Have you always dreamed about growing your own crops without getting your hands dirty but still benefitting from the fruit veggies of your labour? Then you should check out dCrops, a play2earn blockchain game on HIVE. The Cartel is already invested and presents to you in this article the comprehensive overview you expect from your friendly family members.
What Am I Looking At?
dCrops is a relatively new farming simulator built on the Hive blockchain that lets players grow various fruits and vegetables on plots of land using seeds. While currently simple in its execution - you harvest crops grown from seeds - the devs have shared multiple ideas for expanding gameplay as they release future pack editions.
As a Hive-Engine game, dCrops' native token (CROP) is available on TribalDex while ALPHA Land/Seed Cards are trading on NftMart. You can also find all development updates on their Hive blog 
Everything Until Now
dCrops was first announced in early 2021 with a pre-sale roadmap that detailed their plans for selling a wave of 10,000 ALPHA Packs ahead of the 40,000 additional ALPHA Packs intended for the ALPHA launch. The pre-sale sold out in just two days, and no packs remain from the 40k launch sale, except for the secondary market.
Since launching, the dev team has updated the UI and NFT art, developed a Hive reward pool (later referred to as the CP Reward Pool), and introduced a Quest System that rewards players with various Booster Items (faster harvests) scaled to the overall value of their asset collection.
The dCrops economy is currently comprised of the one native token (CROP) and two NFT's (Land/Seed Cards) with future possibilities covered further down.
CROP Token
Presently, the only way to earn CROP is to "burn" crop harvests by selling them in order to acquire "shares" (points) tracked by a leaderboard for the current season.
The first seasonal CROP pool had 500,000 tokens, but each subsequent pool has 0.5% fewer CROP.
Your CROP reward is based on the number of shares you acquired in the current season relative to the total shares amassed by all active players.
Seasons last 15 days and rotate between the traditional Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter seasons in a 60-day cycle.
NFT Cards
All Cards have a rarity that determines their property values.
Lands have three properties:
Plots (top-left) or the total number of crops a single Land Card can support.
Bonus Crop (bottom-left) gained when of extra crops received.
Bonus Chance (bottom-right) for receiving extra crops.
 |  |
|---|---|
Seeds have five properties:
Season (top bar) or when it can be planted/harvested.
Base Price (top-left) for shares received when sold.
Quantity Produced (bottom-left) when harvesting the crop.
Harvest Time (bottom-right) measured in days.
Special Abilities (bottom area) currently only have two types"
- Multiply, a 25% chance for multiple crops on harvest.
- Multi-Harvest, the ability to repeatedly produce until the season ends.
The values for each Seed's numerical properties (Base Price, Quantity Produced and Harvest Time) vary significantly between types, so it's strongly recommended that you take the time to get to know the crop cycles and yields of your Seeds. There's also a small chance your crop harvests will yield higher 2/3-star versions that have greater value when selling.
What's Happenin'?
With ALPHA Packs sold out and BETA Packs slated to arrive sometime in Q1/Q2 of 2022, there aren't any active events you can capitalize on to begin living your best farming life. The good news is Q1/Q2 is technically already upon us, so additional news could land any day!
The BETA Edition won't have any of the same Land/Seed cards found in the ALPHA Packs, so you'll need to decide soon whether or not you want ALPHA Cards before their prices potentially rise in response to a growing playerbase. Additionally, CROP is intended to be a secondary avenue for obtaining packs thanks to a fixed price of $2 per pack or 2000 CROP.
There have been multiple announcements expressing a desire to establish a price floor for CROP at $0.001 with scaling pack prices to ensure players only spend $2 worth of CROP, no matter the token's value at the time of purchase. The dev team is currently waiting on additional liquidity to enter the game, however, before putting this price floor into effect.
