IMPORTANT NOTE:

This post was originally published as a suggestion for a new expansion to the CastlesNFT game. The idea did not get traction with the Castles team, so I am going to look for other developers to work on this game. This game concept is considered to be my intellectual property, and is not available for adaptation by other developers without my express written consent. This notice was added to this post on 8/5/2023.

CastlesNFT Overview

CastlesNFT is a top-10 WAX blockchain game launched in 2022. The basic gameplay involves building your empire by collecting NFTs and merging them into new NFTs. The principal NFT is a Baron, which can produce one new land each day. The Baron can produce 7 lands until it needs to be recharged with 3 Royal Seals. Barons produce Farms most commonly, but can produce Ranches or Villages with low probability. Players can merge 6 Farms together to produce 1 Ranch. 3 Ranches can be merged together to produce 1 Village. 3 Villages can be merged together to produce 1 Town. 3 Towns can be merged together to produce 1 City. 3 Cities can be merged together to produce 1 Castle. Each Castle can produce 1 Royal Seal per day for 7 days until it needs to be recharged with 2 Royal Seals (Net 5 Royal Seals per week). Together, a Baron and Castle would cost 5 Royal Seals to recharge, and would produce 7 Lands and 7 Royal Seals.

There have been some time-limited crafting events that have introduced new NFTs to the Castles ecosystem. These NFTs also produce assets and consume Royal Seals. These NFTs include Lumberjacks that consume Royal Seals to produce Lumber and Carpenters that consume Lumber and Royal Seals to produce Fine Wood. Fine Wood can be used to craft land packs that contain 2 or 5 lands each to help you grow your empire.

Since its launch, CastlesNFT has released 2 major expansions. There is a misnamed "Free to Play" mode that allows anyone to receive a free seasonal character NFT that can generate tokens. Once every 8 hours, players can claim a small number of MSource tokens and season-specific Banquet tokens. Once you collect enough Banquet tokens, you can redeem these to claim a power-up pack that contains 5 Food NFTs you can use to power up your character NFT. Your character NFT is randomly assigned to one of 3 factions, and the Food NFTs from your pack are faction-specific and can only be used by a matching faction's character. Food that does not match your faction can be sold on the market. The power-up pack does cost a small amount of WAX to mint, which is why I say that this expansion is misnamed. It is not free, but it is relatively low cost at 0.6 WAX for each banquet pack you claim. If you claim all 3 banquet packs you can per day, the game will cost 1.8 WAX per day to play The expansion runs in seasons, and as the season progresses, the cost in Banquet tokens for each pack increases.

Another expansion is the Dungeon expansion. Players can craft or buy Heroes that can be used to fight Monsters. Each Hero can fight one free Monster per day to receive rewards such as Wealth, Equipment, and Hero Fragments. Hero Fragments can be merged together to create new Heroes. Wealth can be converted into TSource, which is used to recharge the Heroes when they run out of stamina. Equipment can be staked to a Hero to increase its stamina. Players can also purchase Monster Tomes, which will produce 1 pack containing 3 Monsters every 24 hours (on a global timer) and can be recharged with TSource, Wax, and RSource. Alternatively, players can purchase Monster NFTs directly from other players. These NFT Monsters can be battled in addition to the free daily battle, and will yield more rewards per battle. When a Hero has battled 15 Monsters, they can optionally enter a Boss battle, which provides even more rewards per battle.

Metasource Games, the developers of CastlesNFT, was planning to release a PVP mode expansion for the game, but it looks like that mode did not resonate well with the community, so it has been placed on hold. In this post, I am presenting an idea for an alternative questing expansion for the CastlesNFT game.

CastlesNFT Questing Expansion

The basic idea for this expansion is to combine the mechanics of a 3-tool game, a role-playing game, a deck-building game, and a strategy game. The expansion will feature recurring time-sensitive crafting events with unique NFTs and seasonal play with built-in promotional periods and breaks from the game for players.

Below, I will outline the basic idea of the game. I have not spent a lot of time working out the exact mechanics of the game or the economy, so any details of the expansion will need to be changed in order to balance the expansion properly. The numbers I use below are simply provided for reference.

