Since the dawn of man humans have been enthralled with dragons. Their desire to raise them, train them, and conquer and control them can be seen everywhere in past and present societies. Most recently, in Game of Thrones where Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, is revered for her three dragons.
Enter Dragon Mainland a new Gamefi platform that combines NFTs + DeFi + gaming encapsuled in a rich fully immersive 3D game. It also combines roguelike game features with map exploration and epic battles where player can “play to earn” tokens inside the Dragon Mainland ecosystem.
Surprisingly, during this NFT mania, there are still no NFT or Game projects in the theme of a dragon that have been very successful. Even when rock and TEXT themed NFTs are selling for tens of millions of dollars. On-chain games that combine NFTs and DeFi elements along with use the image of a dragon may be one of the next big trending events in this space.
01, Battle between dragons of 5 races
The first version of Dragon Mainland focuses on Dragon cultivation, breeding and fighting.
There are five races of dragons, namely the fire dragon, water dragon, rock dragon, storm dragon, and thunder dragon. Each race of dragons holds power over one other race. For example, as shown in the picture below, the fire dragons dominates thunder.
Each dragon is born with five basic combat attributes: Attack, Defense, Healthy, Speed, and Intelligence. The different races of have strengths and weaknesses in terms of these 5 attributes. For example, fire dragons rank higher for their attack capabilities but lower for their intelligence. Rock dragons are better at defense, but their speed is minimal. In addition, each dragon is born with 4 initial skills and 1 talent.
The dragons’ 5 combat attributes and 4 skills, as well as their mutual relationship, determines the outcome of each battle. This makes the game more enticing and engaging because both dragon’s combat attributes and skills are upgradable yet not every upgrade is 100% successful.
The upgrade of combat attributes costs dragon bones, which players can acquire through four methods: by burning DMS tokens, opening treasure boxes, and by purchasing dragon bones directly, and through special event rewards.
Every time a dragon absorbs a bone, 1 of its 5 combat attributes can be upgraded. However, the process of choosing which attribute is upgraded is random. Whether it’s the combat attribute that the player needs or not is what makes the game more interesting and fair.
Please note that dragon bones also have 5 combat attributes, namely fire, water, rock, wind and thunder, and dragons can only absorb bones with the same attribute. Dragon bones are divided into low, medium, and high levels, only the high-level bones can have the best effect when upgrading combat attributes.
In the game, every 5 dragon bones of the same attribute can also be integrated into a higher-level one. Whether to open a treasure box, buy a dragon bone directly, or absorb it after the bones are integrated, depends on each player’s own strategies.
The upgrade of dragon skills has the similar rule. With each dragon devoured, 1 of the 4 skills can be randomly upgraded. There is also a probability that the upgrade will go the way the player wants.
02, Find your own way to play the game, whether it’s through battle, trade, collection, or yield farming
It may sound complex, but it’s actually quite easy to play the game. The NFTs in the game, such as dragon bones, dragons, land, etc. players can be collected or exchanged in the Marketplace and if you’re selling hopefully for a profit.
Secondly, players play this game mainly to cultivate their dragons and fight against other dragons. In this process, players need to constantly absorb dragon bones and devour dragons to upgrade their dragons’ combat attributes and skills.
Randomness and deflation, equal participation and assets appreciation
We cannot skip two main features of the game here. One is the mechanism of randomness that meets the players’ need to pay for upgrading, the other is the mechanism of deflation, which determines that the game assets will not be redundant.
The mechanism of randomness
As mentioned above, to upgrade dragons’ combat attribute, players need to absorb dragon bones. However, there are probability if the player can get a high-level dragon bone or not, and if the bone can be absorbed and the dragon attribute can be upgraded as desired.
This requires the player to purchase dragon bones in the Marketplace, integrate dragon bones into higher-level ones, or directly purchase and absorb high-level dragon bones, so as to get the dragon attributes upgraded and to win battles.
