What is #dCrops?
#dCrops is a farming game built here on Hive that continues to develop month after month. In fact, in the last couple months #dCrops has implemented the Workshop and Equipment as well as Crafting, and the Cooking function is close to being released as well. There is much more planned down the road but it has taken a giant leap forward in just the last 60-90 days and there is really a lot to do if you so choose.
With all that said, it has made the game more complicated for beginners to wrap their brains around so in conjunction with the #dCropscontest and @OCD, here is a tutorial for people to help them understand how to get started.
The Object of the Game
First things first. The object of the game is to plant seeds on your land, wait for them to grow, harvest them, and then sell them to earn rewards. Those rewards will come in the form of $CROP.
$CROP is the in-game "money" that can be used to buy things from the market. It is also what you get rewarded with when you sell your harvest. You can use the $HIVE token as well for purchasing packs and other things from the market, but $CROP is the native token for the game.
Where to Begin?
The first thing you are going to need is land and then some seeds to plant on that land. To do that you need to either buy some BETA packs from the game, buy some ALPHA packs from the Hive-Engine market ($DCALPHA), or buy individual cards (seeds and/or land) from the in-game market. As I said earlier, you can use either $HIVE or $CROP to do this. As of now, it's usually "cheaper" to use $HIVE since the spread is much tighter. Before you rush out and start buying things however, there are a few things you need to know.
- #dCrops has four distinct seasons. Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Each of these seasons has it's own set of seeds that can only be planted during that season.
- There are five different types of land. Average (one plot), Fertile (two plots), Awesome (three plots), Trinity (three plots) and Hi-Tech (four plots). Each plot can grow one seed, so you can grow four seeds on the Hi-Tech land but only one on Average.
- Each season has 15 days and each of the seeds has a certain amount of days it takes to grow. Once a seed has been planted, it can't be planted again that season. (there is an exception to this but it's not really relevant to beginners)
- Land, on the other hand, can be used as often as possible in all four seasons. So, as an example, if you have one seed that takes 3 days to mature, another that takes 7, and a third that takes 4, you could use one single plot to grow and harvest all three during a single season. You just have to make sure you are harvesting them when they're done and planting the next one right away. If a seed doesn't mature by the time the season ends, you don't get the harvest. (As an aside, seeds don't get used up or disappear. Once you own it, it's yours, and you will be able to plant it every time that particular season comes around again.)
These are the basics. You buy some packs/lands/seeds, plant them, wait for them to mature, and then harvest them.
How to Plant your Seeds
To get started, click on the Farm icon on the menu to the left.
Once there you should see all the land you have with empty plots on that land. Click on one of those empty plots and a new menu will come up with all of the seeds you have available for planting during the current season. Click on the one you want to plant and the menu will close and show you your seed in that plot. At that point, you can either click on another empty plot and plant another seed, or click on the "Plant Selected" at the bottom of the screen. And, voila, you're a farmer.
(A couple tips...you may want to spend a few minutes figuring out the best order to plant things. Remember, each plot can be used as soon as it's empty but seeds that don't finish maturing by season's end can't be harvested. Also remember that although the season is technically 15 days, you really only have 14 days to use. So don't try and use one plot for a 7 day seed and two 4 day seeds. You'll run out of time on the last one. There are some "Items" I'll get to later that can cure that problem, but I wouldn't worry about them at the beginning.)
Things to Know about your Seeds
Each seed has basically five characteristics you want to pay attention to. We'll use Wheat as an example.
- Which season it can be planted. Here it's summer, depicted by the sun in the upper left.
- How many you own. That's the x102. I own 102 Wheat cards.
- How many days it takes to mature. That's the "4" on the clock in the lower right.
- How many Wheat will be grown by this card each time it's planted. That's the 2 on the box.
- How many shares each Wheat is worth when you sell it. That's the 7 on the gold coins.
So this card can be planted in summer, will take four days to grow, and you'll harvest 2 of them worth 7 Shares each.
Harvesting your Seeds
This is pretty self-explanatory. Once again, go to your Farm and you can see which Crops are ready to be harvested. Depending upon how big your farm is, you may have a running timer on each plot telling you how long until that particular crop matures. Once they are ready, you will have the option of using one click to "Harvest ? Plots", (however many are ready)
or you can click on each seed individually and harvest them one, two, three at a time or whatever you choose. Once harvested, the plot will become empty and you can plant another seed.
