dCrops: Introduction, Tips and Buying Strategy, Planting and Harvest Step by Step Guides and Beta Presale Purchase Cases Evaluation
I love decentralization and blockchain-based games are one of my passions.
I am an active player on almost all games built and developed on the Hive blockchain, and I have also invested in some early-stage game projects where I saw potential.
One of the games that I have decided to play and invest in since its early stages (May 2021) is Dcrops and in today's post I will try to give an overview of Dcrops using my gaming experience that I have accumulated so far with the main goal of being helpful to new players.
The topics I will cover are the following:
- What is dCrops?
- Requirements
- The NFTs
- The LAND cards
- The SEED cards and the seasons of dcrops
- The Resource cards
- The CROP tokens and Shares points
- Planting, Harvest and Selling Crops (Step-by-Step Guides)
- How to perform the operation of Planting
- How to perform the Harvest operation
- How to sell CROPs to get Shares points
- The Game Rewards
- Leaderboard
- Holding Rewards
- Quests
- Tips and Buyng Strategy for Beginners
- LAND cards: The best buy for the current season (winter)
- SEED Cards: The best buy for the current season (winter).
- BETA PRESALE
- Analysis of Purchase Cases and the actual dollar cost of 1 Beta Pack.
- Final Considerations
What is dCrops?
Dcrops is an NFT-based farming game created and developed on the most beautiful blockchain there is: Hive!
On Dcrops, the player plays the role of a farming entrepreneur who, after buying one or more pieces of land (NFT), must dedicate himself to growing and producing agricultural products and selling them.
Main Site: https://www.dcrops.com
Account on Hive: @dcrops
Account on Twitter: @d-crops
Discord channel: https://discord.gg/efJBkMAfX9
Requirements
To play Dcrops you must meet the following Requirements:.
- 1. You must have an Hive account.
If you don't have a Hive account you can easily create one in a few steps.
I have written two tutorials where I show how to create a Hive account via: - 2. You need to install Hive Keychain
Dcrops login mode: only Hive Keychain.- Hive Keychain for Brave or Chrome (Link)
- Hive Keychain for Firefox (Link)
- Hive KeyChain website: https://hive-keychain.com/
- 3. You must purchase a minimum combination of two NFTs:
- 1 NFT of type LAND + 1 NFT of type SEED.
Today, August 9, 2022, the minimum initial investment to start playing Dcrops is 3.48 SWAP.HIVE which is the cost to purchase an Average Farmland NFT and a Radish NFT.
Note, however, that the minimum initial investment is not necessarily the best possible initial investment and you will understand this as you continue reading this post ;)
The NFTs of dCrops
On Dcrops there are three types of NFTs:
- LAND
- SEED
- RESOURCE
All NFTs that can be used in the dCrops game can be viewed from the Cards section of the dCrops website.
Within the Cards section there are search filters useful for narrowing the search and displaying only certain types of cards.
The graphics and symbols on each NFT allow you to quickly identify both the type and attributes of each NFT.
The LAND cards
In the following image you can see all the Land-type NFTs that can be used in the game with an indication of the game statistics.
In the game of Dcrops there are a total of 4 LAND cards available:
- Average Farmland (Common): 1 land = 1 usable seed card.
- Fertile Land (Rare): 2 lands = 2 usable seed cards at the same time.
- Awesome Land (Epic): 3 lands = 3 seed cards that can be used at the same time
- Hi-Tec Land (Legendary): 4 lands = 4 seed cards that can be used at the same time
LAND cards also have a bonus attribute whose value increases as the rarity of the card increases:
- Average Farmland: +2% chance of receiving an additional CROP at harvest time.
- Fertile Land: +5% chance of receiving an additional CROP at harvest time.
- Awesome Land: +10% chance of receiving an additional CROP at harvest time.
- Hi-Tec Land: +10% chance of receiving 2 additional CROP at harvest time.
Note: When the current presale BETA will be over (August 25, 2022) and it will be possible to open BETA packs to the four types of Land cards I listed above a fifth Land card of legendary type will be added.
The SEED cards and the Seasons of Dcrops
In the game of Dcrops, time is marked by the seasons which are the same as in real life but have a duration of only 15 days.
Seed-type cards are closely related to the time and seasons mechanism of Dcrops because each Seed-type NFT can only be used during a specific season and thus can be used cyclically every 45 days.
Note: At the end of the Presale BETA, the first Seed card that can be used in two seasons, the Corn card, will be distributed.
In the table below you can see all the Seed type cards from the alpha edition that are currently usable in the game with an indication of the season in which each card can be used.
