The Gauntlet - BETA DETAILS

I think Gauntlet is the reward that long-term players have been waiting for. I think new players and casual players will find it frustrating for a while if the cost structure doesn't come down considerably. At least in the beta the rewards are similar to Arena. You have to get pretty high up to get the "prize" rewards. You definitely need a deep, strong character base with fully evolved talismans to get very far.
I have a good number of Relics going in. Full health in general and some lower health for most class specifics. A few, but not a lot of offensive relics at this point. Not all of my characters are sharded at all. I've made it to A playing a mix of fully sharded and not sharded at all characters which has made me feel pretty good about the game balance so far. I just have to be careful and really pay attention to who does what ability in what order to make the most of the unsharded characters. It is hard, there are challenges, I have not won every battle the first, and in a couple cases second, time, but it seems to be balanced for difficulty as I work through it. Not too easy, definitely hard, but not impossible for me up to this point with mixed characters.

It is a great way to get ICs, but it also seems to require a lot of ICs to have already been spent to progress very far.
Sand of War refills are 30 Ironite for 10. Level A costs 6 SoW each with 6 battles required for a total of 36 SoW. That's close to 120 Ironite for that level. That was where I finally drew the line last night. I don't know how much I burned up to that point. I wish now I had been tracking each level cost.

Gauntlet maintains the highly addictive aspects of the game and keeps it going strong. I want to buy more SoW to keep going, and have even before I realized I'd made the purchase. The challenges are great. Some battles I can tell I had overkill on my team and a few I lost because I was trying to save stronger characters for another battle in that series. I like it.

I consider myself somewhere between a hard core player and a casual player leaning heavily towards the casual side. I'm in the game all the time, but I don't really try to rank in arena. I play my SoW every day to build up ICs only. Thanks to people posting on this board I started hoarding powerful characters a while back in preparation for this so I'm in pretty good shape for Gauntlet. I feel I could go a lot farther if I had enough Ironite to spend to keep trying to progress. I'll do a few more battles as Ironite refills, just not sure how many more paid refills I am willing to put in. At this time Ironite cost is my only limiting factor.

I am undecided on a new currency for Gauntlet. I can see pros and cons for that. I want to see more of other's thoughts.

I totally agree it would be beneficial to be able to somehow get to the talisman screen to swap talismans around from within the character selection screen. I'm sure that would be a big code change, but it sure would be convenient.

I would prefer not to have more different currencies, it is confusing. As the Gauntlet is integrated into the "PvP" topic (same menu, also a ranking like in the Arena), SoW would be ok. But to me it is clear that some general changes are needed, as I stated earlier in this thread.
My idea: increase SoW maximum considerably, reduce the reset duration considerably and integrate SoW drops for normal level rewards (like it is for SoT) in the cosmos, BNW etc. so that you can get some during farming.
Then it might be an idea to keep the cost structure in the Gauntlet as it is right now. On the other hand, if this would really result in an unwanted change to the normal Arena conditions, an additional currency might be inevitable.

I think a new currency is pretty mandatory

You can't allow players to gain an abundant amount of SOW for PvP. That will merely throw those rankings all to hell. Half of PvP is how often you fight. The more SOW you have the better you will rank in general. And if you can save and expend a lot before the weekly rollover.. then you're bound to move up against teams which are stronger.

I just think not everyone is going to be into the Gauntlet. Those that aren't don't need more SOW.. those that are need something because currently cost is too high and you can't effectively do both PvP and the Gauntlet.

so finally i´m also in beta ;D
Gauntlet is very nice so far, i´m in Tier B.
But the cost of every fight is too expensive. Especially for the rewards. 5 sow for 22 ic is too low. Should be 2x per fight. and the meta rewards also not good. Rare souls (different colours) and hero soul fragments.
to get far in gauntlet you need many eddies and toons, so why should i like rare souls and soul fragments?
Change the rewards or the costs of each battle, but if this will be final i won´t play gauntlet.

They stated a few times that current rewards are beta rewards and they will be different when the Gauntlet is out of beta.

This season it seems to be all Warrior/Magus oriented. I currently greatly lack relics for these two and therefore really suffer from it.
I am at grade AA (doubt i'll get to AAA due to too many losses with good characters).

Are there any information regarding if this changes per reset? Will there be some sort of "weekly/monthly" rotation of the limitations at certain grades or are Warrior and Magus characters just the way to go?

Hit wall at AAA ran out of Warrior class to run. Would be nice if they reset once you exhaust available toons so you keep playing instead of game over until event resets.

Not hit any walls yet other than costs for playing it! It is a good addition and it does make you think a bit but no more than trying to get past some unknows that you face - sure you know the teams you attack but not what they have for talismans or indeed how they will attack - especially when they go first - had two losses as I gambled a bit on using a weaker team, saving better for later but again this fits with the game and the chance side of it all.

Got access yesterday night and started playing with some SoW I had from last sacrifice event. One lost because of a crash that locked my toons. So far I like how challenging it is, yesterday got to level A and I will not continue as I won't spend ironite to refill SoW, even worst if there are resets form time to time. My only concern is the amount of IC earned. At level A one battle costs 6 SoW for 28 IC if win. In PVP 6 SoW would be 72 IC. Not worth right now if you are willing to buy more relics. Hope that is changed.

I find that the enemy team seems to go first quite often and that I may need to stock up on force and steel talismans. I thought I had an extensive roster but you go through them fast. How about the following suggestion (especially for new players): let us use one of our troopers champions to assist in a battle. This would really help newbies or people who don't have a lot of characters. Standard trooper rules would apply-champion only available for 1 battle, 25 badges. One question: since gauntlet is part of pvp, it is not registering as being credited for a battle when doing the daily event challenges.