As you might be aware I won a character (called 'Axies') for the blockchain game Axie Infinity. Although I never played Axie Infinity before, I was quite keen about to find out more about Axie Infinity especially after reading what I have won:
"There are currently 143,520 Axie in existence and counting! There will NEVER be more than 4,088 “Origin” Axies."
So I reckon owning one of these might be not too bad. Especially after we all know about the success story behind Cryptokitties where people made some crazy dollars by trading their virtual kitties once the game became popular. However, I want to be honest with you, my biggest concern with all blockchain games is that I can hardly imagine finding a game beginner-friendly once it has been on the market for a longer period of time already. Axie Infinity is around for more than a year although it is still in Alpha status. Anyways, I won this little freaky origin Axie so I am more than down to give it a try to see what it is like.
Within the next three articles, I will give you some insights on what is my experience as a new player starting to play Axie Infinity.
Before I start I googled Axie Infinity and noticed that there are currently two things popping straight to your eyes. It seems there are a lot of videos floating around where people show how they earn DAI and since the devs released the latest patch KNC tokens while playing the game. On top, it seems there is a well-established economy around Axie Infinity.
What do I know about Axie Infinity?
Just by looking at the market place it seems that they have adopted breeding features from Cryptokitties. On top I noticed that each Axie comes with different abilities and there are different races available. After I played Decentraland I came across the concept of owning land in blockchain games. Although it seems to be heavily traded, I couldn't imagine what the purpose is for land and items in Axie Infinity.
But enough of looking for information, let's get into the game.
As soon as you launch the official website (https://axieinfinity.com/) you will have to download the game client. Being kind of hyped I tried to get into the game as quickly as possible. A little notification let me know that I need three Axies in total before I can enjoy any gameplay. So I already have my origin Axie. This means I need to get at least two more Axies. You can either buy them from the marketplace at the official website or on Open Sea.
Expecting some game mechanics I reached out to the community through Discord and people were really helpful and friendly. Two or three people messaged me, offering me their help and made suggestions what Axies to buy by asking about my budget. The bare minimum you will need to spend is about ~2.40 $USD for an Axie. But once you start talking to some people you instantly know that the Axies which can be used for competitive gameplay won't be available for this price. However, I want to experience the gameplay and took two more Axies on board following the advice to have a tank, a damage dealer and a support Axie.
What does Axie Infinity look like?
Starting screen
The game menu itself is self-explaining. There are two different modes available. So I decided to see what the gameplay looks like by starting the adventure mode.
First, you need to create your team by clicking on the 3-Axies button.
As I only have three Axies, not much to think about when it comes to adding my Axies to the team. Once you have added them you can use the little circles on the left to re-arrange the Axies. As I am aware that there are different classes, I position my tank at the front and those other two Axies in 2nd row.
That is how the gameplay looks like. Based on the stage you try to clear there can be multiple opponents to beat. The top bar shows the attack order. So in this case, my three Axies will attack first before the opponents are going to strike back. Each Axie has four different abilities and you receive your ability cards for either one, two or three Axies at the beginning of each round. The little yellow circle (4/10) shows how much energy I have at the beginning of this round. Each ability comes with an energy cost listed in the upper left corner of each card. So for this round, I can utilize four energy. It took me some time to figure out what abilities I should go for. You need to keep in mind that there is a specific attack order. So this is important for your own team positioning as well as paying attention to the positioning of the enemy team. All Axies will deal damage to the enemy positioned at the front, same for my team. It takes some time to get an understanding of how to position your Axies and making yourself comfortable with who attacks who.
Clearing stages will reward you with SLP (Small Love Potions).
After I beat stage one I got rewarded with 1 SLP. These small love potions are required when it comes to breeding. I will address breeding later in this series. SLP can be traded as I have seen it available in packages on opensea.
After a few minutes, I reached stage 3 of the adventure mode and failed. My Axies couldn't beat the enemies here. Talking to the community again, I got the advice to grind lower stages to level up my Axies. This seems to be a time-consuming process.
What else to do other than grinding?
Right on the starting screen you can access your daily quests:
So after experiencing the adventure mode, I got myself into the Arena. What can I say? I got destroyed. At this stage - being two hours in the game - I didn't know what to do differently. The opponents I faced had 100-200 more hitpoints and were dealing tons of damage more compared to my Axies. I couldn't win a single match. Therefore I couldn't complete my daily quests as it is required to win 5 (!) arena matches.
My Arena experience fast forward
This is day 2 of me playing Axie Infinity. I started slightly frustrated as I ended day 1 with being stuck at the adventure mode and completely devasted in the arena. The only advice I got to continue was to uplevel my Axies. So I started to grind. I was right and it is slightly time-consuming. But to be fair as a new player it allows you to get a better understanding of how things work. So by grinding the hard way, you will learn about the different abilities, getting more proficient with your team positioning and starting to experience how much damage you can deal in a single round by combining your actions. Although I like to experience the game by playing, I reckon a good tutorial will be an advantage for most new players.
The SLP rewards were slightly increasing from stage to stage and by the end of day 2, I was able to beat stage 6. Nonetheless, 3 SLP once was the most I got out of a stage so far. Once again I tried my luck in the arena. Each fight you lose, you lose points in the ranking system. I stopped counting how many times I lost but finally, I lowered my ranking that far that RNGesus matched me with someone who had even less knowledge than I had. Although I need some additional luck, I won my first arena match.
As you can see here I got 7 SLP and 4 Axie KNC (Kyber Network) coins. Keep in mind that you need 1000 (!!!) Axie KNC coins to convert them into a single KNC coin.
I didn't come across any DAI rewards yet. But DAI is the same conversion rate: 1000 Axie DAI coins convert into 1 DAI coin. I played a few more Arena matches and after I lost a few more times, I finally managed to win again. My ranking lowered to <900 points and I noticed that my rewards got less as well, less SLP and less Axie KNC points. Although I grinded the adventure mode a little bit more it didn't make much of an impact for my arena matches. On top, it seems there is a daily cap for the Small Love Potions as I didn't get any while beating the same stage over and over again. So keep this in mind once you come across videos telling you how much you can 'earn' playing Axie Infinity.
Nonetheless, I am curious to experience the next few days what breeding looks like, what I can figure out about the land and items being sold and what changes I can make to my team to clear my daily quests by winning at the arena. If you have any advice, please leave a comment. Feel free to follow me on twitter and get notified when I publish the 2nd part of my series about Axie Infinity.
Resources:
1) https://twitter.com/bitcoin_delight
2) https://axieinfinity.com
3) https://twitter.com/AxieInfinity
4) https://opensea.io/assets?ref=0x0b25b46a70e7f9296c6d8bae9a84c887da5cb9ec