Each SEED card has:
- a production time
- a quantity of production
- a period of use (season)
- one or no special abilities
In the following image you can see all the Seed cards that can be used on Dcrops, which total 20, 5 for each season.
The Resource cards
NFTs of type Resource are not yet usable in the current game dynamics but will be soon, starting on August 25, 2022, when Dcrops will enter the Beta phase and crafting to obtain NFTs of type Building will be possible.
Currently, Resource-type NFTs can be found within the chests of Dcrops Quests or can be purchased from the Market section of Dcrops from other players.
The CROP tokens and Shares points
The native tokens of Dcrops are the CROP tokens.
CROP tokens are second-level tokens of the Hive blockchain and can be transferred, bought, and sold by dexes of Hive's second-level tokens such as:
https://hive-engine.com/
https://tribaldex.com/
https://leodex.io/
With CROP tokens it is possible to:
- buy NFTs from the Market section of Dcrops
- purchase BETA packs from the Pack subsection of the Shop section of Dcrops
- purchase Boosters and Reward Chests from the Booster subsection of the Shop section of Dcrops
In the following image you can see the graph of the trend in the value of CROP tokens (August 9, 2022).
Today, August 9, 2022, the value of 1 token CROP is:
- 0.00311010 SWAP.HIVE = $0.0018979 (Highest Bid)
- 0.00349960 SWAP.HIVE = $0.0021356 (Lowest Ask)
The Shares points are not tokens but are game points obtainable exclusively from the sale of agricultural products.
Planting, Harvest and Selling Crop
- Step by Step Guides -
How to perform the Planting operation
To plant a Seed card in a Land card plot you must follow the following steps:
- 1. You have to go to the PLAY! section as indicated by arrow number 1 in the following image.
- 2. Then you have to click on the green tractor symbol (arrow number 2 in the following image)
- 3. Then you must click on a free plot within a LAND card (arrow number 3 in the following image)
- 4. A screen will open where you have to click on the Plant button that is below the Seed card you want to use (arrow number 4 in the following image)
- 5. Then you need to click on the Plant Selected button located in the middle and bottom of the screen in the PLAY! section (arrow number 5 in the following image).
- 6. As a final step you need to click on CONFIRM within the Hive KeyChain screen (arrow number 6 in the following image)
How to perform the Harvest operation
When you plant a seed you must wait until the production time required by the type of seed you have planted ends before you can perform the harvest operation.
When an agricultural product is mature and ready to be harvested you will display a chronometer symbol in red next to the image of the seed.
To perform the harvest operation:
- 1. you have to click on the plot that contains the mature product (arrow number 1 in the following image)
- 2. then you must click on Harvest Selected (arrow number 2 in the following image)
- 3. then you need to click on CONFIRM within the Hive KeyChain screen (arrow number 3 in the following image)
How to sell an agricultural product in exchange for Shares points
Once you have harvested you can view your newly harvested agricultural products within the Inventory section.
To make a sale of an agricultural product you must follow the steps indicated by the arrows in the following image.
For example from the sale of Tomato of quality equal to 1 star you get 7 Shares points useful for getting CROP tokens at the end of the season.
Simple right? ;)
The Game Rewards
In the game of Dcrops there are three reward mechanisms:
- Leaderboard
- Holding Rewards
- Quests
The Leaderboard is the seasonal reward mechanism that Dcrops uses to reward active players during each season.
The reward that you can receive from participating in the Leaderboard is a certain amount of CROP tokens awarded based on a Reward pool and based on the Shares points earned by each player during a season of play.
The Leaderboard for the current season (winter) has a reward pool of 434526.49 CROP tokens.
The Holding Rewards leaderboard rewards players based on their CROP Power score with an amount of HIVE tokens distributed daily.
CROP Power is a sum of the average values of your dCrops assets.
You can read all the details about CROP POWER and Holding Rewards ranking in the post published by the @dcrops account at the following link: @dcrops/earn-hive-by-holding-dcrops-assets-211-apy-details-inside
To receive daily rewards, you must have a CROP Power score of 20000 points or more.
In the following image you can see the CROP Power score assigned to each Dcrops asset.
To the above list you need to add the BETA Packs that produce a 2000 CROP POWER score.
I have a CROP POWER score of 52973.72 points and the last daily reward I received was 0.083 HIVE.
The last reward mechanism is the Quests.
The reward for completing quests is an amount of Reward Chests whose contents can be a Booster or a NFT of type Resource.
Honestly, the quests mechanism is the one I like the least and I explained my reasons in a previous post of mine: Are the Dcrops Quests improvable?
