“In this day and age, you can actually Play To Earn, Dad!”
Emma’s voice had gotten louder and more exasperated, and I could no longer hear the soft scritch-scritch of my pencil on paper.
“Who’s going to pay you to play games? Where’s the money coming from? Sheesh, it sounds like voodoo, Emma, but I’ll take your word for it.” I turned my attention back to my artwork.
"Thank you...
...So will you help me get started with Farming Tales?”
“Honey, you know I’m happy to help, but no one’s stopping you from ‘playing to earn’ or whatever. I don’t get what the problem is, why don’t you just go to farmingtales.io and play? I may be old but I know how to use a computer, it’s a browser-based game, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s a pretty new game and getting started can be confusing! At least, it is for me. I asked Cassie and Mia, because we’re all already on at least one blockchain, but neither of them could figure it out either.”
Emma, my daughter, wanted to play Farming Tales, but was clearly having some trouble, so, it’s ‘Dad to the rescue’ once again, I guess.
“I’ll point out that you’re interrupting my art time. I could be creating the next Mona Lisa here, that would make us all rich and famous. Are you telling me you want me to put my pencil down and dedicate my afternoon to helping you play Farming Tales?”
“Yes, and I’ll counter with this:
Farming Tales is the only game that connects the modern power of crypto, blockchains, and NFTs to the traditional, tangible value of real-world farmers.
And many of these farmers have been struggling since the pandemic, so playing Farming Tales doesn’t just let me earn money, it lets me support and invest in real-life farmers doing the work of filling our grocery stores. Humanity’s food source is pretty important, right? So Farming Tales isn’t just a game, it’s a vital social movement, possibly rivaling your upcoming Mona Lisa.” Emma grinned cheekily.
“You make a compelling case, Em. Fine, I’ll help you. Let me explore Farming Tales and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
The sun’s golden rays lit up the breakfast table as I enjoyed my bagel, and Emma was animatedly asking for the results of my Farming Tales exploration.
“Em, dear, can’t you wait until I’m done with my bagel and newspaper?”
“No! I wanna play so bad, tell me how please!”
“Ok, fine. Here goes: First you girls aren’t even on the right blockchain.”
“We aren’t?”
“Nope. Farming Tales does plan to integrate with the Hive blockchain so that Hivers can play it easily, but for now…
…You must have a crypto wallet on the WAX Blockchain in order to play Farming Tales.”
“Ohhhhh, is it easy to get one?”
“Mostly, yes, but some people may hit some snags from what I gathered yesterday. For example, I easily registered for a free Wax Cloud Wallet at all-access.wax.io, just by entering a username, password, and clicking ‘Sign Up’ or whatever. But…"
“But what?”
“Some people’s browsers might have an ‘adblock’ plugin that causes problems with that. Some people don’t ‘trust’ cloud wallets (but they could use an Anchor soft wallet instead). Some people don’t remember their wallet address. And most people will probably encounter a similar problem to me.” I pointed at my chest and made a ‘serious’ face to emphasize my point.
“OMG Dad what happened?” Emma’s eyes were cartoon-wide.
“My wallet remained empty. I couldn’t buy any WAXP tokens for it.”
Emma cleared her throat. “I assume WAXP is the main token on the WAX blockchain?”
“Correct, smarty-pants.”
“Is it really a big deal that your wallet’s empty?”
“Yep, because all actions on the WAX blockchain (and in Farming Tales) cost tiny amounts of WAXP.”
“Oh, yeah, just like when I joined other blockchains, I’ll quickly run out of ‘resource credits’ or whatever and every time I click or type on that blockchain, I’ll get an error.”
“Exactly.”
“So how do we buy some WAXP?”
“There’s a few ways to do it. You can login to your Wax Dashboard and click the ‘Buy WAXP’ button. You can acquire some WAXP on a crypto exchange, then transfer or deposit it into your Wax Cloud Wallet. Maybe other ways too. But however you choose to do it:
You must get some WAXP tokens into a crypto wallet on the WAX blockchain…
…and I should mention people sometimes just shorten WAXP token to just ‘WAX’.”
“Well, you eventually got it done, right?”
“Unfortunately not yet honey. I logged into my free Wax Cloud Wallet Dashboard, saw my account was 0.00, and so I clicked the big ‘Buy WAXP’ button. It popped up a window with many different ways to deposit WAXP into my wallet. It gave me options like MoonPay, Crypto.com, and more, but even with all these options I still don’t have any WAXP tokens in my Cloud Wallet.”
“What?! It’s been an entire day and you couldn’t buy tokens?”
