STATE OF THE DAPPS
I’m so glad that @dapplovers and State Of The DApps announced another great task to review one of the featured DApps in the list on their website. Personally, I’m a big fan of these tasks, they have challenged me to discover new DApps. If it wasn’t for these tasks, I’d probably not find out about all these great DApps that are to be found on the blockchains. In this case, I've chosen to review a DApp I've been using for a few months already though, and this one is not new to me at all. In fact, I use Steemmonsters on a daily basis!
STEEMMONSTERS
I think that every Steemit member has heard about Steemmonsters, even if you aren't playing it yourself. Steemmonsters is a collectable card game that runs on the Steem blockchain, but you can also play it without being active on Steemit. You do need a Steemit account to play, but if you don't have a Steemit account yet, you can get one for free when you buy your starter pack. You play with collectable cards that you buy/trade or win by playing in ranked battles or tournaments. The founders of @steemmonsters are @yabapmatt and @aggroed.
I have been holding cards before the game was released, without even knowing what to expect. Once the game was launched, I totally missed that, and it took me a few seasons before I actually started playing. Since I started I've been playing the game daily because it's a fun game.
In this review I will not talk about how to play the game, but I will point out where to find all the information you need to learn how to play the game. Although I'm a player in the Diamond League at the moment, I still have a lot to learn myself, and personally I learn these things best by just trying out things myself, with some tips from experienced players. To me that's more effective than reading endless explanations about gameplay. I would advise you to click on the how to play button on the Steemmonsters website, which you also have access to when you're not logged in or have a steemit account yet.
I will also explain what the Steemmonsters website has to offer and how to use the internal card market.
GETTING STARTED
The first thing someone needs to do before you can start playing Steemmonsters, is buying a starter package for $10. To do this, go to the Steemmonsters website and click on Buy on the top of your screen.
You will now have the option to purchase a starter package. Important: Having a Starter Pack is the minimum requirement to play the game. Even if someone gives you some cards, having a Starter Pack is required. They are available by purchase, or if you are very luck: by Promo code.
As you can see in the image above, you can get a starter package by redeeming a promo code if you have been gifted one, or use a credit card/paypal, but if you prefer to pay with crypto (TRX, STEEM, SBD, BTC, ETH, BNB + more) this is possible as well. If you don't have a Steemit account yet, you can get one for free with your starter pack by selecting create account.
BOOSTERPACKS are packs with 5 cards you can buy for $2 (per package). These packs contain Beta cards, that you can add to your collection.
To purchase these, click on buy on the left top of your screen again as shown in the image above, and select the amount of packages you would like to buy. After that you select your prefered payment method. After you finished the payment you can click on open on the top of your screen.
You will be able to open the cards here:
As you can see, I don't have any packs to open, but after purchasing them, you will be able to open the cards. Once opened they are shown in your collection.
Click on the collection button, to go to your collection:
From here you can see your cards, and if you have more than 1 of a card, you can choose to combine them to level them up. It's also possible to send cards to other people, or to put them in the market (which I will discuss later).
PLAYING RANKED BATTLES
If you're a new player, you start at the bottom league, which is called novice, by earning points if you win battles, you rank up. After novice comes bronze, silver, gold, diamond and champion.
By clicking at the current league your in (in the image above the Diamond 1 image), you can see how many points you need to rank up, and how all the leagues are divided. To start a ranked battle, click on the ranked button below:
When you start a ranked battle, the system is going to find an opponent that is in the same league as you are, so you can fight against each other. The ruleset changes/alternates randomly for each game you play, and some splinters (teams or "colors") may not be available. Don't worry if you don't see a certain summoner (team captain), this is probably because that splinter wasn't available for this battle. Again, for explanation about the game, please use the how to play button.
REWARDS
By playing Steemmonsters, you will earn different rewards. The first thing you will notice will be the Daily Quest rewards, which you can earn by playing a different quest every 24 hours. You can see which cards are reward cards by going to your collection or the market, and filter the cards by Edition "R". You can also filter the cards by splinter, regular/gold and even by common/rare/epic/legendary.
On the left you see edition, if you click the left button, you will see the alpha edition cards, the second one shows you beta edition cards (those that you can find in the booster packs), the third one shows promo cards (that have been given out by campaigns like Kickstarter), and the right button shows the reward cards that you can earn by completing your daily quests, and end of season rewards.
Your daily quest is basically an assignment to win 5 battles with a certain splinter. You can recognize which splinter your quest is by reading the info where you find your quest.
