Wizard Battle: Smite Adding First PvE Mode This Week

You'll have noticed the "No more than nine wizards at a time" handwritten sign in the corner shop window. It's common knowledge that ten wizards together will inevitably brawl over some Ancient, Nexus, Titan, pick 'n' mix, or goodness knows what. Here's a secret: five wizards are just as unsafe, as they'll group up on an 'epic quest' and wander the neighbourhood to fight something, anything. 'PvE', they call it. A bloody nuisance, I say. Last night I found five steaming wizards tangled in my washing line shouting e.g. "It's casting Root!" and "Watch the adds!" while swatting at the peg bag.

Citizens, be alert. Smite [official site] is adding its first PvE mode this week, and the five-wizard arena battles of Xing Tian's Mountain will only encourage that rabble.

Xing Tian's Mountain dunks five wizards on a magical mountain to fight waves of beefy enemies. Wizards start at level 13 with a fair chunk of cash, then must defeat each wave within a minute. From what I've seen, the waves cover a fair range of typical boss battles, like a damage-dealer paired with a healer, a biggun surrounded by a horde of mooks, a duo who get furious if their partner is killed, and so on. It has its own leaderboards, tracking the players who survive the longest.

This Smite wiki has a load more info on it all.

The mode will arrive in patch 3.17, which is due on Tuesday. If you really want a go now, you can hop onto the Public Test Server.

Here's a bit of someone playing Xing Tian's Mountain. I haven't checked the whole video but from what I watched he's a polite young man.