Reading the retention curve
Nine maps, nine clear-badges, nine player counts. Put them in order and the curve is not a smooth slope — it is flat, then a cliff, then a long tail.
The curve is flat for one land (95.9% survive), falls off a cliff at the second (24.1% survive), then settles into 38–59% steps. Phase two is where the game changes.
Take the nine map-clear badges, put them in campaign order, and plot the player counts. The result is not a smooth difficulty slope. It has three distinct phases, and each one tells you something different about how to play.
All counts are awardedCount from badges.roblox.com, fetched 15 November 2026.
The three phases
| Phase | Lands | Retention per step | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat | Forest | 95.9% | The opening is a tutorial in all but name |
| Cliff | Frostfang Pass | 24.1% ⚠ | The game changes rules here and does not say so |
| Tail | Sunken Dunes → Labyrinth | 38–59% (one outlier at 18.5%) | A steady attrition curve, normal for a progression RPG |
That is the whole shape. One flat step, one catastrophic step, then a long, predictable decline.
Phase one: the tutorial dressed as a land
59,582 → 57,121. 95.9% of players who finish the first quest also clear the Forest. A 4% loss is what you would expect from players who simply stop playing, not from players who hit difficulty.
The game is teaching you its systems here, and it is generous about it. The consequence is a trap: the Forest is clearable well before you have learned the systems it is teaching. You can finish it with an under-levelled deck and a single unupgraded card, because it does not punish that.
Phase two: the cliff
57,121 → 13,742. 43,379 players — three in four — do not make this step.
That is not a difficulty curve, it is a wall, and it is the single most important fact about Arcane 101's design. Compare it to every other step in the game:
| Step | Retention |
|---|---|
| Forest → Frostfang Pass | 24.1% |
| Frostfang → Sunken Dunes | 48.0% |
| Sunken Dunes → Drowned Tide | 56.1% |
| Drowned Tide → Galecrag | 59.4% |
| Galecrag → Ashen Caldera | 52.6% |
| Ashen Caldera → Blightroot Hollow | 46.2% |
| Blightroot → Gambit Court | 52.5% |
| Gambit Court → Labyrinth | 18.5% |
Every step except the second and the last retains between 46% and 59%. The second land retains 24%. Whatever happens in Frostfang Pass, it is not "the game gets gradually harder" — something specific changes. The wall guide is about what.
Phase three: the long tail
From the Sunken Dunes onward the curve behaves: roughly half of the players who finish one land finish the next. That is steep but honest — it is what an RPG with escalating difficulty looks like when it is not broken.
The tail ends with a second cliff at the Labyrinth of Legends (281 → 52, 18.5%). Two things to note about it: 52 players is a tiny sample, so small absolute movements swing the percentage hard; and the two badges involved were created on 8 November 2026, a week before this snapshot, so their counts include only one week of awards. Do not over-read it. It may be a genuine final wall, or it may simply be that almost nobody has reached the endgame yet — the game is 83 days old.
What the curve means for your own progress
- Do not trust the Forest's difficulty as a signal. It is designed to be passed. Its 95.9% retention is a warning that it will not tell you when you are weak.
- Treat the second land as a gate, not a step. Plan for it the way you would plan for a boss: level, upgrade, gear up, then enter. Checklist here.
- Expect normality after it. If you get through Frostfang, the rest of the campaign is a grind rather than a wall — roughly half of players clear each subsequent land.
- Ignore the endgame percentages. 52 and 41 player counts are too small, and the badges are too new, to plan around.
The counter-intuitive finding
The most interesting number in the curve is not the cliff. It is that the retention curve and the level curve disagree about where the game is easy.
- By map clears, the Forest is easy: 95.9% pass.
- By levels, the Forest is not being completed properly: only 20,176 of 59,582 players ever reach level 10.
Both can be true, and together they mean the Forest lets you pass without meeting its own requirements. The players who stop at Frostfang are, in large part, the players the Forest let through. That is the mechanism behind the 24.1%.
