Axie Infinity: How to play profitably? – review of the most popular NFT game

Have you managed to make money during the Covid-19 pandemic on online games? John Aaron Ramos, a 22-year-old Filipino, claims to have made a fortune and bought two houses with proceeds from the NFT game Axie Infinity.

The success of this game is phenomenal: the income of the creators of the project exceeds the income of the developers of some cryptocurrencies. At least you should go into this game and try to play. And to begin with, we will tell you in detail about this sensational project.

What is Axie Infinity?

Axie Infinity is a Pokemon and Tamagotchi-inspired blockchain game centered around virtual pets – Axies. You need to breed them, cross them and, most importantly, fight them. It works on the Play-to-Earn principle: as a result of victories in battles, you can earn SLP and AXS cryptocurrency. All characters (Axies) and in-game items are presented as NFTs, which means that they are all unique and have their own rarity and features, which is why the value of different NFTs is different.

History of Axie Infinity

The project was launched in 2017 by Sky Mavis in the wake of the popularity of CryptoKitties, the leader of the GameFi industry at that time. But popularity came during a period of general global isolation in 2020.

In November 2019, the project raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Pangea Blockchain Fund, Hashed, ConsenSys, and Animoca Brands. The Axie Infinity token sale was launched on Binance Launchpad in October 2020, which brought the project $2.97 million. At that time, the price of the AXS currency was $0.1.

As part of the Series A funding round, which took place in May 2021, the project raised $7.5 million. The investors were Libertus Capital, Collaborative Fund, billionaire Mark Cuban and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Axie Infinity has gained popularity all over the world and has become an example of a successful cryptocurrency project for both players and investors and developers. The AXS project token is traded on the largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The cost of AXS at the time of writing is $14.63.

The game is available on Windows and MacOS, as well as an app for iOS and Android. Only English is supported.

Core principles and tokenomics of Axie Infinity

The game takes place in a fantasy world inhabited by creatures (pets) called Axie. Players can breed and trade them, as well as fight other players Axies for cryptocurrency rewards. In the Scholarships program, you can also rent and rent pets.

In Axie Infinity, you can buy virtual land in NFT format inside Lunacia’s own metaverse.

Initially, the ecosystem was based on the Ethereum blockchain. Axie Infinity now operates almost entirely on its own Ronin sidechain. The game network is compatible with Ethereum via Ronin Bridge.

The tokenomics of the game is based on two tokens: Axie Infinity Shards (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP).

AXS and SLP tokens

AXS Coin (Axie Infinity Shard) is a governance token that allows holders to stake and earn rewards in AXS. Rewards come from the community fund, where in-game goods are stored. The total volume of AXS is 270,000,000 coins. Some tokens have been allocated for public sale, some for use in the game, and some for Sky Mavis and project advisors. The initial offer at the first public sale was just under 60,000,000 coins. It is expected that the number of issued tokens will grow annually until 2026.

According to the NFTMetria team, this token is one of the best NFT cryptocurrencies for investment.

Smooth Love Potion (SLP) is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network. SLP tokens are the main source of income for players. They can be sold or used to breed new Axie creatures. This token has an unlimited supply and can be obtained by completing daily quests and skirmishes with other players. SLP tokens are burned after use. In addition, you can receive no more than a set number of tokens per day.

Game Modes

The game has two main modes:

• Adventure (PvE)
• Arena (PvP)

Adventure (PvE)

In Adventure, the player explores the game’s world by fighting virtual enemies and leveling up their Axies. For each new level, a reward in SLP is given. The higher the level, the higher the reward. We recommend starting with this mode in order to understand all the principles, rules and mechanics of the game, passing the levels from easy to difficult.

Previously, they earned up to 100 SLP per day, but now this mode is undergoing massive changes. All this is connected with the innovation on the balance of the economy in the system.

The reason is that there were flaws in the internal economy of the project: the internal SLP token depreciated after it began to be mined too much in order to earn money. Namely, four times more was mined than was burned to create Axie.

Now the project team is completely removing SLP loot from PvE mode. By doing so, he expects to increase the focus on the Arena mode, where previously the income was less than in Adventure.

Arena (PvP)

Arena is a PvP (player versus player) mode where you can fight other players’ Axies. Battles are organized through Matchmaking: each player is automatically matched with a suitable opponent. The greater the total win of the SLP player in the Arena, the higher his rank and the stronger the new enemies. After the update, this will be the only way to get SLP in the game.

In order to consistently win in PvP mode, it is important for you to understand which Axie classes can increase your chances of winning – your team must be as balanced as possible.

You can also earn additional SLP by completing daily quests. For example, open the game during the day, win 5 rounds in the arena and / or get 10 victories in adventure mode.

How to start playing?

To start the game, you need to connect the Ronin Wallet cryptocurrency wallet. Other wallets are currently not supported.

To play Axie Infinity, you will need an initial investment: you need to buy at least three Axies in the in-game store. To do this, we transfer ETH from the main cryptocurrency wallet to Ronin Wallet. Then we go to our own Axie Infinity marketplace and choose pets.

