The Menu for the arena mode.
The Arena is an alternate game-mode for Teleglitch added on the 20th of May in 2014, in the 9.3 Patch.
Rather than attempting to escape the Miltech Facility, the arena has you playing as an advanced combat robot/cyborg carrying out weapon or AI tests for Miltech against waves of enemies in a series of specialized arenas.
There are 4 separate sets of arenas, roughly corresponding to the types of enemies seen in each quarter of the game's main mode; Arena 1 sees the player facing hordes of mutants and zombies with few to no enemies with firearms, while arena 4 has the player pitted against massive hordes of Squids, war-walkers, and other heavily-armored foes. For each difficulty, the player is offered a set of weapon and equipment loadouts to choose from that are appropriate for the given level. As such, dispatching enemies in the arena 1 layouts may be done with only basic equipment and weapons that you are allowed to choose from, such as 9mm Pistols or shotguns. As such, each set of arenas are roughly the same difficulty (or, at the very least, intended to be the same difficulty).
Each arena within a set will have several different objectives for a given layout. These can be eliminating all hostiles in a wave, surviving until a given time limit, or selectively eliminating a certain set of enemies over 4-5 waves. Teleporters scattered around these arenas will spawn the enemies that the player will face, and although the arenas can give plenty of space for the player to run, things can become chaotic and frantic very quickly. In addition to the massive amount of enemies, the amount of resources a player spawns with is limited - including a limited amount of ammunition for each weapon, a sparse selection of equipment, and a limited supply of explosives and healing items. Players can expect that they'll have to give it their all when completing these challenges, as the quantity of enemies is usually overwhelming and far beyond anything seen in the campaign.
Strategy[]
Given that there are many equipment and weapon combinations to choose from, players should opt to use whichever ones they prefer in order to beat each arena challenge at first. If the player wants a challenge, they can try their hand at completing all loadouts for each objective - although doing so is very time-consuming, and potentially more trouble than it's worth given that there doesn't appear to be an achievement for full completion of the arena.[Verify]
- Given that these arena matches take place prior to the Teleglitch incident, there is no Teleglitch anomaly for the player to exploit in order to kill enemies for free. As such, if the player is confident in their dodging and baiting abilities, having enemies deal collateral damage to one-another can be a valid - if dangerous - tactic to save ammunition. This is best seen with Squids and their powerful lasbeam attacks, although abusing corner-peeking and hiding behind pillars is a must in order to avoid dying yourself.
- For objectives in the Arena 4 set, loadouts using the Railgun are extremely powerful. The high damage and piercing of the Railgun, plus the absurd amount of highly-armored enemies crowded in long corridors gives this weapon plenty of room to shine, as firing down a mobbed hallway can eliminate swathes of enemies quickly and cheaply. Many other weapons are still viable, especially when dealing with enemies 1-on-1, but the sheer quantity of foes means that dealing with hordes of squids or war-walkers is far more common.
- For a similar reason, the Cannon loadouts are also useful due to the blast radius the weapon has, although self-damage from firing at nearby enemies can become a problem due to how easy it is to be flanked or ambushed.
- Whenever possible, collect the ammunition from weapons dropped by foes (or canned meat dropped by zombies). The number of enemies present in the arenas are deliberately overwhelming, and as such these random drops of ammo or health can be a godsend.