Hi all,
I've hit an important milestone in this pre-season of Blocklords, and I wanted to share it along with my thoughts on various aspects of the game we've discovered.
This is the second 'season' that Blocklords has had. In each, you had to gain experience by completing missions like harvesting X amount of resource Y or doing other tasks on your farm. In addition, you had to earn enough gold to buy the unlocks. Here's what it looks like:
As you can see, my XP bar is full (actually 13k XP but only 10k is needed to earn all rewards). This was actually quite easy to achieve given that there are still 10 days left in the season and I hit 10k over a week ago (and have slacked off about missions since).
The harder part was actually collecting enough gold to unlock the NFT rewards. You can see from the screenshot that the big prize, the Legacy Raider, costs 20k gold all by himself. This is a hero NFT with lots of stats that will be a big deal in PVP (to be released). In total, it takes 41k gold to unlock all the web3/NFT rewards, which include:
I've got it covered!
This got substantially easier about halfway through the season when they fixed some issues in the market (where you trade farm goods like wheat/stone for gold). Still, it took a LOT of clicking. Given that last season's legacy NFT hero is still selling for $100 months later (.058 ETH), it's worth the slight case of carpal tunnel.
I recently sold a silver banner for $50, plus basic hero NFTs are around $20, so all in all, it's a decent haul. Not worth the time required if you hate the game (the effective hourly rate is abysmal) but definitely worth it if you enjoy it.
In my last update, we were still working our way towards finishing construction of the library. When it finished, we were quite underwhelmed. Unlocking the first quest required burning banner NFTs and wasn't even close to worth it for the normal person's budget. Luckily, CarnivalBigTop bit the bullet and bought up a crap ton of banners to unlock the Bisping Quest.
This wound up just being a series of multiple-choice events in a row. You send your heroes in for a fee and if you pass the event, each NFT got stamped a marker saying that he completed it. We have no idea what this does or if it was worth Carnival's many sacrifices to make it happen.
All in all: a letdown to be honest.
One of the current downsides of the game is the number of mechanics that aren't explained in-game or don't work as you would expect. Once you figure it out, you're set, but I wasted a lot of time upgrading buildings because I thought they did one thing only to find out they didn't.
Your farm evolves from villagers picking berries into a full farm with several different production lines. Key to all of it, though, is stone and wood used to upgrade your farming buildings. I should have focused upgrading here first/earlier. This is like juicing your engine to then churn out more upgrades to everything over time.
Upgrading the Hunter's lodge (where meat is converted to food) would also have been a great early upgrade. Now that I have it at level 8, my entire farm is fed by 1-2 hunters preparing food while the rest hunt. This gives me plenty of meat to sell each day, but also has let me retire my villagers for more lumberjacks/miners! Even more upgrades.
The evolution of the farm is slow, but it's pretty cool to watch it transform. The most advanced production line is bread, and I can see how with enough upgrades, I might not even need the hunter's lodge or meat and just live on the excess bread I'm producing.
Honestly, I'll probably keep playing even though I've finished the season. I might play a bit less, though. No need to hardcore grind without any real objectives in sight. However, building up a stockpile of gold has got to be a good thing. Who knows? The game is so early, they may make earning gold harder in the future. They could just as easily make it easier, though.
As more features roll out, I like the idea of being one of the bigger/wealthier farmers able to contribute to my region's defenses. There are just still a TON of questions. The core farming loop of the game is there (although it needs 3-4 pollish passes). The features they are promising are ambitious, though. High risk high reward.
Unlike my last update, I don't see any way for a new player to earn this pre-season's rewards if they start now. However, just like last update, starting work on your farm now means it will be easier for you to complete the next season, so give it a shot and see if you like it.
