We’re bringing more Arkheron to your week: introducing Community Nights! In addition to Friday Night Fights, we’re inviting our fellow Echoes to join us on Thursday nights, starting this week with North America. Expect a lower pressure Arkheron experience, where you can pick up some tips and wisdom from our very own developers and high-skill playtesters.

Better yet, we’re kicking things off by testing Spires — a never-before-seen game mode focused on combat, combat, and more combat. 

Here’s what’s going on this week:

• Featured Mode: Spires (Thursday AND Friday!)

• Community Nights: North America debut

• Friday Night Fights: NA, EU, Asia

• Dev Streams & Custom Games

New to Friday Night Fights? 

• Get your Key: If you’ve never played in Friday Night Fights (hey, welcome!) you can still get an Arkheron Playtest key through a FirstLook friend invite from an existing player, or by signing up on FirstLook here. 

• Join our Discord: A lot of the action - including Dev Q&As, custom games, and team finding - takes place on Discord! Join the Arkheron Discord here!

NEW Featured Mode: Spires

We’re excited for you to get your hands on our newest game mode, Spires. It’s all Beacon fights, all the time. 

Keep in mind: this is still an early iteration of what we want Spires to become, and even more than usual, we want to hear all your feedback. Unlike Turbo and Blitz Ascension modes, we see Spires as a mode that has the potential to become a mainstay game mode in Arkheron, just like core Ascension. Spires is our version of an “Arena” mode, aimed to help players (old and new) sharpen their skills in combat.

With that in mind, we look forward to shaping it with your help!

Spires was made to simulate the high-intensity gameplay of a two team beacon fight.

You start the match alone with your team in a check-point room, which is peppered with a series of spires-specific chests and a Shrine. Equip yourself and your team with a loadout from the items available to you, then purchase your Anchor Ability and Consumables from the Shrine. Once you’re fully equipped, ready up and ascend into an arena, where you’ll face one other team in a 3v3.

Each match is best of three, meaning: if the fight doesn’t go your way the first time, take a moment to regroup with your teammates and try again. Once the match ends, if you want to keep your teammates, you can vote to stay together. You’ll respawn together in a new check-point room, and start over with a new set of items to choose from.

Spires is more than just one match - it’s a series of them. You start each Spires run with three lives, and your stats are tracked from one match to the next until your lives run out with three losses. 

Keep fighting, keep winning, keep racking up damage and levels for a sick final score - you get the point.

NEW: Community Night - May 7 

Our first official Community Night is coming this week, starting with North America. It’s a chance to get more hands-on time with Arkheron, to meet and play with different people in the community, and to spend time together outside of the intensity of Friday Night Fights. 

Invite your Crew

We’re planning Community Night with new players in mind - we’d love to build a space where everyone feels comfortable inviting their friends to try out Arkheron! To keep things feeling balanced, we’ll have leaderboards turned off and matchmaking restrictions on for a small pool of our highest-skill players. 

Join us for a Community Night Pre-Show

Join us on Thursday at 6 pm PT as we kick off our first-ever Community Night with a full Spires reveal and rundown, hosted by our one-and-only Michelle “ohdeveraux” and featuring Case “someguyordude” and Game Director Jeremy “SunsetLion”! We’ll hop into some Spires matches, take you through the game, and answer questions from the community in real time. 

Queue up for Spires 

At 7 pm PT, the doors to the Tower will open and Spires queues will run from 7 to 9 pm PT, just like Friday Night Fights.

Learn or Teach in Ascension Customs

Once the Spires queues wind down at 9 pm PT, we’ll close the stream and open up Custom Ascension Games lobbies for players of all skill levels to hop in. We’ll be aiming to pair up newer players with more experienced players and developers - if you’re looking to learn, or looking to help teach, we’d love to have you join!

Looking for a Group? 

We’ll have team members across many skill levels playing alongside you during the NA queues again. Drop a request in the #looking-for-group channel and, if someone is available, they’ll buddy up with you.

Friday Night Fights - May 8

Come back the next day for Friday Night Fights and more Spires action. 

We’ll run Spires queues in Asia, Europe, and North America at the usual times. Read more here.

Get on the Leaderboard

For Friday Night Fights this week, leaderboards are back on with a Spires-specific twist! Keep an eye on the Discord for more details coming soon, we’re still getting our last few ducks in a row. 

After Hours Custom Games

Once NA queues wind down at 9 pm PT, we’ll run After Hours Customs — when it’s time, check Discord for the code.

See you in the Tower!

Arkheron’s Community Nights and Friday Night Fights are how we play, learn, and grow alongside our community, while testing out exciting new features and fine-tuning the game to its optimal state.

During these playtests, you can expect us to experiment with a variety of limited modes and activities to help us better tailor the experience, understand how you all like to play Arkheron, and help us beat up new additions to the game. We’re learning as you play, so expect quick iterations and changes that feel very work-in-progress.