Mob Arena

Mob Arena was a Dogcraft mini game that was available to play on Survival 1 and 2 and discontinued during the reset to Survival 3. Players would select a class to play, each with a unique loadout, before being teleported to the arena.

In the Arena. players would fight waves of mobs of increasing difficulty. Every 10 waves, a boss would appear.

Players would earn DCD for playing Mob Arena and would earn more for each level that was cleared. A leader board with the most levels cleared was posted on the Dogcraft wiki for a time, but is currently unavailable.

Classes:

The Warrior

The Warrior class was a direct combat class equipped with a Sharpness 5 Diamond Sword.

This class was easy to pick up and play for newcomers to Mob Arena but lacked the survivability of other classes due to its emphasis on direct, close quarter combat. This class was a solid all-around pick by itself or with a team, and it was one of the best solo run classes.

The Logfella

The Logfella was a support-oriented class equipped with a Diamond Axe and 8 logs of each wood type at the time (Oak, Birch, Spruce, Dark Oak, Acacia, and Jungle). These logs could be crafted into planks and used to build defensive fortifications around the arena.

While not the most aggressive class, the recent (at the time) 1.9 combat changes allowed the Logfella to 2 shot most regular mobs with an axe crit, making the class extremely dangerous against many mobs. However, the slow swing speed of the axe could prove very challenging to use against opponents with more unpredictable movement like Guardians and Vex.

The development of the Logfella Fort strategy was what cemented this class as the best in the game and most teams would always run at least one.

The Archer

The Archer was a long-range combat class equipped with a Punch, Flame, Power 5, and Infinity bow.

This class excelled at long range fights but required constant movement to avoid enemies getting too close. It was a highly effective class in combination with a Logfella fort.

The Tank

The Tank was a direct combat class equipped with a full set of enchanted diamond armor.

While this class had higher survivability than the other classes, the unenchanted sword and bow this class was equipped with meant that a Tank player could eventually break both their sword and bow, leaving them without a means of directly dealing damage.

The Fool

The Fool was an indirect combat class, armed with a Knockback Diamond Hoe, buckets of Lava and Water, a Flint and Steel, cobwebs, and TNT.

While this class focused a lot more on fun than effectiveness, it did have merit alongside a Logfella fort for being able to set lava and water traps outside the fort without having to defeat a boss to obtain a water or lava bucket.

All Class Equipment

All classes were equipped with varying levels of armor, food, and a bow and arrows. Some classes (the Warrior, the Archer and the Logfella) received an Infinity Bow, while the others received unenchanted bows.

Bosses

The player would face bosses every ten levels. The single exception to this pattern was Lv 5, in which players would face a squid boss. Bosses would drop useful items upon defeat, including Golden Apples, extra Shields, TNT, Arrows, and buckets of Lava and Water.

Notable Strategies:

The Logfella Fort

Logfella forts were a common strategy for Mob Arena. Most teams would bring at least one Logfella, as the presence of a fort dramatically increased one’s odds of surviving longer in Mob Arena.

Early Designs

Early designs were single story structures with an accessible roof, built up against one of the corners of the arena itself. They featured windows to shoot out of, and a single door, which was often protected with cobwebs dropped by bosses.

While this fort was a major improvement upon no fort at all, this design suffered from four major downfalls. The first was that it was often very crowded inside the fort and very dangerous to go outside of it due to the fact that it was difficult to reenter. Second of all, waves that spawned Vex were difficult to deal with due to the cramped nature of the fort and the Vex’s ability to bypass the fort’s walls. Third, the requirement to build the fort in the corner of the arena meant that many times, mobs would spawn on the other side of the arena, meaning that players would have to leave the fort to deal with them and progress. Lastly, most designs required more wood than a single Logfella carried. As such, this design required a second Logfella to be present, limiting one’s team composition further.

The Classic Design

A new design was developed later on to solve these issues. It was started with idea that a Logfella could craft a crafting table and therefore could make any wood item, most notably wood slabs, increasing the area that a single Logfella could cover with a roof.

This experimentation resulted in a treehouse design, built around a singular column, about 7-8 blocks high to be out of range of all enemies except for skeletons close to the base of the fort, Vex and Ghasts. The roof was built three blocks above the floor, both made of wood slabs, with some walls being made of solid blocks and others being made of slabs, to provide cover and windows to shoot out of at the same time. It also featured a ladder down the central column to provide ground access. Excess materials and boss drops were often stored in a chest in the fort itself, to avoid their loss in the event one of the players was killed.

The circular nature of the fort alleviated some of the crowding issues that the previous fort design had. The ability to build centrally in the arena, as opposed to being confined to a corner, also allowed players stay in the safety of the fort and hit targets in nearly any location around the arena with a bow and arrow.

Later improvements led to the bottom block of the central column being replaced with a water block to keep the mobs away from the base of the ladder, as mobs crowding the ladder made it difficult for players who exited the fort to reenter.

In order to allow players to more easily re enter the fort, instead of having to swim through the water, a structure known as a “diving board” was invented. The diving board was a 3 wide structure built of slabs that stretched over the water, facing the fort’s ladder. The diving board had a 1 block gap in between its final terminus and the ladder, requiring the player to jump to the ladder. This was intentional to keep mobs off of the ladder while allowing players to escape to safety. The diving board also allowed for some mobs to pathfind closer to the fort on the diving board, concentrating many into a single confined area, and making them easy targets for players.

While the newer treehouse style fort design was a vast improvement, it still had issues with Vex, sometimes requiring the players to exit the fort to be able to deal with them more efficiently.