The Play-to-Earn (P2E) gaming sector has grown into a powerful concept within the cryptocurrency industry as non-fungible tokens took flight and legitimized a new segment in the market.
Gaming has long been touted as one of the best applications for blockchain-based technology. Even though it’s still in its nascency, GameFi has proven to be a model that players enjoy.
For example, CryptoBlades — a blockchain and web-based NFT roleplaying game — attracted the interest of hundreds of thousands of users. Initially deployed on the BNB Chain (BSC), it expanded to other networks to achieve transaction efficiency and improved user experience. CryptoBlades was also named the Most Valuable Builder in the BSC incubation program.
The following is a complete guide on playing the game and an honest review of our experience playing CryptoBlades in 2022. You can also check our video guide on the game:
What is CryptoBlades?
As mentioned above, CryptoBlades is an innovative web-based NFT roleplaying game that launched on the BNB Chain (formerly – Binance Smart Chain). Developed by Riveted Games, CryptoBlades brings forward plenty of mechanisms that set the tone for future developments and trends in play-to-earn gaming.
Although it originally started on BSC, the game has expanded to other networks to achieve transaction efficiency, improve the gameplay experience, and maximize players’ earnings. At the time of this writing, in April 2022, the game is available on the following networks:
- BNB Chain
- HECO Blockchain
- OEC Chain
- Polygon
- Avalanche
- Aurora
For the sake of this guide, we will go through the gameplay using the BNB Chain, but some of the other options are more cost-efficient and could increase your earnings.
At the game’s core is a reward system that allows players to earn SKILL tokens after defeating their enemies. With those earnings, players can acquire additional characters based on various elements, forge unique weapons as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), reforge weapons to increase their overall power, trade on the marketplace, or withdraw their tokens completely.
Data from BSC Scan shows that there are over 360,000 holders of the native token of the game – SKILL. However, given that the game supports five networks, that number has grown significantly to over a million – according to the official website.
Who Created CryptoBlades?
The game development studio behind CryptoBlades is called Riveted Games. The studio was founded in 2014, and some of its key members include:
Philip Devine – Owner of Riveted Games, CEO at CryptoBlades
Devine founded Riveted Games in 2014 and has released multiple award-winning games on Steam – the largest marketplace for video games globally and independently. He has a background in development and is the one who built the team from the ground up.
Daniel Karsai – Lead Game Developer
Daniel joined Riveted Games back in 2016 and specializes in many fields such as programming, game design, Unity, 3D graphics, and blockchain development. He has also worked on the award-winning space simulation game title Lightspeed Frontier and other names such as Spoxel and Nations at War.
Kyle Kemp – Lead Front-End Developer
Kemp is the lead front-end developer for CryptoBlades. He’s responsible for creating over 108 repositories on Github and is in the top 0.1% of users for star ratings. Known as a renowned front-end developer globally, Kemp is responsible for the user interface and also works on constantly optimizing the overall gameplay experience.
Other names on the team include Nick Newcomer – Chief Operating Officer (COO) – David Diebels – Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and Aaron Hutton – Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).
Gameplay Basics
Because of its web-based game design, you don’t need to download a native client, as you can play straight from your browser – here.
Before we dive in-depth into the gameplay, it’s worth noting that we will be playing the game using the BNB Chain for the sake of this guide. However, there are more efficient networks in terms of transaction costs.
The team has created a comprehensive video on how to connect your MetaMask wallet to the OEC network, and the links will be in the description.
To dive into the CryptoBlades universe, you need to install MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, or other supported wallets. Once you have it ready, you should set up the BNB Chain and deposit some BNB.
Once you have this done, you need to go to the game’s official website, hit the Enter Game button on the top right of the navigation menu, and select a network.
This is the screen that you will see immediately after entering the game portal:
We now need to get some SKILL. Clicking that link would take you to ApeSwap, a well-known decentralized exchange where you can swap some of your BNB for SKILL.
