We’ve been playing the alpha build of Warcraft Arclight Rumble (WAR) for almost a week and we’ve found interesting details about how you can improve your teams, the game’s monetization, and other features hidden throughout the ethereal arclight arcade machine.

So here’s roughly what we found out. Keep in mind this is based on an alpha build of the game and some of these mechanics may be changed by the time of the game’s official release.

Using the store and Monetization

The store in Warcraft Arclight Rumble is rather peculiar when it comes to monetization. The game has no gacha or loot boxes but this doesn’t mean there’s no RNG.

The WAR store is made up of a 3×3 grid with characters, leaders, and talents up for sale. Once you buy a unit, all other items that are horizontally or vertically aligned to it also reset, making way for new items to appear.

This means that you’ll need some luck from the RNG Gods if you’re looking for a specific item. It’s a little annoying that you can’t just pick exactly what you want, the system definitely encourages players to keep spending. That being said, it at least means that you know what you’re going to buy and have more choice than with a loot box system.

There are two currencies in the game, in-game gold and real-world money. The store uses gold to buy items, but you can buy more gold with real-world money which will refresh in stock once a week.

Here is the in-game price for the different items in the store:

• XP Boost – 50 Gold
• Unit – 350 Gold
• Hazard Unit – 350 Gold
• Leader Units – 400 Gold
• Talents – 500 Gold

All of this can lead to the game being rather pricey, especially with the talents however if you’re able to stave off the temptation of paying real money for the in-game money, you should be able to get more gold through completing the maps.

One important trick to remember is that after completing a world on the PvE map, there will be limited-time offers at the store for some discounted items and gold for real money but only for a short amount of time. For the first map, it will sell units that are in the same tribe as your first chosen leader and the other maps will sell gold for far cheaper.

Leveling Up

There are two leveling systems in Warcraft Arclight Rumble, each unit individually levels up, and your overall account levels up. Completing a map will give exp to a single unit. Doing Daily Quests, however, can give more exp to a unit of your choosing making them a good way to grind up your army.

If your account levels up, you will be able to gain more exp from XP tomes, found in the stores, and as PvE rewards as well as, and the daily quests so it is imperative to try and level up your account.

Using Leaders and Their Abilities

In Arclight Rumble, your team is led by one of 12 leader units, consisting of famous characters from across the Warcraft series. When you start the game, you’ll get to choose your first leader from three randomly selected choices.

Each leader has a specific passive ability that only they can perform. Here are all the abilities of each of the leaders that are currently in the alpha build.

Using Talents

In Warcraft Arclight Rumble, you’ll be able to unlock another mechanic called talents. Talents are passive skills that unit leaders can gain access to. Each of the 12 leaders has about three talents that they can choose from. For example, Hogger has a talent that grants him 20% max HP depending on how many times he is deployed, and has another talent that grants him poison.

You can think of them as kind of like the abilities in Pokemon, and like those, talents can significantly change how your units work in battle meaning that selecting one is something you should think about before heading off to fight.

You can buy more talents in the store. It should be noted that they are by far the most expensive item in there, even more so than new units or leaders usually going for around 500 gold, probably a little stingy on the dev’s side but it shows how valuable they can be.

Dungeon Mode and Valor

Dungeon mode is another feature that can be unlocked early in the game. It’s a survival mode where your army has to go up against three maps, one after another.

For every map that you clear, you’ll get valor, a resource that allows you to upgrade your army via your leader by raising one of their stats based on your choice. As you can see from the picture above, you need to unlock a certain stat with valor at least three times for it to upgrade it to the next level.

These upgrades are particularly important for PvP play. In PvP, in order to make the game fairer, all units are brought down the level one however the leader’s stats unlocked from valor stay the same which can give you quite the edge against your opponents. It’s equivalent to a level 1 army going up against a level 4 army.

The dungeon maps will also give you one relic per map which can be used to buff certain units based on their tribe.

There are a few more details worth noting about the game, combat wise:

• The Home base tower will have the same level as your hero.
• Quests level will be similar to your current troops’ level.
• There are high ground and low ground areas on maps. Ranged units can attack enemies that are on lower ground, but can’t attack units that are higher than them. 
• If your bombard (usually ranged and attack ground only) unit goes up the ramp, it won’t attack the enemy until the enemy is next to it or until it successfully went up the ramp. This is due to the effects of high and low ground.
• We suspect the unit’s max level is at 30. We can’t confirm for certain however considering Onyxia, the game’s most challenging boss reaches level 30, is it most likely that is as far as the player can go, at least at launch. 
• Apparently, they set a maximum quest (which grants extra exp on specific units) you can do a day, not sure if this will still be the case for the final build.

Hopefully, this should give you some idea of what awaits you in Warcraft Arclight Rumble, from talents to leaders, to entering a dungeon.

Warcraft Arclight Rumble will be available for mobile devices later this year.