Farming Arena Tickets in…Tournaments!?

Diego’s Arena Gear prices have always been considered “high, but reasonable”, but the new Brandon Mistborn gear is so expensive the Duelmaster might as well be a convenience store. You need a full 11,000 (that’s ELEVEN THOUSAND) tickets just to get the Level 50 ring, athame, and wand and their awesome boosts in offensive stats. Even at 28 tickets per win, that’s 393 ranked pvp wins. Surely there is a better way; is there?

It turns out there is! Although Tournaments cost Crowns (the equivalent of 50 cents for subscribers, 90 cents for non) and require specific availability, their ticket rewards can be the most efficient way to ticket farm. In a 16 person tournament, everyone receives the following ticket awards (plus other prizes):

• 1st place – 1250 tickets
• 2nd place – 1000 tickets
• 3rd place – 750 tickets
• 4th place – 650 tickets
• 5th place – 550 tickets
• 6th place – 500 tickets
• 7th place – 475 tickets
• 8th place – 450 tickets

• 9th place – 425 tickets
• 10th place – 400 tickets
• 11th place – 375 tickets
• 12th place – 350 tickets
• 13th place – 325 tickets
• 14th place – 300 tickets
• 15th place – 275 tickets
• 16th place – 250 tickets

It should be noted that if there are fewer than 16 participants and you come in anywhere below 3rd place, you are given prizes corresponding to a lower rank than what appears in this chart. For example, one recent tournament I was in 5th place out of somewhere between 11 and 13 people but only received 475 tickets, which is the 7th place prize – not the 550 I should have gotten! Also, note that sometimes a tournament will have slightly more than 16 participants; if so, your rank does not get adjusted upwards. For example, I once finished in 7th place out of 19 participants with a 3-1 record, but still only got the 7th place prize.

In the 2 hours you need to have reserved to do a tournament, you could probably do around 8 ranked matches… corresponding to “only” 224 tickets. HOWEVER, this does not mean that tournaments are always the best way to ticket farm! Between having to lock in specific time intervals (you might have to wait a few days to even find a tournament in the time slot you prefer to play) and the Crowns cost, I wouldn’t say that tournaments give better payoffs for investment until you’re around 8th place or so (when you get twice as many tickets as from 8 wins). By the time you hit the 4th place prize, you start getting enough tickets to make tournaments unquestionably the best place for ticket farming (and you get other awesome prizes as well, such as Mega-Snacks, trophies, and maybe even the exact gear you were farming for tickets for in the first place!)

Suggestions for Farming Arena Tickets

This still doesn’t answer the strategy of when to use tournaments and when to use ranked PvP; my suggestions are as follows:

1. Be “fully geared”: If you enter tournaments completely ungeared, you are likely to finish in the bottom half or worse. Therefore, until you have your full set of Commander (if below Level 50) or Warlord (if Grandmaster tier) gear, you should probably begin by simply playing ranked matches until your rank is Warlord and you are fully geared. At Level 60 or above, Waterworks gear and the Staff of Flashing Blades is definitely enough to be considered “fully geared” in this sense.
2. Be prepared for a grind: From then on, you are likely to be geared enough to be competitive – but NOT dominant – in PvP tournaments; those with Mistborn rings, wands, and athames are likely to still have an advantage over you. However, you should be able to get at least 450 or so tickets (on average) per tournament, which is enough for these to become the best way to continue.
3. AVOID THE EIGHT PM (US Central time) SLOT LIKE THE PLAGUE! Various timeslots for tournaments have various levels of competitiveness, but the eight PM slot (being early evening in the US) brought out the most hardcore PvP competitive people out of all the tournaments. The one time I tried a Level 50 tournament at that time, everyone – even at the bottom of the pool – was a Warlord with Glendemming gear… and names I recognized as perennial top-3 finishers were struggling to make the top half. Some timeslots are more competitive and some are less, but this time slot is particularly awful for ticket farming.

Note that the slots will show up as your local time; for example, if you’re in the Pacific time zone, this time slot will appear as 6 PM.