As Hive’s lovely idle farming game continues to evolve to meet its Beta vision, we’ve also been lucky to see a new kind of game-within-a-game: dCrops “point events.”
Starting with Halloween 2022, most in-game actions spawn a certain number of thematic points (e.g. Halloween candy during the spooky season). These points can be spent at a seasonal shop for all manner of interesting things, including boosts and reward chests. There’s also a shop item that can spawn a Golden Ticket, which is in turn used to buy much rarer items from the shop.
Akin to earning XP or literally racking up points, this dCrops feature adds additional rewards to all the things you’d normally be doing. The dopamine boost is real, folks.
As players plot and race to optimize points and snag juicy items before they run out, I can only imagine that this has throttled up trading activity for dCrops’ assets across Hive Engine.
Speaking of plotting… I want to dedicate the rest of this post to points event strategy.
First off: these events are new and their mechanics change all the time. So strategy #1 is to make sure you pay attention to posts by 
Second, we don’t know if these events will stop, be only during the holidays, or become a regular feature in the game. My sense is that for 2023 we will see these events appear during major holidays or game releases to help boost engagement and interest (e.g. Easter, when Cooking goes live, etc.)
Here’s a quick overview of the “rules of the game,” so to speak.
During a points event, many in-game actions (stuff you do already) will generate a random number of thematic currency (“points,” generically). For example, the current Christmas event generates Candy Canes.
Below is the full list of Candy Cane generating actions. Because each action has a 75% chance of triggering, it is always possible to get 0 points. The 75% chance was increased from Halloween's 50%—so this may change again in the future as more data is considered for balancing.
For the full details of the shop and points, visit the official post by dCrops here.
Regardless of how you spend the points, it’s key to try and get as many as you can, for the least cost or effort.
The current setup of the points systems heavily favours those who have more dCrops assets—it is a whale-friendly situation. 🐳
Buying packs may be the best accelerant there is: you get a chance at a lot of points for buying the pack, and if you open it, you may receive seeds to plant/harvest/sell (each is a chance to earn points) or the land to do it on.
Buying assets—especially seeds—on the secondary market is also a decent strategy. Plants with short growth time and/or high yield will be the best bang for your crypto, since they offer many more chances to execute a plant, harvest, or sell.
The market tends to respond to this. Since these events started, the price of 1 and 2 day crops more than doubled!
Other tips:
While there are many, many ways to play the game, I will outline three approaches that I think match different player types.
dCrops is admittedly very, very slow to start from scratch. If you only have a few land plots and a handful of seeds, in 60 days (a full dCrops year) you may only earn a few hundred CROP. It will be very hard to complete seasonal quests. During events, you may earn enough points to get maybe 1-2 items.
Card packs (DCALPHA or DCBETA) are the way to get more assets, besides buying dCrops NFTs off the market.
During an event, the game packs are usually included in the event shop. So far, they have always been priced in Golden Tickets.
You can also spend Golden Tickets on the very special event NFTs—but I wouldn’t recommend this for new players as it may be hard to get value out of these cards without a foundation built. Unless of course you aim to sell the special NFT!
So: you need Golden Tickets if you’re after game packs. Earning Golden Tickets has changed drastically between the first and second event: during Halloween they were very rare, and during Christmas they are quite common! So my advice would be to run some math on the odds and costs of getting a Golden Ticket, and see if it would be easier or less expensive to just buy a pack (either from the secondary market or from the dCrops store itself).
⚠️ NOTE: The Christmas event that is on right now has a novel mechanic that allows people to gift and receive Present items, which have a chance of containing a dCrops NFT. However, this may not be a good route for new players because:
Rewards chests are critical for those looking to access the world of dCrops beyond simple farming. They contain—among other things—the building materials: Wood, Stone, Copper, Iron and Gold! You need these items to break into crafting, building, cooking, etc.
If you have access to this “mid-game” stuff, you can also earn way more points in this event and future events, assuming the mechanics remain similar.
Since construction and basic crafting was released, the price of some building materials has ballooned on the secondary market.
Because the points system is quite whale friendly, an obvious strategy is to try and nab as many limited edition items as possible. If you have a large farm and tons of seeds, plant/harvest/sell the 1-2 day crops first. Maybe buy a block of packs!
With a large amount of points, buy up the item(s) that have a chance to create Golden Tickets, then buy up the limited edition NFTs.
Late-game players can also find value in focusing their points on reward chests as well. Stocking up on the new Gas, Salt and Pepper NFTs is a good idea, and all trends indicate that building material NFTs will remain in high demand as the game evolves.
There’s a choice to make with your harvested item inventory in between events:
As you may or may not know, the total CROP pool decreases by a small amount every 15 days. And theoretically, as more people play and advance, the number of sold SHARES increases over time. Meaning the CROP earned per SHARE “must” trend down over time. Selling a harvested item (in game, not on a market) today is probably worth more than selling it tomorrow.
You always want to save some items for quests, crafting or cooking—which ones you hold will depend on what buildings you have access to. But do you need to save all of them?
My advice: if you think dCrops will continue on as a good game to play and you like playing it: save as many items as you can for the event sell bonus. The CROP you “give up” to the slow erosion of the SHARE:CROP ratio should be balanced out nicely by what you can gain by using points to your advantage.
Thank you for reading! This post was created in response to the OCD sponsored writing contest. I own the license to the images in the ‘cover photo,’ with exception to the dCrops logo. All other images are screengrabs of dCrops assets.
