So you took some Hive off your wallet to see what the hottest new game on chain is about? All right, it is about glory. But before we talk your dreams of promoting to the League of Chamipons there is a quick shortlist do do right now.
Not registered for Rabona yet? Get your team now!
First Things First
There is a long row of icons in the top right corner of your screen (you might need to scroll up if you do not see one). You will get familiar with all of those soon but for now, mouseovers are there to help navigating. We now head to the Stadium icon that is somewhere in the middle and it looks like a football pitch.
This is where you can upgrade your facilities. There are blue buttons that say Upgrade to Lvl 1. Upgrade your Stadium capacity and Catering capacity only. There is also Shop number (too expensive at the moment) and Youth academy (do not touch yet). Note when the timer runs out because you want to keep coming back until you upgrade both Stadium and catering all the way to Lvl 5. That is both inexpensive and easy to fill up for a new club. Do this right now and continue reading when the upgrade is underway.
Your First Match
This might come a bit of letdown but if you hurried to Fixtures icon (next to Stadium) anxious to see your assignment, you got some empty looks. Here is how Rabona works: No matches until the next season starts! Sounds terrible? Well, the season takes 7.5 days. Years ago, I spent a lot of time playing Hattrick with one league game per week, so the wait for your first competetive match will be the same as if you had registered the free-to-play classics.
Once you play your first match, you will see the difference. There is a league game every 6 hours and you are going to play a 30-match schedule over the week. For now, you should go to the Main page aka Dashboard (the first icon on the left) and check the countdown timer (lots of numbers there, the first one is Days left).
Did you notice the "Things you should do first/regular" list? Well, you are already on your way with the stadium, aren't you?
Training Session
Completing the tasks for rewards is fine but the time is money and the tasks won't run away. Training is a different animal. Once a day, you press that magic button that instantly improves your players. Once you do, the cooldown timer starts running. After 23 hours, you will be able to click it again. Treat it the way you treat your Hive Voting mana pool (for those not familiar with the Hive blockchain yet - keep the clock running at all times - that gives you the maximum value). People are actually paying for those 1 USD instant resets so in theory, you are losing a few cents every hour the timer is not running. In practice, you are going to click it every day until the reset moves late at night and you only come next day. No big deal.
So you have two options now. I recommend the easy one. Go to Training, choose Passing (every player is going to benefit) click the button and watch the money flow in as the timer moves.
The other (not recommended) is to postpone training while buying a couple of new players immediately and only press the button when you have more players to gain from the training. Sounds fair, but I do not think you are going to find good deals in your first hour in the game so you better look around and start buying tomorrow before your second training session.
Meet the Team
FOMO time over! We have done all the urgent stuff by now. There are timers around the place but they are not the core of the gameplay. Click the Team icon next to Dashboard and check what you have in the locker room.
You should have a modest squad of one goalkeeper, four defenders, three midfielders and three forwards (the interface still has hard time deciding whether to call them Attackers or Offense butboth Att and Off means the same). Eleven players will not be enough (there are injuries and suspensions after red cards - btw, no counting yellows here which I personally applaud, the real world mechanics is so ridiculous with the regards of the actual meaning of "fair").
Each player has a long list of stats. The green number called Overall Strength (OS for short) is there only to give you the basic idea what kind of player are you looking at. It is actually never used during the match. We will learn to know the players better. The most important piece of knowledge is this: Offensive players have lower OS than equally useful defensive players. "Equally useful" can be viewed both from market perspective (a midfielder/forward is going to be more expensive than a defender with identical OS score with goalkeepers even less expensive) and from sporting perspective (replacing a midfielder with a 10 OS-better alternative is more helpful than doing it with defender).
The reason is, defensive players rely on one primary (GK or DEF) and one secondary (PAS) skill. Offensive players need a good balance of all four basic skills (DEF, PAS, DRI, SHT). There are more skills that influence the performance but for now, remember it is way easier to both "scout" and train a single-skill player than an all-rounder.
Conclusion
You can spend the rest of your first hour looking around the market. I will go into more detail regarding the building of your squad in the follow up article (if there is a demand for one). It does not hurt to window shop a little to see how much RBN (the in-game currency) you need to improve your squad. If your ambition is bigger than the starterpack can accomodate, there is an in-game shop that sells 100k RBN for 1 USD worth of Hive. I believe the guys running the game deserve to sell some to get compensated for their efforts.
I do not run the game but after playing a bit I have some extra RBN too. Maybe I overspent, maybe I found a smart way to invest. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I have more than I can invest in the team so I can help lower league colleagues by selling some in-game currency at the rate of 115k RBN for 1 HBD. So you get 15% extra RBN and you save some on HBD usually being under par with USD. On the other hand, the transaction is trustful and not instant. Find me at Rabona Discord Server server if interested. Price may vary later and it is currently available to teams in League 2 or 3.