Academy

What is the academy for?

The academy is primarily the social aspect of the game. It is like a guild where players can interact with each other, and actually help each other that are members of the same academy. Unlike most games where you’d typically have a hard time applying for guilds, it is relatively easy to be part of an academy in RWBY: Amity Arena. There aren't restrictions for joining academies, and it acts as a marketplace for higher level players -- to sell their surplus cards.

You can also make an academy - exclusive to your group of friends so that you can help each other grow in the game, and have a special room to interact with each other. Currently, there isn't an option to fight PvP battles that will generally involve an academy as a whole, but the mere fact that the sum of trophies of each member is displayed as the overall power of an academy denotes that this might be a plausible feature of the game later on.

How does it benefit a player?

[Low Level Players] Regardless if you are a newbie or a higher ranking player, joining an academy is beneficial. For low level players in need of cards to improve the collection of fighters in their deck, joining an academy will primarily give you the option to request for specific common or rare cards. When the member of your academy has a surplus of the cards you’ve requested, you can basically earn the cards for free. Up to 10 members can send you an X number of copies of the pertaining common card you've requested, and 1 member for a requested rare card. You won’t have to pay anything to get them which is nice and very helpful to new players -- and to get the most number of aid, you might want to pick an academy that has a lot of members in it too.

[High Level Players] For the higher level players, the academy acts like a marketplace where they could trade their surplus cards for Lien. Every time they a requested card is in their inventory, they have the option to send it as aid to the academy member, and earn a number of Liens in return. This is not a bad deal as a surplus card wouldn't really mean anything to a player that already has a maxed out version of that pertaining card. Take note that sending aid isn't necessarily limited to high level players. You can send aid regardless of your rank in the game. However, it gets more sense to send aid when you have a lot of surplus cards than when you are starting out in the game as you'll probably need cards for your deck as well.