If you've been following our initial blog updates, the Cartel swapped 44.38 CARTEL for the following dCrops assets at ~50% of their stated value:
Lands
| Rarity | QTY | Value in SWAP.HIVE | Value in USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 1 | 0.75 | $1.1625 |
| Rare | 10 | 13.00 | $20.15 |
| Epic | 3 | 15.00 | $23.25 |
| Legendary | 1 | 50.00 | $77.50 |
| SUB-TOTAL | 15 | 78.75 | $122.0625 |
Spring Seeds
| Type | Rarity | QTY | Value in SWAP.HIVE | Value in USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broccoli | Common | 6 | 1.98 | $3.069 |
| Kale | Common | 6 | 1.98 | $3.069 |
| Cauliflower | Rare | 16 | 5.60 | $8.68 |
| Potato | Epic | 9 | 31.50 | $48.825 |
| Strawberry | Legendary | 2 | 40.00 | $62.00 |
| SUB-TOTAL | 39 | 81.06 | $125.643 |
Summer Seeds
| Type | Rarity | QTY | Value in SWAP.HIVE | Value in USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat | Common | 6 | 1.98 | $3.069 |
| Turnip | Common | 6 | 1.98 | $3.069 |
| Watermelon | Rare | 16 | 5.60 | $8.40 |
| Tomato | Epic | 10 | 100.00 | $155.00 |
| Blueberry | Legendary | 2 | 40.00 | $62.00 |
| SUB-TOTAL | 40 | 149.56 | $231.818 |
Fall Seeds
| Type | Rarity | QTY | Value in SWAP.HIVE | Value in USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garlic | Common | 6 | 1.98 | $3.069 |
| Carrot | Common | 16 | 4.00 | $6.20 |
| Pumpkin | Rare | 16 | 5.60 | $8.68 |
| Beetroot | Epic | 10 | 80.00 | $124.00 |
| Raspberry | Legendary | 1 | 20.00 | $31.00 |
| SUB-TOTAL | 49 | 111.50 | $172.825 |
Winter Seeds
| Type | Rarity | QTY | Value in SWAP.HIVE | Value in USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peas | Common | 6 | 3.00 | $4.65 |
| Radish | Common | 6 | 1.98 | $3.069 |
| Cabbage | Rare | 16 | 8.80 | $13.64 |
| Onion | Epic | 10 | 90.00 | $139.50 |
| Bell Pepper | Legendary | 1 | 40.00 | $62.00 |
| SUB-TOTAL | 39 | 143.78 | $222.859 |
| ALL SEEDS | QTY | Value in SWAP.HIVE | Value in USD |
|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL | 167 | 485.90 | $753.145 |
Based on Hive price of $1.55 per Hive at time of asset swap
Looking Forward
In preparation for the upcoming BETA Edition, the dev team shared a roadmap with several ideas they're kicking around as possibilities for inclusion with the launch of BETA Packs.
These ideas include:
- Crafting ingredients from crop harvests (i.e. Flour from Wheat)
- Cooking recipes
- Orders for crops/foods (similar to Quest tasks)
- Levels/Skills (crafting, cooking, and/or player level)
- Merging NFT's (i.e. buildings on Lands)
While they also admit that it's possible none of the ideas make it into the game, it's great to see that they're looking into multiple avenues of expanding gameplay. This farming simulator has plenty of room to grow!
Where Do I Sign Up?
Before heading into the wilderness, make sure you've setup a Hive wallet for storing the CROP token and Card NFT's used in dCrops (if you already have a HIVE account, you are ready to play).
Unfortunately, there aren't any packs available to purchase directly, so you can try your luck buying ALPHA Packs through TribalDex or visit NFTMart to acquire the Land and Seeds you'd like to use. If the NFT's you want to buy are only available for CROP, TribalDex has you covered, as well.
Regardless of how you get them, you'll need at least 1 Land Card and 1 Seed Card from the current season in order to plant your first crop.
If you opted to buy ALPHA Packs, they each contain 5 Cards with at least one being Rare or better.