One quick note, the game only allows for you to interact with no more than 50 NFTs at a time. Each seed is an NFT and each land card, regardless of how many plots it has, is one NFT. So if you have 30 Average Land cards with crops ready to harvest, you'll only be able to harvest 25 at once since you'll be interacting with 25 Land NFTs and 25 Seed NFTs. It usually works if you use the "Harvest ? Plots" button at the top regardless of how many there are, but sometimes it's better to get that number down if you're dealing with a large farm.
Selling your Crops
Okay, on to the selling.
At any point during the season, you will be able to go to your "Inventory" screen and see how many crops you have harvested. Once there, you will see three different possible "Quality" levels for each crop.
There are "3-Star", which are worth triple (so using our Wheat example, each Wheat would be worth 21 shares instead of 7), "2-Star", which are worth double, and "1-Star", which would be worth the regular 7 from our example. Each time you harvest you have a small random chance of getting a 2 or 3 star crop, but most of the time it will be 1.
Using Wheat again, you can see that I have 2 (number in the upper right) 1-Star Wheats in my Inventory worth 7 Shares each. I could click on the +1 a couple times and then sell them for 14 Shares total. (The red and green numbers at the bottom of the card allow you to select 1 or 5 or deselect 1 or 5 cards for selling.) Again, you can only do up to 50 cards at once. Number of shares doesn't matter.
The Inventory screen will show all of your Crops and their Quality (3-star, 2-star, 1-star) and you can decide if and when you want to sell them to build up your Shares for that particular season. There are also filters you can use to organize them on your screen.
Rewards
This is where the rewards come in. On the Dashboard there is a Leaderboard.
This will show you where you rank in the current seasons shares and what your estimated reward in $CROP will be. You can see I am currently 9th with 14079.39 shares and an estimated payout of 12212 $CROP. Directly below the word "Leaderboard" in the middle you can see the total Reward Pool of $CROP for this season. That number is 415,359 and change. That is the total number of $CROP tokens that will be paid out to all the players at the end of the season. The number of shares you have will dictate the percentage of the rewards you will receive. Obviously the more shares you have of the total shares out there, the higher your reward in $CROP will be. That said, these numbers are updated every few hours so the numbers will change.
IMPORTANT: to reiterate, your shares are a percentage of the total shares gathered during the season. So, for example, if you had 1000 shares and the rest of the players had 99,000 combined, you would get 1% of the reward pool. But if you have 1000 shares and the rest of the players have 999,000 combined your percentage would only by .1%. It's important to understand that it's your percentage of the total that determines your rewards, NOT how many shares you have or how high you rank. You could have 1000 shares one season and 800 the next and collect more rewards for the 800 than the 1000. Again, it all depends on your percentage of the total, not how many shares you have. This can be confusing for people so I'm hammering it home. Sorry.
Show Me the Money
Now that you know the basics of farming, harvesting, and selling, there is also another way to earn money from this game. The first, as we just went through, is selling your crops for shares and climbing the Leaderboard. But there is a second way that pays you $HIVE instead of $CROPS. It's called "Holding Rewards" and the button is next to the Leaderboard button on the Dashboard.
Holding Rewards are generated by having 20,000 CROP power on average over a 15-day period. There are a few different ways to get that CROP power. The first is simple, own 20,000 $CROP for over 15 days and your average will be over 20,000. But there are a few other things that count towards CROP power as well. The biggest one is owning packs. Alpha or Beta, it doesn't matter. Every unopened pack you own counts as 2000 CROP power. So owning 10 would get you over the 20,000 number. Or you could have 10,000 $CROP and 5 unopened packs. Any combination works.
Harvested 3-star crops also give you CROP power points. They are small, but they do start to add up as you play. I never sell any of my 3-star crops for this reason. Again, they're small (one 3-star Legendary gives you 1 CROP power regardless of how many "shares" it's worth, one 3-star Epic gives you .75 CROP power, .5 for Rare, and .25 for Common) but they start to add up over time. You also get a small number for the NFTs you own, and a bit more for the ones that are "active". Again, these are very small numbers but they count, so I'm mentioning them. You can read more about this under the FAQ tab on your Dashboard in the game.
