Hello everyone,
First, let us thank you for your interest in Screeps: Arena. It was a difficult time, a few months in a hospital fighting COVID-19 affected development of this project greatly. But despite all difficulties, we continued to work on the game. And now we are almost there. Today we are rolling out this release with all game mechanics we wanted to see in Early Access. All new mechanics are interconnected and interdependent so they cant be delivered apart from each other. Its not the final version, we continue to polish and improve some small things, but the game concept is finished now. And it is based on two things (except coding for arena battles): Fame and Crafting.
Fame
The first important mechanic is the Fame. Earning fame is like a daily quest available in every unlocked (see below) arena. When you take the quest, the game creates a ladder consisting of 10 opponents, where each opponent is stronger than the previous one. You are supposed to play against each opponent in a predefined order. You dont see their names and versions, but you should expect that the next opponent will be stronger.
While you are progressing through the ladder you gain Fame Points and fame rewards. Fame Points is a metric of your profile tied to the season; it defines your place in the seasonal Hall of Fame. Fame reward is a set of random items that you can get into your inventory once a day (see below).
Each victory during this "quest" gives you one Fame Point and increases the potential fame reward level. On the first defeat you lose your potential fame reward for good. Draws does neither.
Between battles you can finish the quest at any time or take the fame reward of the current level. The more the reward level is, the more items you get (and the more valuable these items will be). Level 0 reward is nothing.
 
This means before every fame battle with every of the 10 opponents you need to decide do you want to take the risk and try increasing your fame reward (if you win); or not to risk and take your reward at the current level.
Inventory and Crafting
Crafting is a mechanic to transform components from fame rewards into useful items. Currently, you can craft only Basic Keys and Advanced Keys for unlocking basic and advanced arenas, respectively.
A Basic Key only costs 100 Key Fragments to create. An Advanced Key requires 300 Key Fragments and 10 Key Upgrades if each of the three kinds: red, blue, and green.
All arenas are now locked by default in each season, including Season Alpha. Your first unlock in each season is free, all further unlocks will consume crafted keys. Basic arenas can be unlocked with a basic key right away while advanced arenas require an advanced key and unlocked basic version of the arena.
All items will be tradable on the Steam Community Market. But we are not going to sell them at the official store; they will only be generated by crafting from fame rewards.
We hope that this new mechanic will be fun enough to allow playing Screeps: Arena as a game, not just as a hardcore code competition. It will give a feeling of progress, unlocking more content while you are progressing through a season. And Fame Points plays a role of an aggregated metric that combines both your skill and persistency in all arenas during the season.
Please test this new mechanic as you try the new release. We are really interested in how it feels in comparison to the previous bare game mechanic. If you feel it's satisfying, let us know. If you have any complaints or suggestions, feel free to share. We hope we will be able to release the final Early Access version on Steam very soon.
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