The BETA of Temple Arena has already accomplished one entire year of development and intense work. I am very proud that there are already so many TA fans out there who want to see the game progressing even more. Today I’m giving you insights to the new Temple Arena features which are part of the upcoming patch 15.

•  Mercenaries & Mercenary Panel

First, there are two new mercenary classes: Medics and Leviathans. That means TA has a mercenary repertoire of 16 unit types. Those 16 unit types have been divided into 4 different armor classes which you can see at the left dialog frame. Each armor type is particularly strong versus another. Additionally, all mercenaries have been divided into damage, support and tank classes: the damage type gains more offensive abilities and bonuses from upgrades but is weak in defense, the tank type gains more defensive abilities and bonuses from upgrades, but is weak in offensive actions, and the support type is consisting only of medics by now. Medics are able to heal your army and have special supportive abilities.

At game start, you will be able to choose whichever mercenary class you want and you won’t have to pay anything for it. To switch your mercenary class, you have to pay 1000 minerals. If your mercenary compound is destroyed, you have to pay 500 for a new one.

• Upgrades & Upgrade Panel

The most distinct feature of patch 15 is the new upgrade panel and upgrade content. Within this panel you can find all upgrades that are currently available in game at one spot. You don’t have to search in structures and menus anymore. The panel offers three pages, one for standard upgrades (as you can see like damage, armor, health and other upgrades for your basic units, mercenaries and heroes), one for special upgrades (all abilities, passive bonuses and other upgrades that aren’t standard: each unit has 4 of them), and one for re-equips (enabling units to switch armors and weapons with a cooldown, but this feature isn’t finished yet: only marines and stalkers have re-equips right now).

While the costs for standard upgrades are increasing with higher levels in TA 14, they stay equally expensive in TA 15. Therefore, the prices have changed significantly and the total amount of the damage, armor & health upgrades has been increased to 40.

• Armor System 2.0

From patch 15 onwards, TA will work with a new armor system that is similar to the one in Warcraft III. Instead of absorbing the specific amount of damage depending on the armor value of the unit, a relative value is now calculated and represents the damage reduction value. The graph shows how the armor system works: the higher the armor value of the unit, the lower the damage reduction gain for a new armor point. It’s a degressive function.

For the game, this means that no unit will be undefeatable because even if you got max armor the unit will still receive about 18% damage (we can say 1/5th). So a Marine with 10 damage will do about 2 damage to the max armored unit. In conclusion, this armor system is an important step towards a fair and balanced arena game.

• Tutorial for beginners 

The very first game of a new TA player will now start with a tutorial that introduces the player to the most important game mechanics and shows how to defend oneself. All players who are busy with the tutorial don’t take part in voting and gain bonus minerals after the accomplished tutorial for the lost game time.

•  Hotkeys 

Both, the mercenary panel and the upgrade panel are opened by pressing hotkeys. In addition, from patch 15 onwards, TA will have all unit abilities properly assigned to hotkeys.

• Camera Panel

Since all players have different needs and likes, you are from TA 15 onwards able to adjust the camera distance as you wish. The default camera distance has been set to 40 which offers an acceptable view on the battlefield, but if you prefer to have your eyes everywhere at the same time, you will be able to easily zoom out as much as you want.

• Voting System 2.0

First, you are now able to vote for and against events. Second, you can now track the voting status with the number behind the options and see how many people have voted for them. You don’t have a vote button anymore, checking the boxes will be sufficient.

• Event Point Currency & Unit Cap

A new currency has been integrated to TA. For each time you win an event, you will now be rewarded with “Event Points”. Those points can be spent for different rewards (right now there are only options to make the entire map visible). But more rewards are planned.

Also you will be bound to a unit limit. Each player can have up to 150 units at the same time. Don’t worry, this is a huge army and each unit needs 1 supply. There are no differences besides Zerglings, which consume 0.5 supply. This feature prevents players who stay afk for a while to gather hundreds of units and it also makes “bunkering” a lot more difficult.

• New Sounds & Optimized Winner/Loser Screens

The way-too-big monster evaluation screen at the end of the game has been significantly reduced in size. In addition, you can now see the remaining XP to reach the new rank.

Thanks to one of our team members (DJ Fasay) who is a professional creator of sounds & music tracks, TA has had a lot of unique and very cool new sounds implemented. Thanks so much for this

Of course there are a lot more things to discover in TA 15. The testing phase will shortly begin and I hope we can present you the “fresh” TA very soon. Apply for the BETA test now and visit our chat channel: Temple Arena