The Battle Isles is the location of most of the player vs. player action in Guild Wars. The Battle Isles contain all of the high level PvP arenas in addition to the challenge missions, Zaishen Menagerie, your Guild Hall, and the Great Temple of Balthazar. The Battle Isles is accessible to everyone with a Guild Wars account, although certain areas, like the Guild Hall, must be unlocked in order to gain access.

If you make a PvP character then you will automatically find yourself in The Battle Isles (and conversely only able to access this area of the world in addition to the Fort Aspenwood or The Jade Quarry alliance battles). RP Characters are automatically given access once they reach their “port” city (Lion’s Arch, Kaineng Center, Kamadan). You can press “M” to bring up the map and select the boat icon which will automatically give you access to The Battle Isles.

The nexus of The Battle Isles is the Great Temple of Balthazar where you’ll find the Zaishen Challenge Quests, the ability to turn in Balthazar faction points, a profession changer, and various merchants. If you need to buy something, change your secondary profession, or cash in faction then this is an excellent place to do so.

Your Guild Hall is also accessible on The Battle Isles and allows access to Guild vs. Guild combat in addition to whatever merchants you have purchased. GvG is a very complex form of PvP for groups of 8 people to fight against other guilds in ranked battle.

In addition to GvG and the town there is also the Zaishen Menagerie where you can save your various pets and return here to train them.

A map of the Battle Isles.

The other various forms of PvP are as follows:

Codex Arena

The Codex Arena is a 4v4 arena that requires you to use a “sealed” deck. Only a select number of skills are allowed and you may only use an elite skill from your primary profession. You can view which skills are allowed by pressing “k”  or viewing your skills list. All of the skills in the codex are temporarily learned, meaning that you can use skills that may not have been unlocked yet. This can be a great form of PvP for starters because you don’t need any skills unlocked in order to play.

There are a few additional limitations. You can only bring one of each profession in a group, meaning that you can only have one primary Elementalist and one primary Necromancer, but not two primary Elementalists and two primary Necromancers. Resurrection Signets, certain self-heals, and Charm Animal will always be available. The codex is reset each day and all of the skills chosen are random outside of the self-heals, resurrection signet, and Charm Animal.

Heroes’ Ascent

Heroes’ Ascent is an 8v8 PvP tournament that is constantly ongoing. You advance from map to map fighting enemy groups until you reach The Hall of Heroes (HoH) where you’ll attempt to take the map as yours and hold it for as long as possible to gain as much fame and faction as possible.

The first battle is “The Elite Zaishen Battle” in which you’ll find a group of six A.I. (computer) controlled enemies. You’ll gain a morale boost depending on how quickly you’re able to take the other group out (less than 30 seconds for 10%) which will persist into the next fight.

From there you will move to The Underworld where you’ll need to kill the opposing team (complete annihilation) in order to advance. There are a total of seven additional maps before the HoH. Some of the maps can be skipped, depending on the amount of players in HA and it is entirely possible to move to HoH straight from The Underworld, but is incredibly rare.

• Fetid River: A small map that requires you to annihilate the other team. You’ll need to kill the enemy Priest who will resurrect the enemy team every 2 minutes. Your Priest will do the same for you. Beware that the Priest has Heal Area.
• Burial Mounds: The same as Fetid River, although a bit bigger.
• Unholy Temples:  A timed match in which you must capture more relics than the opposing team. Relics spawn in the opposing base and you’ll need to carry your relic from the middle to your Ghostly Hero. The Ghostly Hero and both teams resurrect every 2 minutes, so if you kill the Ghostly Hero right after a resurrection then the opposing team will have to wait 2 minutes in order to capture their own relics.
• Forgotten Shrines:  There are five capture points which grant one point every 30 seconds to the team that owns them. The Ghostly Hero counts as a total of four people for any capture mission, so you’ll want to try and hold three capture points for as long as possible. The team with the most points at the end of the match wins (or, alternatively, the first team to get 20 more points than the other team).
• Golden Gates: A regular Priest annihilation match. The opposing team and their Priest must be killed.
• The Courtyard: A King of the Hill styled match. You’ll need to take the central alter with your Ghostly Hero. He will cast “Claim Resource” which takes 5 seconds and can be interrupted. Once captured, the Ghostly Hero will need to be killed for another team to take the central alter. A team will win when they have more points than the opposing teams at the end of the match or when both of the other teams have 60% Death Penalty on all of their members.
• The Antechamber: The same mechanics as Forgotten Shrines (see above).
• The Vault: Waiting area.
• The Hall of Heroes: There are three different objectives in this map, one of which is chosen at random. The first is the King of the Hill match which works exactly like The Courtyard. Then there is the relic run match that works exactly like Unholy Temples, and finally a capture points match which works like the Forgotten Shrines. There is no death penalty and resurrects are every minute.

There are various maps to play, learn them all to become a master of PvP.

Random Arenas

The Random Arenas is a 4v4 arena where parties are made randomly. Simply zone in and choose to enter mission and you’ll be teamed up with three other random players against another team. This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to get into PvP, but you may find a lot of frustration from the quality of random teams (or bad team composition). This can be mitigated by playing as a healer, something many players do not do.

There are four kinds of battle types:

• Deathmatch: Annihilate the opposing team to win.
• Deathmatch w/ Obelisks: The same as Deathmatch, but there is an obelisk in the middle which can be captured to do periodic damage to enemies.
• Deathmatch w/ Priest: The same as a regular Deathmatch, except a Priest will resurrect the enemy team every 2 minutes. You must kill the Priest AND the opposing team to win.
• Kill Count: There is no death penalty and every player is resurrected every 30 seconds. You have 3 minutes to score more kills than the opposing team.

Important: Any secondary "Monk" class or any Ritualist counts as a healer for random arenas. So you can have no healing spells but the RA will pick you as the healer.

Zaishen Challenge

Zaishen Challenge is a 4v4 map where your team will face off against four level 20 computer controlled players. You can earn up to 2,000 Balthazar Faction a day (which counts towards the Zaishen Elite 6,000 limit) by doing this map and it can be solo’d by trappers, elementalists, and any other class good at soloing. You can choose the maps/groups you face.

Zaishen Elite

The same as Zaishen Challenge, except you can earn up to 6,000 Balthazar Faction a day and one additional enemy will join the team every 3 consecutive wins (up to 12 total enemies).

Well that’s everything you need to know about The Battle Isles! Why not come to the Ten Ton Hammer community forums and share your exploits in The Battle Isles or how many times you’ve gone from The Underworld straight to HoH?