After the race in the last episode, Basket tries the other new thing in Sierhaven: the arena. Someone on voice knows how it works and talks Basket through it. Scoti isn't on, and the arena is a one-person fight anyway. "Only one person can do it, so that's kind of a shame."
Start with nothing
The rules come first. Mobs drop soul dust, and you trade it at the arena shop for weapons, armor, food and potions. Bosses drop blood dust, which buys the more permanent upgrades. Between waves you teleport back to the shop and heal up. You go in empty-handed. "Do I start with stuff? Are you gonna give me things?" Nope.
The first waves are small groups of rats and scavengers. With a little dust in hand, Basket goes shopping. The choice is a stone sword or the Battlesign, a sign that hits a bit softer but never breaks. Basket takes the Battlesign. There are no shields anywhere, which bothers Basket all episode. "I can't believe I don't get a shield." A stack of carrots goes in too.
Waves and a raid
Each wave is a bit faster than the last. Some come in two lots, so you want the first group dead before the second shows up. Basket keeps getting stuck on the rubble and tries to herd the mobs into one group. Partway through, a raid arrives from another channel and Basket stops to say hello.
The armor shop gets the next round of dust: a chestplate with knockback resistance, then boots and a helmet with projectile protection and speed. A viewer asks how many waves counts as "good." The answer on voice is wave 18, where all their armor broke in the middle of a wave.
The first boss
Wave 5 is a boss, Luke the Empowered Scavenger. Luke has a bow, teleports, and calls in plague rats. "A bow! Not cool," says chat. Basket misses having a shield here more than anywhere. The rats remind Basket of silverfish, only not quite as bad. Luke goes down, and the blood dust buys an offhand item.
Lingering trouble
The later waves get stranger. One group drops bad lingering potions and heals each other, and Basket barely survives it. Then the poison and wither clouds finish the whole group off. "Somehow they all died off. That's weird." Next come Plague Spiders, and the leaping makes the knockback resistance worth it.
Basket buys a Cough Syrup, ten seconds of Regeneration, and later swaps weapons. A sword with sweeping edge would hit the whole crowd, but Basket goes with a shovel that has extra knockback. "I'm gonna go with knockback. We'll give that a go."
Wave 9
Wave 9 sends zombies and jumping spiders, with lava behind Basket and fire on the ground. More mobs spawn, and some speed up. Basket goes down with a score of 32991. The chat line says "BasketMC was slain by Plaguebringer."
Beating the whole arena gets you an epic item, and the guess on voice is that only about ten people have done it. Even good players needed three or four tries. Basket compares it to an old tower defense map where you bought upgrades between levels. The voice on the call says content like this and the roguelike are good ways to stretch out the server, then heads back to work.