Mythic and Insane: what the two hard tiers ask
8,732 players cleared any area on Insane. 4,875 cleared any Mythic tier. Both numbers are larger than the number who finished the campaign's late maps — the hard tiers are a separate ladder.
Insane is a difficulty setting on a map you already know; Mythic is a separate tier ladder. Clear Insane on the Forest first — it is the cheapest way to test whether your deck is ready.
Arcane 101 has two difficulty ladders above the campaign, and the badge data shows they are not what most players assume.
- 8,732 players cleared any area on Insane (Unbreakable).
- 4,875 players cleared any Mythic tier (Mythic).
- 6,601 players cleared the Sunken Dunes — the campaign's third land.
Both hard-tier badges are held by more players than have finished the third campaign land. That tells you these are not end-of-campaign content. They are parallel ladders you can enter earlier than you would guess, and a meaningful number of players do exactly that.
The numbers side by side
| Badge | What it takes | Players | Relative to first quest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unbreakable | Clear any area on Insane | 8,732 | 14.7% |
| Sandbreaker | Clear the Sunken Dunes | 6,601 | 11.1% |
| Mythic | Clear any Mythic tier | 4,875 | 8.2% |
| Twice Burned | Clear the Ashen Caldera | 1,157 | 1.9% |
Insane clears outnumber third-land clears by 32%. Mythic clears nearly match the fourth land's (Tidebreaker, 3,702). The hard tiers are a shortcut around the campaign, not a capstone on top of it.
What "Insane" is
Insane is a difficulty setting applied to content you have already seen. The badge fires on clearing any area on that setting, which is why the count is relatively high: you do not need to clear the campaign on Insane, you need to clear one area.
The cheapest way to use this: test yourself on the Forest on Insane. You know the Forest's fights, you know your turn counts, and it is the smallest possible step up. If you can clear a Forest encounter on Insane, your deck is ready for the normal-mode second and third lands. If you cannot, you have found your real problem without spending a long run finding out.
What "Mythic" is
Mythic is a separate tier ladder — stages of escalating difficulty rather than a setting on existing maps. The badge fires on clearing any tier.
What we will not do is invent a tier list of Mythic stages, their rewards, or their enemy rosters. The developer does not publish them and we have not verified them in-game. What follows is the preparation order, which is the part that is actually transferable.
The preparation order
- Finish the campaign's first two lands on normal first. Not because the tiers require it, but because you need the card power. See Frostfang Pass.
- Get one card to Tier V — 7,082 players have; it is the cheapest power in the game. Card tiers.
- Equip your legendaries, do not save them — 14,393 players own one and it arrives earlier than you expect. Gear.
- Clear the Forest on Insane as a test, not as an achievement. Judge it by health remaining, not by whether you won.
- Then take one Mythic tier. One. If it fails, the answer is usually card depth (two damage sources) rather than raw level.
- Build sustain for repeat attempts. Both ladders punish a single-element, single-carry deck.
What separates the 8,732 from the 4,875
Looking at the two counts, roughly 56% of players who clear an Insane area go on to clear a Mythic tier. That is a milder step-down than the campaign's own 24.1% cliff at Frostfang Pass, which suggests Mythic is a fair fight for someone who has already proven they can clear Insane — not a second wall.
If you bounced off it: check that you brought a second damage element and that your carry card is actually upgraded. Those two account for most failures we can infer from the badge pattern.
Related
- The endless depths — the third and least-populated endgame ladder.
- The 27-badge funnel — where both hard tiers sit in the full data.
- Reading the retention curve — why these counts are higher than the late campaign's.
