I've recently started playing the Hive NFT game Big Dog Bone, which you can find here:
https://www.mundovirtualhive.online/login/hoosie
I was struggling at first how to figure out how to play the game, but I got some great help from the game creator on the discord page (https://discord.gg/vPGRDCf5). The game creator is not a native English speaker, and as such I said I'd write a beginners guide in English (this post) which will hopefully be a help to others wanting to try the game.
You can also check out the game guide from the creator here. I struggled with this a little due to translation issues, hence why I wanted to write this game guide - but its still really helpful.
Game Basics
The main elements of the game are:
- Energy - this allows you to undertake missions,
- HUESO - this is the in-game currency (which you can find on Hive-engine https://hive-engine.com/trade/HUESO). Undertaking missions awards you HUESO. You can then use that to buy more cards/NFTs, or trade it on the market, etc. There are also some other options for using HUESO like staking, but I havent figured that out yet. In this post we'll just stick to the basics.
There are also 3 main player stats that you can find under your profile:
- LEVEL - This applies a bonus to your Hueso when you are withdrawing it from the game. You have to buy levels at a cost of 5000 HUESO each. The bonus aplied depends on your level, and there are 400 levels, the following post gives the details of the bonuses Level bonuses
- Power Hueso - The more power you have (which comes from Special NFTs - which have an E in the top left hand corner) the more Hueso you will get when you undertake a mission that rewards Hueso
- Power Energy - The more energy you have (which comes from General NFTs - which have an G in the top left hand corner) the more energy you will gain when you undertake a mission that rewards energy (the recharge mission). The base mission awards 2 energy, and then for every 100 power energy you have, you will generate an extra energy from that mission.
Starting the game
You can actually play the game completely for free - that is, you can start playing without any NFTs and undertake missions. The thing is that you wont be able to withdraw any Hueso from the game - the Hueso you earn from the missions will be locked within the game (which means you cant withdraw it to sell it, and you cant withdraw it to buy packs or NFTs - when buying something with Hueso, your Hueso needs to be in your hive wallet (ie, on Hive-engine) so needs to be withdrawn).
In order to get full game functionality (ie, the ability to withdraw Hueso) you need to buy the initial land pack at a cost of $10. From memory there are a few options to pay for it - I paid for it in Hive.
When I first started, I just tried it without buying the inital land pack. I could see that I was clearly accumulating Hueso, and figured out that it therefore could be profitable. As such, after a few weeks I went ahead and purchased the initial land pack.
Top tip - anytime you make a purchase, it can take a few minutes to register and appear. So dont worry if it looks like things have not worked, just give it a few mins and refresh the game in your browser and you will see if after a while.
Playing the Game
In simple terms:
Playing the energy mission (recharge) will award you energy - the higher your Power Energy stat, the more energy you will be awarded. The energy mission (recharge) is in the middle of the top row and takes one hour to complete.
Once you have a decent amount of energy you can then play the missions that award you Hueso - the higher your Power Hueso stat, the more Hueso you will be awarded from these. These are on the right and left side of the top row. The one on the left costs less energy and takes 1 hour. The one on the right costs more energy and takes 6 hours, but generally awards more Hueso.
You can also join the pool (which is the option on the bottom row). You can join the pool once each day for a sum of energy. You then get awarded an amount of Hueso for being in the pool depending on your NFT power. So it may not be worth it when you first start, until you have gained some NFTs, I havent tried this yet. Some of the people in the pool have a lot of NFT power and hence would get awarded much more of the pool than I would, however, you do get a minimum of 150 Hueso for joining the pool, so that is the worst payout you would get from joining it each day.
So in short - do the energy missions to build up energy, then you can either undertake the Hueso missions to earn Hueso or try joining the pool once every 24 hours to earn Hueso that way (or do both !).
Withdrawing Hueso from the game
This section explains how to withdraw your Hueso so that you can then spend it on goodies to get more out of the game. Heres how to withdraw your hueso:
N.B. You miust have purchased the initial pack for $10 before you will be able to withdraw Hueso.
To withdraw:
1 - Go to your profile (icon in the top right hand corner)
2 - Press the 'Withdraw in game' button first,
3 - Then press the 'Withdraw All' button - which will then take your Hueso into your hive wallet.
N.B. I think you need to have a minimum of 1000 Hueso in game before you can withdraw - but once you do, you can withdraw it all.
It should then register fairly quickly in your hive wallet (I use Hive-engine for monitoring this). Once its there, you can then spend it back in game.
Buying Levels, General Packs and Fusion Packs in game
To buy stuff in game, you need to go to the 'in-game market' screen.
