Player Testimonies:

(check the attached video for a replay of the duel that led to this salt 😂)

Duel Arena Primer

Hello again friends, today we'll be talking about Cambria's Duel Arena Essence Points ♦ [EP] (airdrop points weighted higher than Gold Rush's Royal Favor), and how you can start farming it in the safest way possible! Fair warning, this is far riskier money wise than Gold Rush could ever be. Play at your own risk, and if you aren't having fun take a break! If you're a Cambria head this will be a quick refresher, but by the end of this guide anyone reading will be familiar with Duel Arena ahead of it reopening Jan 16th (Delaybria q.q) for a "Definitely Not New Years" event. This guide will assume you're already familiar with Cambria, but if you aren't you can reference my Gold Rush Royal Favor Farming Guide for a general overview of the main game.

First of all, why should you listen to me? Referencing the Dune Duel Arena Leaderboard (scroll down), you'll see a familiar name in the top 5 for total battles when the game was on Base! We've been farming since Base from an .03E initial stack to .5E+ alongside 50k+ EP ♦ across my accounts. Duel Arena is one of the few games where once you get the ball rolling you're effectively paid to play. I'd love to pass on the knowledge to anyone who's interested!

What is Duel Arena? ⚔️

Game link: lobby.cambria.gg/select-world/

Access Code: not needed for this event!

In the Duel Arena, you can challenge anyone to a high-stakes 1v1 duel to the death in a public arena. Players can wager any amount of Arena Tokens (in-game currency used on vanity items) or ETH on their Duels with other players - winner-takes-all. Essence Points [EP] ♦ are points towards Cambria's upcoming $gold airdrop, red (duel arena) essence > gold (gold rush) essence in terms of weight. Essence Points can be earned through staking ETH in duels. The more ETH you stake, the more your Essence Point reward (diminishing returns .01 ETH duels are the best R/R for EP farming), regardless of whether you win or lose the duel. You can use several weapons such as; whip, great axe, falchion, boxing, and whip + dagger. Protip; if you are a noob/new player avoid daggers at all cost, you will get rinsed. However, if we're solely focused on farming with as little risk as possible, we'll be staying with whips as it's almost exclusively what I did my farming on. Whip and whip + dagger have odds you can manipulate through player skill, while the rest of the weapons, while fun (try falchion duels), are completely random odds wise.

Combat Stances:

(Note: for Duel Arena each combat stat is maxed at 99, 990 HP per player per duel. You can also swap stances by using the Q,W,E hotkeys for Accurate, Aggressive, and Defensive respectively.)

Formula with simulations you can call a scam when you lose.

Accurate (max hit rate)

Advantageous in Accuracy, with max output of 270 (vs. 160 for the other stances).

Aggressive (max dmg)

Advantageous in Strength (i.e. max hit), with max output of 130 (vs. 110 for the other stances).

Defensive (max defense/less DMG taken)

Advantageous in Defense, with max output of 180 (vs. 120 for the other stances).

On average, if Player A only uses the Aggressive stance to duel against Player B, who only uses the Accurate stance, it will take Player A 23.3 turns to defeat Player B. Conversely, it will take Player B 24.9 turns (1.6 more turns) to defeat Player A.

Strategy:

Going off that data alone we can develop a basic strategy that puts us ahead of other players. Take your opponent's attack on the Defensive stance, and attempt to hit them on Accurate or Aggressive depending on total HP remaining. Sometimes it really is that simple, although, as I said earlier you can manipulate the odds through player skill to a certain point. For example; if you obtain an HP lead early on through attacking Aggressive, why would you ever need to swap to the Aggressive stance again when the more consistent hits on Accurate stance will make you win sooner? Assuming your opponent gets similar rolls, and doesn't critical hit [mechanic where you deal much more damage than usual rarely] you 5 times in a row. There's also something to be said about starting the Duel on Defensive stance to mitigate damage if you don't get the first hit, but personally I prefer to sit on Aggressive just in case I crit.

Excalibur (cherry on top):

Excalibur is a global effect that chooses Duel victors at random and grants them a massive reward that accumulates in a pool the longer someone goes without winning it (minimum 0.3 ETH). 2% of all ETH staked is added to the Excalibur pool. Every time a player wins a crypto duel, there is a chance that they get chosen by Excalibur, instantly winning the higher of 0.3 ETH or the accumulated fee revenue. The likelihood of being chosen by Excalibur increases significantly the more you stake, capping at .5 ETH total stake.

If you are the current holder of Excalibur, you also gain a 1.5x multiplier on ALL essence points earned, until someone else claims it! Excalibur winners can also wield the sword in game during this period.

Note: Self-dueling is not allowed. Please reference Rules for more. Cambria's moderation team will be applying Excalibur bans to anyone they suspect are self-dueling or otherwise breaking the rules.

A Note on Greed:

Inevitably, if you're a skilled player you'll get to the point where you're effectively playing with house money which may tempt you to increase size. If you do get to that point, and this is coming from someone who has seen far worse, you can lose upwards of .5 ETH (largest I've seen was 3 ETH personally) in a single duel before you can cope by saying "this is the luckiest MFer alive." Don't chase the dragon too hard, as fun as it is with house money, go legit gamble on perps it has much better R/R for larger amounts. We're here for Essence Points, stay on .003 eth - .01 eth whip duels exclusively and it's very hard to go to 0. On another note, give people a break if they quite literally will not stop playing you even though they're losing 80% of the time, you'd be surprised. GLHF!