Changes have recently been made to the quests mechanism and you can read all the details in this post: @dcrops/dcrops-update-quests-reward-changes-buying-reward-chests-withdraw-beta-packs-to-hive-engine-and-more
The best cards to buy in the current season (winter)
I will now step into the shoes of a new Dcrops player and show the cards I would purchase today if I were a new player and wanted to start my adventure as a farmer on Dcrops right away.
To start playing right away you need to purchase at least:
- one Land card
- one Seed card that is usable in the current season (winter).
Regarding Land type cards I recommend buying the cards that have the lowest Cost per Plot.
From the Market section you can purchase Land cards using two tokens as the payment method:
- the HIVE (SWAP.HIVE) tokens.
- the CROP tokens**
Based on the current values of HIVE tokens and CROP tokens, I calculated the cost per plot for each Land card in the market using SWAP.HIVE tokens and CROP tokens as the payment method.
As you can see from the calculations in the table below there can be a lot of difference in price between one payment method and another.
If I were a new Dcrops player I would purchase a Average Farmland card because it has the lowest cost per plot (3.49 SWAP.HIVE) if purchased using SWAP.HIVE tokens as a payment method ;)
SEED cards: The best purchase for the winter season
There are five SEED cards that can be used in the current season (winter):
- Peas (common type)
- Radish (common type)
- Cabbage (rare type)
- Onion (epic type)
- Bell Pepper (legendary type)
Only the legendary card Bell Pepper can be used multiple times during the winter season (it has no cooldown period).
All other cards can only be used once during a winter season after which they can be reused in the following winter season.
SEED cards allow you to obtain agricultural products (Crop) that can be sold in exchange for SHARES points .
SHARES points allow you to place yourself in the Leaderboard of Dcrops and get a certain amount of CROP tokens (end-of-season reward) as a prize.
Whenever I purchased a Seed card from the market, I always chose to purchase the card that had the best SHARES POINTS/HIVE ratio.
The SHARES/HIVE POINTS ratio indicates the minimum number of Shares points obtainable from a Seed card for each HIVE token spent in purchasing the Seed card.
Calculating the value of the POINTS SHARES/HIVE ratio of each SEED card is easy:
Total SHARES POINTS obtainable from the SEED card in a season/seed card purchase cost (in HIVE)
In the table below you can see which card has the best ratio of SHARES/HIVE POINTS: the Cabbage card of rare type.
The Cabbage card allows you to earn 24 Shares points for every HIVE spent in its purchase and is therefore for me the best possible purchase at this time.
The worst possible purchase is the legendary card Bell Pepper which, although it has the ability to produce 140 Shares in a single season, has a very low POINTS SHARES/HIVE ratio (3.69) due to its high market price.
BETA PRESALE
On July 25, 20222, the BETA Presale of Dcrops began and will end on August 25, 2022.
During the BETA Presale it is possible to purchase BETA packs that contain 3 NFTs and can be opened at the end of the presale.
BETA packs on sale during the presale are priced at a discount compared to the price they will be during the general sale beginning on August 25, 2022:
- 2.70$ instead of 3$
- 2550 CROP instead of 3000 CROP
The total number of BETA packs in circulation will be 300000 units whose distribution will be as follows:
- 100000 packs are purchasable now and for the duration of the Presale (July 25-August 25, 2022)
- 190000 packs will be purchasable during the General Sale
- 10000 packs will be used for promotional purposes (contests, giveaways, ...)
Today, August 9, 2022, after 16 days since the presale began, 12680 BETA packs have been sold and there are still 87320 BETA packs available for purchase.
It is possible to purchase Beta packs from the Shop section of Dcrops and there are also bonuses for purchases of multiple packs in one transaction:
- 100 BETA Packs (+10% Bonus Packs)
- 500 BETA Packs (+15% Bonus Packs)
- 2000 BETA Packs (+20% Bonus Packs)
Purchase cases and the effective dollar cost of 1 Beta Pack
To purchase Dcrops' BETA packs, you can choose from 5 different payment methods = 5 different tokens:
- HIVE
- SWAP.HIVE
- HBD
- CROP
- SWAP.BUDS
In the following image you can see the values of all tokens that can be used as a payment method to purchase Dcrops Beta Packs (values as of today's date August 9, 2022).
Although a BETA pack has a cost set at the value of $2.70 the effective dollar cost is not the same and changes based on:
- to the choice of using one token over another as a payment method.
