I've released a new Ethgard Legends update yesterday, which included a V2 release for the Showdown system that should be more dynamic and bring even more strategic depth to the fights. I'll go over the flow in this post.
Enter The Arena
When visiting ethgardlegends.com/showdown, you'll be greeted with this screen. It shows the matches left that count toward your leaderboard position and rewards, as well as the wins remaining for your next reward chest.
To move forward, you'll need to Enter The Arena.
Choose Your Hero
After entering the arena, instead of choosing a hero beforehand and getting matched with a random opponent of equal strength, the next step is now more tactical.
You'll see 3 randomly chosen heroes from your collection. When selecting one, 3 random opponents of similar power will also be displayed.
Your goal is to choose the right hero to fight the right opponent. There are 3-4 datapoints you can use for the optimal matchup:
- Health: How much Health does the opponent have?
- Damage Type: Is your opponent dealing Strength, Agility or Intelligence damage?
- Defense Type: Is your opponent wearing Armor, Protector or Garment?
- Luck (Optional): How much Luck does your hero have? Relevant for rounds where you can receive a chest at the end.
Health is straightforward. If the opponent has less health than your hero, that’s an advantage. It doesn't say anything about this raw damage though. Maybe he has low health but high damage?
For Damage and Defense Types, look at the red and green symbols next to them.
A red downward triangle on your opponent means the opponent is at a disadvantage (77% damage), while a green upward triangle indicates an advantage (130% damage). A gray circle means neutral (100% damage). The same is true in reverse — for your opponent versus your hero.
Below is an overview table.
For example, in this matchup I chose Mordren as my hero and Kaiyo as the opponent. Mordren deals Intelligence damage against Kaiyo's Armor defense, which is effective (130% damage). Kaiyo deals Agility damage against Mordren's Protector defense, which is ineffective (77% damage).
Simply put: Mordren does more damage to Kaiyo than Kaiyo does to Mordren — without even considering items. There’s always a chance Kaiyo has a strong weapon equipped, but based purely on damage and defense types, I should have the upper hand.
The Damage/Defense type also depends on what kind of items the hero wears. For damage type, it's the main-hand weapon and for Defense Type it's the highest amount sum per defense type. (i.e. 2x Protector => 23 Defense, 3x Armor => 21 Defense, 0x Garment => 0 Defense ==> Protector)
More info here: Introduction to the New Item System
Fight: Mordren vs Kaiyo
Turns out, it was 
https://ethgardlegends.com/showdown?b=8d300613-73ad-4067-8a35-132315560c29
Fun fact: I'm waiting to watch the fight after writing the post, so we're both in the dark about who the winner might be.
Spin To Win
Also recently, I added another feature to Ethgard Legends, which I haven’t written about yet on Hive. It's a "Spin To Win" wheel.
http://ethgardlegends.com/rewards/spin
In combination with the new Item System and Showdown mode, it's a straightforward, risk-free way to get into the game. Spin the wheel daily, forge chests, open them for onchain items, equip them to your heroes and fight battles.
Fun fact: Over 1000 items have been minted so far. https://opensea.io/collection/ethgard-legends-items
There's still a lot more I'm working on, but the game is starting to take shape more and more.
When comparing the current state of the game to where it was 1 or even 2 years ago, the difference is huge.
I'm probably most happy and proud about the fact that so much of the game is onchain and powered by smart contracts (aka onchain logic). I fully understand that not everyone is going to appreciate, understand or even realise how challenging that is, but knowing that each game item is owned by a wallet address on a blockchain — not just stored in some centralised database like every Web2 game and even some Web3 ones — is important to me.
I'm trying to find the right balance between having a game that's just fun to play, even without spending money, and still allowing for real world value through tradeable, onchain items. Not as a hidden investment vehicle, but as a real game — while also breaking down technological barriers and disrupting the industry. I know, it's a lot, and maybe you're not interested in anything outside of Hive.
But wouldn't it be fun to say: "Everything started on Hive..."?