Axie Infinity: Play To Earn Blockchain Game

Play To Earn

A lot of us are spending countless hours, sleepless nights playing games on our computers or mobile phones. We'll even find zombie-like dudes and dudettes who play online games to the point of skipping meals even.

Addicting? Understatement.

This is exactly the reason why I try to stay away from mobile games. I do not want to be addicted to them, not to mention there are lots of other things that I should spend my time on.

Cue: Play to earn.

Things changed when I discovered that there are "earning money games" (this is how my kids call them). There were those faucet games where you get some free crypto and then of course those in the likes of Splinterlands where we have to invest a small amount to start playing. These kinds of games are my sort of "guilt-free" play time, that which I can tell the kids, "Hey, this is earning money game, you know". LOL.

Axie Infinity

It was a few months ago when I first heard of Axie Infinity. Upon learning that there is a starting capital to begin playing, I did not really spend much time learning about it. I completely dismissed it, until a few days ago when it started (at least to my very short radar) exploding.

How To Get Started With Axie Infinity

Axie Infinity is an Ethereum based blockchain game so you will need:

Metamask Wallet - where you will need ETH to purchase your team of Axies
Ronin Wallet - another wallet where you will store WETH that will be used to purchase Axies from the Axie Infinity Marketplace.

Currently, you will require around $1,100 to get started. You need to have 3 Axies (starting prices at the marketplace are around $350) and these are really not the best Axies.

Buying Your First Axies

For someone like me who had budget constraints and really did not know what kind of Axies to buy, I just put the filter on and bought a team of Plant, Beast, and Aqua Axies that my budget could afford. This tool -- https://axie.zone/finder is also helpful to find what Axies are good.

Here are the steps to buy your first Axies:

Send ETH to your Metamask Wallet
Download Ronin Wallet extension for Chrome and deposit ETH to the Ronin wallet using the bridge - https://bridge.axieinfinity.com/
Buy your 3 Axies from the Marketplace. Register your Metamask account - https://marketplace.axieinfinity.com/login

Note: There may be instances when you will get an error - "Purchase Failed" or "This Auction is no longer available..." - it just means that though still listed on the Marketplace, these Axies have already been bought.

Once you have completed your team of 3 Axies, you are now ready to play. Download the game application (available on desktop and mobile) and start playing. For the mobile version, you will need to scan the QR code from the desktop application.

Earning From The Game

Okay! You've just spent over $1,000 to play a game. How do you earn from this?

The game lets you earn Small Love Potion (SLP) Tokens which is currently trading at $0.3797 today July 13, 2021 as per coinmarketcap.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/small-love-potion/

There are three main ways in which you can earn SLP tokens in the game:

You can earn a maximum of 100 SLP tokens per day at the Adventure Mode.
You can earn 50 more SLP tokens per day by completing the daily quest -- Check in, complete 10 adventure games, win 5 arena battles.
You can also earn extra SLP tokens upon winning battles in the arena.

Energy

Each battle in Axie Infinity will cost you 1 energy. The number of energy you have depends on the number of Axies you own:

3 to 9 Axies: 20 Energy, regaining 5 Energy every 6 hours
10 to 19 Axies: 40 Energy, regaining 5 Energy every 3 hours
20+ Axies: 60 Energy, regaining 5 Energy every 2 hours

When battling in the Arena, you will also have the chance to earn extra SLP when you win the battle while playing with Energy. You can still battle in the Arena with zero energy but you won't gain extra SLP (only complete daily quest).

A player can actually play even with depleted energy but this means that the Axies won't gain XP on the Adventure mode (but can still earn SLP), while there won't be extra SLP when winning the Arena battle.

Claiming the SLP's

The SLP's gained daily from playing the game can only be claimed every 2 weeks.

The SLP will have to be withdrawn from the Ronin Wallet > to Metamask Wallet > to Binance exchange (for trading to fiat).

Initial Thoughts On Axie Infinity

Today is my third day playing the game and I would say, so far so good. The graphics are good although there are times when the game is disconnecting and you might end up losing the battle and the energy (meh!)

Initially, the concern was to buy the Axies that fit the budget with little to no concern on the cards/abilities of the Axies. Now that I have started playing, I'd really say that a great team is really paramount. Budget Axies could be good for Adventure mode, but would be a struggle to battle with in the Arena.

Now the goal is to get as many Axies as possible through breeding which is for another post, hopefully. For now, time to enjoy the game.