Hello Friends

So as I promised last week, this is the detailed article on ETHTown. If you haven't read the previous article, then you can read it here: https://steemit.com/gaming/@siddartha/ethtown-the-crazy-new-dapp-10-hero-giveaway

Is EthTown a real town?

No....no. Actually it is a big tower (shorter than Trump Tower though), which has many floors. Each floor is beautifully designed and animated. Floors are based on different themes with a slight input of comedy. Some floors portray Crypto events like DAO hack, Metamask congestion due to Cryptokitties; while some floors are based around popular personalities like President Trump and Supreme Leader Kim. Do have a look at these floors! It will surely bring a child like smile on your face!!! Some floors host minigames, arena and upcoming secrets..

Let's dive deeper into the gameplay of EthTown

I made a cool video for you guys to get a feel of this game.

Let's start with heroes. So heroes are basically your crypto collectibles in game. But unlike most other crypto collectibles, their role is not limited to looks and breeding. They actually have a utility. My good friend Jihoz once mentioned the concept "Triple Threat" to analyze the value of any collectible including crypto collectibles. According to him a collectible is valuable if it is scarce, useful and beautiful.

Just love this middle one! Reminds me of someone!!

And EthTown heroes are fully complaint to the concept of "Triple Threat".

They maintain their scarcity because after breeding, the parents vanish to produce 1 child. This is somewhat like card merging. In some rare events you might get twins or even triplets but the chances are super low. You can say it is pretty similar to China's "one child" policy. So over the time, population decreases hence creating scarcity.

They are aesthetic as you can already see. Some are even custom heroes which are even more aesthetic. And they come in different gender, color and hair styles!! So you are sure to find a lovable hero. I even found a hero which looked exactly like my crush in school. I immediately bought it!! 😍

They have utility, a lot of utility actually. Send them to dungeons or make them fight to collect loot. Involve them in floor bidding and they bring you bigger profits. Some even earn passive income from minigames.

So now that they are valuable, let's see how to buy them and how to use them effectively in game.

Buying Heroes

Custom heroes

Every 15 minutes, a new hero arrives in town and can be bought using the game's native currency known as ETIT (ERC-20 token). These heroes are lvl 0 heroes, that is the lowest level. The price of these heroes decrease every second and theoretically you can even grab one for free. But obviously, you don't get that chance when everyone is looking for the same thing!!

If you are looking for custom, higher level or heroes with rare genes then you should probably head to Opensea. Opensea allows you to buy heroes from other players using ETH. There you can find different types of heroes and can easily filter by price, arrival, level, genes etc. Also you can bid an offer on a hero which is not even listed on marketplace. Sounds interesting, huh! Check out EthTown heroes on Opensea here: https://opensea.io/category/ethtown

Merging heroes

So as previously mentioned, the breeding in game is more of a merging than a breeding. That's because parents merge together to form one higher level hero. After that parents vanish into thin air. You will need a male and a female hero to bring a new hero in town! These guys are not hermaphrodites, you see! So if you merge two level 0 heroes then you will get a level 1 hero. Very rarely you can get twins and triplets also. The chances are increased if parents have "twin" genes.

There are many different genes that your heroes can acquire. Heroes have more chance to inherit genes of their parents than getting them from out of the blue.

Some genes:

Instant merge. When merging heroes for upgrade, why wait? Get the new hero instantly!
Fast merge. Ok, not instantly with this gene. But way faster than usual!
Fast cooldown. When playing mini-games, heroes get tired. Carriers of this gene however recover faster than usual.
Twins likely. There’s always a chance to get twins when merging characters. With this gene the probability is increased.
Born to invest. Investor power is determined by the hero’s level, but this gene makes the effective power 5% higher.
Tough. Even if they hit you hard, they can’t do you much harm. In games involving getting hit with stuff, the received damage is reduced.
Critical power. Sometimes you miss, sometimes you hit, sometimes you crit. Heroes with this gene require a lower roll for a critical hit in games involving hitting others with stuff.
Dice: Passive revenue from the profits of dice game.

In order to merge heroes, you simply have to select a male and a female hero of same level. Then pay some ETIT as birthing fees. Payment is based on how fast you want the child. Imagine hospitals giving parents such a fee plan! Less wait is equal to more money. If heroes have XP then it also reduces the wait time. XP is gained from fights and dungeon adventures. Also some genes reduce the wait time. Note that once parents start merging, they can't be used anywhere else.