“You got it. Because we’re in Canada, many of the traditional methods of buying WAXP haven’t worked for me. People in other countries may have similar issues if they’re not familiar with the cryptosphere. For example, MoonPay or SimplePay are great services to buy WAXP, but only available in the United States.”
“Lame.”
“Bittrex is what I normally use since it’s worldwide and lists so many cryptocurrencies for exchange, but for most of December many of its currencies have been ‘down for maintenance’, so I can’t exchange HIVE for WAXP like I wanted to.”
“Seriously? A month-long maintenance? Right when I want to play? They’re a Digital Exchange! What if people want to buy or sell crypto?”
“Crypto is a new field, Em, and there’s lots of bugs to work out with new things. Don’t worry, it’ll get smoother. One day you’ll be able to join any blockchain or pay-to-earn game with a click of a button, but for now, let’s be kind, patient, and work through the growing pains, eh?”
“You’re right, my bad, I just really wanna play.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out. I was going to use Binance, because it’s a massively popular Crypto Exchange and if they ever have maintenance it’s kept quite short.”
“Sounds like Binance is perfect? Let’s do it!”
“Right, but unfortunately Binance has had regulatory issues in some States and with the Ontario government, and is being forced to close down in Ontario.”
“What?? One of the most famous crypto exchanges is unavailable for us? Is everything against us getting some damn WAX tokens?”
“Hey! Watch your tone miss, we just agreed to be patient and kind and work through this, didn’t we?”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“C’mon Em, I thought you’d been getting more mature and level-headed recently.”
“I know but Farming Tales looks so cute! I saw a teaser of it on YouTube and you have this cute lil 3D farmer running around on a 3D farm managing food and water for your animals and crops, earning epic yields, it looks so fun! I’m just over-emotional, I’ll be chill, promise.”
“Thank you miss. Now, rumor has it Binance will overcome this restriction and be back in Ontario, but I went back to Bittrex since it’s my favorite, most comfortable, most familiar exchange. Plus it’s one of the officially supported exchanges on wax.io.
Basically, I reached out to them and asked my digital exchange for help with buying WAXP.”
“You’ve always taught me that it’s ‘a blessing to the world when we ask for help,’ right?”
“Right, and Bittrex did help me! They told me to Wire Transfer some US Dollars from my bank into my BIttrex account, then use those funds to buy WAXP directly. That way I’d have some WAXP, and I could worry about transferring it into my Wax Cloud Wallet afterwards.”
“Sounds good, so did you do it?”
“Almost, wire transfers take 10 days and I have to visit the bank in person.”
“Ugh, who actually does stuff in person in 2022?” Emma rolled her eyes.
“‘I know, right?’” I mimicked something Emma often says. “But we’re creative. We need WAXP tokens to play Farming Tales, and all the digital exchanges have been making it tricky to buy WAX for us Canadians, so what does the Brown Family do when faced with challenges?”
“We solve them, fast!”
“Exactly. So I did. I contacted a friend of mine, @phage93 , and asked if he’d kindly trade me some WAXP for some HIVE. I checked the Hive-To-Wax conversion rate. I logged into my Hive Wallet and sent him some tokens. He logged into his Wax Wallet and sent a matching amount to my WAX Address (which I got from my WAX Dashboard), and voila, my Wax Cloud Wallet balance now says I own 341.00 WAXP.”
“Wait, how much WAX do I need to get started in Farming Tales?”
“I did a surprising amount of research on this just to find out. If you ask most Farming Tales players, they’ll just tell you ‘it depends on the market’, which is technically true, because by the time I’m done explaining this to you, WAXP prices and Farming Tales NFT prices may have changed drastically, just like any cryptocurrency.”
“Dad, I can’t tell Cass and Mia to play with me, then tell them I have no clue how much they’ll have to spend!”
“I know, my love, but ‘chill’, as you girls say. Since WAXP debuted as a crypto currency, its price has hovered around $0.50 USD. That may change, but you can ballpark the price of WAXP tokens at about two tokens for one US dollar.”
“OK, that helps a bit, but I still don’t know what to tell Mia and Cassie.They’re just students with part-time jobs…
…Do they need to be rich to play Farming Tales?”
“Nope. When I last checked you could buy a ‘White Goose’ NFT for about 66 WAX, and now we’ll test your grade 3 math: given our usual WAX price of $0.50 USD, how much money would a goose in Farming Tales cost you today, darling daughter?”
“66 divided by 2…” Emma muttered under her breath “...thirty-three US bucks!”
“Exactly, nice to see you learned something in the schools I paid for.”