Characters
From here, you can mint your character. At the time of writing this guide, it cost us 0.6185 SKILL to create our first character, but that will surely increase due to the recent Dynamic Minting update the team just released. We minted two characters: Jano Lemesprie and Flisp Osresp:
There are a few things that we need to unpack here. First, the screen above is the Plaza – it’s where you keep your active characters, and there’s a limit of four. However, the team also introduced the Garrison feature – you can have unlimited characters in the Garrison and choose which ones you want to be active. To send a character to the Garrison, click on the three dots on the top right of your character card and select the option.
You will also notice an element icon on top of each of our characters. This is integral to the gameplay and fundamental for player-versus-player (PVP) action.
Important Stats
Elements
There are four different elements present in the game:
- Fire
- Earth
- Lightning
- Water
In our case, we pulled an Earth and a Lightning character.
All characters, weapons, and enemies are assigned an element. These can increase or decrease your chances of success in battle. This is why you need to know the following and keep it in mind when selecting opponents:
- Fire trumps Earth but is weak to Water
- Earth trumps Lightning but is weak to Fire
- Lightning trumps Water but is weak to Earth
- Water trumps Fire but is weak to Lightning
Therefore, our Earth character – Jano Lemesprie – will be strong against lightning and weaker against fire enemies.
Stamina
Stamina is a vital stat to consider. It regenerates by one every five minutes. Your starting stamina will always be 200, which can all be used in one battle for maximum gains. However, it is possible to battle with intervals of 40 stamina for maximum gains.
Power
As you can see, both of our starting characters have 1000 PWR – this is their current power. Clicking the question mark gives us some additional information:
This is a measure of your character’s strength – fighting an opponent with less PWR means you are more likely to win the battle and vice versa.
To find out more about the calculations behind the power, you can check this entry.
Weapons
Weapons are amongst the main NFTs that players can own in CryptoBlades, and you can hold an unlimited number of them. However, there is a price associated with forging weapons – all of them are located in the Blacksmith section.
For the sake of this guide, we will also mint ten more weapons.
As you can see on the weapon image, each has its element, increasing its strength versus weaker element opponents and vice-versa. You can combine weapons that match your character based on their element to increase your odds of winning in combat.
Each weapon also has a number of stars – from one to five. According to the whitepaper, the chances of forging different weapons are:
- One star – 44%
- Two stars – 35%
- Three stars – 15%
- Four stars – 5%
- Five stars – 1%
Luckily for us, we managed to mint a five-star weapon:
It’s a water element sword named the Unholy Sculptor, and it increases both our Power and Strength.
During certain events, there is sometimes an option to forge a special weapon. These unique weapons have an exclusive design, special ability in PvP to reroll an opponent and give an option for a higher quality weapon. Earthen Hope, which was celebrating Earth Day, could be forged either by spending SKILL or shards. Shards, currently, can only be obtained through forging other weapons.
Beyond weapons, you can also obtain equipment such as shields, trinkets, and different types of armor.
Combat
Moving to combat, this is the mode where you battle creatures from the CryptoBlades universe.
The combat feature is powered by a formula that you can explore in-depth here. This is what your combat dashboard will look like:
As you can see, there’s all the necessary information about your opponent. In addition, you will see a guide to the elements on the top-right if you need to be reminded what elements are strong against each other.
Here, you can also equip your different weapons. In our case, we have selected our earth-based character and equipped our brand new five-star sword. The game also points you to matches that you are likely to win. But, of course, they also reward you fewer points than those that are more challenging, so it’s entirely up to you to determine the risk factor of your gameplay.
Once you have found your opponent, click on the top and sign the transaction. This will trigger the algorithm based on the formula described in the entry we provided above, and the results will determine the winner. In our case – we won the roll and saw our first-ever victory in CryptoBlades!
As you can see, we gained 0.000611 SKILL and 31 experience points. However, these rewards scale with your level, so the more you level up – the higher the rewards.
If you are more of a PvP type of player – you can select the PvP mode.
The Arena
There are a few things that you need to know about the Arena. First, this is the entrance to the PvP mode in CryptoBlades, and it will cost you 3.99 SKILL tokens to enter. While in the Arena, you can be attacked – and you can also attack. Leaving the Arena will cost you 0.9975 SKILL. These wagers vary based on the chain you use and could be lower than those displayed here.
