Campaign and progression

It is also the best practice tool in the game. Every tool the multiplayer side uses works here without an audience: your custom movesets, your loadouts, your preferred weapon.

What the campaign actually is

• A solo arena run. You fight through arena battles against AI gladiators using the same combat rules as multiplayer — physics, organ damage, no health bars.
• Three difficulties. Inceptor (easy), Peritus (normal) and Invictus (hard) are separate achievements; the percentages on the achievement page are dated player completion snapshots, not a measure of difficulty for your build.
• Everything is shared with multiplayer. Weapons, armor and movesets you settle on in the campaign carry over — nothing here is campaign-exclusive.
• The tutorial counts. "Baby steps" (complete the tutorial) is one of the earliest achievements most players earn; the tutorial is also where the controls finally click for people coming from normal fighting games.

Why players actually run the campaign

1. Move editor testing ground. Custom moves behave differently against live AI than in the editor's preview. Campaign fights are where you find out whether a move whiffs.
2. Achievement cleanup. Ten of the game's 25 achievements live partly or fully in single-player — the campaign difficulty runs alone are a serious time investment. See the achievements list.
3. Learning weapons without cost. Trying the pollaxe for the first time in a public lobby is an ego tax. In the campaign it is free.
4. Slow-motion practice. Campaign fights at reduced game speed (down to 0.25x) slow the physics enough to study what your attacks actually do to a body — brain hits, blood loss and spine damage become visible lessons instead of lucky breaks.

How long and how hard

Plan a practice run around the fights you want to learn; an Early Access completion-time estimate is not a deadline for a current campaign.

Where to go next

• Before anything else: How to Play
• The model the campaign teaches: Damage System
• What to bring back to multiplayer: Move Editor

Use a solo fight to check the October moveset

Before a longer campaign run with Pugilist, test Action 9 for hammer fist, then enter block stance and try Action 2. Those are the routes in the October 1 1.0.3.4 hotfix. The older Action 5 crouch instruction was reverted; repeatedly training it builds the wrong habit for this patch.

Make the solo run a controlled practice session: keep your weapon and moveset fixed, try one attack at a time, and note whether failure comes from distance, stance or the bound action. Once both hammer-fist routes are reproducible, return to the campaign difficulty you were attempting. A successful input test does not mean the same move is safe to repeat into every enemy attack.

The release campaign uses a gauntlet of AI enemies and includes newer arenas in its map rotation. It is separate from the online Last-Man-Standing modes. For an online session using default movesets choose Classic; Creative allows custom movesets, and Limitless adds boosted character strength. That distinction matters when a move seems stronger online than during your campaign test.

Sources: October Pugilist hotfix and official launch features. Checked October 4, 2026.