“Hey! Be nice!” I stuck my tongue out at Emma, but let her continue. “So I can tell the girls they only need thirty-three dollars to get started?”
“Nope, because…
Getting started in Farming Tales requires at least one ‘animal’ and one ‘building’ to shelter the animal.”
“Ah, and how much does that cost? Wait, let me guess, ‘it depends on the market’ yadda yadda.” Em’s voice became nasal and high-pitched, a parody of a ‘typical geek’ you might see on Saved By The Bell or in the old movie Revenge Of The Nerds.
I ignored her joke. “Actually Em, buying a ‘Geese Shelter’ NFT to shelter your Goose isn’t much at all, just 69 WAX.”
“Which is about $34.50 USD at current market prices, so I could tell Mia and Cassie that the animal and building combo together would cost them about… thirty-three plus thirty-five… 68 USD!”
“Yes, depending on the market. And you should know that one Goose and one Shelter may not be the best investment, but technically they’re a cheap way to get started. Personally I highly, highly, highly recommend starting with a ‘rare’ animal and a ‘rare’ building combo, because ‘common’ animal/building combos can actually lose you money in today’s Farming Tales market.”
“Oh, good to know. Are there better ways to get started if I’m willing to spend more?”
“Yes, I believe a few ‘rare leghorn hens’ with a ‘rare chicken coop’ yields better results for beginners, but that animal+building combo costs about double the WAX–”
“--depending on the market, right?”
“Right, haha. And if you’re serious about Farming Tales you could invest in quite a few animals and buildings to start, Goats, Cows, Bees, etc. You could probably even go ‘vegetarian’ and mostly garden, but I haven’t really looked into it.”
“OK cool, so it sounds like right now, in today’s market, it’s about $70 USD to get started playing Farming Tales and get your first animal + building NFT, but I might want to invest double that to get a rare hen + coop to truly jumpstart my Farming Tales gaming experience and get better yields, correct?”
“Correct! You’re a quick-learner!”
Emma blushed adorably. “Yes, I totally am. But why did you have your friend send you 341 WAX?”
“Ah, good question, well a) because I wanted to ‘game right’ and start with a ‘chicken + coop’, and b) because it’s not just the animal and building that will be draining my Wax Wallet. Can you guess what else I’ll have to pay for in WAX as I click around and perform transactions on the WAX blockchain, Em?”
“Ummmm… I’m wracking my brain but I honestly can’t imagine what else. Food for the animals?”
“Yes! That’s one thing that will actually cost CBITs, an in-game currency, but you’re right because many players do end up purchasing some CBITs with WAX. Still, there’s something else WAX is vital for, and a Hive veteran like yourself should be able to guess it.”
“I’ve no idea!”
“Here’s a hint: ‘Resource Credits.’” I made ‘airquotes’ symbols with my fingers so she’d know I was hinting that WAX is used in Farming Tales similarly to how Hive uses ‘Resource Credits.’ I could see the wheels turning in Emma’s head and the a-ha moment when she got it.
Emma’s eyes lit up, “Ohhh, gas fees! Transaction fees!
Farming Tales, just like any dApp on the blockchain requires RAM, CPU, and Network Bandwidth…
…so everyone has to pay gas fees on every transaction on the blockchain!”
“Bingo. So I set aside some WAX for my animal, my building, food & water, and lastly, for gas fees that I’ll need to cover RAM, CPU, and Network Bandwidth.”
“That makes so much sense, and if we want a good gaming experience we’ll definitely want our Wax Cloud Wallet to be topped up so we’re not met with weird errors and transaction limits as we play.”
“Exactly, when I first started I got errors left and right, mostly because I didn’t have enough WAX staked into the CPU. I fixed it by going to my Wallet Dashboard -> Resources Section, and I went crazy. I probably only needed 50 more WAX staked, but I went overboard, staking about 500 more WAX into the CPU, just so I’d never have to worry about errors again, haha. Anyway, the point is, after I finally got a healthy amount of WAX in my Cloud Wallet to actually play and login to Farming Tales. I was ready to start my farm.”
“Hooray! Is it easy?”
“Well, yes and no. You have to realize it’s a very new game that just graduated out of ‘alpha’ into a ‘live beta test’ where people like you and I can play.”
“Oh no, you’re telling me there’s lots of bugs, right?”
“Not exactly. The game is pretty solid, but some things are unpolished or a bit tricky to navigate if you don’t have a teacher to guide you. Still lots of people are playing it and it’s player base is growing fast, so it’s totally doable. Sometimes figuring things out is part of the fun, and even helps you connect with others and make friends as you Google and ask around about Farming Tales. I bet you, Mia, and Cassie would bond over it.”