After the wait time is over, you'll get a hero which is one level higher than his/her parents. In case there are twins or triplets, then they'll also have a higher level than the parents.

Dungeon Adventures

So now that we have our heroes ready, let's send them to deadly dungeons. Don't worry, they somehow always come back alive. Either they are too strong or dungeons are not deadly!

Anyways, you can send your heroes to dungeons to get XP, gems and equipment. XP helps in faster breeding. Gems can be used to purchase equipment or as a stake in Gem Pot. More about it down the road. Equipment is not guaranteed expect in Hobbit Dungeon. There are currently 4 dungeons to choose from. Dungeons with better loot have higher ETIT entry fees and completion times. But the starter dungeon is totally free and you still have a good chance to get equipment from it. One thing to know is that a dungeon can house only one hero at any given time. So basically you can't send many heroes to a dungeon at once. You'll have to wait for the hero to return, before you can send another hero to the same dungeon.

Each dungeon has preference to a set of stats. So if a dungeon prefers luck then send a hero with highest luck to get the most out of that dungeon. Higher level heroes with equipment are even better. Equipment basically increases your hero's stats, so if u have one, make sure to equip it.

Titans Arena

Now don't get confused with "Titan". There is no Titan or even PVE concept in game as of now.

Getting bored? Then send one of your slaves..umm..heroes to the Arena. Pitch them against heroes of other players and watch them die!! Ya, my heroes always die for some reason. I'm not really good at fighting.

The fighting concept is based on rock, paper and scissors. You can choose attack, defend or trick and arrange their sequence. Attack is weak to defend -> Defend is weak to trick -> Trick is weak to attack. You have to choose your strategy before battle itself and then broadcast the transaction. Rest is automatic. And of course, equipping your heroes with weapons, costume or amulets increases their chances of winning.

Winners and losers both get XP and gems, but winners obviously get more of each. Heroes also get trophy points which are basically useless!! Anyways I never got one, so useless for me.

In future, team based battles will be launched, but for now you got single battles.

Minigames

Dice Minigame

Minigames are well minigames in game. These are short games which are there to distract your mind and leak your pockets without you noticing much!

There are several minigames in EthTown. In the video I have just shown one of the mini games that is dice game. This is basically the first game on ETH mainnet which is launched using Loom's SDK for private side chains.

1) Moon Rocket Game: This is a production optimization strategy game. You buy some raw materials, refine them to higher quality materials till u get a rocket with Penguin astronaut in it!! Now there are many penalties set in this game. And your aim is to avoid penalties and get more profits. So buying and selling raw materials is a penalty. Converting a raw material into another raw material is a penalty. So how to make profits? Make Penguin rockets. Selling moon rockets is not a penalty. And if you convert these rockets into raw materials, then you get 25% extra raw materials. Try to produce more rockets until you have covered your setup costs and then it's all profits for you. Also the more penalties other players make, the bigger increase in selling price of rockets. So basically you thrive from the bad management decisions taken by other players. Kinda like real world business, right!

2) Dice game: This minigame has various mini-mini games like lucky numbers, odd and even, black and white, above or below a number etc. You can either play one or all four at the same time. They are all connected to a spin wheel, where the numbers and colors determine your profits based on your selections. You can play the game using ETIT or ETH. And all you need is one deposit transaction, thanks to Loom sidechain. After that you can spin the wheel as many times as you want. Even the withdrawal does not require any further transactions. I think this is a great option and if all the ETH Dapps out there implemented sidechains, then we would never have to see the hike in gas prices like we saw just 2-3 days back.

3) Couldron: Simply a lucky pot. Add your ETH or ETIT in the couldron and three players share the whole couldron. There is a chance that a single player takes the whole couldron. It depends on the amount a player deposits in the pot. Bigger deposit is equal to higher loot chances! Minimum players required to start the game are three. No maximum limit.

Other than these three games, a lottery game is going to launch very soon. And in future many more minigames will be launched.

