While it may have never 'died', Alienworlds has for sure had some dark days. As I outlined here, by the end of 2021, Alienworlds was in a bad place. NFT mining had been paused for months, bots were sucking the life out of the TLM pool and the only messages seen from the team were "Join us live on Twitch for marbles!" or "Join us in general chat for trivia!". Don't get me wrong, having events like these are great to grow and maintain engagement with the community, but there were no actual notices about the game. No news on upcoming updates. No comment on the state of NFT mining. Nothing.
All we had were the same bleak notices without updates for months.
Thunderdome? Coming soon.
Missions? Coming soon.
NFT mining? Soon.
Having become nothing more than a TLM faucet being drained by bots, Alienworlds had fallen off. Hard. But now, less than 2 years later, some high rarity tools have increased by factors of 10 or 15 times what they were. So what's happened? Let's take a look at some of the big changes that led to Alienworlds' recovery:
1. Rarity Pools: Bots have been a problem since the early days of Alienworlds and this is no surprise considering the faucet-like nature of the game. Even with the use of captchas, bots were sucking the pool away (typically with their 3x Standard Drill setup due to its rather overpowered nature) leaving little TLM to be mined for the actual players. It made it especially frustrating for people with expensive, high-rarity tools which would be mining fractions of a TLM barely once an hour. Thankfully, the addition of rarity pools had a major impact on fixing this. By dedicating certain percentages of planetary TLM pools to each rarity of tool, owners of high-rarity tools now split the pool with a much smaller number of players. Furthermore, it limits the effectiveness for bots to keep making new wallets (the 5 WAX wallet cost also helped with this) and mining with their abundant tools whether it be a shovel or a drill. By mining with a Legendary or Mythical tool, you are mining out of separate pools to the lower rarity pool. While the percentage of the pool may be smaller, it is important to remember that the number of people you are sharing this pool with is much more limited with less than 1000 legendary and 250 mythical tools currently minted. For reference, the current pool breakdown on Neri at the time of writing looks like this, clearly showing the larger pools for rarer tools. 
2. NFT Mining: While it might not be what it once was, the return of NFT mining to Alienworlds was essential. The introduction of the 'NFT points' system returned value to NFT power-oriented tools such as the Causian Attractor, Glavor Disc, and Draxos Axe. For reference, the Causian Attractor which had fallen below 150 WAX is now valued at over 1000 WAX. Similarly, the Glavor Disc and Draxos Axe fell to around 50 WAX both now have a floor price of over 400 WAX. While it is important to remember that the price of WAX has fallen since then (significantly), this is still an increase in both WAX and USD value. Throughout the period where NFT mining was 'paused', these tools had literally no use and thus no value so this update returned not only value to players, but also confidence. Of course, it is significantly harder to get NFTs through the points system compared to the original 'mine and pray' era but the change is understandable.
3. Release of Missions: Whether it be Missions or Thunderdome, the Alienworlds community was dying for new content, and Missions provided it. With its link to BSC, missions not only offered new content for current players but also reached out, bringing in new players. Missions furthermore created a new use for TLM, boosting its value, as well as offering a new way to acquire TLM beyond just mining. The release of Missions also came with the introduction of many new NFTs, boosting the market volume and elevating engagement, with new features both released and planned for these NFTs such as increasing your own Mission productivity.
4. New Look: Perhaps not a major change but the fresh appearance definitely didn't hurt Alienworlds. With a smoother experience and clear descriptions of your mining power, the new UI made getting into Alienworlds easier for new players as well as mixing things up for veterans of the game.
As always I'm sure I've missed things and feel free to point them out in the comments but I believe these to be at least some of the major aspects which helped Alienworlds rebuild itself after its tragic decline (at least in my opinion). I've loved watching Alienworlds grow over the years and can't wait for what comes next!
Enjoy your day and thanks for reading :)