“OK, well can you make it easier for us?”
“I’ll do my best. For example, when I first went to the Farming Tales website, farmingtales.io, I clicked ‘login’ and it didn’t work. I was getting frustrated until I discovered it’s best to click the ‘Play Now’ button on farmingtales.io, which will then load the game and take you to the Farming Tales title screen, and that’s where you ‘login.’”
“Yeah, knowing little quirks like that makes it easier. So you bought your WAX and ta-da, now you’re ready to play! You’re in-game?”
“Technically you can click play now, then login, then ‘connect to your cloud wallet’ and you’ll be in-game, able to run around a 3D farm. You can do that part even without any WAX I believe, but you can’t actually do anything. And there’s no real point running around Farming Tales if you haven’t bought your first animal and building yet, in my opinion.”
“Oh, well you have enough WAX for those in your Cloud Wallet, where do you buy the ‘animal’ and ‘building’ NFTs? Inside the game?”
“You can buy them inside the game, but I’ve had issues with that sometimes.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I tried to buy something from the in-game marketplace instead of AtomicHub and once it said not enough CPU/RAM/Gas Fees, and another time it said ‘no wallet recognized’ – probably because I hadn’t set up the right wallet or something. Point is, I prefer to buy them on WAX’s NFT Marketplace, called AtomicHub. It seems smoother and easier.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hol’ up. Are you telling me…
…I need to learn my WAX Dashboard, Farming Tales itself, and AtomicHub’s NFT Marketplace too?”
“Yes, personally, I keep all 3 tabs open while I’m playing Farming Tales. It’s way easier than it sounds though, and once you have enough WAX in your wallet and you’re happy with your animals & buildings, you could close two of the tabs. And it’s just a couple clicks to top up your cloud wallet or buy from the marketplace, no big deal.”
“Hmm, ok. So did you buy your animal and building from AtomicHub?”
“I did. First I went to wax.atomichub.io/market and I saw the big ‘login’ button in the top right corner. I figured I’d have to create an account, but I clicked ‘login’ and AtomicHub popped up a window asking me if I’d like to login with my Wax Cloud Wallet, so I did, it popped up an ‘approval’ window, I clicked approve, and bam– I was now logged into the AtomicHub NFT Marketplace.”
“Great, I hate having to sign-up for multiple accounts.”
“Same here. Anyway, now I was on the AtomicHub Marketplace page, and it presented me with a listing of thousands of random NFTs from the Wax Blockchain.”
“But we want Farming Tales NFTs, don’t we?”
“Yes, and AtomicHub makes this easy to find by giving us a ‘Filters’ sidebar.”
“What’’s a ‘filters sidebar’?”
“It’s where you can set filters for what NFTs you want the Marketplace to show you. Want only Rare NFTs? Click the ‘rare’ filter. Want only Farming Tales NFTs? Click the ‘farmingtales’ filter. AtomicHub has lots of other features, but the filter bar is basically all you need. Personally, I use the filters to find animals of 'rare' status, since common animals aren't too profitable.”
“Ah, makes sense. So I assume you looked through the list of filters, found ‘farmingtales’ and clicked it?”
“I did, and AtomicHub immediately displayed all NFTs from the ‘farmingtales’ collection. I should mention that you can also ‘search’ for ‘farmingtales’ and find the ‘farmingtales’ NFT collection that way as well, but it’s just extra steps so I don’t bother.”
“Sounds easy. So now do we buy our first animal and building?”
“Sort of, first you have to find an animal NFT and a building NFT you like that fits your budget. This means you want to select even more filters. For example, now that we’re in the ‘farmingtales’ collection on AtomicHub, new filters show up such as ‘game.animal’, ‘game.build’, ‘lands’, ‘stickers’, and so on.”
“Once we’re in the ‘farmingtales’ collection, I’m guessing we select the game.build filter first?”
“You guessed it! That’s exactly what I did. I found someone selling a ‘chicken coop’ NFT for 200 WAX, so I clicked ‘details’ to look into it further. It was from a seller with the WAX address ‘vztzefu.wam’ and everything seemed fine with it, so I then clicked the AtomicHub ‘buy’ on the chicken coop’s details-page. But something scary happened…”
“OMG! What?”
“Don’t worry, it turned out to be nothing in the end.”
“Well what was it?!”
“It was a scary red-text warning about ‘fake NFT-Sellers and scam artists’ and it said I should be very careful and ‘do my own research’ before buying this chicken coop.”
