Interpreting the Battledome Screen

The first step to learning to use the Battledome well is understanding the basics. There are 7 icon types: fire, air, water, physical, earth, dark, and light. They're represented by little pictures: is dark, is light, is earth, is physical, is air, is water, and is fire. Icons help determine how much you damage your opponent. For example, if you have a weapon that does 2 icons, it generally won't do as much damage as a weapon that does 10 icons. (However, a very strong pet can do more damage with a 2 icon weapon than a very weak pet can do with a 10 icon weapon.) After every move in a battle, there will be a box in the middle of the screen showing how many icons you did to your opponent and how many icons he did to you. Here's an example of one of those boxes:

This example is from a fight between CottonCandy_92119 (my Wocky) and the Flaming Meerca (a one-player Battledome opponent). On the left side, you see Cotton's name at the top, and below that you see the icons of damage that the Flaming Meerca did to her. The icons appear at the side of the description of what caused them, so you can see that the Flaming Meerca did 4 icons with its fire spear and 2 icons with its attack ability. Those icon types are fire and light.

Look at the right side of the picture to see the icons that Cotton did to the Flaming Meerca. You'll see that Cotton did 4 icons with her sleep ray, 3 icons with her desert flying scarab, and 6 icons with her Wocky Snarl.

Looking further down the right side, you'll notice some icon pictures that look a little different than the others. These icons represent defense by the Flaming Meerca. You can see from the picture that the Flaming Meerca defended against my dark icons and my air icons with its earthen scorchstone. (According to the picture, the Flaming Meerca blocked 5 air and 5 dark, but unfortunately, the pictures of blocked icons aren't always accurate.)

The very bottom of the picture tells how much damage each pet took - Cotton took 65 damage, and the Flaming Meerca took 63. This means that 65 hit points were deducted from Cotton's previous total and 63 hit points were deducted from the Flaming Meerca's previous total.

Now let me point out some details from another picture:

I've included here the part of the Battledome screen that shows each pet's hit points. You can see at the top left that CottonCandy_92119 has 1186 hit points out of her maximum of 1506. At the top right, you see that the Snowager has 10447 hit points out of his maximum of 10580.

Below the Snowager's hit points, you'll notice a picture of a snowflake. This means that he has been frozen for the next round and he won't be able to make a move. That will be a huge advantage for Cotton next round, because she can hit with her highest-icon weapons and the Snowager will just have to helplessly endure her attack.

A little further down the page, you'll see a green bar with "Power 100%" above it. This shows that neither opponent has used any power. Some special abilities use power, but I'm not going to discuss those here. When pets use power, the green bar will become shorter and change color.

Now look near the bottom of the picture where it says "You reflect the Snowager's air attack back at them with the Triple Turbo Dryer!" Notice that icons are shown on both sides of that text. The icons on the left represent air icons that Cotton blocked. But on the right side, they represent damage done to the Snowager. So why don't they look like normal air icons? The reason is that they're reflected icons. This means that the Snowager tried to do those icons to Cotton, but she bounced them back at him, so he wound up hitting himself. Cotton's triple turbo dryer doesn't do any damage on its own, but if Cotton's opponent attacks her with air, the dryer reflects most of it back.

Ok, one more thing to cover with one last picture:

Look halfway down the picture where it says, "Highland Chia inhales sharply, you feel the life being sucked out of you - they used Life Drain!" Life Drain (also known as Drain Life) is a special faerie ability that takes power. (I cut the power bar out of the picture, but Highland Chia is down to 80% power.) This ability takes 11% of the opponent's current hit points and gives them to the pet using the ability, up to a maximum of 100 hit points. No icons show next to the text about the ability, but if you look to the right of where it says, "Highland Chia heals!" you'll see (100 hp) and a heart. Highland Chia healed 100 hit points this round and only took 48 damage, so he had a net gain of 52 hit points. (However, healing never takes pets over their maximum hit points.) There is no picture representing Cotton's loss of the 100 hit points that Highland Chia stole.

There are lots of weapons and abilities that can heal pets, and most don't steal hit points from opponents. This healing is represented the same way on the screen - a heart near the bottom with text detailing how many hit points the pet regained.

I've only covered a little of the huge selection of Battledome topics I could have discussed, but I hope this information is helpful. There are lots of articles in the Neopian Times about abilities, training, and weapons selection that you might want to check out for more Battledome help. If you have any questions or comments about this article, you can neomail me and I'll answer as well as I can. Good luck in the dome!