Every day you average over 20,000 CROP power you will receive a dividend in $HIVE from the Holding Rewards pool. Like the CROPS rewards, it's based on your percentage of the total CROP power being held by everyone combined. There is a channel on dCrops Discord where you can see the amounts paid out every day. It is a way to start building a passive income from Hive and a nice little bonus for playing the game. (Plus, it gives you better rewards for completing your Quests....more below.)
Get Farming!
That's all you need to know to get started, however there is a LOT more to this game. For those of you who can't wait any longer and want to get started, you now have the basics to start farming. Feel free to skip the rest of this for now and get to work. You can reach the game by clicking here or you can keep reading for more information on some of the other facets of the game.
In fact, you may want to stick around just a little longer for the Quests...
Quests
Each season brings a new set of 10 quests for each farmer to complete. Completing all 10 (that's important...you need to complete them all to get the rewards) will allow you to claim Rewards Chests when they are done. These chests are filled with goodies that can help you boost your shares. They also contain resources you will need to participate in other aspects of the game: namely building materials, buildings, and equipment as well as crafting items that will be worth a lot more CROP shares to sell. They will also be important for Cooking once that gets implemented.
Here is a screenshot of some of the things you will find in the Chests:
First, there are the Boosters.
- Ferti-Plus doubles the chance that you'll get 2-Star and 3-Star crops. You can Apply this after you've planted your seed(s). I like to only use these on my Hi-Tech and Awesome Lands because one card affects all plots. If you use it on Average Land it will only double the odds on one seed. Using it on Awesome Land doubles it on all three seeds. More bang for the buck.
- Speed-Gro cuts the time it takes for a seed to mature by anywhere from 10-50%. IMPORTANT: This must be applied before you plant your seed(s). Otherwise it will affect the next seed you plant and not the one currently planted.
- Mystery Seeds will plant a random Crop from the season you are currently in. It's one way you can occasionally get a Legendary crop you might not have. Be careful though. If you use this card with only...say 6 days left in the season and a Seed that takes 7 days or more to mature pops up, it's wasted.
Next, there are the Resources.
- Wood (not pictured) is used to create Charcoal which is needed to use the Kiln and Furnace. It is also used to create Wood Planks which are necessary to construct some of the Buildings and Equipment you can build.
- Stone is another resource necessary to create Stone Slabs (along with Charcoal) which is again used to construct Buildings and Equipment.
- Copper Ore is used to create Copper Ingots (along with Charcoal) for Buildings and Equipment.
- Iron Ore (not pictured) is used to create Iron Ingots (along with Charcoal) for Buildings and Equipment.
- Gold Ore is used to create Gold Ingots (along with Charcoal) for Buildings and Equipment.
Finally, there are Crafting ingredients.
- Salt and Pepper are both used in crafting recipes and,
- Gas is used to make some of your Buildings run when using them to craft things.
These are all very necessary things to acquire if you want to participate in the Building, Crafting, and Cooking aspects of the game. Completing your 10 Quests will get you 10 Rewards Chests automatically. Then, for every 15,000 CROP power you have, you will get another Rewards Chest. For example, if you completed your quest and you had 75,000 CROP power between your $CROP, Packs, and NFTs, you would get a total of 15 items in your Chest. 10 for completing the quests and 5 more for your Holding Rewards. (75,000/15,000= 5) Another good incentive to build your Holding Rewards.
One final note on Quests. Some Quests you will not be able to complete either because you don't have those crops or they are from a different season and you haven't even grown them yet. In this case, you can spend 10 $CROP and re-roll your quest. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee you'll be able to complete that one either so if you don't have a lot of cards yet, it may take you a few seasons before you start completing them all. This is a BIG reason why you don't necessarily want to sell all of your Crops at the end of the season. I try to keep 4 of everything in my Inventory all year long, just so I'm sure I'll be able to complete them without having to re-roll and spend 10 $CROPS.
