Upland is a crypto game with its own metaverse that is mapped to the real world. It is a real estate game where you can sell, buy and trade virtual properties. You can read more about crypto real estate games in Alex’ article. This is a short guide on how to have an easy start in Upland, and a few steps to make progression a faster.
When you start the game, you have a choice of three starting location to start building your real estate empire. You can choose between LA, Fresno and Brooklyn. This article is going to cover Brooklyn since it had the cheapest starting properties.
Upland has introduced the Fair Start Act (FSA) to protect new players. FSA properties are low cost properties reserved for 'visitors' and 'uplanders' (the first two ranks in the game). There are three tiers of properties based on their real world estimate (high end, middle tier, affordable). FSA properties are not yet minted and will exist in each market segment. These are the properties you want to concentrate on, since they will be the cheapest ones available. Do not hurry to get passed uplander rank, since you wont be able to buy FSA properties anymore.
In Upland, you get a small starting amount of UPX (native currency) to purchase your first properties. After that the only steady income is from rent from your properties, visitor fees and your daily bonus. The daily bonus gives you 50 UPX the fist three days 75 on the fourth, 100 on fifth, 150 on sixth and finally a 300 UPX streak bonus on the seventh day. The bonus restarts after that from day one. You can set different visitor fees, which is the fee someone pays to travel to your property. Lastly, rent income depends on the size of your property and how many residents live in it. Rent can be collected every 3 hours. You can increase the amount you get with Multipliers.
In the beginning you can afford to purchase 1-2 properties, but it is easily possible to get stuck after that. So before you start buying properties, check out the collections tab. Here you will find multipliers for you rent, and a first time unlock bonus. You can lock in your properties for the multipliers, but you can't use the same property twice. For this guide we only care about the first time bonus, since it will allow you to buy more properties. The first one that you should focus on is the 'own 3 properties on same street'. This will allow you to also unlock 'own 3 properties in Brooklyn' and 'own any 1 property in Upland'. This should give you enough to buy a few more properties. Finally you want to work towards 'own 5 properties in the same city'.
There are also two random ways of getting UPX in Upland consisting of chests and piñatas. While your character traverses the cities, he has a chance on stumbling on a piñata. Piñatas are timed events, where you have to click on it until the timer runs out. You will get a certain amount payed out in UPX depending on how fast and where you clicked on the piñata. To find treasure chests, you have to pay a minigame where you have to track the chest to a certain property. You will be able to see the general direction of the chest relative to your location. Your success will depend on how good you are at triangulating the location of the chests.
It can be disorienting when you start upland first, but its good to focus on small goals. Start off by looking at your collections and see what achievements you can finish easily, since it will give you more cash. Then keep you eye open for piñatas and chests. Most importantly don't forget to log in daily to keep the bonus and the rent flowing in.
