Comprehensive strategies, tips and tricks for arena tournament : Hustle Castle

This document is to show how to improve your chance to win at arena tournament with various methods and information, some of which still require further case studies. As the information has been acquired mainly based on my experience it may lack information that can only be observed in higher level range.

Dedicated to all clan members of Black Vampires

0. Purpose of Arena Tournament

  The key of this game is to maximize your power and the best way is to get as many legendary items of your current fighter level. Below list is about how to get legendary items and chances to get legendary items goes down from the top of the list.

  a. Arena : Master Chest(100% from TR7), Artifacts(from TR?), Updated Items(from TR?)

  b. Portal: I understand it gives you legendary amulet and so on but it seems to only be available for high-level members as it requires very high power to defeat stages worth farming. I will update more information when I get there.

  c. Reward Chest from Clan War: Legendary chest and above provides legendary items. The epic chest also provides legendary item by rare chance. They tend to be distributed to a clan member who has gained the highest glory point.

  d. In Market: you can have the legendary item out of Ad-watcher's Chest and the Mystical Chest but the chance is pretty low.

1. Level Bracket

  a. What is it? : In order to win the tournament first we need to understand the level bracket. Hustle Castle tournament matching system decides your opponents by an average of your fighters' level and lets you play in a certain bracket where all of your opponents have a similar average level of their fighters. However as it could simply take too long time to find opponents of exactly the same level as yours the developers of the game has turned the matching curve into stair, in which some brilliant players have brought out a unique strategy to win the higher place in a tournament : as long as the average level of your fighter stays under the level limit of each bracket you can have one higher level fighter than the bracket level in your squad.

  b. Bracket list: In below list, the left number is the size of your barrack and the right number is the average level of your best fighters.

     4x30, 4x40, 4x47, 4x55, 4x70

     5x40, 5x47, 5x55, 5x62, 5x70, 5x77, 5x85, 5x92, 5x100
     6x40, 6x47, 6x55, 6x62, 6x70, 6x77, 6x85, 6x92, 6x100

     (in bold are the brackets with a lack of players and a long waiting time in queue)

     Bracket list by u/BeewizFr

  c. How is the average level of your fighters calculated

   - The average level is calculated with levels of the best fighters among your whole castle dwellers no matter which chamber they are in your castle. When calculating the average level people normally count fighters they have in a barrack but a fighter outside the barrack can be counted if he/she is higher level than anyone in the barrack.

   - The average level is always rounded down (for example 47.9 => 47). u/BeewizFr

As soon as your average level is over a bracket level, you go to the next bracket. For example, with an average level of 48, you go to the level 55 bracket.

2. Strategy and accompanying cons.

  a. Da Trick: Set one fighter's level higher than the others. That's pretty simple but it will give you even higher chance to win a tournament. Below are some example and a few requirements

    - If you are in the 4x30 bracket, set your squad as 27 30 30 36 of which average still remains at 30.75. 

    - The highest fighter has to be a melee tanker. continuing with above example, the 36lv melee fighter with legendary or epic item set of his/her level would be felt like a golem to the opponent 30lv fighters and would carry most of the fight alone. In many cases, it is recommended to have two top level fighters as melee fighters unless you have legendary archer/mage set and all blue items for the melee fighter.

  b. Preparation Stage(legendary Item farming) : Legendary item is still essential so you need to prepare legendary item set for the highest level fighter and at least epic sets for the others.

    - First of all, you will need some farming of arena point till you accumulate enough point to buy first master chest. The master chest should be the one you can get a legendary item by 100%. When you have low-level fighters like 30 the best strategy is to farm a melee legendary items for your strongest level fighter, let's say 36, then you will be able to start winning the tournament more easily.

    - Next, you may want to equip your lower level fighters with epic or legendary items which will improve the chance of winning. Once you level up your TR room and crafting shops you won't be able to get legendary items anymore for lower level fighters. Before moving up to the next level bracket you need to prepare enough legendary items for lower fighters in the next level squad in the plan. For example if you currently have 27 30 30 36 lv fighters and the next bracket you want to farm is 47 you will have to accumulate arena points that you can buy at least 5 master chests, 3 for the lower 3 fighters(43 47 47) and 2 for the next strongest fighter (51). If you also want to be competitive in clan war you would need an extra one or two more chests for 2 more fighters, total 6.

