Hello Friends

"Until one has loved an Axie, a part of one's soul remains unawakened" by Anatole France (edited)

Axie Infinity is a crypto game, which I have just started playing around 1-2 months ago; but I have completely fallen in love with it. It's the kind of game which I envisioned on blockchain, but never found. A game which is fun, cute, full of innovative features, relaxing and still very competitive.

Axie Infinity revolves around cute but powerful fictional pets called Axies. An Axie is a combination of different parts of a bug, bird, beast, reptile, plant and aquatic animals. Sometimes things like sandals are also included as body parts!! And some Axies can have man made bionic parts as well. So basically it is a chimera that looks surprisingly cuter than a kitten!

And Axies are not your typical pets, which just jump around to get your love and attention. They can also protect you, in case someone tries to umm...say, pull your pants down. Axies certainly don't tolerate that.

More about Axies

Axie Class and parts

An Axie can have one of out of six different base classes. There are more classes, but as of now they are undiscovered. So currently an Axie can have aquatic, plant and beast as common base classes; while reptile, bird and bug as rare classes. And then as I mentioned earlier, an Axie can have different parts from different classes. These parts are eyes, ears, mouth, horn, back and tail. Of course there are other characteristics like color, body shape, body patterns also. All this info is stored in an Axie's genes and are passed over to the offsprings when Axies mate. That's basically something like Cryptokitties but with more parts, cuteness, part utility and much much less breeding fees.

Pure Axies:

In very rare cases, an Axie can have all six parts same as the base class. For example a plant Axie having all 6 parts as plant parts. This kind of Axie is called a pure Axie and breeding 2 different pure Axies can result in the discovery of a totally new class.

Axie Breeding and growth stages:

Axies require a minimum of 300 EXP to start breeding. With each breeding EXP costs rise so that players can't just spam the market with Axies like they did with Cryptokitties. Every Axie is born with 400 EXP. Axies can get EXP by fighting in the matches. Each win adds 100 EXP and a loss adds 30 EXP. Also later minigames, quests, Axie care activities will allow Axies to gain even more EXP.

When an Axie is born it starts with egg stage. It's basically an egg in some sort of advanced incubator. After that we have larvae stage, where Axie is like a blob of flesh which can just jump up and down. Then comes the Petite stage. This is like froglet stage of frogs where you can get an indication of how they will look after full development. And last is Axie stage, which is full formed Axie with all it's parts bursting with life!

Axie Battles

Battle is a feature which has been recently added to the game. Battles are still being run on Rinkeby Test network so as to test them without having to spend real ETH for gas transactions and battle fees. Later the battles will run on main network and then on Loom sidechain. Loom sidechain will allow for almost free and instant battle transactions. So that players don't have to wait for transaction confirmations to battle. This is also one big advantage of Axie Infinity. For crypto games to be really successful, they need to be fast and not involve any extra charges like gas fees. And Axie Infinity definitely knows that!

So what happens is that you gather a team of 3 Axies and fight them against other players. Choosing your Axies, their position in battles and the ordering of their moves plays a very important role in the game.

Choosing your Axies is important because Axies have various different combos, stats, parts. For example, you can make up a team of 3 Axies with horn parts and they'll get a pretty decent attack bonus. or you can choose an Axie which has many parts of a single type, say owl and it will have more attack/defense/crit/speed bonus. Some Axies also have special parts called mystic parts. These Axies are highly desirable as their parts can be evolved to legendary levels. Normal parts can only be evolved to rare levels. Again, EXP is used for that, so use EXP judiciously!

Position of Axies means how you place them in the battlefield. In general the front Axie receives the damage until it dies. So you'd want an Axie with high HP or defense to be the front Axie. Behind it you can have healer, high damage dealing, speedy or crit dealing Axies.

Ordering of moves is also important. In Axie Infinity same move can be an attack and defense move. So if an Axie is attacking it is using a move. Later when it is being attacked it may use that same move as a defense move. So ordering is important. You won't want to have a healing move as a first move as it would be wasted.