The pull rates for each rarity are as follows:
- 75% Common
- 20% Rare
- 4.2% Epic
- 0.8% Legendary
To ensure you have enough room for your seeds, be sure to count your plots:
| Plots | Bonus Chance | Bonus Crops | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 1 | 2% | 1 |
| Rare | 2 | 5% | 1 |
| Epic | 3 | 10% | 1 |
| Legendary | 4 | 10% | 2 |
Before diving in, make sure you know which season is active and how many days are left before it changes.
If you purchase Seeds for Summer 2 days before Fall is about to start, you'll be stuck with those Seeds for another 45 days before Summer comes back around.
These are the Seeds available for each Season:
| Spring | Summer | Fall | Winter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common | Broccoli, Kale | Wheat, Turnip | Garlic, Carrot | Peas, Radish |
| Rare | Cauliflower | Watermelon | Pumpkin | Cabbage |
| Epic | Potato | Tomato | Beetroot | Onion |
| Legendary | Strawberry | Blueberry | Raspberry | Bell Pepper |
Once you have your first pair of Cards, you can repeatedly use your Seed Card to plant crops so long as you have plots available on your Land Card and the Seed Card's 15-day cooldown has refreshed.
When it comes time to harvest your crops, it will have a quality of 1 to 3-Star:
90% chance for 1-Star
9% for 2-Stars
1% for 3-Stars
Quality acts as a 1-3x multiplier when selling crops for shares, so keep this in mind when you're trying to figure out where you might stack up on the leaderboards.
CROP POWER (CP)
As you steadily amass CROP, Cards, and crop harvests, you'll reach certain thresholds based on your total asset value (or CROP POWER) that yield additional passive rewards.
Quests require you to complete 7 tasks in a season in return for a reward chest with 10 Booster Items in it. The tasks come in three types ("Plant X", "Harvest Y", or "Sell Z") and can be freely reset once a season. Alternatively, you can spend 10 CROP to re-roll tasks you're not yet ready to tackle.
Booster Items come in three types:
Note: The Speed-Gro and Ferti-Plus applies to all plots on the chosen Land Card.
You can gain additional Booster Items from your Quest reward ranging from 1 additional item at 10,000 CP up to 50 at 1,000,000 CP. The breakdown for these additional items is as follows:
- +1 per 10k CP from 0-100k (+10 total)
- +1 per 20k CP from 100k-500k (+20 total)
- +1 per 50k CP from 500k-1M (+10 total)
CP Reward Pool
Formed by 30% of all Hive-based sales, this pool provides a daily pay-out equal to 0.25% of its total value distributed across all players with 20,000 CP or more.
Your CP value is determined by a 15-day rolling average of your daily CP snapshots. You receive 1 point for each CROP token, 2000 points for each unopened ALPHA Pack, and additional points for your active Cards and 3-star crop harvests.
Here are the values for ALPHA Cards and 3-star crop harvests:
| ALPHA Burn Value | 3-Star Crop Harvest | |
|---|---|---|
| Common | 3 | 0.25 |
| Rare | 5 | 0.5 |
| Epic | 10 | 0.75 |
| Legendary | 50 | 1 |
"Active" Cards are those that have been used within the last 15 days, and "Inactive" Cards are only worth 50% of their value. This means your off-season Seeds will eventually drop in value until they rotate back into season.
If you still have questions, go checkout the official dCrops Wiki.
You can also join the dCrops community by engaging with any of their social media platforms:
- Hive: @dcrops
- Discord: https://discord.gg/zeJShKkF7K
- Bitclout: https://bitclout.com/u/dcrops
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/d_crops
This article was written by 
What's The Gameplan?
We'll keep an eye out for an announcement for when the BETA Edition will launch. Below is our current strategy from
I am keeping these items of the coming harvest as a reserve for upcoming quests:
- 1x 3 Star of every item
- 2x 2 Star of every item
- 4x 1 Star of every item
If possible, I will keep twice the amount, which should get us easily to the next spring season to refresh our stock, with what we spend on quests!
We are expecting about 1000 CROP this season for the Cartel.
I am always keeping my eyes out for a good deal on the market and I have a strict schedule on harvesting to not miss out on anything!
In the meantime: Game On!