Now that Blocklords is in public beta and has a new set of season rewards, I've been grinding pretty hard. I'm lucky in that I can have it running in the background while I'm working. Every 10-15 minutes or so I give everyone commands and send them on their way. That and some dedicated play time (real grinding) have allowed me to progress pretty far.

I'll show my personal progress along with some of the new features in the game like regional construction projects, tax policy, and other things set by the Lord of your region (a real player).

New Regional Collaboration

The map below highlights the region where I'm playing. The lord of this region is Gods Unchained's very own CarnivalBigTop! He recruited any of us who were interested to join together and push to make a strong kingdom.

As the region's lord, Carnival can set various regional policies:

High taxes lead to lower order/prosperity, which in turn can depress production rates of goods on your farm. Low taxes do the opposite. Taxes take a % of everything you produce (e.g. wood or tools) and send them to the City Coffers (i.e. regional bank).

The players in a region pool their resources to start construction projects. Our region was the first to kick off construction on the first regional building project: the Library.

While it's building, Carnival was able to add gold bounties for regional members to contribute to speeding up construction. The "Bounty Pool" (bottom left) is currently empty, but you can see my recent donations and total bounty claimed in the bottom right. You can also see some of the features of the library, although none of us know for sure what these new features are or how lucrative they are.

Being able to work together as a region is a big source of enjoyment for me. Looking forward to seeing what other avenues will open up as the game develops. Of course, at some point regional battles are coming, which should be fun too.

Life on the Farm

I've got quite the sprawling little farm going!

I've unlocked sector 2 (south of the river), and there is one more sector to unlock. There are farms for growing/harvesting wheat, windmills to turn that into grain, dairy cows and bakeries to make bread, lumberjacks/miners to collect building materials, etc. I have 33 squads in total, which means when the farm is in full production mode, there is quite a lot to manage.

I'm hoping for some automation tools to be added in the future - perhaps as technology that can be researched/upgraded. For example, I want my villagers picking berries and then recovering their energy in an endless loop. Other squads I don't want working endlessly on one task, though. Would be nice to customize their behavior. Right now, every task requires you to click the squad, click the task, and click the target.

It's a lot of clicking.

On the other hand, managing the farm is pretty enjoyable. Take my cowpens for example. Which cow do I want to be raising/milking? Each comes with different costs, number of uses, and total milk production. You can also add other tools to improve yields, but only if you can produce enough surplus tools/materials to make it make sense.

In this beta, attacks from NPCs were promised, but so far, they are not active. More on this in the challenges section.

Seasonal Rewards

Seasonal goals offer lucrative rewards if you can achieve them. For example, the rare NFT militia hero from last season is selling for >$100 on the market. It works similar to a battle pass: as you complete quests you get XP and then you can spend gold to unlock the various prizes.

With 26 days left, I think new players can still reach the Legacy Raider reward, but only if they are basically no-lifing the game. However, there is always another season, and your farm doesn't reset. Bigger farms make it easier to reach max rewards.

Challenges

No game is perfect (especially in Beta). Here I'll talk about some of the concerns I have.

Bugs

Minor quest (not seasonal) rewards are bugged. Sometimes your squads stop responding to your clicks unless you restart. Building upgrade timers restart if you restart the game. etc. etc. This class of challenge isn't too concerning, but I do hope devs can fix these soon as they are frustrating and I'm sure turn a lot of new players off.

Market/Gold

This is a serious concern. Each region has a market where you can sell goods, but it's algorithmic meaning the game controls pricing rather than a true market where players list/buy from each other. The initial implementation of the market made gold too plentiful. Then they over-corrected and now gold is extremely difficult to get. Short term, this has obvious impacts on the season rewards: the legacy raider requires $20k gold to unlock once you have enough XP.

My larger concern is long-term. They clearly weren't (aren't) planning for a real market, which means they need a way to fix their 'fake' market.

One obvious problem: the market resets daily at a specific time (8:00 pm eastern). There is a mad rush to sell all your goods from the day, and some goods like Meat get sold out in minutes. For europeans and many others, the reset is in the middle of the night. Not good.

I have ideas on how to fix it, but that's for another post (that I probably won't write). We'll just see what they come up with for a fix.

Battles

The devs promise to let people play the game they want to play. If you want to be a farmer, you don't have to worry (too much) about raiding/fighting. This is nice, because I know that lots of players will just want a farm sim and work collectively towards regional goals.

What has me worried is how good the fighting will be for those who want to do it. The controls in this game are adequate for farm life, but not for battles / RTS. The game also requires a lot of computer power just running the farm. I'm afraid it's going to brick if two players are trying to fight one another.

My fear here is that people have built up this amazing concept of what fighting will be, but I almost guarantee it won't be that. I expect it to be relatively simple, and that might be disappointing to many. We'll have to see.

Bricking

New players can get into a spot where they have no food and no energy to get more food. If they have spent all their gold, as well, then they are effectively bricked. There is no way to get the core villager food loop started. Make sure you always have villagers with energy out collecting food! Build up a food surplus!

Earning

I've made quite a bit of profit off the game, which is interesting seeing as how there is no token. Instead, winning/minting NFTs (heroes in the game) has been a source of gains. I recently opened a legacy warrior hero that is worth a pretty penny:

Here's recent market activity, and my stats are (much) better than both of those:

I've also done a better job cashing out from this game as I play. I've sold banners and some heroes. Locking in gains feels good. I've been in the web3 space long enough to see my collection values plummet in multiple games. Prices could skyrocket, and I still have NFTs if they do, but being greedy has burned me enough times that I'm finally learning.

Conclusion

I've sunk a lot of time into Blocklords and I'm still enjoying it. Honestly, though, the fun is more from being a part of a community working towards the same goals. If this was a single-player web2 game, I wouldn't have played more than a few hours before stopping. The team needs to roll out new features and fix the current ones to continue fleshing out the game. The core farming loop is there, but it needs purpose in game. That purpose is slowly materializing, so there's a lot to be hopeful for.

It's free to play, so if you're interested, let me know in the comments! Anyone can sign up: https://www.blocklords.com/

I can help you locate your farm into our region and give you some tips starting out so you avoid bricking your farm.