Arena Tournaments

Bracketed Arena competitions — register a lineup, battle through the field, and claim prizes for how far you place

Tournaments are a scheduled, bracketed competition mode inside the Arena. Instead of a one-off duel, you register a lineup ahead of time, then the whole field is played out automatically — a round-robin to seed the bracket, followed by a single-elimination knockout — with prizes awarded by how far you place.

🏆 Jump in: open the Arena and pick the Tournaments category. The board splits into Active Tournaments (upcoming and running) and Past Tournaments (finished), with a Tournament Rules scroll beside the list.

Spotting a tournament

You don't have to keep the Arena open to catch one:

• World Map marker — a gold trophy appears above the Arena building whenever a tournament is worth your attention: one you can still join, one running right now, or one holding a prize you haven't claimed. It sits beside the duel marker, so a tournament is never mistaken for an incoming duel.

• World Map countdown — up to 48 hours before a tournament starts, a Tournament · <time left> button appears in the map's right-hand countdown stack. While the brackets are running it reads Tournament · Now. Tapping it opens that tournament straight away.

• Announcements — new tournaments are also posted to the Pawtato Discord server as scheduled events, so you can get a reminder from Discord itself. The event card names the bracket size, combat format and any entry restrictions, and links back into the game — open it to see the current entry fee and prize pool.

Registering

Each tournament has a fixed start time, and sign-ups open as soon as the bracket is announced — there is no waiting phase. Registration stays open right up until the tournament begins. While it's open, you register a lineup of your own Heroes:

• Solo — 1 Hero.

• Squad / Shuffle Squad — 3 Heroes.

Some tournaments add entry restrictions — a maximum Hero level, a required class, or a maximum equipment tier. Tutorial Heroes can't be entered. You can register once per tournament.

A Squad lineup must be three different Heroes — you can't field the same Hero in more than one slot.

Which Heroes can be entered

Each Hero can hold at most one slot in a tournament, and that applies across the whole field, not just your own entry: if a Hero is already registered in a tournament, nobody can register it there again. So a Hero that changes hands between two players can't buy a second place in the same bracket.

A Hero that's already on its way out of your account can't take a bracket slot with it either. You can't register a Hero that is:

• listed on the Marketplace — cancel the listing first, or

• in the middle of a withdrawal (unstaking) — cancel the cooldown first.

The lock works both ways: while one of your Heroes is registered in a tournament that hasn't finished, that Hero can't be listed on the Marketplace, unstaked, or withdrawn to your wallet. The game names the tournament that's holding it — leave that tournament and the Hero is free again. The lock lifts on its own once the tournament completes (or is cancelled).

There is no seat limit — anyone who meets the entry rules can sign up, so far more players may register than the knockout has places for. Everyone who enters plays the preliminaries, and it's those results (not the sign-up order) that cut the field down. The card and detail screen therefore show a plain registered count rather than a "x of y" capacity.

Your lineup is snapshotted the moment you register — later gear, Skill or stat changes don't alter the Heroes you entered.

Entry fee

A tournament may charge a TATO entry fee (some are free). The fee scales with the live TATO price, shown in-game, and is paid from your sellable balance — soulbound TATO can't cover it. It's held in escrow while you're registered.

If you change your mind, you can leave the tournament any time before it starts and your entry fee is refunded in full. Leaving asks you to confirm first, so a stray tap can't drop you out of a bracket you meant to stay in.

The tournament's detail screen summarises all of this in four chips: Format (Solo / Squad / Shuffle Squad), Knockout-Phase (how many players the knockout holds), Entry fee, and Min. to run (the minimum sign-ups needed for it to go ahead).

How a tournament plays out

A tournament moves through these stages automatically:

1. Registration Open — the stage a tournament is created in. Sign-ups are live and a countdown shows the start time.

2. In Progress — preliminaries run, then the knockout bracket plays out.

3. Completed — every placement is decided and prizes can be claimed.

Every tournament has a minimum number of participants. If too few players have registered when the start time arrives, the tournament is cancelled and all entry fees are refunded.

Preliminaries

When the tournament starts, everyone who registered plays a single round-robin — each player faces every other player once, in a quick Best of 1 match. You earn 1 point per win.

The field is then ranked by points, and the top finishers advance — exactly as many as the knockout holds (8, 16 or 32, depending on the tournament). This is what settles an oversubscribed field. Players who don't make the cut take their preliminary rank as their final placing. When two players are tied on the edge of the cut, the tie is broken at random.

The preliminary matches are played out behind the scenes to seed the bracket — you see the resulting standings (points and who advanced), not each individual preliminary battle.

Knockout bracket

The advancing players are placed into a single-elimination bracket, seeded so the strongest preliminary finishers are kept apart and can only meet late. Bracket sizes are 8, 16 or 32 players.

• Standard rounds are played as Best of 3.

• The final and the third-place match are played as Best of 5.

• The two semi-final losers meet in the third-place match to decide 3rd and 4th.

Matches resolve on a schedule, and the whole bracket runs quickly:

• Once the preliminary standings are published, a 2 minute countdown runs before the knockout stage begins.

• Each round then takes 3 minutes to resolve, and its result stays hidden for 1 minute before it's revealed.

• The next round starts from that reveal, so a round is settled every 4 minutes.

You can watch the replay of a match as soon as it resolves from the bracket screen, even before the result is revealed.

What counts in battle

Tournament battles use the exact same rules as regular Arena duels:

• ✅ Base stats, equipment bonuses, selected Skills and titles all count.

• ❌ Potion buffs, altar buffs and other temporary boosts are nullified.

• ❌ Injuries are ignored — a wounded Hero fights at full strength.

In Squad matches the three Heroes fight in the order you set; Shuffle Squad randomizes the order before each match.

See the Arena page for more on how these snapshot rules keep every match a fair test of your build.

Prizes

Each tournament has its own prize pool, awarded by the finish bracket you land in. Prizes are manually claimed once your placement is locked in — you'll see a Claim Prize option on the tournament once you're eliminated or crowned.

The finish brackets, from best to lowest, are:

Finish	Where it applies
Champion	1st place
Runner-up	2nd place
Third place	3rd place
Semi-finalist	4th place
Quarter-finalist	5th–8th
Round of 16	9th–16th (16- and 32-player brackets)
Participant	17th–32nd (32-player brackets)

Which brackets pay out depends on the tournament's size — a larger bracket reaches deeper finish tiers. A prize can be any of resources, equipment, Skill Scrolls, schematics or cosmetics.

Tournament prizes are soulbound by default — yours to keep and use, not to trade. A tournament may mark specific prizes as tradeable, in which case you're free to list them on the Marketplace.