The game will follow scheduled seasons, which gives the game a cyclical nature. This can benefit players because there will be built-in rest periods where players can focus on trading assets, crafting new assets, playing other Castles expansions, or just taking a break from the game. I've been playing NFT games for about a year and a half now, and I find that I do get tired of them, and would appreciate a built-in break periodically so I don't lose interest in the game. During the seasonal breaks, the dev team can focus marketing efforts to acquire new players. This allows them to focus on marketing and player acquisition during certain times of the year, and focus on game development the rest of the year while the season is under way. The seasons also allow the dev team to tweak all costs and calculations used in the expansion at the beginning of each season to fit current in-game markets. This seasonal cost adjustment will make sure the game remains relevant for the long term and in-game asset prices stay balanced for ideal gameplay.

I am envisioning 12-week seasons (with only 8 weeks "playable"), but of course this schedule can be adjusted. I know initially it will sound better to have shorter seasons so the game is more exciting, but I'm thinking more about building a game that can be played long-term, which means less focus on making the players feel rushed by a tight timeline. Instead, I envision giving players a significant "rest" from the game periodically so they don't get burned out clicking the same buttons every day month after month, year after year. The seasons should be long enough that players with few assets have time to build up enough resources to go on advanced quests that require larger parties. Also, some of the other CastlesNFT elements can be staked to the game during a season, so having 4 weeks "off" between seasons might give players a chance to turn their focus back to the other CastlesNFT elements, which ensures there is variety in the game play, even while keeping it very predictable and flexible for any type of player.

Each season will include a time-limited crafting window. Players can craft unique season-specific NFTs during the crafting window. These NFTs will not be available to craft ever again once the season is over. Developers can adjust the crafting costs for each season to make adjustments to the in-game market and help maintain a balanced economy. Each crafting window will introduce 4 new character NFTs that will be completely unique. But they will all be used for the same purpose, and NFTs from previous seasons will still be playable. Each new character NFT is like a new Magic: The Gathering card. It has a unique design and unique attributes, but can still be played in the same game the way any other card is played. Players can choose their "deck" each season by selecting which character NFTs (current or former seasons) they will craft or activate for the season. The mechanics will be explained below, but each character NFT can spawn one adventurer FT per day. These adventurers can be sent on quests for rewards. But there is a cost to generate each adventurer FT, and an additional cost to go on a quest. The spawn limits and costs ensure players will only be able to utilize as many character NFTs per season as they can afford with their available assets.

Each quest has specific requirements that may favor certain character classes (Wizard, Warrior, Cleric, Thief) or certain attributes (Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, Stamina), so players will be rewarded for matching adventurers to quests. Quests take a fixed amount of time to complete and may succeed or fail. Players are rewarded with a raffle ticket for every quest (success or failure) that can be used in the Banquets and Prizes event at the end of the season. If the quest succeeds, the player will be rewarded with food, wealth, weapons, or other assets.

Each season will follow a schedule like this:

Week 1: Reveal season details

Weeks 2-3: Crafting event

Weeks 4-11: Questing season

Week 12: Banquets and Prizes

Week 1: Season Reveal

Each season will open with a one-week promotional period where the dev team can focus on marketing, building hype, and onboarding new players. This allows them to focus their efforts on the game during the rest of the season, and only focus on growth at fixed intervals. During this promotional period, the season details are revealed, including the new craftable NFTs and the season's quests.

Craftable NFTs

The season reveal begins with 4 new character NFTs introduced. These are unique, new NFTs created specifically for this season, and they will be available to craft in a time-limited window at the beginning of the season. After this window closes, these character NFTs can never be crafted again.

Each season, one new character NFT will be available for crafting in each of the four character classes:

• Wizard
• Warrior
• Cleric
• Thief

Each new character NFT will have fixed attributes that represent the following skills (On a scale of 1-5):

• Intelligence
• Strength
• Stamina
• Charisma

Each character class has an automatic skill bonus for their class. Wizards have a +1 intelligence, Warriors have a +1 strength, Clerics have a +1 stamina, and Thieves have a +1 charisma. These bonuses will be added to the skill represented for each attribute.

Certain quests may favor certain skills over others. For example, slaying a dragon may favor strength and stamina, while rescuing a kidnapped heir to the throne may favor intelligence and charisma. The combination of character class and attributes makes every new character NFT produced each season unique, ensuring that all NFTs will remain valuable long after they are crafted, while still giving players an incentive to craft new characters each season. During the season, players will be able use their personal character NFT decks to create teams of adventurers that are perfectly tailored to a particular quest.

Season's Quests

In addition to revealing the new character NFTs available for the season, the dev team will reveal the quests available for the season. Quests will vary in type, duration, requirements, rewards, etc. There should be a good mix of quests available each season to satisfy whales and casual players alike.