The “About” tab shows the class of the pet, its generation (breed count) and the number of previous owners with the current address. Below are the main characteristics, body parts and ability cards. Once selected, click “Buy Now” at the top right to purchase.

How to play Axie Infinity?

By genre, Axie Infinity is a turn-based tactical game where the player has to fight with his own squad against the pets of other players.

Battles take place in the format of a card game, similar in mechanics to Rock-Paper-Scissors. During a turn, the player attacks the opponent’s pet using Abilities cards. Pet cards are determined by its class and body parts; several cards can be combined in one turn, creating high damage combos.

Each Axie has two playable aspects: basic stats and class abilities.

The main ones include:

• health,
• Fighting spirit (Morale),
• Skill,
• Speed.

Also, a pet can belong to one of 9 classes, each with its own distinctive color. Classes define a set of pet action cards.

Each Axie has a unique set of 6 body parts:

• eyes,
• ears,
• mouth,
• horn,
• back,
• tail.

The set is determined randomly when a pet is created or bred, and an Axie of one class can have body parts that belong to up to six others.

The back, mouth, horn, and tail determine which cards Axie can use in combat. Eyes and ears are not map-bound, but can provide passive bonuses.

How to play Axie Infinity for free?

One of the most popular ways to get a character is based around the so-called scholarship. The mechanics here is as follows: one of the players gives you a free team of Axies. You agree and start playing, and a little later share a part of the earned SLP tokens. The whole system is maintained solely by the users of the game itself, and not by the Sky Mavis team, so be careful not to fall for a scam. First you need to join the profile Discord community, you can select a country using the link.

Crossbreeding Axies pets

Pets can be crossed, resulting in unique Axies. Each pet has a limit – a maximum of 7 crossings. Moreover, the cost of each subsequent crossing increases. The commission for each crossing is 0.5 AXS. You cannot cross parents and children, as well as brothers and sisters.

Breeding a new Axie is no easy task: to create a balanced creature, you will have to take into account the genes of the parents, and this is no joke. Each “child” inherits the characteristics (genes) of its “parents” in three main categories: dominant (D), recessive (R1) and small recessive (R2) gene. Genes are assigned randomly. The chance of inheriting a dominant gene is maximum, while recessive and small recessive are much less.

Each of the pets has its own distinctive properties, more enhanced parameters. So, birds and fish have high speed, insects and animals have high morale. But despite this, each of your Axie will have their own unique indicators. Creatures also have unique body parts that have their own nuances in combat (ability cards). Now everything is used except for the ears and eyes, but in the future the developers plan to add special features for these features.

To cross two Axies, select the first one in the game store window and click “Breed” at the top right. Then we select the second one and cross them. After that, an egg will be added to the inventory, which will “mature” for 5 days. After 5 days, go to the egg page and click “Morph to Adult”.

Buying NFT land in Lunacia

Buying NFT land in Lunacia is gaining popularity. Lunacia is an open world divided into NFT areas. They can be built up and cultivated, collected resources on them (including AXS tokens) and used as a home base. Players can freely roam around the world, fighting either against each other or against special virtual chimera bosses that can be defeated for rare rewards.

There are four types of land in Lunacia:

• savannah,
• forest,
• arctic,
• mysterious.

They differ in the concentration of resources, items and rare bosses, as well as in price.

To buy game land, in the marketplace window, select the “Land” tab, then the plot. We confirm the purchase.

In the “Land” section, you can buy lottery chests containing one guaranteed piece of land, a chance to get a Genesis piece of land (the rarest and most valuable type), as well as a guaranteed set of rare game items and resources.

Biggest Cryptocurrency Theft at Axie Infinity

On March 23, 2022, the world’s most popular crypto game suffered one of the biggest heists of all time. A hacker hacked into the Ronin sidechain running Axie Infinity and stole $620 million (about 173,600 Ethereum and $25.5 million) from user accounts. The incident remained undisclosed for almost a week and exposed security vulnerabilities in Axie Infinity, as well as damaging the reputation of developer Sky Mavis. After that, the developers guaranteed compensation for all losses to their users.

In April 2022, the US Treasury Department blamed the attack on a North Korean hacker group, the Lazarus Group, citing the fact that these hackers always attack the cryptocurrency sector.

Axie Infinity: Origin

The Sky Mavis team has learned from the failures of the first such large-scale project and has now launched Axie Infinity: Origin in alpha. The most noticeable innovation is that now you won’t need to buy Axi to enter the game. Agree, this is a big plus. In addition, there will be many changes in the new version, but they are not so noticeable to users. It concerns mainly internal tokenomics, economics and game mechanics.

We are sure that the second version should be better than the first one. We are closely following this project and will immediately share the news with you.

Conclusion

Axie Infinity is a leader in the GameFi industry and one of the prime examples of a self-sustaining and sustainable blockchain ecosystem. Every element of the game and local tokenomics is being worked on to achieve maximum balance and sustainability. With the transition to its own Ronin blockchain and the introduction of the ability to stake the AXS governance token, the platform has great prospects for further growth. Despite the largest theft of cryptocurrency and the fall in the price of coins against this background, the game is still popular and has a huge strong army of fans.