Hello everyone and welcome back to the weekly crypto roundup, your one stop shop for all your crypto needs. Today I'm going to be writing a guide to and reviewing simultaneously the crypto game "Upland". It's an interesting game that I've been playing for a few hours now. So without further ado, let's just hop right into it.
What is Upland?
Good question. Upland is a crypto based real estate game where you can acquire and sell properties across 3 main locations in the USA: Fresno, San Francisco and New York. Cool thing about this game is that you genuinely own a piece of a blockchain when you buy and sell properties, you really get NFTs out of this. Publish0x recently sold their NFT of the NYSE building for $2300 in real money! Incredible! Upland is on the EOS blockchain which is quite a well known crypto so is unlikely to fail any time soon. This means your investments will be safe!
This first section of the article will be all about the game and how to get started. The second section will be a review of the game, the issues and limitations but also the good stuff of course!
How do I get started?
So you can sign up with a referral code if you want to help out me or Publish0x, I'll leave the respective ones below. I'll also put down just an ordinary link if you don't want to help anyone haha. My referral code will mean Upland will match your first purchase of UPX and split the bonus between you and me, Publish0x's will give you 6,000 UPX (in game currency) on the spot.
Now then, what do we get when we join? You will be given a tutorial at sign up which I highly recommend you watch. The basics of Upland are all about the EOS blockchain, NFTs, avatars called "Explorers", UPX and Collections. The whole of the Upland world is on the EOS blockchain, which is the EOS.io blockchain. Holding steady at $5, the EOS cryptocurrency and blockchain will likely never collapse, guaranteeing safety for your assets. When you purchase a property in game, that property will be turned into an NFT on the EOS blockchain in your name. For those of you who do not know, an NFT is a Non-Fungible Token, i.e. something you cannot touch. But people pay a lot for NFTs if they have value, like the NYSE building sale I talked about above. So if you play your cards right, you can bag yourself a tidy profit on Upland. Explorers are a special thing about Upland. In order to stop people just buying the whole map, Explorers travel across the map at a slow rate, meaning you can only buy property when they are in range and not anywhere on the map. Below is my explorer:
UPX is the in game currency of Upland. You use it to purchase your virtual properties. Most properties (in Fresno) are a tad under 1500 UPX, and you start with 5,000 UPX anyway. Finally, collections are very important to the game. With your properties by themselves, you can only expect to earn a measly 15 UPX per month. However, with collections, you can firstly get a big payoff for completing them, and they also boost properties inside of the collection by from 1.1x to 2.7x.
With your money at the start of Upland, you want to try and purchase property that is cheap and also furfills the collections. For example, you should try and get 3 properties on the same street and 5 properties in the same town. This will bag you the Newbie collection, King of The Street collection and the City Pro collection, earning you 3000 UPX and a real nice boost on your 8 properties. Start by doing the Newbie achievement, then King of The Street, then City Pro so you will have enough money to buy other properties.
This info should get you started on the game. I'm going to run through some things that really confused me for a while, so that you guys don't have to feel the same mistakes. Firstly, for ease of use, you should be using these buttons all the time to help you get about.
The location sign at the very top is very useful in my opinion. It'll let you see any properties being sold (dark green) and any properties you own (dark blue) on the map. The building sign is useful if you want to buy property off of people, as it shows all nearby building sales. However, I am unable to use this (more in the review later). The search symbol is cool if you want to buy your own house or something like that. The chess piece symbol will move the map to your explorer.
Also, remember to renew your Upland Visa every week! Otherwise your account will be stopped until you come back. This visa system gets removed once you get into the Uplander role, but that is quite difficult (more in the review)
If you also want to see your purchase proof on the EOS blockchain, you can find it under your property listing.
UPDATE 23/02/21
I have updated the guide today to tell you about Trains and Planes, as today I am venturing out towards Brooklyn, a future city that will be released "very soon". In order to move your explorer about in Upland, you use these things called "Sends". However, these are only for locally moving the explorer. In order to move between the 3 different areas of Upland, you have to use Trains and Planes. And as Newbies to Upland are probably reading this guide and also hoping to go to Brooklyn when it opens, I will sum up how to use Trains and Planes.
The Train runs from Fresno County to San Fransisco and vice versa, and the plane runs from San Fransisco to New York and vice versa. Most Upland Beginners begin down in Fresno County. I advise that NO-ONE UNDER 20K NET WORTH takes the train or plane. Brooklyn props are going to be expensive, and the flight and train will cost you 3,000 UPX. The Train can be taken by sending your block explorer to the train station and purchasing a ticket. The journey takes 25 minutes:
When you arrive, you'll get this nice message:
Then you need to head to the Plane area in the South of San Fransisco. There you can buy a plane ticket to NY for 2580 UPX.