For example, you might have 6 different quests available in a season, like those below. Some quests can be completed with a single adventurer, while others require a large, well-equipped party. Quests have specific costs associated with them, so to go on a quest, players will need to have adventurers, weapons, food, and wealth.

Each quest has a variable number of adventurers required. Each season, there should be some quests available that can be played with only a single adventurer, but some quests will require a larger party. The chance of succeeding on a quest should not depend on the number of adventurers sent on the quest (Otherwise, players with more assets will always have a better chance of winning than players with fewer assets).

Each adventurer assigned to a quest will need to be equipped with one to three weapons or spells. Warriors and thieves can only equip weapons, while wizards and clerics can equip either weapons or spells. Basic weapons and spells will have no affect on skills, but more advanced weapons and spells might add to or subtract from the skills of the adventurer carrying them. Weapon bonuses will be limited to strength and stamina, while spell bonuses can include intelligence, strength, stamina, or charisma. Players should carefully consider which weapons or spells to equip their adventurers with to maximize their chances of success. Here are some example weapons and their bonuses:

Knife
No bonus

Sword
+1 strength

Battle Axe
+3 strength
-1 stamina

Long Bow
+1 stamina

Healing Spell
+2 stamina

Finding Spell
+3 intelligence
-1 strength

Charm Spell
+2 charisma
-1 intelligence

Each quest will have a fixed cost in food for every adventurer embarking on the quest. Food will be produced by lands staked to the game or purchased from the game, with the proceeds of any in-game food purchases split between the dev team and Royal Courthouse NFT holders. While a land is staked during a season, it will produce food for adventurers, but will be unavailable for blending or generating MSource in the base CastlesNFT game. The amount of food produced by each staked land will vary by land type and can be adjusted seasonally as needed to balance the in-game economy. Castles, too, can be staked, meaning they will not produce MSource or Royal Seals while they are staked to the season. Staked castles may also generate wealth in addition to food, which would make them critical assets to the new expansion and reduce the number of castles generating Royal Seals during the season. This should help to increase the value of Royal Seals, which have become too abundant in the current game economy.

Each quest will have a fixed cost in wealth for each adventurer embarking on the quest. The only exceptions are the City Quest and Castellia Quest, which pay the quest's wealth expenses on behalf of the adventurers. Wealth for the quests can be obtained from the Dungeon expansion, produced by castles staked to the season, and received as questing rewards. We might need additional sources to satisfy demand, or to allow wealth to be purchased in-game with proceeds split between the dev team and holders of Royal Courthouse NFTs.

Some sample quests that might be included in a season are described below. Each quest has specific requirements, duration, and potential rewards. Each quest has bonuses for certain skill balances of the party listed by percentage of the total party's skills as a percentage of all skills held by the party. For example, a quest might prefer a skill balance of 40% strength, 20% intelligence, 15% charisma, 25% stamina. The amount of bonus would be determined by how closely the party's total skills match that preferred balance. For example, a party consisting of one adventurer with a strength of 5, intelligence of 2, charisma of 2, and stamina of 3 would have a total skill value of 5+2+2+3, or 12. Converting this to rounded percentages, the party would have 42% strength, 17% intelligence, 17% charisma, and 25% stamina (I understand that comes out to 101%, but I'm rounding these numbers for easy reading. The actual calculations would use more accurate values). The party's strength matches the quest's preferences by 95%, intelligence matches by 85%, charisma matches by 88%, and stamina matches 100%. Multiply these together to get the percent of the available bonus that gets paid to the party if the quest is successful: 95% * 85% * 88% * 100% = 71%. The same calculation would apply if there were more than one adventurer in the party...simply add together the values of each skill and the total values for all skills of all party members and calculate the percentages. In addition to determining the percentage of the bonus available, matching the quest's preferred skill balance will increase the chance of successefully completing the quest. Rewards and bonuses are only paid for successful quests.

Sample Quests

Obviously, the exact numbers shown below should be adjusted seasonally to account for the supply of these assets. Some quests can reward players with a small chance of receiving a farm. Obviously, you can't bring a farm back from a quest, so maybe this is a token that represents the deed to a farm and can be exchanged 1:1 for a farm or held and exchanged for a different land (6:1 for a ranch, 18:1 for a village, etc.). Some quests reward players with a small chance of receiving a bonus adventurer FT. This adventurer should match one of the character NFTs the player has staked to the game for the season.

