DungeonSwap V2 Sneak Peek from Beta Test

By GameFiH2 | h2crypto | 11 Oct 2021

This is an introduction to DungeonSwap(DS) V2 from my experience playing in the beta test. There are hundreds of global players participating in this event to find issues and provide suggestions.

If you are not familiar with this awesome Medieval Theme RPG Blockchain web-game, please read my previous article to get the basic idea of the V1 version. And welcome to read this official AMA transcript if you want to know what V2 wants to achieve.

Because DS V2 is still under beta testing, any data and guidance here may not be the final mechanism and gameplay when V2 launches. But this article can definitely give you the whole picture regarding DS V2 gaming experience, enhancement from V1, and possible strategies for you to explore the dungeon and earn more.

Ancient Dungeon (Play to Earn)

Ancient Dungeon is an exciting leaderboard competition. It's round-based. Each round lasts 12 hours and all participants compete for score ranking. The higher score you get, the more $DND rewards you get in a proportional manner.

Let's see how $DND total rewards will be distributed after a round ends:

Top 10 bonus from high to low: 8%, 5%, 2.5%, 1.5%, 0.5%, 0.3% for 6th~10th
Round creator: 1% (at round starts)
Lucky draw: 5% (after round ends, randomly pick)
Other: 75% (proportional distributed to all players)

In the beta test, DS simulates the total rewards as 5000 $DND. So if you finally score rank #1, you'll get 400 $DND plus the proportional rewards calculated by your score.

This is an interesting part: If fewer players join a round, the more rewards will be distributed to each player; and when the rewards are high it encourages players to join competition and even buy Relic to play.

Wisely choose which round you should play. It's the strategic thinking you should do for better performance.

Explore & Earn

If you asked me how to describe DS V2, I'll say it starts to realize the dream of simulating Tabletop RPG on blockchain as white-paper depicts.

Previously we talked about not every round you should go for it. Now let's see the battle gameplay to explore more.

Don't be scared with so many panels, actually it's easy. Just to remember you are "Explore and Earn", a.k.a., Explore the dungeon and you earn $DND rewards plus possible NFT looted in return.

Let's check on the panels and describe them in detail.

Story

Each dungeon(That's right, not only one dungeon available in DS) has it's own storyline, and each enemy has their own details when you encounter any one of them.

Oxygen Meter

This is a special gameplay in DS that if you don't act within 12 minutes, you'll get lost in the dungeon and forfeit exploring. It's a requirement for DS to use a Blockchain specialty Future Block to make the game cannot be exploited.

Round Info

On each fight you win, you are accumulating your score. This round panel helps you to quickly check your current Score and Rank. Apart from that it lets you be aware of how long this round will end, it's important if you want to give top 10 players a ranking ambush!

Battle: Element Slate

Each enemy may have an element attribute. Using correct NFT equipment to fight against them may give you overwhelming battler power(BP) boosting which results in extra score you get.

To be noticed that the more score you accumulate, the higher rank you will be in leaderboard and more handsome $DND rewards.

So collecting a variety of NFT elements is not just for fun now, it means more NFT equipment combinations you can make.

Battle: NFT Equipments

There are four types of NFT equipment you can use for each fight: Weapon, Armor, Special Item and Relic. Among these types, Relic is newly introduced in V2 and plays an important role for P2E, a.k.a., Play To Earn.

Each NFT has its own Power, Level and possible elements including Relic. Same NFT with higher levels always contributes higher Total Battle Power against your enemy.

The Relic will be chosen by you before entering Ancient Dungeon and cannot be replaced during battle.

Always try to get maximum Boosting to get the highest battle win rate and NFT drop rate.

Battle: Strategy

Back in V1 we spend our $DND to do Special Attack, it provides a higher win rate and NFT drop rate by burning the $DND. Now in V2 Ancient Dungeon we no longer sacrifice our money for it, instead we can use our score to perform Special Attack.

However Special Attack is no free food you can always use. V2 introduces the concept of MP, which works like action points we use in some RPG games. If you spend all your MP before the boss, you can only use Free Attack to challenge it.

Obviously MP is another decision making throughout your exploration. It recovers 1 point every 4 dungeon levels.

Scoring Mechanism

DS is not a simple click to play game, it's actually a RPG where you need to think how to defeat your opponents with the best equipment set while achieving high score. And in some circumstances, you may want to focus on getting a better NFT rather than the highest score.

To compete in the Leaderboard, you have to be a smart adventurer.

Check the screenshot below, there are so many factors affects your resulting battle score:

Special Cost - A minus part if you use Special Attack
Level Score - The deeper the level, the higher score
Relic Power - The better Relic you use, the higher score multiplexer
Extra Power - The extra NFT power over the enemy to be another score multiplexer
Added Score - Level Score x Relic Power x Extra Power
Final Score - Original Score + Added Score

From Extra Power we know that both NFTs and Luck play critical roles in getting high scores. Let's check on Extra Power formula first:

100% + win rate(%) - random result(%)

If you want to achieve maximum boosting to get the highest win rate, you need to use the best NFTs. One way is to choose high Power & Level equipment, another is to use the correct Element counter NFT to get advantages.

For the Luck part this is very friendly to new players. Even if you don't have good NFTs at the beginning, you may still win high scores by rolling dice to get great results. We can tell that the dev team is willing to bring a balance between old and new players.

V1 NFT Upgrades

Even though we don't have Smithy in the current beta test(There will be a second round "upgraded" beta test soon), I already see some NFTs which have only at most Rank 2 to have a Rank 3 upgraded version.

Take this Shogun's Helmet as an example. I never saw this Rank 3 NFT before in the V1 game.

Also, look at this beautiful Rank 4 Thor's shield. It's a must for the best adventurers!

NFT Economy

As we discussed before, the new V2 gameplay provides reasons to increase NFT value because they result in higher score. And higher scores means having more competitiveness in the leaderboard.

Also, there will be Smithy accompanying the V2 launch. Low tier NFT said could be burnt to upgrade NFTs. This will definitely enhance DungeonSwap Equipment(DSE) scarcity.

Finally by checking on bscscan we know there are about 217K DSE minted by players, and there are a total of 11K $DND holders. So it's an average of 20 NFTs per holder.

Do you think we have too many DSEs or too few DSEs that can be used/equipped by all players after V2 launch? Welcome to leave your comments below.

NFT Value

This is the final part I want to summarize and conclude. From 8/25 AMA we know this is one of the main focuses the whole community is willing to know. I think NFT value will be improved in V2 by: