with a ring of pillars to fight around (two of them have fallen, so no round is quite the same) and braziers at each end. It fights like any floor: powers, bows and glaives, a shove on every blow. It is sealed like an event's floor: nothing out in the world (a rift, a door) can be opened from it.

Rating

Everyone starts each mode at 1000. After a match your rating moves by Elo with K = 32: beat someone rated like you and you gain 16, they lose 16; beat someone rated far above you and you gain more. Your level does not matter: a level 1 who beats a level 50 gains what anyone gains against the same rating, no more. In 2v2 each fighter's own rating moves against the other side's average. 1v1 and 2v2 have separate ratings. A character started over starts again at 1000 in both, with no record (and a champion's due owed to the old one goes with it). The change is told at the end and shown in the Arena window with your wins and losses and your place on the ladder.

The same two fighters on one day (UTC) count in full for their first two matches, at half (K = 16) for the third to the fifth, and not at all from the sixth: no change, not a rated match, and nothing counted for the achievements. (In 2v2, the pair of fighters who have met most decides.)

The season

The ladder is a weekly season that turns every Monday at 00:00 UTC, like the Rift Ladder. The Arena window shows the top ten of each mode and last season's best. When the week turns, the best of each mode's ladder who has fought at least 5 rated matches against at least 3 different fighters is that mode's champion: they get the title Champion of the Pit (shown with your name from the Achievements window) and 500 gold, announced to everyone. If nobody has fought that much, the mode has no champion that week. A champion who is offline gets the gold by post (the Mail window, U) and the title the next time they log in; a due that waits more than eight weeks is forgotten. Then everyone starts again at 1000.

Sparring

Spar with a grey copy (from the Arena window, any time, from anywhere) puts you in the pit against a grey copy of yourself: your look, your weapon, your life, a little less than your blow. It comes for you when the count is done. Nothing rides on it: no rating, no experience, no loot. Yield to end it early.

For the achievements

Duels and arena matches are counted (for the achievements and titles that count them): a duel that was fought reports a win or a loss for each of the two, a rated arena match the mode, the win or loss and your new rating. Draws, spars, duels called off and matches that are not rated count nothing.