Civil Patrol: Travel throughout Castellia to put a stop to criminal activity.

Mission Requirements

• Teams of 1-2 adventurers
• 1 food pack per adventurer
• 1 weapon or spell per adventurer
• 10 wealth per adventurer

Duration

• 1 day

Ideal Skill Balance (for bonus payout)

• 20% strength, 40% intelligence, 25% charisma, 15% stamina

Rewards

• 1 raffle ticket per adventurer
• One or more of the following rewards, with chance and quantity rewarded adjusted for number of adventurers
  • Food
  • Weapon/Spell
  • Wealth
  • Extra raffle ticket
  • Farm (slim chance)
  • Bonus random adventurer FT (slim chance)

Bounty Hunter: Seek out and apprehend a dangerous opponent

Mission Requirements

• Teams of 1-3 adventurers
• 3 food pack per adventurer
• 1-3 weapons or spells per adventurer
• 30 wealth per adventurer

Duration

• 3 days

Ideal Skill Balance (for bonus payout)

• 30% strength, 35% intelligence, 10% charisma, 25% stamina

Rewards

• 3 raffle tickets per adventurer
• One or more of the following rewards, with chance and quantity rewarded adjusted for number of adventurers
  • Food
  • Weapon
  • Wealth
  • Extra raffle ticket
  • Farm (slim chance)
  • Bonus random adventurer (slim chance)

Treasure Hunter: Search for treasure horded by various monsters

Mission Requirements

• Teams of 3-5 adventurers
• 1 food pack per adventurer
• 1-3 weapons or spells per adventurer
• 10 wealth per adventurer

Duration

• 1 day

Ideal Skill Balance (for bonus payout)

• 20% strength, 45% intelligence, 15% charisma, 20% stamina

Rewards

• 1 raffle tickets per adventurer
• Wealth (guaranteed wealth, but a random amount)
• One or more of the following rewards, with chance and quantity rewarded adjusted for number of adventurers
  • Food
  • Weapon
  • Extra Wealth
  • Extra raffle ticket
  • Farm (slim chance)
  • Monster or monster pack for Dungeon expansion

City Quest: Changes every season, but a special quest to retrieve a valuable item and return it to the city

Mission Requirements

• Teams of 4-8 adventurers
• 10 food pack per adventurer
• 1-3 weapons or spells per adventurer
• 0 wealth per adventurer (City pays expenses)

Duration

• 7 days

Ideal Skill Balance (for bonus payout)

• 25% strength, 25% intelligence, 25% charisma, 25% stamina

Rewards

• 7 raffle tickets per adventurer
• 1 guaranteed reward (Changes every season, but maybe wealth, a farm, a Royal Seal, some equipment or weapons, etc.)
• One or more of the following rewards, with chance and quantity rewarded adjusted for number of adventurers
  • Food
  • Weapon
  • Wealth
  • Extra raffle ticket

Dragon Slayer: Kill the dragon terrorizing Castellia

Mission Requirements

• Teams of 8-10 adventurers
• 10 food pack per adventurer
• 3 weapons or spells per adventurer (Must be fully equipped)
• 100 wealth per adventurer

Duration

• 7 days

Ideal Skill Balance (for bonus payout)

• 50% strength, 20% intelligence, 5% charisma, 25% stamina

Rewards

• 7 raffle tickets per adventurer
• One or more of the following rewards, with chance and quantity rewarded adjusted for number of adventurers
  • Food
  • Weapon
  • Wealth
  • Extra raffle ticket
  • Farm (slim chance)
  • Bonus random adventurer (slim chance)
  • High quality reward (medium chance).
    You just killed a dragon. Your reward should be something good, but not something that will destroy the in-game economy.

Castellia Quest: Changes every season, but a very dangerous assignment with a low likelihood of success, but great rewards

Mission Requirements

• Teams of 10-15 adventurers
• 20 food pack per adventurer
• 2-3 weapons or spells per adventurer
• -100 wealth per adventurer (Castellia pays expenses and pays 100 wealth to each adventurer in advance due to the low likelihood of success)

Duration

• 14 days

Ideal Skill Balance (for bonus payout)

• 20% strength, 40% intelligence, 20% charisma, 20% stamina

Rewards

• 10 raffle tickets per adventurer
• 1,000 wealth (total, not per adventurer)
• 1 Guaranteed reward (Something good, like one of the season's character NFTs)
• One or more of the following rewards, with chance and quantity rewarded adjusted for number of adventurers
  • Food
  • Weapon
  • Wealth

These are just examples, of course, but give you an idea of what I'm thinking. Each mission should have a low chance of failure (Except the Castellia Quest, which should have a comparatively high chance of failure), and rewards appropriate for the cost and time involved in the mission, balanced each season to adjust for the current in-game market.