After this you will arrive in New York! From here, I'm sure that Brooklyn will be opening soon. I'm going to be ready for it! Are you?
That is all for the guide, hope this helped to all the new players! Enjoy Upland. For those of you waiting for the review, it's right below
Upland Review: Is it really as good as it seems?
I have quite a bit of constructive criticism against the game, and also some compliments. Firstly, I think that the game itself is sound. It has an app, you can purchase currency if you run low, you can play it on the web and you can even earn money from it. Most of the good stuff is all listed above. I think the game has potential to be something great, and I also did enjoy playing. However, I do have some issues.
My first issue is to do with this newbie system and how to get into the Uplander rank. I purchased 4 properties today with my money and am now left on just 519 UPX. In order to purchase property, you need 1000 or more UPX. Also, in order to get up to Uplander rank, you need 10,000 UPX or more of assets. There is a big issue here. Firstly, I can't complete the City Pro collection and get UPX in order to get up to Uplander because I don't have enough for the 5th building. Secondly, I cannot purchase buildings off of other people at cheap prices because I'm not an Uplander and thirdly, I cannot get enough passive income to get to 1000 unless I wait A YEAR! So I am quite confused as to how to proceed.
Secondly, the tutorial could be even clearer really. So much stuff I had to learn as I went rather than being told at the start.
Thirdly, I think the only way that Upland will make a significant amount of money is if they actually make the UPX cheaper. I may have been slightly tempted to buy some earlier, but if you look at the prices, you can see they are STEEP.
Lastly, one thing I'd love is if they expanded the game. There are currently only 3 cities available. 3 cities for what will become a massive game is simply not enough. An hour of looking on the game only let me find about 10 properties. There are just thousands of already claimed ones and not many unclaimed. I hope that Upland decide to add the UK or a country like that so that they can really achieve the real global feel of the game.
None of these are really impossible to change, but would really make a big impact on me. For example, I would be so greatful if they either raised the monthly earning rate or lowered the Uplander rank limit. I would also be happy if they lowered UPX (though this isn't necessary really, I understand that Upland 100% will have to cover costs) and also if they improved the tutorial. And lastly, increasing map size (doesn't have to be instant but gradually) would add a more worldwide feel to the game and also attract new players with all the new properties about.
If I were ranking the game out of 10, it would be a solid 7 right now I would say. That's my review over.
UPDATE 16/02/2021
I managed to do the collections in order so that I had plenty of money. Again, I would’ve preferred a more in depth tutorial or guide so I didn’t have to open a second account, but whatever will be will be haha.
My suggested improvements I would’ve liked from above have been slightly addressed today. Clovis, a new area of the world, is opening up. This is addressing one of my main issues of a lack of land! I’m so very happy they have done this and I’m going to be purchasing quite a lot of land. (EDIT (23/02/21): Brooklyn is also opening soon, again helping the lack of land issues)
I also decided to join the discord. The people on there are very nice, and they helped me make sense of some of the confusing things. I now know how to efficiently find treasure and also how to flip properties for a profit.
So what can I say about the game as a final, more in depth remark? This is what I will say. The game is very, very fun, but the first day on there is SUPER difficult. There needs to be some kind of better guide, because the one there right now is just not up to scratch from my point of view. I presume that Upland is sponsoring the contest in some way, so they will be looking at all of these posts.
My advice to the devs, then, is please make the game slightly easier for first time players. Maybe make a practise account on a practise world before moving into the real world. Try and improve the guides. And I would personally REMOVE the Upland visa, or EXTEND it to 30 days. A lot of people are unhappy about the 7 day limit, as this basically removes true ownership of assets. Lastly, please explain the optimum order to complete collections. On my first account, I did the Newbie collection and tried to get the City Pro before realising that there isn’t enough money to do it without doing King of The Street first. A “suggested” order would be nice. And finally, I am happy about Clovis but still think we need more land. It doesn’t have to be instant, and Clovis is 100% a step in the right direction, but growth of the game is dependent on new players being able to find property.
I am raising my rating of the game to 8.5 out of 10 after playing and understanding the game these past few days. If you guys can do the suggestions above, it’s an easy 10. Thanks to everyone in the discord for helping and for the game itself. I may get addicted :D
Thanks for reading everyone. I hope you enjoyed the ultimate guide to Upland. Be sure to tune in to the contest for Upland too, you could win up to or more than $100 of Ethereum thanks to our friends at Publish0x! Thanks to you guys for running it and thanks to the community for reading this. Publish0x is the collective of team and community (and sponsors), so I will thank Upland, Publish0x and the readers right now!
Have a good day all.
