The Coliseum in Drakenhold is the PvP hub of Unicorn Overlord, as well as a long-term quest to unlock the Gladiator Amalia. Let’s talk about a few ways to climbs ranks through the Coliseum so you can get rewards fast.
To unlock the Coliseum, you’ll first need to complete the Another Prince quest in Unicorn Overlord—the quest right after you initially unlock Berengaria. A cutscene commemorates the opening of the Coliseum, with Gilbert keeping his promise to Amalia—and Amalia making a promise to Alain. As soon as the city of Baumratte is open, you can immediately enter matches—no deliveries required.
But the arena is a big ladder of single fights against units. As long as you end the fight with more health than the foe, you win the match and climb in rank or ranked points.
Read your foe’s skills before the match
You have many advantages on offense before you begin a Coliseum duel. One of them is the ability to read your opponent’s army and figure out their weaknesses. A surprise Freeze weapon could catch an unprepared army off-guard, and Row attacks that deal Burn can be compensated with if you bring the right anti-burn equipment on your support characters.
This will also let you prepare for fights against classes you haven’t seen before, like Bestrals or Angels. Quickly check out their skills and equipment skills to see if they have attacks that might ruin your basic formations. While this rarely happens outside of online mode and Auxiliary battles, it’s still a good idea to refresh yourself on active and passive abilities for rarely-seen foes.
Change out your characters
Some of your units used during basic gameplay might not have a place in the Arena. For instance, a full Cavalry squad might die quickly to the right set of foes or suffer heavy losses against a Greatshield unit. Tagging out a character like Clive for one like Rosalinde can get you a bit farther against your foes.
You’ll likely have to do the same with equipment. Bringing anti-curse and anti-seal Shields and Accessories can easily be the difference between life and death in specific fights. Several of the fights on the ladder like to apply the Frozen condition, for instance, which can ruin you if you can’t cure it on multiple characters.
Adjust your conditions
Some fights can benefit from having slightly different conditions. Your healer could benefit from being more aggressive, for example, in a fight against ranged armored threats. Or you may notice your army is dedicating a lot of attacks into an armored unit when they should be prioritizing others.
By temporarily changing the conditions on your units, you can make them stop using attacks that aren’t doing anything good and instead make them more likely to help your team. Do this and you can turn a definite loss into an overwhelming victory.
Feel free to lose a fight once to see what you’re dealing with and what attacks or passives aren’t proccing. For offline fights, you get as many tries as you need to win. Online fights have a fights-per-day limit, though, so try to plan accordingly.
Stall is an option
While you can’t guarantee a clean victory in every fight, you might be able to eek out one through having more health than your opponent. Hoplites, Legionnaires, and Werebears might not pump out the most damage but can keep enough of your units healthy enough to win through technicality.
Make sure your team can do enough damage to tilt the health differential in your favor, though. While Sainted Knights and Legionnaires can heal or defend to their heart’s content, they still need to eventually win the fight through the other guys not having 100 percent of their HP.
Check the forbidden units and item list
Exclusive to online play is a small list of banned characters and items unavailable for offense or defense. At the moment of writing, these include the Featherstaff, Crusader, Valkyria, and the Lapis and Sapphire Pendants. These can be big changes to a squad, so make sure yours doesn’t fully rely on these before you enter online play.
There are very valid replacements for many of these. For example, the Ancient Crown can grant a plus-one to PP and a plus-five to all stats. Alongside an Icefall or Dragonbone Spear, you can get to that plus-two PP currently banned in online play. Featherstaves are powerful healers, but not irreplaceable by clerics like Tatiana, similar to how Valkyrias aren’t irreplaceable by other strong sword fighters like Jeremy or Melisandre. We’re not sure if this is going to be a rotating banlist or a temporary one while they figure out problems with the Crusader and Featherstaff classes, but keep a close eye on this list while you concoct your squad.
Rewards for beating the Coliseum
The offline Coliseum ends with a level 45 boss fight against a singular Dreadnaught, Amalia, in order to recruit her to your team. Both the online and offline Coliseum come with coins for purchasing endgame equipment in a unique shop.
Amalia will absolutely ruin a party that is not ready for her massive areas of effect and brutal Passive Seals. Make sure your army is ready with fantastic single-target debuffs, anti-Passive Seal, and ways to heal between Amalia’s devastating turns. Otherwise, you’ll quickly be overwhelmed.
The Coin shop is a great reward for those willing to play online. Offline battles will only get you around 1,200 Coliseum Coins, which is enough for strong gear by not enough for items like the Ruby and Sapphire Pendants. If you want those, you’ll have to play online. But don’t worry: Online play is built exactly like offline play, so you’ll be able to prepare for fights and battle just like you would for Amalia’s ladder.