Weeks 2-3: Season Crafting Event

After announcing the season's details and giving players a week to start preparing their strategy, we kick off a 2-week crafting event. The event should be open for the full two-weeks with no time-based bonuses (In other words, the crafting price should not increase over the course of the 2-week event). Crafting costs can include a combination of WAX and any CastlesNFT consumables, such as Royal Seals, MSource, Wealth, RSource, TSource, Lands, Lumber, Fine Wood, Metal, etc. Crafting costs should not include non-consumable assets from other CastlesNFT systems (Crafters, Heroes, Characters, etc.) The crafting costs should be balanced each season, so one season's crafting event might cost 30 Royal Seals, 20 Lumber, and 30 Fine Wood, and if the market changes before the next season, the cost might adjust to 10 Royal Seals, 5 Lumber, 100 TSource. This is a great opportunity for the devs to periodically balance the in-game economy by setting the cost for each season independently.

There are three ways to handle the crafting. I prefer the second.

1. Pay a price to craft a pack that contains one random NFT with an equal chance of receiving any of the 4 new characters
   
   
2. Pick which character you want to craft and pay the crafting cost for that character. The crafting costs may be the same for all 4 characters, or may vary from one character to another. This way, players can choose the assets they are crafting based on their needs for certain character classes or attributes (or what they can afford). Meanwhile, the devs can control the balance of characters available in the ecosystem (If there are an abundance of wizards, warriors may be cheaper to craft the next season, etc.).
   
   
3. Combination of the above: Have a lower price point to craft a random NFT, or pay a slightly higher price to choose which character you are crafting.

Players can also choose to re-activate character NFTs from past seasons in addition to or instead of crafting new ones. This allows players to choose their decks that they will go into the season with. Each character NFT can have a mutable attribute that determines which season it is activated for. During the crafting event, players can craft a new character NFT with the current season marked in the mutable attributes or re-activate an older NFT to replace this mutable attribute with the current season. This allows players a lot of flexibility in creating their decks that they can use during the season. But they have to set up their deck during the crafting event or they miss out unless they can buy a character NFT on the secondary market that is already activated for the current season. This might get complicated, but I think it's important to incentivize players to create their own customized collections or decks from current and past season NFTs. Players can examine their existing character NFTs and the new character NFTs available to craft for the current season, and the quests available, and decide on how to build their deck for the season.

Other advantages to allowing people to re-activate past characters include allowing a high degree of personalization for the player to play their preferred characters. Because old characters will have to be re-activated for the new season for the same crafting cost as creating new characters, it ensures that character NFTs from previous seasons will always be useful, but won't flood the economy because they have to be re-activated to be useful in the current season. Players don't want to craft unique NFTs if they can never use them again. There will never be an excess of character NFTs, because players will only be able to craft or re-activate as many character NFTs as they can afford.

Weeks 4-11: Questing Season

Once the crafting event closes, the questing season opens. Each activated character NFT staked to the game produces a fungible adventurer token once a day, but not for free. Just like sending adventurers on quests, there will be a cost to produce each adventurer. Each staked character NFT can produce up to 1 adventurer FT each day for a fixed cost (To be adjusted seasonally as appropriate). The cost will be in Royal Seals and maybe also some wealth (maybe TSource, but I like the idea of having another use for raw wealth that has not been converted into TSource). This cost will buy a fixed number of charges (I'm thinking 7 charges...one full week). Players will have the option to pre-pay these costs so they don't have to come back and click a button every day, but they will only get as many adventurers as they can afford to produce. If the cost is 1 royal seal and 1,000 wealth per week, I could spend 8 royal seals and 8,000 wealth and my character NFT would produce an adventurer every day for the 8 playable weeks of the season. But I can also recharge my Character NFT at any time during the season if I can't afford to pay for the full season up front.

If the character NFT is transferred to another wallet and then staked to the game from that wallet, it will produce adventurer FTs for the new wallet until it runs out of charges. This means the character NFTs have to be staked to the game, and will only produce adventurers (and consume costs) while they are staked. Remaining charges on a character NFT will be stored as a mutable attribute on the NFT.

