As of March 2024, the gamemode has now been made free for everyone to play.
Arcade is a Game Mode in For Honor, introduced in the Marching Fire update. It is currently the only game mode that is exclusive (not free-to-play), as it requires the purchase of the Marching Fire Expansion pack to gain access to it. Friends can play with players who have the expansion without needing to purchase it.
Overview[]
Arcade is a single player or two-player coop gamemode that pits players against bots. Players will start by selecting a quest based on the tier's gear rarity level. The level affects the difficulty of the quest, how many chapters will be present in the quest along with the kind of modifiers applied to all combatant Heroes. If your Hero is above/below the rarity level requirement, your Hero will receive a buff/debuff respectively to your damage output and input (ie. if you are under level, you will receive more damage and deal less damage); if you are on par with the rarity level, there won't be a damage modifier. Also, with each gear rarity level, the Bot enemies will receive slightly higher health and damage boosts.
Arcade will progress your Hero like any other multiplayer game mode. This also works with Orders, including the Daily Orders, given to the player. Each chapter of Arcade counts as a full match, although rewards for the end of the Quest will be akin to one match. As an example, a 4 chapter Arcade quest will count as 4 full matches for Orders.
Each quest tells a miniature story of a quest your warrior has embarked on. Each quest will randomly select its maps, warriors, and modifiers. Modifiers and locations will be thematically selected for the quest. The player can face everything in the game, including Soldiers, Archers, Heroes, and Guardians; they can even face Catapults and Arrows from above or a field filled with traps. Heroes and Guardians can have modifiers.
Each chapter may have one of three objectives: Elimination, Survive and Eliminate Target.
- "Elimination" is the most common objective, where you just need to kill all enemies.
- "Survive" puts the player on a clock (usually 2 minutes), where they need to keep fighting until the time is over. Bots of this objective will innately have the "Cheat Death" trait (not counted as a modifier in this case).
- "Eliminate Target" requires the player to kill one of the enemy bots, who is usually accompanied by bots that do not need to be killed to finish the chapter. On each Quest page, the target that needs to be killed will be in bold.
Modifiers[]
At the beginning of each chapter, modifiers are selected for all warriors. Modifiers can be beneficial or detrimental traits that will change the dynamic of the chapter. Most modifiers have levels, up to three, where an aspect of the modifier can be stronger at higher levels. Each Hero can only have up to three modifiers at a time.
At low tier quests, the player will be buffed while the bots will receive debuffs. At higher tiers, the traits will skew in favour of the bots instead, giving the bots the advantage while crippling the player severely, sometimes making a quest nearly impossible if the modifiers are badly randomized.
*Words underlined represent values that are modified by modifier levels; no underline means the modifier does not have levels.*
- Increased damage : All attacks will deal more damage
- Increased light damage : Light Attack' damage is increased.
- Increased heavy damage : Heavy Attack damage is increased.
- Heavy attacks knocks down enemies : Landed heavy attacks will knock down enemies a distance.
- Heavy attacks knocks back enemies : Landed heavy attacks will knock back enemies a distance.
- Unblockable : All attacks become unblockable.
- Uninterruptible : Actions cannot be interrupted.
- Never stumbles : Cannot be stumbled or unbalanced by parries and throws.
- Attacks drain stamina : Attacks that hit will drain the stamina of the target.
- Block damage increase : Attacks deal increased chip damage.
- Blocks drain stamina : Blocking attacks drains stamina from the enemy.
- Heal on hit : Attacks will heal on successful hit (Works on smaller units).
- Heal on kill : Attacks will heal on kills (Works on smaller units).
- Bleeding attacks : Attack will make the target bleed.
- Fire-y attacks : Attack will make the target burn.
- Never thrown : Immunity to normal throws. Still can be guardbroken.
- Increased health : The Hero starts with increased maximum health.
- Shield : The Hero starts with a shield.
- Regeneration : The Hero constantly regenerates health.
- Regenerative shield : The Hero has a shield that regenerates (by percentage) when not hit.
- Blinds enemies : Landed heavy attacks will blind the target for a period of time.
- Increased revenge gain : Increases the revenge gain for the Hero. (allows for Revenge gain even in 1v1s)
- Infinite revenge : The Hero starts and stays in revenge mode for the entire chapter.
- Effectively, the Hero has infinite stamina, uninterruptible attacks, and increased damage, on top of causing knockdowns when throwing or parrying enemy attacks.
- Slippery : Guard break will not work on the Hero.
- Desperation : Deal more damage when at low health.
Bots only[]
- Respawning : The Hero will respawn if not executed after a short time.
- Cheats Death : The Hero will respawn after a short time, until all their allies are killed, even if executed.
- For the Survive objective, bots have this by default, although not counted as one of their three traits.
Players only[]
- No UI : Guard UI is turned off.
Quest Tiers[]
The following is a short break-down of what each tier offers, including the Weekly Quest.
- Common: 4-chapter Quests with no level restriction. Fights in this tier are simple and typically are easy to fight out.
- Rare: 5-chapter Quests with a level 36 restriction. Fights start to be less favoured to the player, although they are still manageable.
- Heroic: 5-chapter Quests with a level 72 restriction. Bots you face are now competent to hold their own, comparable to a level 2 bot.
- Epic: 6-chapter Quests with a level 108 restriction. The opponents you fight will start to have the advantage, either via the modifiers they receive or the fact that they fight with a lvl 3 AI.
- Legendary: 6-chapter Quests with a level 144 restriction. Chapters are grueling as you are most likely left weakened by modifiers as the opposing bots are empowered.
- Weekly Quest: 4-chapter Quests with a level 108 restriction. Difficulty of this Quest varies from Weekly Quest to the next as they are handcrafted and focus more on the Quest's unique story.
You can view the list of random Quests that may appear at any of the tiers above here.
Weekly Quest[]
Every week a new story quest is available, offering flavoured challenges and unique rewards. Weekly Quests will always ranked at the Epic tier (level 108) and have four chapters. Weekly quests always have a special theme (fighting Guardians, a specific faction or having a "unique" modifier) depending on the title and its theme. Because they are not randomized during the week, you can repeat the same Quest if you desire.
The difficulty of Weekly Quests vary as they are handcrafted, not chosen from randomized modifiers and the likeliness.
Weekly Quests recorded on their own page can be listed here.
Trivia[]
- During the later chapters of an arcade quest, even more for the final chapter, Enemy Heroes can appear as characters from the Story Mode, such as Stone and Siv. These unique Heroes will bring together with them all special moves they had, if they had any.
- Weekly Quests are very likely to use Heroes from the Story Mode or unique Heroes of their own.
- As of the 14th of March 2024, the gamemode has been made free for everyone. Players who bought the Marching Fire DLC will still be able to play, aswell as people who didn't own it. Everyone can enjoy the DLC free of charge, although it remains unclear whether users who previously bought the gamemode will be refunded or not.
Videos[]
