While we're nearing the starter pack sale and have an official post ready to announce the exact items that are within the "packs", odds of the rarities and various other things. I wanted to take the time to write a little on some of the thoughts behind it, why the price is what it is and other smaller details you may not think of when reading the official post regarding the sale.
Alright so what value is in the starter pack and why should I care to get one?
Firstly, to play the game you will need a creature. Sure we will eventually allow the delegation of creatures (and healers) and potentially change the cost of getting to play to a "healer license" but as a small project just starting out and having made no sale of in-game assets yet this will be a requirement in the beginning. The other requirement is that you have a healer, without a healer you can't control the creature and tell him what to attack and how!
While this is quite a direct "pay 2 play" we believe this is a good deterrence to multi-accounts and bot farms early on until the ecosystem matures and we've put a lot more thought into deterring them in the future as currently most of our focus goes towards getting things launched.
Secondly, healers will need items to play the game properly. This is where the "requirements" start to fade off a little, because technically you could still play with just a healer and a creature but without healing gloves you won't be able to heal your creatures by using your healing abilities. Healing gloves will also come with the starter pack.
Now let's go through everything currently planned for the starter pack before we discuss the idea behind it after.
- Starter Creature
- Healing gloves
- Capture Device
- Capture Ammo
- Backpack
- Mount
- Empty Alpha Cards
- Potions & Elixirs
- Food & Water
Okay, so before we get into why these items exactly, I want to mention that most of these items will be craftable by players in the economy eventually. This means that if you want, you don't have to buy the starter packs to play the game later but in terms of aesthetics these will be limited to the alpha packs while giving players the chance to start playing instantly and efficiently.
Healing gloves will have an "alpha" skin to go with many other items in the starter "pack". They will come in unique rarities with varying stats and last you quite a few levels. Another unique feature of these gloves is that they can be re-used by other healers on your account. Soul-bound NFTs created by @rishi556 on hive-engine are something known to us hive users through @splinterlands and other accounts but quite unique in the space as NFTs are largely tradable freely. The healing gloves, however, will become "account-bound" when equipped on a healer, there's a difference between account-bound and soul-bound in our game, the former allows you to equip items on any healer on your account (but to be able to trade the healer to another account you will have to unequip) and if you have extra healing gloves from other packs you can trade them as long as you don't equip them on a healer. Soul and account-bound items can be salvaged if you really don't want them anymore.
A capture device in @holozing will be something like a gun, it'll be able to shoot a laser beam to attempt to capture a wild creature. The gun requires laser ammo which it uses up on each capture attempt. On top/behind the gun is a card placeholder, this is where the healer inserts and empty card to attempt to capture the creature within. Guns have unique rarities which come with stats, the stat is called Luck which increases your chances to capture the wild creature among other things.
The capture ammo as mentioned has its own rarity and luck stats and can be inserted into the capture device, you can mix and match ammo with the device to try and increase your luck % for your capture rate. Once the ammo is depleted you can't attempt to capture the creature any longer and have to swap the ammo clip for another one.
The backpack allows you to carry items, while it won't have much usage early on in the release of @holozing, it'll be required later when you're out exploring the holo world! There are more use cases planned but too early to mention them at this time. The Alpha backpack stands out from future backpacks aesthetically.
Similarly, the mount won't see much usage early on but there are use cases planned for it other than riding it when discovering the holo world. There will be two unique mounts from the starter pack with different rarities and of course an alpha "theme".
A lot of these items will be soulbound when used which means you won't be able to trade them anymore after usage.
Now we get to the fun stuff for collectors, empty alpha cards. These are some of the assets I've been dying to show the community but I believe it best to wait for the launch of the sale so you get to experience them first-hand! There will be empty alpha cards included in the starter packs, these will have a unique look that can't be crafted by professions in the future and be quite limited. They will differ from each other slightly and some of them will have certain restrictions. I think that's all I'm going to say for now because if I'd were to go into more details I'd be spoiling the surprise. However, the plan is also to allow players to un-bind creatures from cards but not all cards being able to be re-used but with the alpha ones having that possibility.
Potions and Elixirs are items players will be able to use in and off-battle. Potions will as in many previous games give your healer mana but elixirs will give your healer a boost in stats for certain amount of time forward. Do note, however, that these may not always be able to be used in battles against other players and if elixirs are active the "buff" won't be during PvP.
Food and Water, there'll be food for both healers and creatures. Water will allow the healer to regenerate mana faster when resting and food will allow the healer to regenerate healing ability points for the next day. For creatures on the other hand food will regenerate some Health Points when resting and water will regenerate ability points for their moves.
Alright, now that that is done, here's some other thoughts behind the sale.
The alpha packs won't be limited by supply but rather by time which means demand is what determines the supply. The sale may last 3 months, 6 months and maybe even 12 it all depends on how fast we start moving towards the beta sale which is when the alpha one would end. Do note that the beta sale doesn't mean it will start before beta of the game is released but during the beta period.
The packs will be able to generate zing tokens for the holders, a little for unopened packs and more if you've opened them up, these will be called "collection rewards" compared to "delegation rewards" and the other ones we have currently active. Collection rewards will go live shortly after the starter sale. The way they work is by giving collectors points based on what creatures and items they hold as they then compete against each other for the limited supply of zing going out daily similar to the 200k zing for delegation rewards. The rarities of creatures, items, and their stats are what determine how many points they are worth.
With the start of the game and creatures being able to be captured and items discovered this means that a race for points will start as players and collectors will want to maintain the collection zing rewards they are receiving. On top of that, there will be other factors that increase your collection reward points such as soulbound nft achievement and other various in-game stats.
Other unique things concerning the alpha packs aside from the whole theme of items and cards. The 4 starters in these packs won't be completely limited to the alpha pack supply, we don't believe in limiting creatures forever but they will however be much rarer in future packs as those will have different starters mainly appearing. Additionally, the odds of their stat rarities being high will decrease in future packs and something we've not mentioned before is that their odds of mutated starter creatures will drop in other packs as well. Mutated creatures are creatures with slightly different colors from the original.
The odds of receiving a mutated starter will be quite low, the odds of receiving a max-stat starter will be extremely low, the odds of receiving a mutated max-stat starter will be astronomically low and the odds of receiving a mutated max-stats starter creature in a certain card foil will be, well, let's just say we'll be surprised if it happens before the alpha starter sale ends.
Anyway, keep in mind that a lot of what's written here may still change come the official launch of our starter sale but these are most of the ideas behind what the packs will hold. Hope ya'll are excited!
