Bloody Thursday night everyone!
Origin Alpha is now live. I spent around 5 hours playing it today and I'm amazed because I never thought it would be this good. Although there is a certain familiarity with the interface and gameplay I find Origin's more appealing and user friendly. They said that clothes make the man and that is very true if you compare Origin from v2. The sharper and much more vibrant graphics would surely satisfy new players and even the old timers.
The storyline quest makes it immersive to a certain degree. Also, new players are not required to invest because there are now free axies available. I now have 4 free axie which are Olek, Puffy, Buba and Ena. You'd start with the first three and would acquire Ena after clearing some of the early stages. I'm still not sure if there are other free axies that will be available later because like you all I'm still exploring the game.
Anyway, below are some of my insights. Just take note that we're all fairly new so this information might not be accurate or complete. But I do hope it will help you in your journey.
Starting with Adventure
If you're free to play or does not have any blockchain axie you can start with the adventure mode right away. I'd recommend playing the tutorial video first because it really helps to familiarize with the new mechanics. If you have blockchain axies then you can also use them after syncing. Syncing is very easy you only need to click that rotating arrow button, no need to overcomplicate things.
Adventure is important because it's a prerequisite to unlock the other features of the game like the arena, inventory, crafting etc. Completing every stage will give you experience to level your account. Unlike the adventure mode in Axie v2 the experience points are now accumulated universally through the account rather than the individual axies. Moon shards which you can use in crafting runes and charms also drop here. The further you are in the adventure mode the more content you can unlock.
Charms, Runes and Crafting
Crafting is a feature where you can convert materials to charms and runes. Right now only moon shards are available for crafting but it is stated that SLP will also be implemented as a material in the near future. This is the feature that most of us are waiting. Although not yet implemented this could trigger a massive burn in the supply of SLP.
There are different recipes for runes and charms. So far we've unlock two which are the basic and he intermediate recipes. Basic recipe only costs 100 moon shards while the intermediate costs around 1000 shards for each crafting. Of course, the intermediate one offers greater chances to get rarer items. For each crafting there's a 25% chance to get a rune and 75% to get a charm. For each crafting of basic recipes the results would only yield common rune/charm as a product. For the intermediate one you'd get 60% common, 35% rare and 5% epic item. I only tried crafting intermediate twice but my luck is not that good as I only got 2 commons.
Each crafting procedure provides some experience. Take note that this is different from the other experience you'd earn through questing and battling. The experience in crafting is needed to progress the crafting level. The higher crafting level one has the more recipes it will unlock.
Arena and the Ronin Spirit Buff
There are three arena modes available. Tournaments are still closed so players can choose between Practice and the Ranked battles. Both have same gameplay but there are greater rewards in Ranked as you climb the ladders. There are different divisions in the ranked games each division consists of 4 tiers except for Challenger. From bottom you have Egg, Chick, Hare, Boar, Wolf , Bear, Tiger, Dragon and lastly Challenger.
I'm now at Chick 3, so there's still along way to go. Also stamina computation now is very different. The computation for stamina is right below. Given I have 3 free starter Axies and 4 Blockchain Axies my Stamina is around 13.5. They round it down to the nearest whole number so mine was a measly 13. I need to buy 2 new Axies to make it close to my previous 20 stamina in v2. That was a really a nice marketing tactic coming from them. Yet, they once again succeeded in creating demand.
Another thing to consider when doing battle in the ranked mode is the so-called Ronin Spirit Buff. We all know that we need three axies to compete but this mechanism favors those who play using blockhain axies. When your team win a ranked match there are additional moon shards which are rewarded depending on the number on blockchain axies in your team. If you are playing all the free starters then you'd have 0 additional rewards regardless of the rank you're in. Take the challenger tier as an example. Zero bc axies yield zero additional rewards, 1 bc axie yield additional 50, 2 bc axies yield an additional of 100 and finally 3 bc axies yield 150 additional moon shards.
The game improved alot and I think that these additional rewards are just fair considering that many people have invested alot of time and money in the game. It's very subtle but I think this teasing mechanic of Sky Mavis might have some success in the near future. What I'm really keen about is the SLP burning that will come later on. I read that they are slowly migrating assets here in Origin and there might be a time when SLP is solely earned in this new platform. Hopefully, the burning would be enough to balance the economy. We already know that there's a massive gap between mint and burn of SLP, so I'm really interested on how things will fair after the said implementation.
Anyways, I'm really sleepy right now as I'm finishing this entry at 2:18 in the morning. Hope you guys have a good day ahead. See you again and thanks for reading.