Also, VERY IMPORTANT, make SURE you reset your Quests at the beginning of the season BEFORE you start planting anything. There's nothing worse than planting all of your Onions only to find out that you forgot to reset the Quests and you could have completed two of them by...planting Onions. Trust me. I've done it way too many times myself. lol You've been warned. :-)
Equipment
Moving on to things used to enhance your output of shares we come to Equipment. There are 15 pieces of Equipment you can currently build in the game. (Can't do Houses yet)
Each of them uses ingredients you grow or find in your Rewards Chests to enhance the amount of shares they are worth. For example, you could sell two one-star Broccoli for 14 shares. But if you use them in a Preserve Barrel and mix them with some Oil, Salt, and a Hot Pepper, they could be worth anywhere from 57-172 shares depending on whether you get a 1-star, 2-star, or 3-star "Broccoli Pickle".
But you can't do that without a Preserve Barrel, and to get one of those you either need to buy it on the market (expensive) or build it yourself using the necessary Resources we talked about above. This can also be very time-consuming, which I think is a good thing, because it gives you a nice sense of accomplishment when you finally get it built. It can take a few seasons to gather all the resources necessary to craft the ingredients necessary to create the Barrel. Then it can take a full week or longer just to build the Barrel. Like I said, it's fun working towards gathering what you need, building the ingredients, and then ultimately building the Equipment.
The pictures above are the Blueprints necessary to build each piece of Equipment. You can get those from opening Packs or again, buying them off the market.
Crafting
I basically touched on this with my "Broccoli Pickle" example above, but it is a way to enhance some of the Crops you have harvested and make them worth more shares. It will also be used to create some of the ingredients necessary in Cooking, which hasn't been implemented yet. If and when you open some Beta packs, you will doubtless get some Recipe NFTs that will be necessary when that gets added to the game. Don't just blindly sell them. You will need more than one to take your Cooking to it's maximum level. Make sure you understand how they'll be used before you decide what you want to do with them.
Special Cards and their Characteristics
That basically covers everything in the game so far, but there are a couple more things I should mention to make this complete.
Orchard
On the Dashboard at the bottom of the side-menu on the left, you'll see a picture of a tree. This is your Orchard. There are four Tree Seeds in the game that you can harvest daily while they're in their season. These Seeds are Legendary Cards and must be planted on Legendary Plots. Legendary Plots can be acquired in two ways. One, you can buy them from the market again, or two, you can take one of your Legendary Land cards (Hi-Tech or Trinity) and divide them into individual Legendary Plots. You will get 4 from the Hi-Tech and 3 from the Trinity. You can then plant your tree(s) on these plots, wait 15 days for them to mature, and then harvest 80 shares a day from each tree during it's season. Be happy if you get one in opening your packs. :-)
Land Bonuses
The Legendary and the Awesome land cards give you some bonuses when they are growing things. You have a slightly higher chance of getting better Quality crops and also may even get an extra crop when using them. As I said earlier, they are good cards to use your Ferti-Plus and Speed-Gro on because you increase your odds of getting better crops and you only have to use one booster to boost three or four plots.
Card Bonuses
Some of the Legendary and Epic Seed cards also have bonuses. For example, Strawberries will keep growing the entire season without having to be replanted. You still have to harvest them first, but if you plant four of them on Hi-Tech land you can harvest them every three days. Throw a Speed-Gro on the plot before the last harvesting and get 5 harvests out of them in one season. Each one yields 4 Crops at $5 shares so one Strawberry can get you 100 shares in a season. And that doesn't even count whether any of them turn up as 2-star or 3-star, which usually happens, especially if you throw a Ferti-Plus on them. Keep an eye out for these traits as they can make a big difference on what you want to plant where.
Summary and Links
All in all, this is a very fun and engaging game and it just keeps getting better. There is always something to do if you want, or you can just plan your season and check in when things need to be harvested. It's completely up to you how much you want to put into the game.
Again, you can join the game here using my affiliate link (which I'd appreciate), or you can check out the dCrops Discord server and ask questions there. Lots of helpful people, including the developer.
That's it. Get to work!!! lol That's as "complete" as I can make it. I'm sure I forgot something so feel free to leave comments below.
(This was written because I love playing the game and I've been meaning to do it for a while but #dCrops is holding the #dcropscontest so now was a good time to get it done.)
The official website is www.dcrops.com.