You can choose which characters you want to use and equip them with weapons and shields:
You get ranking points and SKILL rewards whenever you win a battle or successfully defend against an attack. You will be matched with opponents randomly. Another thing to consider is that Arena doesn’t require stamina. Also, it’s divided into character levels: 1-through-10, 11-through-20, and so forth.
Matches against higher-level players might be tough to win. However, they also grant you more ranking points, giving you a better chance of winning the end-of-season rewards and climbing the leaderboards.
Once in the Arena, you can begin fighting other players:
In our case, we were immediately matched with another player who was level 8 but also had no ranking points:
You can always reroll if you don’t like your match-up, although it will cost you some SKILL. You can also leave at any time you decide. In our case, we were unfortunate and couldn’t win.
If you’re not the PvP type of player, you can always battle monsters, raid, or do quests, which brings us to our next point – raids.
Raids
As many of you who have played any MMO know, raiding is a group activity. It’s the same in CryptoBlades – you team up with other players to fight various bosses and get rewards.
Raiding periods vary, and so do the bosses – the higher your level is, the more challenging the bosses are. Fortunately, you fight with the combined PWR of everyone in the raid. Once the attack is complete and you emerge victoriously, you also get your loot.
You can choose your weapons that provide various multipliers and increase the strength of your characters. Raiding requires 200 stamina to enter.
Quests
Quests are yet another way to improve and progress with your character. However, they are available only for characters not in Arena. In return for completing quests, your characters gain reputation points that increase their tier, experience, and items.
You can request quests and then determine whether or not you want to complete them:
In this case, we had to submit 280 stamina to complete the quest and receive 12 reputation points and a new weapon.
CryptoBlades Marketplace – the Bazaar
The Bazaar is CryptoBlades’ marketplace where you can sell your characters and items or buy whatever you need. This is what it looks like:
As you can see, you can filter the items and narrow down the search. Then, all you need to do is connect a wallet with some tokens, and you are good to go.
CryptoBlades Kingdoms: What You Need to Know
In October 2021, the team introduced CryptoBlades: Kingdoms (CBK). It’s a realm that contains 6,250,000 claimable territory locations with dimensions of 2500 x 2500, and it’s divided into 50×50 chunks.
Each claimable territory can have a village or a dungeon – or, of course – be empty. The villages contain three primary resources – stone, clay, and wood. These can be used to construct buildings and also to recruit troops.
Land can currently be acquired using KING (to be explained) from the Bazaar. CBK also introduced another token called KING, which has a supply of 1 billion
The token powers the CBK ecosystem, and some of the things that you can do with it include but are not limited to:
- Upgrade a village
- Claim a new village
- Send an attack or support
- Nickname your wallet
It’s worth noting that you only use KING to acquire gold, and from there – almost everything happens off-chain and is purchasable with gold.
Tokenomics
When it comes to CryptoBlades (not CryptoBlades: Kingdoms), the primary token is SKILL. Players leverage it to acquire items, participate in Arena, battle monsters, enter raids, and even more coming soon.
The supply of SKILL is designated under the following scheme (according to the official whitepaper):
- IDO – 35%
- Gameplay Incentives – 20%
- Development – 20%
- Initial Liquidity – 15%
- Liquidity Incentives – 10%
The total supply is 1,000,000 SKILL coins.
Conclusion
CryptoBlades is a leading title in the blockchain P2E ecosystem, and it’s perhaps easy to see why.
The game design follows easy-to-understand logic that is critical for P2E projects. In addition, it’s based on a familiar rolling model, which makes it very easy for users to grasp.
Of course, suppose you are expecting a traditional gaming experience with Unreal engine graphics. In that case, this is not the game for you – but neither is the entire play-to-earn segment of the cryptocurrency industry.
The entire game is built to make completing various tasks easy, while the PvP action is somewhat addicting. Even though the rewards from each battle are not significant, it’s easy to see how using a more gas-efficient blockchain such as OEC can increase profitability. Scaling this up across various accounts and multiple characters makes it entirely possible to generate significant income, as it only takes mere seconds per battle.
The requirements to start playing the game on the BNB Chain may be steep, but users can choose a more efficient network.
Our experience with CryptoBlades has been satisfying, and it’s easy to see why it has garnered so much popularity over the past year.