The Original, Old Battledome

While the Battledome has a sleek style, it didn't always look the way it does now. In 2012, the original Neopets Battledome was temporarily shut down to make way for the new Battledome. While most of the tasks were the same (players could battle AI characters in 1-player or each other in 2-player, equipping weapons and using faerie abilites), most tasks were accomplished quite differently. Here are some of the way things used to be as well as screenshots from the old Battledome.

Differences from Current Battledome

• The Battledome was based on a refreshing system, where each page was completely reloaded after each turn.
• While the icon types were the same (air, earth, dark, light, fire, water, physical), the icons signifying each type were different:
  
  
• Users could attack with a weapon and a stance, species attack, or a faerie ability.
  • Stances offered a damage multiplier, though it would affect both your and your opponent's damage. For instance, a "fierce attack" would increase your and your opponent's damage by 140%.
  • Species attacks were available for specific species of pets. For example, Shoyrus could use Shoyru Dive or Shoyru Hover.
• Faerie abilities were obtained by blessing your pet with bottled faeries, just like the current Battledome, although the available abilities were quite different. You could also select the strength of the ability. (You can still view the old abilities and structure on Neopets under List of All Abilities. You can view their effects at our Index of Old Faerie Abilities.)
• There was a power bar under each fighting pet. Each pet started the battle with 100% power, and using a faerie ability drained power. Using a faerie ability on strong would drain 39% power, while using it on medium drained 20% and weak drained 10%. Once the power bar reached 0%, you could not use stances, species attacks, or faerie abilities.
• 1-P opponents had only one difficulty, although their HP would increase with each successive win against them.
• Defeating a 1-P opponent stoyour pet's HP to full.
• Battling gave no NP or item rewards - only increasing record scores and, for certain challengers, awarding trophies or avatars.
• 1-P opponents' weapons had a "stealing order," so stealing a weapon would always steal the same weapon, stealing a second time would always steal the second weapon in the stealing order, etc.
• Leaving a fight would withdraw and withdrawals did not count against your overall score. It was a valid strategy to attempt to freeze an opponent with a weapon that had a percentage freeze (such as Randomly Firing Freeze Ray) and simply withdraw if the opponent was not frozen.
• Some species had innate weaknesses or resistances for certain icon types. For instance, Peophins were particularly susceptible to fire.

Screenshots from the Old Battledome

Special thanks to Xepha, Crimson, and demon_aj.