Every map in Arena Breakout: Infinite can be queued at up to three tiers, and the tier decides who you meet, what spawns, and what you are allowed to bring. The names are Normal, Lockdown Zone and Forbidden Zone. Below are the published requirements, what changes, and the caps Season 7 is adding.
The three tiers
Normal. No entry fee, no loadout floor. Standard AI, standard loot tables, every squad from first-day players to people farming a mission. Where you learn a map — start with Farm and the beginner guide.
Lockdown Zone. Requirements as published for the Farm, Valley and Armory zones: level 12, a loadout worth at least 100,000 Koen, and a 20,000 Koen entry fee. Tactical Ops (your own kit) only — Covert Ops (scav-style) runs cannot enter. What you get for it: more containers in the high-value areas, more elite squads with better gear, and on Valley the boss Doss Anthony appears. Some extraction points are removed or re-conditioned versus Normal, so check the extraction list for the map before you queue.
Forbidden Zone. Loadout worth at least 300,000 Koen and a 50,000 Koen fee. Heavily armed AI, elite squads, and players who came to fight rather than loot. The Farm and Valley bosses — Ajax Jones and Doss Anthony — hold their territories with reinforced guards here. This is where the site's weapon tier lists and T5–T6 ammo discussions actually apply; below it, most of that is over-investment.
Season 7: ammo and gear caps
Morefun's Season 7 announcement adds mode-based ammo and gear caps: T4 and below in Normal, T5 and below in Lockdown. It also removes the T5/T6 armour-penetration RNG and increases headshot effectiveness and effective ranges. The practical reading: in Normal, the class-4 ammo page is the ceiling for what anyone can load, which flattens the gear gap; Lockdown becomes the tier where T5 matters; Forbidden stays uncapped. Exact rules arrive with the 16 September patch and the patch notes will carry them.
What "loadout value" means for the floor
The floor counts the market value of what you bring in, weapon and attachments included. Reaching 100,000 Koen is not hard — a mid-tier rifle build alone can do it (the meta builds guide prices several at 300,000 and up) — but the point of the floor is that you have something to lose. Meet it deliberately with gear you would run anyway, not by padding a bag with sellables.
Choosing a tier
- Learning a map, running early missions, playing solo without a kit to spare: Normal, or the PvE modes which sit outside this ladder entirely.
- Stash can absorb two lost 100k kits, you know the map's exits, you want the container density: Lockdown.
- Boss loot, top-tier fights, and a stash that does not notice 350,000 Koen: Forbidden.
The difficulty loadout guide lists a kit for each tier — armour class, ammo pierce level, meds — and the armour classes explainer is the other half of reading what the tier's AI will be wearing.