Challenge Mode

Current challenge: Catwoman/Arkham Knight (ends June 2)

Required characters: 

A Challenge or Challenge Mode is a regularly held event that usually starts on Thursday and lasts around three weeks (may be shorter for repeats), in which players must beat 63 (repeatable for two further times at increasing difficulty for 189 total) battles within that time for various prizes, but they are most well-known for unlocking challenge characters, which are the main source of new and more powerful characters for every player's roster. Batgirl is the first known challenge character. Challenges may be repeated, but repeats are fairly rare; so far, only Batgirl/Prime, Darkseid/Prime, Superman/Godfall, Martian Manhunter/Prime, and Killer Frost/Prime are known to be officially repeated. Batgirl/Prime and Darkseid/Prime are the only challenges to be repeated twice.

Each challenge has five challenge battles; challenge battle 1 to 4 has 12 fights and 5 has 15, including a boss fight against the challenge's unique character. Challenge battles can be done alongside single player battles without resetting process. They can be done in any order, you don't need to complete a battle to work on another, although you still need to beat the matches in order.

Completing 2 challenge battles awards a Bronze Booster Pack, 3 for 15,000 Power Credits, 4 for a Silver Booster Pack, and 5 for the challenge character. Additionally, after completing the Standard challenge, you can do the more difficult Expert challenge for the same rewards plus a random piece of uncommon (2-star) gear for completing it. Finally, the Nightmare challenge offers a 3-star gear specific to the challenge character.

Challenge Credits are required to enter challenge battles. Each fight consumes 1 challenge credit. Certain older challenges, such as Batgirl or Darkseid, requires 2 and 3 credits each for expert and nightmare stages.

It is possible to buy challenge credits with power credits (Small Challenge Bundle, Large Challenge Bundle), or simply pay power credits to skip battles. Both options have a high price however, so try to avoid using them, especially buying challenge credits as they can be earned very easily by completing single player battles, while players may be forced to skip some battles they are unable to beat.

Previously, battle 2 requires a random character just like battle 4 and 5 and battle 3 only allows bronze and silver characters, but this is switched around in the Martian Manhunter/Blackest Night challenge. The energy cost was unchanged, however: battle 2 still only consumes 1 bar of energy each while battle 3 consumes 2. This was changed back in the Red Lantern Hal Jordan challenge.

Starting with the Blackest Night Martian Manhunter challenge, there would be a single match in the challenge that awards an unrelated gold card. It was Darkseid for this case, followed by Batman/Beyond Animated during the Red Lantern Hal Jordan challenge.

Challenge characters
Here is a list of all challenge characters in roughly chronological order (not counting repeats). Note that while the Challenge Booster Pack only contains challenge characters, new challenge characters are usually added to the pack several months after the challenge expired, and not immediately, and does not contain Raven/Prime or Green Lantern/Red Son.


 * Batgirl/Prime
 * Zod/Prime
 * Deathstroke/Red Son
 * Raven/Regime
 * Aquaman/Regime
 * Batman/Blackest Night
 * Hawkgirl/Prime
 * The Flash/Elseworld
 * Martian Manhunter/Prime
 * Scorpion/Mortal Kombat
 * Green Lantern/John Stewart
 * Darkseid
 * Wonder Woman/600
 * Doomsday/Containment
 * Solomon Grundy/Boss
 * Killer Frost/Regime
 * Batman/Red Son
 * Deathstroke/Arkham Origins
 * Bane/Luchador
 * Zatanna
 * Green Lantern/Red Son
 * Raven/Prime
 * Aquaman/Prime
 * Superman/Godfall
 * Batman/Beyond Animated
 * Scorpion/Mortal Kombat X
 * Static
 * Killer Frost/Prime
 * The Joker/Arkham Origins
 * Bane/Arkham Origins
 * Hawkgirl/Regime
 * Lobo/Bounty Hunter
 * Martian Manhunter/Blackest Night
 * Green Lantern/Red Lantern Hal Jordan
 * The Arkham Knight
 * Harley Quinn/Arkham Knight
 * Wonder Woman/Justice League
 * Darkseid/Apokolips
 * Superman/Dawn of Justice
 * Wonder Woman/Dawn of Justice
 * Black Adam/Kahndaq
 * Sinestro/Antimatter

Currently, these are the characters that are completely impossible to obtain if you did not complete their challenge prior:


 * Killer Frost/Prime
 * Hawkgirl/Regime
 * Martian Manhunter/Blackest Night
 * Green Lantern/Red Lantern Hal Jordan
 * Wonder Woman/Justice League
 * Darkseid/Apokolips

Trivia

 * There are no challenge versions of Ares, Catwoman, Cyborg, Green Arrow, Lex Luthor, Nightwing, and Shazam.
 * On the other hand, there are no non-challenge versions of Raven, Aquaman, Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Scorpion, Darkseid, Killer Frost, Zatanna, Static, and The Arkham Knight.
 * Prior to the release of The Flash/Elseworld (or up till Hawkgirl/Prime), challenges were not repeatable.
 * Prior to the release of Superman/Godfall (or up till Aquaman/Prime), the challenge front page will show the character in a different pose, mostly one of them leaping into the scene. Superman Godfall and all following challenge characters only have their image on their card reused on the front page instead, although repeats of previous challenge will still use their old image.
 * A glitched version of the challenge battle description will briefly appear upon completing a challenge battle.Challenge glitch.png
 * Deathstroke/Red Son and Zod/Prime were originally announced to have challenge repeats in the lull after Lobo/Bounty Hunter, but was never re-released and instead update 2.6 brought in a batch of all-new characters.
 * Killer Frost/Prime's repeat challenge is official the shortest challenge, lasting only six days (Killer Frost/Regime's challenge lasted shorter on android but it was only withdrawn due to bugs). When asked whether the shortened repeat was in anticipation of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the WB response is simply a "shrug" emoticon.