As the adventurer FTs are produced, they can be sent on quests. Once adventurer FTs are sent on a quest, they are burned along with the food and wealth paid to begin the quest. The underlying character NFT is not affected, and will continue to produce new adventurer NFTs as long as it has charges. A formula should be used to to generate a win probability for the quest based on the minimum number of adventurers required by the quest, the party's total skills, and the quest's requirements. This can be the same formula used to determine the bonus payout percentage, or a different formula. If the quest can be undertaken by a range of adventurers (4-6 adventurers, for example), there should be no penalty for sending only 4. The rewards generated for a win will be adjusted for the number of adventurers, so 6 adventurers will earn more rewards than 4 adventurers. Therefore, there is no need to change the win probability based on the number of adventurers sent. With the exception of the Castellia Quest, players should win more often than lose, and accumulate rewards. On average, the rewards should be slightly more than the cost to play so players can be rewarded for the time spent on the game.

Weapons and spells might be NFTs, in which case they will be staked to the game during the quest, and can be reused for another quest after the first quest is finished. Alternatively, weapons and spells may be lower cost consumable items that will be available to purchase in-game (with proceeds split between dev team and Royal Courthouse owners) and will be burned during the quest. If spells and weapons are NFTs, there should be a probability that they will break during the quest and be consumed, otherwise there will eventually be too many on the market. Food and wealth paid to start the quest will be burned. All of these costs will be paid whether the quest succeeds or fails.

Week 12: Banquets and Prizes

Every quest completed, success or failure, will produce one raffle ticket (or maybe "point") per adventurer in the quest's party. These raffle tickets should be fungible tokens and may be traded with other players on an exchange. Devs might want to allow raffle tickets to be converted to NFT stacks the way RSource, TSource, and Wealth are now for a nominal fee.

At the end of the season, there will be a raffle. This can be done any way desired, but in all honesty, the raffles will almost always go to the whales in the game, who will naturally generate the most tickets and have the highest probability of winning. I still think it's worth having a raffle, but the prizes shouldn't be too big, since they will only go to benefit the players who already have the most. I don't care much about the mechanics of this section, but I do like the idea of getting some small token of appreciation for each quest you complete, and being able to convert those tokens into something you might actually want at the end of the season.

It might be a good idea to have multiple raffles, and players can spend their raffle tickets on whichever raffle(s) they want. That way, if they only have a few tickets, they can put them all towards the thing they want the most. I was thinking it might be nice to show how many other tickets were assigned to a particular raffle so a player could see that raffle 3 has the lowest number of entries, therefore the highest chance of winning per entry. But that wouldn't work because everyone would just wait until the last minute to designate their tickets for their preferred raffle, and the chance of winning would not be at all like what they thought it would be.

Instead of raffles, it might be possible to exchange your winning points to a guaranteed prize or exchange them directly for WAX. Depending on the number of tickets, each ticket might be worth 0.01 WAX, or you can redeem 125 tickets for a Royal Seal, etc. Or you can make it more like the free to play expansion, and use something more like vanity points to allow you to export a certificate of achievement at the end of the season, or trade points for NFTs that can be burned for a discount on the crafting costs for the next season or for a increase in food production or adventurer NFTs for a limited time in the next season.

The last week should also have some sort of celebratory element to it. I'm not sure what this would be, but basically it should be a cool-down period where you can stop playing for a short time and just bask in the glory of your accomplishments during the season. I know this wraps into the non-playable week when the next season is announced and then the 2-week crafting event, meaning there are 4 consecutive weeks when players can't play the game. But during the first three weeks of the new season, you will probably be strategizing and thinking about the next season. This post-season week would be a time when you don't have to think about the game at all.

At the end of this period, the cycle begins again with the announcement of the next season.

Staking assets to a season

Each season, you need to stake certain assets to the game. Players should be able to stake or unstake assets at any time during the season. When an asset is unstaked, it stops generating questing resources and can be used in other parts of the CastlesNFT ecosystem, if applicable. For example, staking a farm to the game during a season will make the farm stop producing MSource and start producing food for questing. Players should be able to stake the farm to the questing expansion at any time, and unstake it at any time as well. This may affect the production of resources in the game, so we need a way to balance things out. If a farm produces one food pack per day, the player would need to have it staked for a whole day to produce the food. I recommend having the staked assets listed in the game along with a percentage of their progress in producing their daily assets. If a player really wants to unstake a farm that is 95% of the way towards producing a food pack, the user should be warned that unstaking the asset will reset all progress. If they choose to continue, the asset will be unstaked and the food pack will not be produced. This type of progress indicator would allow players to stake and unstake assets as often as they wanted, but prevent them from gaming the system by timing when they stake and unstake the assets. It would also incentivize most players to keep their assets staked to the questing season as long as possible.