The matches are pretty quick and are not live turn based battles. So you choose your team, arrange their position and moves and send a battle transaction. You Axies are now queued for the battle. When there is a match available, your Axies will fight and the result will be shown in your battle dashboard. After that just click on replay and enjoy the Axie battle. Some users prefer live matches where they can make strategies on the battle ground itself. Axie Infinity is considering that option also and may implement it near future. For example in PVE matches. PVE is something which has yet to be revealed and released, but it'll be there.

Just yesterday, top 16 players from the leaderboard were chosen for a tournament which will start on September 2nd at 5 PM CEST. All these 16 players will get 5 MEO tokens each, which can be redeemed for an Axie egg. Winners will get some cool prizes in this first ever Axie Infinity tournament.
1st place: Trophy Terrarium Item and .5 ETH

2nd place: .3 ETH

3rd place: .2 ETH

Finally competitive tournaments have started in crypto games!! And even though very soon a few more crypto games will launch their tournaments, but we can safely say that Axie Infinity is the first to do so.

My Team in Qualification phase

I also participated in the qualification round, but got rank 22. Once I managed to get to rank 9, but smarter players outdid me pretty quickly! Well, I am sure there will be many more tournaments and I will probably win one of them.

Terrariums

These are basically Axie aquarium kind of concept. So you can place your Axies in these terrariums, add different items for decorations or utility and take care of your Axies. For example bath them, pat them etc. Of course, this will make your Axies happier and gain more EXP.

"Money can buy you a fine Axie, but only love can make him wag his tail" by Kinky Friedman (edited)

As per Jihoz, the community manager and growth hacker at Axie Infinity,

I am more excited for terrariums, even more than fights!

So I think terrariums will really help in making Axie Infinity even more interesting for players. There are many crypto games which work on the concept of digital pets but I think that currently Axie Infinity is the only crypto game which really implements it. I have even heard of plans to add AR/VR to Axie Infinity later down the road.

But for now, we have these bubbly cute but ferocious Axies that can breed, fight, evolve and provide you with the "shitless" pet experience!

Giveaway time!!!

So as you know, my crypto game articles don't end without some good giveaways. I personally believe that doing giveaways is the best thing that you can do to encourage people to interact and adopt a product or service. You don't have to believe my words to know how good Axie Infinity is. Just experience it yourself!!

This time I am doing a giveaway of 3 Axies, which is basically 1/3rd of my Axies. It's a bit hard to let go my precious Axies, but I really want people to see and play Axie Infinity. You don't have to keep dabbling with random crypto collectibles which don't really innovate but just implement, "greater fool concept". Crypto games have evolved to the level of mainstream games and we should all be a part of this evolution.

How to participate in this giveaway?

1) Go to webpage: https://axieinfinity.com/encyclopedia?stage=4

2) Choose any Axie listed and take a screenshot.

3) Now comes the main part. Write a small story, haiku, poem or just why you like that particular Axie. You can either post this in comment or make a new post. I'll prefer good rhyming poems in separate posts!! Don't forget to add the pic of that Axie.

4) I'll choose 3 winners after this post payout. That is, a week from now. All Axies are of equal rarity, EXP etc. But of course parts and stats are different and that's totally up to you on how to make best use of them. I'll suggest buy 2 more Axies and start battling. But if you wish you can just interact with them or even sell them. They'll be truly yours! 😉

Important rules for this contest:

1) Upvote and resteem this post.

2) As always, please make sure you have Metamask installed in your browser and have some ETH for gas transactions. It's very important and without it you can't really play with these Axies.

3) Post your Metamask address in the comment section along with your entry. If you are making a separate post (preferable), then don't forget to add it's link in the comment section. Otherwise I'll never be able to know.....

4) Single entry per Steemian. So choose your best poison!

5) Don't be a cheater! Always create original content.

That's it. Plain simple rules. I'll end this post here. Wanted to write so much more, but I guess it's already way too long!! Hope you will enjoy this fun contest and participate in it. Feel free to tell your friends about it. If I witness really high level of participation, then I may even add more Axies to the prize pool. Good Luck!