    - Arena points gained by tournament rank does not increase as you level up, while the cost of apple to participate in the arena does. For this reason, you may consider staying in a certain arena bracket for a very long time to farm enough points to buy legendary items for much higher level not just for the next level.

    - Once you level up your TR room you won't be able to get the lower level item, and your lower level fighters may have to fight in green or blue armors if legendary items were not acquired in advance.

  d. Cons: When your barrack capacity is less than 6 employing this strategy would make you difficult to in clan war against opponents who have the same throne room level as yours but have maxed out training for all 6 fighters. For example, if you have 4-crew barrack filled with 36 30 30 27 level fighters and then you deploy them to the war way point of 6 fighter slot your 6-man squad has to be 36 30 30 27 + 27 27 (total 177, the latter two 27 level fighters cannot exceed the level otherwise you would move to next arena bracket) while your opponent with the same TR6 would bring 6x40 (total 240) fighters and if the opponents fighters are equipped with similar tier items of yours but of their maxed-out level, you won't be able to win that waypoint even though it's only for TR6, which really matters sometimes.

3. Troubleshooting: Cases that cause an unwanted change of level bracket and how to fix it

  a. Two higher level fighters than current bracket level(75% confirmed)

      If you have two fighters with a higher level than your desired bracket level you would most likely to be moved to the next level bracket. I am not yet 100% sure how it works but by several cases, especially from the 40lv bracket, I have found two higher level fighters than your current bracket cause unwanted change of bracket even though the average level of fighters does not exceed the limit.

  b. 5 level gap
      I have been developing this theory with a few but plausible case studies and this may only work for other level brackets except 30 level bracket. This is pretty similar to above issue (a.) but when you have a too low level fighter that is still counted to calculate the average, it may cause a problem. If the lowest level fighter, Tink, is 5 level lower than the next lowest lever fighter, Tonk, the lowest level fighter, Tink, is excluded from the calculation of average fighter level, which will increase the average more than what your expected. Below is tested results in 40x4 bracket. If you want to stay in 40x5 bracket the fighter average level has to be smaller than 41.

    - 35 40 40 46 : in this case though the average level does not exceed 41 as the 35 level fighter is excluded from the calculation the average is (40+40+46)/3 = 42

    - 35 36 40 46 : in this case the gap between the two lowest fighters are smaller than 5 but the average of three higher level fighters is 40.6 and the gap between the number and the lowest level fighter is 5. This squad was matched to 47 lv bracket and has brought the new hypothesis.

    - 36 36 40 46 : works fine at lv 40 bracket but there are 6 level gap between top and the second high level fighter

    - 36 38 41 46 : the average is 40.25 but was matched to 47 lv bracket. The gap between the average of top two fighters(43.5) and the next high level fighter(38) is more than 5.

    ∴ level gap explains many cases but it may have exceptional case such as if only one high level fighter exceeds the limit(41~) of the bracket it may have 5 level gap from the next high level fighter who remains inside the level limit(as 40).

  c. Going back to lower bracket : If you don't think you fit in your current bracket as you don't have enough number of legendary or epic items, or by accident you leveled up a fighter and stepped into the next level bracket you may want to consider to go back to previous bracket. Here is the simple way and some explanation.

  - Banish fighters and lower your average level.

  - If above does not work.

      Banish the fighter whose leveling up was a direct effect on the unwanted change of level bracket. Check if you have high level fighters in other chamber than barrack which may be affecting the average calculation.

4. Cost of items in arena store : 

  a. Legendary artifacts(changing) : from TR?

  b. Legendary items(changing) : from TR?

  c. Master chest : 5200(TR6) / 8350(TR7) / 16700(TR8)

Credit

NAN_KEBAB, Kimi_Raikokken, u/BeewizFr