Today I want to tell you about this awesome new game on Hive called TerraCore (https://www.terracoregame.com/) which is a browser based game set in a post-apocalyptic world, featuring scavenging for resources, developing your characters, exploring new worlds and battling with other players.
This game is currently in alpha and I believe it's now a good chance to hop on and be an early bird, helping improving it with testing and suggestions, getting the upper hand over those who will join later.
Let's start from the story, as narrated in the TerraCore wiki:
In TerraCore, the world has been ravaged by a catastrophic event known as the Great Upheaval. This event caused the destruction of much of the world's infrastructure and natural resources, leaving humanity to scavenge for scraps in order to survive. As a citizen of TerraCore, you must mine for valuable $SCRAP, which is the new currency in this post-apocalyptic world. Use your $SCRAP to upgrade your land claim and defend it from other citizens who will stop at nothing to steal your valuable resources. Can you build a thriving community and defend it from the dangers of TerraCore?
Starting the adventure
To start playing you need to become a citizen, buying citizenship costs 20 HIVE, but during the alpha stage there is a 50% discount so currently you only need 10 HIVE to join the game!
After you have joined the TerraCore world, there are different things you can do, and more are planned to come in the future:
Collect Scrap
Scrap is the main resource of the game, it can be mined passively, bought on every Hive decentralised market (like Tribaldex) and if you're more inclined to PVP you can also steal it from other players through battles, but be wary of their revenge!.
TerraCore economy revolves around Scrap and you will need it to progress in the game.
You can use it to improve your stats, unlock new worlds and many other things.
This screen shows you the Scrap you've earned through mining.
To collect the Scrap you need to use the claim button, but you can perform this action only a limited amount of times (every 4 hours you get another claim, until you reach the max of 5).
Why claiming is limited? Becaus the unclaimed Scrap can be stolen by other players, so you need to find a good balance between not wasting your claims on small amounts of Scrap and not letting your stash become so big to attract other players to pillage your resources.
Once you have claimed your Scrap it goes into your Hive wallet and can't be stolen anymore, you can use it in the game or sell it on the market.
Grow your skills
In TerraCore there are 5 main skills, that can all be improved using Scrap:
- Engineering: Improves your mining rate and lets you earn more Scrap per second.
- Damage: Used in battle to attack another player and steal her Scrap
- Defense: Used to defend your stash from being pillaged when you're idle
- Stash size: Determines the max amount of Scrap you can claim at once (or steal from other players)
- Favor: It lets you unlock new planets to explore and helps you in battle.
To improve your stats you need to spend Scrap, but there are two different mechanics depending on the skill.
Engineering, Damage and Defense can be improved by paying Scrap according to their level, the cost is exponential and follows the progression level² so the first upgrade will cost 1 Scrap, the second 4, the third 9 and so on.
Stash size and Favor on the other hand improve by staking, so for example if you stake 2 Scrap your stash will become 2 units bigger, no matter his initial dimention.
Battle
Battling is the PVP part of the game and even if we're just in alpha it's already a lot of fun, putting pression on people to claim their earned scrap or risk to be pillaged by other players.
The battle screen shows you a list of players you can attack, which depends on your Damage skill, because you can only attack people if your Damage exceeds their Defense.
The higher this difference the bigger amount of Scrap you can steal from the other player.
Favor also comes into play in combat, adding an RNG element that gives you a higher chance to steal more Scrap if you have more favor than the defender.
The formulas regarding combat can be found in the Terracore wiki and is reported below:
var roll;
//check who has a higher favor
if (user.favor > target.favor) {
//roll a number between 25 and 100 ints
roll = Math.floor(Math.random() * 75) + 25;
}
else if (user.favor < target.favor) {
//roll a number between 1 and 50
roll = Math.floor(Math.random() * 50) + 1;
}
//if attacker has zero favor
if (user.favor == 0) {
//roll a number between 1 and 25
roll = Math.floor(Math.random() * 25) + 1;
}
You also have a limited number of attacks that you can use against other players, and exactly like claims you earn one every 4 hours to a maximum of 10 attacks.
Exploring
This is the most interesting part of the game, not yet fully developed but promising a lot of excitment for the future!
In the Explore screen you can find new planets to be discovered, for now only Oceanea but more will come, and they require a collective effort to be unlocked, by the contribution of Scrap from all the citizens of TerraCore.
In the future you will be able to claim plots on new planets and no one knows what benefit this could give, but this is the fun of joining a game in its early development stages, being able to see its growth and reap amazing reward!
Exploration however is not a mechanic that will be useful only at a later stage, but it's currently the only way to earn favor and improve your chance to steal Scrap in battle, so it's not something to overlook!
Thoughts about TerraCore
Here come the question that everyone is probably asking, is TerraCore worth playing?
Well, of course you need to be aware that there will be bugs, mechanics yet to develop and things that may change, because we are in the early alpha stage, so you shouldn't expect a fully polished game, but I also find that TerraCore has a huge potential to develop and grow in a great game, unique in the Hive ecosystem.
TerraCore has very active and helpful developers, guided by the lead 
With the potential of becoming the first browser based game on Hive to combine mining mechanics and PVP combat, I also want to be an early bird and join before the cost of the game assets skyrockets, as it often happens with blockchain games.
I hope more players will embark in this awesome journey through space, joining our friendly community and discover together where this adventure will lead!
Play TerraCore!
https://www.terracoregame.com/
Join TerraCore Discord:
https://discord.gg/dgJU6RqMv4
TerraCore on Hive:
@terracore
TerraCore Twitter:
https://twitter.com/terracoregame