As you can see, I already finished mine, but in 17 hours and some minutes I will get a new one. If the assignment talks about Lyanna, then you have to win 5 battles with the earth splinter. Zintar is the death splinter, Alric is the water splinter, Malric the fire splinter and Tyrus the life splinter. As soon as you won 5 battles, you will see a button to claim your rewards.
The image above shows how much cards you will be rewarded for every time you rank up or complete a quest in a certain league. The higher your league, the more reward cards you will receive. The cards can be regular cards, but also gold cards.
On the right top of your screen you will see something similar to the image above, showing how many cards you will receive at the end of a season. This amount is always equal to the amount of the highest league you have reached during the season. Once season has ended, there will be a reset of points for every player, the info for every league about season reset can be found by clicking on your current league. See image below, where you can then select the league that you would like to see the information about.
PLAYING TOURNAMENTS
Another way to play the game, and to earn rewards, is by playing tournaments. You can find them by clicking on the tournaments button.
The list of tournaments is easy to understand, you can see the first tournament that will be played, followed by the next on, and so on. You can filter them by different rules like gold cards only, alpha cards only etc. Once you found one you want to play, you just click on the green enter button to sign up.
TIP: Make sure you turn on desktop notifications so that you won't miss a tournament, you can also add the tournament to your calendar. Turning on desktop notifications (and changing other settings) can be done by clicking your name on the right top of you screen:
Then you will see:
If you enabled desktop notifications, you will get a pop-up on the right bottom of your screen to warn you 15 minutes before the tournament starts. It's important that you check in to a tournament before it starts, otherwise you're automatically removed from the tournament!
You will see this pop-up on the right bottom of your screen when it's time to check in:
Click on the pop up to be redirected to the tournament:
Just click on check in, and then you wait until the tournament starts. You can see the countdown timer by clicking on Arena. As soon as the tournament starts you will see this screen:
The rest speaks for itself. Some tournaments start with a qualifier round, but sometimes you have a free pass to the next round. If you have to play or not will be shown in the tournament screen. Gameplay in tournaments can be quite different from playing ranked battles, so don't feel bad if you can't make it far in a tournament when you haven't had any experience in them yet, practice makes perfect!
Steemmonsters Market
Next to playing Steemmonsters, there also is an Internal market to buy and sell Steemmonster cards. Click on the Market button to go to the market:
When you click on that button, you will see this:
You can see all the cards and filter them by splinter or sort. If you click on a card, you will see this:
You can select which one you want to buy, by looking at the level and price as market in the red box above. You mark the box in front of the card you want to buy, and then select how you want to pay by selecting steem, sbd or trx.
You will then be redirected to Steemconnect to finish your payment. Once the payment has been made, you will see the card(s) in your collection. Some cards may be in cooldown, if they have been played with recently, you can recognize these by the little clock next to your card in the list:
If this is the case you can just put your mouse on the clock to see how long the cooldown will last. While you will not be able to use the card in cooldown playing ranked games, the card in cooldown is available playing in a tournament.
If you want to sell a card yourself, you can do this by going to the card in your collection.
Select the box, and then click on the button as I've marked in the image above. There you can fill in the price you want to sell the card for, and confirm. After that it will be shown in the list of cards that's for sale on the market.
CONCLUSION
I still enjoy playing Steemmonsters every day, and I'm very curious to see which new cards will be introduced, and how the game will evolve in the (near) future. The website looks nice, and works pretty smooth most of the times. The only thing that I don't like is the fact that there don't seem to be enough players to battle against sometimes.
I’ve noticed that it takes more time to find an opponent while trying to play a ranked battle. First I assumed it was due to the fact that I started the new season in Diamond, instead of Gold or Silver, like the previous season kick-offs. But, then I fell back into Gold 1, and it took just as much time to find opponents, plus I even got the notification that there was no other player available. This is a bit concerning. A few seasons ago I was super frustrated playing against a lot of bots, especially that life team that seemed to beat everyone (the other players probably all know what team I'm talking about). But after a while, I started to appreciate the bots, because they made sure that there were opponents around the clock. As I’m located in Europe, a lot of players aren’t around during the hours that I’m awake, as they are located on the other side of the world.
Although I play Steemmonsters on a daily base, I don’t always keep track on what’s going on behind the scenes. Therefor I don’t know if they banned out the bot accounts, or that this is happening more often due to another reason that I'm not aware of.
But overall, I'm very happy with the game, and I will probably be playing a lot more battles in the future.
RATING
I give Steemmonsters a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating.
Disclaimer
This is not financial advice, nor a guarantee or promise in regards to any result that may be obtained from using the above content. The information provided here is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered as financial and/or investment advice. No person should make any kind of financial decision without first consulting their own financial adviser and/or conducting their own research and due diligence.