It's been a week since I started playing Crownrend. Exactly 7 days actually. I wanted to give my first impressions of the game. My Strategies of the game. Where I see it going and so on.
I already posted 2 articles about Crownrend Here and Here.

What is it?

If you have been living under a Hive Rock I figured I should give a brief overview just for you. Crownrend is a Hive blockchain browser strategy game. To boil the game down to it's core, you have a kingdom and you gain money (DENAR) passively from taxes. Every 4 hours you can claim those taxes and you use that DENAR to level up your kingdom.

But every other kingdom is building up their army to attack you possibly and steal some of that unclaimed DENAR. So you need to level up your kingdom strategically to have a good defense to block attackers but also a good army to go steal DENAR from other kingdoms.

First Impressions:

I love it. It truly reminds me of an updated modern version of DarkThrone which was a old browser based army/kingdom strategy game. I won't rehash that here as I already talked about it on another post. Yet I bring it up because playing Crownrend brings back some nostalgia for me.

The entire game at it's core is simple. You earn DENAR passively and you need to claim that DENAR every 4 hours and save it up and decide what you are going to level up in what order. You can attack other villages and you get a new attack Charge every hour but can only hold 8 at a time.

The simplicity of this game I think is what I getting so many people to start playing it. Any game that releases that has too high of a barrier of entry will discourage too many prospective new players. But releasing the game which is refined and clean but also simple is great. It lets us get familiar with it and strategize and then add on more features maybe down the line.

On 1 hand I love the game doesn't help you at all. It just brings you into the game and you gotta sort it out. But on the other hand its hard to find some things sometimes because I am overthinking them. For instance... items.

There is a 'inventory' section on the main page. And I see people opening up chests or at least having items that they got from chests. I searched way to long on various other sites to try to find where the drop is for the Chests. Well turns out that it is NOT in the 'Marketplace' section but the 'inventory' section. I never checked there because I knew I didn't have anything in my inventory.

Strategy:

This is the million dollar question. For a while there I didn't know which path to pick because as I see it there are only 4 options to choose from on what and how to level your army.
Option 1) You focus on levelling up your Army Strength so you can attack kingdoms with higher defenses.

Option 2) You focus on levelling up your Army Defense so you can withstand more attacks. But more appropriately so people don't attack you as much because they can't win.

Option 3) You level up your Army Strength and Defense equally to be a more well rounded player who can attack and defend equally.

Option 4) YOLO approach or what I like to call it Money Money Money. You focus not on Strength and Defense but passive earning with Tax Efficiency but also adding in the other 4 Army stats.

This method lets you have a higher DENAR earning, but also that means more people will try to attack you as you will show up higher on the Battle Hall. But with a high Leadership and Speed you have a higher chance at stopping the attacks or even winning DENAR from your attacker. This path is definitely the sneakier path because I am not sure everyone looks at a kingdoms Leadership or Speed when attacking. Only their Defense to know if they will even have a chance at being successful.

I have since moved to Option 3 and I am attempting to keep my Strength and Defense at a semi equal level as I level up. My thinking here is that at these early stages of the game when every account earns roughly 2 DENAR every 4 hours there isn't much strategy to trying to stay under the top people because you are going to claim what you can claim every 4 hours.

However that being said the way I play the game is simple. In the morning I check in and see I can claim my DENAR but since I was asleep for 8+hours I now have 8 Battle Charges to use. So I scroll down the Battle Hall until I find a few kingdoms by each other that all have lower defenses and I can attack back to back to back. I hit at least 4 kingdoms that I know I will win. Then frantically scroll up and claim my DENAR.

It's not pretty but it works. I wait the 4 hours or so and do the same process over again. Rinse and Repeat. The game early on is a grind and honestly that grind will only get worse and the DENAR required to level up increases but then again on average you will have more DENAR every 4 hours to claim.

Future of the Game:

This game has great potential. I can see it being a massive hit. There are a few things I want to point out that I think the dev team needs to take into account though. Here are my suggestions.

I think there should be a way to maybe 'test' out the game without having to pay the 20 HIVE. Because as it stands it's not possible to even see what the game is like if you navigate to crownrend.com without paying the fee to get a account. Or better yet have a section on the main page for screenshots of in game or a video roll of highlights. Something to show potential players what the game is. You can't expect your new players to research on HIVE everything.
And for longevity, New players will need people to attack and play against say a year from now. I guess if people who previously played and stopped are still showing up in the Battle Hall that could work but for NEW NEW players it would be nice to see maybe a trial period where you can login with your HIVE account and get a kingdom where you can't open items or use the marketplace but you can collect your DENAR and level up things then after a week pay the HIVE fee if you want to keep playing.

There needs to be some sort of skill brought into the game. DarkThrone had spies that you could train up and use to sabotage the person you were about to attack. It would maybe lower their defense some or show you what units they had. Something added strategy to the game that isn't overtly shown to every player like your stats are now in the Battle Hall.

Shields need to become a thing. I asked in the Discord server about being able to be attacked back to back and was told there was no mechanism in place to stop that from happening. The way I see this playing out. We are all posting screenshots of our accounts here on Hive right? Well what is someone doesn't like me and knows my kingdom name. They could setup a guild and basically target certain people so all Guild members attack 1 kingdom within 60 seconds. That 1 targeted person would get destroyed and it would lose the fun for them over time.
It is very easy to go overboard here though as well but having a attack cooldown maybe of like 20 minutes would be nice. So that after someone attacked you, you couldn't get attacked again for a set amount of time. It could even be an increasing time. So the first attack gives you a 60 second shield, the 2nd attack gives you a 2 minute shield and so on. Once you claim DENAR that resets back to zero.

I do LOVE how there are popups stating changes have been made and to read about them on their Hive account. I LOVE THIS. It truly is my biggest pet peeve that web3 games do not show the updates or news on the actual URL the players are using. It would be nice to have a documented list ON the games website though like there is on their Discord. Just a little tab that shows this info would be great:

I would also love a Whitepaper. I can't find one anywhere. Because when I look at this screenshot:

I wonder what 'Trade Power" does.
When will Guilds be a thing.
What is Orichalcum and how do you get it? (I think I read somewhere you get Ori when you burn your inventory NFT's?)

There is just a lot that could be explained in a whitepaper that, at least to me, isn't accessible.

But all in all, I love the game and hope it keeps growing and getting better and better!