Hails from the Arena (1)

Rather than trying to find a new company in Second Life I've spent my past time in playing Gladiatus the past few weeks, which is rather easy to do as it doesn't take much time. Time to do a little update on the game.

Gladiatus, the Town of Rome

The game of Gladiatus has 3 areas; the town, the province and the dungeons. In this blogpost I'd like to focus on the town as this is where the game begins. First there are the stable and the jewellers shop (image 1 and image 2). Working in the stables will get you money you'll need to buy armor and other items. At the Jeweller's you can buy (obviously) Jewels, which can be purchased with real money through paypal and other payment methods. These Jewels can be used (for instance) to hurry expeditions in the province.

A small outing to the province brings you to the hermit (image 3) where you'll be able to change your name (at a price) if you've made too many enemies, or simply if you think you need a more heroic name. With the money you have earned you can visit various shops in town. There's the armory and the weaponsmith (image 4 and image 5) where you can buy armor and weapons. A third shop houses the Alchemist (image 6) where you can buy potions and rings to strengthen your items or yourself.

A fourth shop is the Merchant's (image 7) where you can buy food, gloves and shoes. Buying items at the armory and weaponsmith comes at a price. Often these items are quite expensive and the best items always need Jewels (hence real money) to purchase. Best option to acquire good items is the Auction (image 8). At the auction, which runs in cycles of approximately 4-5 hours a new set of items is available. You can bid on these items, but plan well ahead. When you are overbid, you lose the money you've invested in the auction as well. However, there's the option to use Jewels here as well. Let's say items come at a base price of 2500 gold coins and 10 Jewels, you can start bidding at 2501 gold coins. If it is a hot item, the price may well rise to 12000 gold items. If you really want the item, you can still nick it away in a direct sale for 2500 gold coins and 10 Jewels. A second alternative to get items without buying Jewels is at the marketplace (image 9). This is where gamer to gamer sales take place.

When you're dressed for success, you'll need every bit of money you can find to visit the trainer (image 10) to work on your stats (strength, charisma, intelligence, speed etc.) and prepare yourself for the live of a Gladiator.

Living the live of the Gladiator starts in the arena (image 11). Here you can fight against fellow gamers. The arena is level based. For every 10 levels there is a seperate pool, so you'll stand a fair chance. On the particular server I played, the arena for level 1-9 was about 750 players, and the same went for the arena on level 10-19.

Final place to stop in the town is the inn, where the innkeeper (image 12) is the one who deals out quests. These quests will get you a nice reward, in money and sometimes in fine items. Items you receive in quests, but don't want to use can be sold at the appropriate shop or at the market. The innkeeper will provide you with simple quests like talking to various shopkeepers or exploring certain areas in the province, or harder ones to find artefacts in the province or win a fight in the arena.

As I said, the arena works in level based pools. The image above shows a bit more detail on the arena. It has two columns of Gladiators, first of which is the top 5 Gladiators in this level pool. Every hour you're on spot 1 there's money added to the jackpot. Beating the number 1 gladiator gets you the jackpot. The second column is a list of the 4 Gladiators ahead of you in the competition, these are the Gladiators you can fight to rise in rank. As you can see, my charachter, Verritus has risen to rank 10 in this group. I actually made it to rank 6 in this pool before I levelled to level 20 and had to start all over again.

Finally, there's the guardsman (image 10 as well) which is accessible after level 10 who can give you Dungeon related quests. Also, after level 10 your merchant has an extra tab available to purchase mercenaries, which I'll go into in a later blogpost.