At the end of each season, assets should be automatically unstaked from the game and returned to the player's wallet. These assets, when not staked to the Questing expansion, do produce other assets like MSource, so players should not have to manually unstake them at the end of the season.

In-season assets produced by staked NFTs like farms can either automatically accrue in the player's wallet, or may need to be claimed by the player manually. If they are held until claimed, there should be no time-based requirements for claiming the produced FTs. For example, if a farm produces 1 food pack per day, and is staked to the season at 10:00 am on day 1, the player should be able to come back at 10:00 pm on day 2, claim their 1 food pack, and know that their second food pack is 50% completed, and will be available to claim at 10:00 am on day 3. Producing the second FT should not wait until the player claims the first FT. Ideally, there should be a single button a player can click to claim all FTs at once to minimize the number of transactions needed to claim a lot of assets at once.

For character NFTs staked to the game that have a cost to produce their FTs, they should continue to produce FTs until they run out of charges. These FTs will be produced once a day based on a 24-hour production timer that starts when the character NFT is staked to the game and charged. A charge will be consumed when the character NFT begins producing an adventurer FT, so if the character NFT is unstaked after it begins producing the adventurer FT, the charge will already be consumed, but the adventurer FT will not be produced. This will incentivize players to leave character NFTs staked to the game while they are charged.

When charged, the character NFT will produce adventurer FTs until the charges run out. Once their charges are depleted, they will stop producing FTs until they are recharged. When they are recharged from a fully depleted state, the production timer will reset to the time they were recharged. However, character NFTs can be recharged at any time before they are fully depleted without affecting the production timer. The dev team may choose to offer bonuses for recharging in bulk. It may cost 1 Royal Seal and 1,000 wealth to charge the character NFT with 7 charges. But maybe there is a discount if you want to fill your character NFT at the beginning of the season for the full 8 weeks and you would pay only 8 Royal Seals and 5,000 wealth (A discount of 3,000 wealth).

As I said, charges can be added at any time. If a character NFT costs 1 Royal Seal and 1,000 wealth for 7 charges, and is charged/staked at 10:00 am on day 1, it will produce 7 adventurers before being depleted. If, on day 6, the player spends 1 Royal Seal and 1,000 wealth to recharge the character NFT, it will add another 7 charges to the remaining charges without affecting the production timer. There should be no limit to the number of charges a character NFT can hold. Any charges remaining at the end of the season will remain in the mutable attributes of the NFT. If that character NFT is re-activated in a future season, it will be able to use the remaining charges to produce adventurer FTs in that season.

Summary

This expansion idea would make CastlesNFT a great long-term game that would be popular for many years to come. In addition, this expansion allows for frequent market adjustments to the game to balance the in-game economy. This expansion also provides alternate uses for some of the most abundant CastlesNFT assets that have driven down the in-game economy. The expansion combines the attributes of a three-tool game, an RPG, and a strategy game into one game. The expansion allows the CastlesNFT team to continue to provide new game assets through recurring time-sensitive crafting events without having to find new in-game functionality for the new assets that are produced. NFTs that are crafted in one season will remain available for use in any subsequent seasons of the game, but will have to be recharged each season, which will prevent new assets from flooding the market and making previous assets less valuable.

Notes

• Adventurer FTs should not be tradeable with other players, but other in-game FTs, such as food and wealth, should be tradeable either in-game or on a secondary market like Alcor Exchange. If the assets are not directly tradeable this way, players should be able to convert them to NFT stacks for a nominal fee so they can be sold that way.
  
  
• When a season is complete, players should be able to burn leftover adventurers for a small chance at a reward. This reward should not be enough to incentivize players to horde their adventurers during the 8-week playable portion of the season, but should make them feel better if they forgot to send their last few adventurers on quests before the season ended.
  
  
• As the season nears the end, some quests will no longer be available if they cannot be completed before the end of the season. A quest cannot be started if it will not be finished before the season ends.