If the player chooses to get dragon bones through burning Dragon Mainland Shards or DMS tokens and opening treasure boxes, which are actually blind boxes, the possibility that the player can get high-level bones is quite small.
As introduced in the white paper, dragon bones in treasure boxes are random in terms of attribute and level, and the possibility of getting a high-level bone is much lower than getting medium-and-low-level ones. The probability of getting a high-level dragon bone with the same attribute through opening treasure boxes is much less than 1/15.
Secondly, the process of dragon bone absorption is random too. The dragon bone will randomly upgrade 1 of the 5 combat attributes. For every attribute, the probability is the same. But, as for how much to improve, it is also random and it is limited to different ranges for different attributes.
It’s even more random during the process of breeding. What attributes and skills the offspring dragons inherit depends on entirely on chance. Whether genes mutate positively is a matter of luck. In addition, in battles, the randomness of the rival dragon also affects the outcome.
Randomness makes the game more fair and playable. On the one hand, the story of Dragon Mainland becomes more unpredictable and can evolve in many more directions. On the other hand, it’s really hard to become a top player because it can cost a lot of money and relies on a player’s wisdom and strategy. The more challenging the game is, the greater sense of accomplishment the top players will feel.
The mechanism of deflation
How many times each individual dragon can breed is limited. The more times a dragon is bred the more tokens it will cost. Low-quality dragons can be devoured to improve the skills of high-quality dragons. Low-and-medium level dragon bones can be integrated into high-level ones. Dragon bones can be absorbed to improve the combat attributes of dragons……all of these help keep the game assets fully recyclable and non-redundant.
Tokens will be used in many scenarios, thus not redundant too. There are 2 kinds of tokens in this game. The ecological token which is DMS, and Dragon Miracle Potion or DMP which is required for breeding. The process of dragon cultivation and breeding consumes both tokens, for example, in the process of dragon bones absorption and dragon devouring.
In addition, DMS will be used in scenarios like opening treasure boxes, purchasing game assets, and yield farming, etc. The team of Dragon Mainland will also use part of the fees from Marketplace to buy back and lock up DMS.
Thus, unlike Axie Infinity, where Axie and SLP assets may overflow, Dragon Mainland has many scenes of asset consumption and a recycling mechanism, so there is less possibility that assets will overflow and easily lose their value.
In summary, the randomness of Dragon Mainland and the setting of the deflation mechanism have produced an effect of 1+1 greater than 2. The strong randomness of the game brings much more excitement and fairness keeping players on their toes. These game attributes should also help increase its widespread adoption with a larger group of players. Its unique asset deflation mechanism ensures the balance of the game state which guarantees the sustainability of playing and earning, and helps potentially enhance and protect the player’s earnings.
As we all know, computing capacity of blockchains is limited, even highly scalable blockchains have limited computing capacities. Preventing asset redundancy and preserving asset values has become an important initiative for games, on-chain applications, and ecologies.
Dragon Mainland also incorporates DeFi elements such as staking incentives. It integrates a series of smart contracts containing optimized yield farming strategy, allowing players to earn passive income while playing the game.
By staking the DMS and LP tokens, players will be rewarded with a portion of the exchange fees from Marketplace, as well as DMS token. In addition, dragons in the game can also be used as a multiplier when calculating staking rewards.
According to the official roadmap, Dragon Mainland will also introduce virtual land, metaverse concept in the V2 version. Dragon Mainland will gradually unleash the power of NFT, DeFi, encompassed in a blockchain game in a way that’s never been seen before. For those wanting to get involved now the good news is that their pre-sale of genesis dragon eggs will be launched in October. The total quantity of genesis dragon eggs is 10,000. Please check their website: https://dragonmainland.io/
If your are interested in their project, pls check info:
Website: https://dragonmainland.io/#/home
Twitter：http://twitter.com//DragonMainland
Telegram: https://t.me/dragon_mainland
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQaTBCOp-KZ-lgH9V6BJo7Q