Every so often i try out the Arena just too see what it does, and as far as i can tell up to now, it's purpose is suicide booth??

Whenever you feel like getting wiped out, just go to the Arena!

And what purpose are the Arena combat experience questions for? Because even if i select 'novice', a huge army still rolls out and smashes me up and i wonder if 'novice' is really code for extreme elite Godlike difficulty level?

Difficulty levels on arena:
Novice - opponent would be below your hero level
Expert - similar
Veteran - above.
Thing with arena - random filling of all slots - units, spells and equipment.
So you can find extremes like 5 level mage with summon phoenix spell or level 5 commander with hydra.
At low level main use of the arena would be bets on commander classes.
In the late game you can use arena to level up 4th+ heroes.
Veteran units with profile medals can take on units 1-2 tiers higher than their own, especially with the help of buff/debuff spells.

There's also a special reward if a hero can beat everything the arena can throw at him and become Arena Champion.

so the Arena battle is based on the Hero level, not the entire army?

But even if my army is more powerful, there is no getting around 'focused attack' and hence, valuable units will always be lost?

What if i go in the Arena with the Hero alone? In provincial combat, i will often take territories with my warrior hero alone where the enemy has lots of ranged units such as centaurs because of their ability to reach around and kill my valuable units.

And what about new hero's that are very green, is the Arena useful for leveling them up?

yes

you could get around it, and there is ressurection, priests

if you go alone you might win, might notta!

yes very useful if you give them experienced troops, but risky if you face level 5 and above like Gremlion said



I like the arena for a last all out battle on a shard with my level 30 hero and über units who have no challenge left.

How do ressurection priests work? Is there any way to ressurect units after a battle?

Resurrection is a spell that allows you to revive a unit that has falling in battle. It is a tier 3 Holy school spell. It can be learned by priests upon level up on, I think, level 8 and up.

You can only use the Resurection ability of Priests DURING battle NOT after. It might have been interesting if they had let it be used after battle but probably really broken, unbalanced, then.

Correct it can be learned starting at level 8 on Priests.

After the battle they can only be raised as undead, gotta ressurrect during battle. You can pin the last enemy down with fatigue,webs or something. The hero can refresh a priests ammo, then one can ressurrect alot of units.

Keep in mind that the priests Res spell takes up 4 ammo per use. Magic Weapon can replenish upto 4 ammo so that's only enough for 1 res per reload. Resting to use Meditate on Priests only gain back 1 ammo a turn so try to make sure to not leave all Resurrecting for the end.

Yeah, biggest problem, for me anyway, was always to keep the priest alive. :D