Gem Pot

Gem Pot is a mechanism to convert your gems to ETH. You can get gems from dungeons, Titan Arena and some floors. So what happens is that 50% of all ETH from equipment sales ends up in this Gem Pot. Also sometimes the EthTown team adds ETH to the pot. Out of the ETH present in the pot, 10% is available to gem contributors. And every four days, you can withdraw your ETH from this pot. The gems you contribute to the pot are considered spent, that is they are no longer yours. And then you get the ETH in proportion to the amount of gems you contributed to the Gem pot. Gem pot is a win:win situation for all contributors, as gems are always free and you get ETH in return for spending them in the pot. Just make sure to manually withdraw the ETH after 4 days. ETH is not automatically sent to your wallet. Just give the withdraw command on Gem Pot page and ETH will be withdrawn.

Floors

My button is bigger than yours!!

Floors are the main attraction of EthTown. Basically they are game versions of real estates only. You buy a share in the floor and then sell it to buyers who are ready to pay more than you. You can get 1.25% - 9% profits on single floor flip. The profit depends on price increment % of a floor and the level of your hero. So always make sure to select the highest level hero available for floor deals. Now there are many scenarios in this, as we will see below. There are two types of floors. Floors which can be bought using ETH and floors which can be bought using ETIT.

ETH Floors

An ETH Floor - DAO hacker Floor

These are floors which can be bought using ETH. There are some floors where only single owner is allowed, but most of them can have many owners at the same time, like having share in that floor. Possible scenarios:

1) Bidders buy the floor from the owners in the given time. Owners get 1.25% - 9% profits in ETH, based on floor and hero's level. Bidders now become the owners. The target amount is raised by 5%-15% based on the floor.

2) Bidders are unable to buy the floor in the given time. Now owners will be compensated in ETIT. 50-200 ETIT per ETH invested in the floor. Bidders get 80%-100% of their bid back in ETH. Floor resets back to the first round.

Now you might wonder how good is this ETIT compensation. Well, ETIT is the native token of EthTown. Holders of ETIT receive daily dividends. You can buy equipment, heroes via ETIT and also play minigames, merge heroes and explore higher level dungeons. In future there will be more uses for ETIT. Also, the game tries to keep the supply of ETIT to around 200K. There are many ETIT burning mechanisms in place, so ETIT always remain valuable. So basically floor flips or not, you are always in profit. You can buy ETIT on Forkdelta also.

ETIT Floors

An ETIT Floor - Lambo floor. Can you recognize the Steem child?

These floors can be bought via ETIT only. Here also owners can get 1.25% - 9% profits but in ETIT. Possible scenarios:

1) Bidders flip the floor in given time. Owners get 1.25% - 9% profits in ETIT. Bidders become new owners.

2) Bidders are unable to flip the floor in time. Owners get heroes if they have at least 1% stake in the floor. Some ETIT floors also give 1 gem per ETIT invested. Bidders are returned 100% of their ETIT bids back.

ETIT floors are bit more risky than the ETH floors, but then you also get a chance to get high level heroes which are pretty costly on Opensea market. ETIT floors are actually one of the ETIT burning mechanisms about which I talked above.

So overall floors are a good way to earn some fast money, but always be careful when you invest. Even though the compensation in case of failed flips is more than satisfactory, but it is difficult to make everyone happy. If flips are not your forte, then you can always stick to other elements of EthTown; like hero merges, dungeon adventures, Titan Arena, minigames, passive ETIT dividends etc.

Achievements

Achievements are unlocked by completing certain goals in game. They can be as simple as having 3 women heroes in your team to more complex ones, like bidding on various floors. Every completed achievement gives you not only a cool badge but also in game rewards which include gems, ETIT and even ETH. Completing a row of achievements unlock bigger achievements with rarer rewards. So try to complete all achievements and grab all those rewards. I have unlocked 6 achievements till now and I aim to complete all of them very soon!

EthTown Hero Giveaway Results:

These are 10 winners of last week's hero giveaway contest. Each of these 10 winners will receive a hero.
rannarvasa1

I'll be sending the codes to the winners directly on discord.

So this was my detailed article on EthTown. I tried to cover all topics, but the game is so rich and diverse in content that I might have missed some topics. But nonetheless, the video and article will help you as a guide while playing EthTown. Feel free to ask any question and I'll try to answer them as soon as possible.