... and while I can't say it was profitable - it isn't a web3 game after all - it was fun. At least most of the time. And I managed to finish all 69 tiers for the latest event, with more than 2 days to go! That was a relief, because when there were 16 days left I had 20 tiers to go and no idea how to manage, which made me feel stressed even though I shouldn't really care.
StreamRaiders, for those who don't know it, is game played on Twitch. No, that's not quite true. A lot of Twitch streamers run it, either as the only thing they do or as a background game to keep their viewers engaged, but you don't have to watch the streams to play since the actual game is run on its own website. You do need a Twitch account to be able to login though, and I prefer running the streams in the background to support the streamers even if I'm not actively listening or chatting. (Also, sometimes there are random giveaways just for being there...)
This will not be a comprehensive manual for how to play, since that would be too long and boring, and anyway nobody knows what the next event will be and what new rules and monsters/enemies will appear. It is simply meant as a short introduction with a few tips about what to do and not to do as a beginner. When you need more information, consult the wiki!
You start with three units in your army: Warrior, Tank and Archer, which are all at level 1. Placing a unit on a battlefield gains you a scroll for that unit - except for the legendary units, where you only gain scrolls from doing quests or reaching certain tiers in an event, and sometimes, rarely, from buying special chests with the ingame tokens you collect. When you have enough scrolls and gold you can level up that unit, which usually raises its attack or defense, upgrades its milestone skill at lvl 5, 10, 20 and 30, and lets you choose a special skill at lvl 20.
Until your units are higher level than the enemies - you can hover over the enemies on the battlefield to figure out their levels, and they differ from fight to fight and also depends on how many successful battles the captain has run - you'll probably do more harm than help by being in the front lines. Place your units at the back and be happy with the scrolls and potions you get for participating.
When you start you can only play with one captain, but unlocking more units will gain you up to two more slots, and for each of them you can place 1 unit every 5 minutes. If you buy a Battle Pass you can have a 4th captain, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you have got a few of your units to lvl 30 and unlocked spares, because you'll probably run out of units to place otherwise. Or, of course, if there are skin rewards you really want. More on skins later on.
Units can be divided into 4 rarities and 5 types. There are currently 27 different ones, and they all interact with each other in different ways, so clicking the Army tab in the game and reading up on what each of them does is a good idea.
Once a unit is placed it will take part in that battle, and you cannot place that unit in that or another battle until it has had a chance to rest. Common units need 10 minutes, Uncommon need 30, Rares take 60 minutes, and the Legendaries have to wait for 240 minutes.
Different units do better against certain enemies - by hovering over a unit when it's time for placing one in a battle you can see if there are any enemies available who are extra susceptible to that unit's attack. They will have a green sword on top.
Each battle takes 30 minutes (plus whatever waiting time while the streamer clicks to start the battle, claim rewards, and set up a new battlefield) which means you can put at most 6 of your units into one battle. Sometimes a streamer decides to start a battle early if they think there are enough units placed to beat that map. This can be good - you earn your reward chests faster - or bad - you meant to place a complementing unit to heal/assist/boost the ones you already placed and didn't get a chance to do that, and it messed up your plan for using those 30-minute cooldown units.
After a battle you'll get a reward chest, even if your side lost. The contents vary both depending on what kind of chest it is and how many battles you have fought for that particular captain, and of course how well your units did. Killing enemies or assisting friends gain you Epic Potions, which can be used to temporarily boost one of your units. You can gain at most 15 potions in one battle, apart from the chest rewards, and it takes 45 to use them. But you can only have 100, so don't be shy to use them when you are getting close to max. The chests can also contain gold and scrolls for all kinds of units except legendary, and this is the best way to unlock new units when starting to play.
The store contains Featured stuff - things you have to pay real money for, Scrolls which can be bought for gold. When starting you'll mostly need your gold for levelling up with the scrolls you have won, so don't buy everything you see, and don't click the "refresh now" button just to see what new scrolls are there. Then there's the meat section, where you can buy, well, meat. This is used to shorten the cooldown of units. Meat can sometimes be won in reward chests too.
And lastly there's skins. This is where you can pay fiat to dress up your units. You can filter by captain, unit, skin type... How much of what you pay for a skin goes to the streamer depends on the streamer's level. I have no idea if there's a way to see that, but I've heard it goes from 10% to 60%.
After all this rambling, I bet you wonder why I spent a whole month playing a game that is not even web3? Apart from the "I shall prove that I can do this without paying" aspect, which I admit was a huge motivation to stay awake and keep placing units just to gain the next tier, even when I ended up gaining nothing but the basic rewards since I was useless in a fight...
Skins!
For me this is the fun part of the game, trying to build a good-looking army! Every unit has a basic look, but you can buy, earn, or win skins to change their appearance. Some skins are given as rewards for reaching a certain tier in an event, others are given as Twitch drops for watching participating streams, or appear randomly in chests you buy with in game currencies. A lot of captains have their own skins which you can buy from the store, costing $5 or $10 depending on the type. There's also an option in the game for people to buy 1, 5 or even 10 skins and gift randomly to viewers of a captain's stream, so if you are lucky you may win something that way, just by having a stream going in the background!
Here are some of my favourite skins that I have won from streamer's giveaways, random gifts, completing enough tiers, or just hanging out in the right place at the right time:
Cheers to all who read this far. Maybe we'll join up in a StreamRaiders battle somewhere in the future :)