There are three things you can purchase with Hueso:
1 - To buy a level (level up pack) at a cost of 5000 Hueso,
2 - To buy a General Pack at a cost of 3500 Hueso. This gives you a pack of general cards. Please note, it gives you cards, not NFTs. In order to create NFTs you need a number of the same type of card, which you then need to fuse together with a fusion token (I'll explain this further below because its quite essential to the game). The general pack will award you general cards (which have an G in the top left hand corner), which when converted to NFTs increase your Power Energy.
3 - To buy a fusion pack for 1000 Hueso. This will basically award you one fusion shot, allowing you to fuse together one set of general cards into an NFT.
There is one other purchasing option on this screen which is for a special pack, which I assume awards special cards (which have an E in the top left hand corner). Once created into NFTs these increase you Power Hueso stat which means you will generate more Hueso from your missions. To buy these packs you need a different token type - the HUESO-VIP. You can buy these on hive-engine. I've not tried that yet. I guess its the games way of maintaining functioning tokenomics, which is important to keep the game alive, so I'm ok with that.
Creating an NFT
This section will tell you how to create an NFT. First of all you will need to buy a general pack, and then a fusion pack (following the instruction in the above section) which will cost you 4500 Hueso in total.
Once purchased, these packs will then appear in your inventory page (remember - it can take a few mins for the packs to appear there, so just let that happen and refresh your browser a few times as needed until they appear).
Once the packs appear, you will have to 'open' the general pack to get the cards, but you dont have to do anything with the fusion pack. It works automatically when you go to fuse some cards together.
The pic above shows you the cards I was awarded when I opened the general pack I have. The key to the card type (Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary) is in the top right hand corner of the card - and also in the coloured box in the middle at the bottom. As can be seen in the pic above I got 8 common cards, and 2 rare cards.
The table above explains how many of each card type you need to fuse together in order to make an NFT:
- 5 common cards can be fused together to give an NFT of 1 power, etc.
To fuse cards together (called crafting) you need to go to the crafting page, by selecting 'album' at the top, and then 'crafting' at the left hand side.
On this screen you need to select the appropriate number of cards to fuse together and then hit the crafting button. N.B. I had already bought and opened some more packs, hence in the pic above I have more cards than was just opened in the pack above.
In the example above I've selected 4 rare cards (by clicking on them) - they just all have to be rare, they dont have to be the exact same card. Then you just hit the crafting button.
If its all worked you will see a green success message come up at the bottom left. The 4 cards selected will disappear, and then you will have a new general NFT, which you will be able to see in the general album. Again, remember that it can take a few minutes for the new NFT to appear. Once it appears, your Power Energy stat in your profile will also increase by the power of the card created, 5 in the case of the example above.
To see my new card (pic above) I went into the 'album' on the top row, then selected 'general album' from the list on the left, and then you can see that I now have a new Rare NFT. My Power Energy stat also increased from 11 to 16 as expected.
In the page shown above, you can also click on your newley created NFT and sell it if you want, which will then put it up for sale on the in-game market place (I've not tried that out yet).
So this method has shown how to increase your Power energy stat by buying general packs/cards and by fusing them to create a general NFT. As can be seen it will take quite a lot of Hueso to increase my Power Energy stat by 100. However, the other option you have is to buy cards from the market.
Buying cards from the market
In the 'album' page, you will find two options for buying NFTs that have already been created:
1 - Under the 'marketplace' which is where you can buy NFTs created by other players which they have put up for sale,
2 - From the 'special market' tab, which is where the game creators have put up special NFTs for sale - and it is these we will look at next:
You get to the special market via the 'album' tab at the top and then the 'special market' tab on the left.
The special market offers a good way of getting some nice cards at what I think will work out to be a lower cost than if you bought the packs and fused them together yourself.
Currently in the special market there are two NFTs of interest to me which I can buy for 20000 Hueso each. Special (E) NFT marked BHR, and then the General (G) NFT marked City farm. 20000 Hueso is quite a bit, and it would take a little while to generate that in game, but its do-able over a number of weeks. I would buy the General City Farm NFT first as that will help to boost your energy creation power, and then I'd get the BHR special NFT to help boost mission payouts. And in fact, thats what I'm going to try and do over the coming weeks, so we'll see how it goes !
Summary
This post hopefully explains the basics of the game and how to go about playing and using it. I've been trying to figure out, and thanks to the kind help of the game creator on discord I am getting there. I thought this post would be helpful to other beginners.
Best of luck with the game !!! Heres the game link again:
https://www.mundovirtualhive.online/login/hoosie
If anyone spots any mistakes, please let me know in comments, and I'll be happy to correct them.
Credits: all pics shown are screen shots from the game.