- to the market value of the token used as a payment method
Fifteen days ago I published a post in which I calculated the effective dollar cost of a dCrops BETA pack for each possible purchase method, and today I am redoing the same calculations to help those of my readers who are planning to purchase BETA packs and do not know which token to use.
Buying a Beta pack using HIVE tokens or SWAP.HIVE tokens as the payment method will always have an effective cost in dollars equal to $2.70 because in the Shop section of Dcrops the value of the HIVE and SWAP.HIVE tokens is continuously updated based on the market value of the HIVE and SWAP.HIVE tokens.
Today August 9, 2022 to purchase 1 pack of BETA cards requires 4.0299 HIVE = $2.70 (15 days ago 5.0093 HIVE was required).
The effective cost is the same as the set cost of $2.70.
Using CROP tokens as a payment method allows for a 15% discount but as you can see from the calculations in the following image it is not the method I recommend because based on the current value of CROP tokens each pack of cards would cost $5.97 instead of $2.70.
A less costly alternative would be to choose to wait some time and try to place a bid (Highest BID) for CROP tokens but even then the cost would still be high: 5.31$ instead of 2.70$.
Buying a Beta pack using HBD tokens has a fixed cost of 2.70 HBD on Dcrops Shop but that does not take into account the current market value of HBD tokens: 1 HBD = $0.9760.
Buying 1 Beta pack using HBD tokens as the payment method has an effective cost of $2.6352 instead of $2.70.
In this case there is a saving of $0.0648 per pack purchased.
The last possible purchase option in the Shop section of Dcrops is the use of SWAP.BUSD tokens.
Based on the best sale offer of SWAP.BUSD tokens (Lowest Ask) present today, August 9, 2022, on TribalDex, purchasing a BETA pack using SWAP.BUSD tokens as a payment method has an effective cost of $3.05 instead of $2.70.
Trying to place an offer to purchase (Highest BID) could bring down the effective cost per pack to 2.87$ which is still a higher cost than the 2.70$ price
In any blockchain-based farming game it is always important to do calculations and evaluations before buying an NFT or token and the calculations I have shown prove the truth of this statement.
To recap today, August 9, 2022, the best payment method to use to purchase a BETA pack is to use HBD tokens that allow you to pay a BETA pack $2.6352 instead of $2.70.
This is exactly the purchase method I used today to purchase 20 BETA packs.
I spent 54 HBD and now I have 20 Alpha packs and 20 BETA packs among my Dcrops assets and in the next few days I will consider whether to make a new investment before the presale ends or stop here.
Final Considerations
BETA packs will be able to be opened at the end of the presale and there will be 50+ new NFTs to use in Dcrops' game.
Starting August 25, 2022, new game dynamics will also be introduced because it will be possible to use and combine NFTs to perform crafting, cooking and Blueprint operations.
More than a year has passed since I decided to play and invest on Dcrops and from the financial point of view I have been getting good results.
Considering my last investment of 54 HBD to buy 20 BETA packs I have increased the total cost of my investment on Dcrops which is now equal to 368.96 HIVE.
If I consider the current value of my NFT collection and the value of DCALPHA tokens and DCBETA tokens on TribalDex to date I have obtained the following financial results:
- profit: 408.31 HIVE
- ROI: 110.66%
Dcrops is a game that I like and it is a project that has potential in my opinion and that is why I decided to invest in it.
I like the theme of the game, I like the graphics, and I think the development team has done a really good job from a development standpoint and in implementing the game dynamics.
This is just my humble opinion as a simple gamer but there are also aspects that can be improved in my opinion:
- The mechanism of quests is definitely improvable because they are easily completed by players who have many assets but are impossible to complete for new players who start with a small investment.
I who have more than 140 NFTs manage quite easily to complete the quests but I think they could be structured better with the purpose of incentivizing new players as well. - The marketing and promotion side of the game both on Hive and outside of Hive has been a highly neglected activity so far and I hope it will get more consideration in the future because it is one of the aspects that in my opinion are never to be underestimated in a blockchain-based project.
That is why I am very happy that OCD has decided to support the Dcrops project by organizing the contest in which I also decided to participate with this post of mine.
I hope this post of mine will be useful to those of my readers who are not familiar with Dcrops and those who are planning to participate in the Dcrops Beta presale, and if you have come this far I thank you for taking the time to read my post.
Important Note:
In every kind of investment there is always a risk factor to evaluate and consider.
I am not a financial advisor and my post does not want to be in any way an invitation to invest on Dcrops but it is just the analysis and sharing of my personal investment on Dcrops on august 9, 2022.
A selection of my previous Dcrops posts