“Holy. Mia and Cass would shi– I mean crap their pants.” Emma clearly stopped herself from swearing to avoid offending her Mom’s sensitive ears in the next room. “Doesn’t this scare people away from playing Farming Tales?”
“Nah, it’s just like the FBI warnings at the beginning of old VHS films or something. It’s just to cover their butts so if you do something dumb or buy something fake you can’t blame them. I clicked the ‘I Understand’ button and continued on with my purchase from the official ‘farmingtales’ NFT collection.”
“So what happened once you clicked ‘buy’?”
“It did normal blockchain things. It said ‘Processing Transaction…’, then it popped up an approval window to ‘allow the transaction on the blockchain’, I clicked approve, and… it failed.”
“What?? So you didn’t buy a building?”
“Like I said, normal blockchain things. Sometimes this happens, right? A transaction doesn’t go through for some reason. I simply went back to the ‘chicken coop details page,’ clicked buy again, confirmed I wanted to buy it, clicked ‘approve’ in the popup a second time, and this time the transaction went through. I’m now the proud owner of a chicken coop NFT, which I believe is somehow connected to a ‘real life’ chicken coop on a farm.”
“Which farm? Whereabouts?”
“Oh, I don’t have all the details but when I last checked they had three farms, two in Italy, and one in Tenerife, Spain. Anyway, you got your first farm building in the game, and you supported an actual farmer in real life in a few clicks, I love it!”
“Yep, then I did the same thing with a ‘leghorn hen’ NFT (connected to a ‘real life’ chicken), and that worked too. I’m now the proud owner of a chicken and a chicken coop in Farming Tales and supporting farmers somewhere, possibly Tenerife.”
“So how do you know you have them? We haven’t even really logged in there yet…
Are your purchases already on your farm automatically?”
“Not exactly. They’re not on my farm in-game yet, because the ‘building NFTs’ I bought need to be ‘placed’ and the animals housed in them. For now, I can see the NFTs I own in either my ‘AtomicHub Inventory’ in the top right dropdown menu, or I can go over to my WAX Dashboard and click the ‘NFTs’ menu option and see all Wax Blockchain NFTs I own there too. Shortly after, I’m free to login to Farming Tales and start placing my buildings.”
“Whew, got it. So am I gonna be confused when I go to play?
Will I know how to place buildings?”
“You probably won’t know how to do stuff at first, my sweet girl. Farming Tales is working on a new user-interface that should be clearer and easier, but for now, you’ll have to decipher a few things in game and figure out what’s what, don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
“K, thanks, because once I get my farm going, I totally wanna teach Cass and Mia, they’re gonna love it!”
“Alright, well let’s login to my account and we’ll see how to place buildings.” I popped over to the computer and hopped onto farmingtales.io, clicked ‘play now’, it took me to play.farmingtales.io and loaded the game’s title screen, I clicked login, connected to my Wax Wallet, and I was instantly moving my little farmer around my farm land.
“Oh. My. Goodness. Is that you? That adorable little farmer? That is sooooo cute. And the green fields and dirt paths look like fairytales! This game is awesome, and I see some buildings already too!”
“Yes, but those aren’t the NFTs I purchased, those are the standard buildings that every new account has. There’s your house, your shed, your garage, your crafting bench, your silo, your bulldozer, your harvester, your scooter, your barn, etc. Most of your buildings and vehicles help you perform an in-game action like harvesting, feeding, shopping for farm equipment, and so on.”
“Cool! So which vehicle helps us place the cool chicken coop NFT you bought?
Er, actually, wait, did you place it yesterday?”
“I did, but I started a new account just to show you how it all works, so we’ll be placing this chicken coop together. Ready?”
“Yes, so psyched! This is exciting.”
“Great! Take a seat and then move your little farmer over to the bulldozer with the sign that says ‘Build & Harvest.’ Emma hopped into the chair and wheeled it right up close to the desk, but then looked up at me with a pout.
“What’s wrong my darling?”
“I don’t know how to move my little character. I clicked the mouse, I dragged, but all it did was zoom the camera around at lightspeed while my little dude stayed still.”
“Ah, yes, if you’re used to playing tetris or clicker games, you may not be used to ‘WASD.’”
“Uh, what? What’s double-you-way-essdee?”
“Not double-you-way-essdee, Em. I mean the letters W, A, S, and D. You can use those letters or the arrow keys on your keyboard to make your farmer walk, (and ‘spacebar’ to jump) give it a try. If you can’t see where you’re going, gently nudge your mouse to spin the camera and get a better view. I found a YouTube video that introduces you nicely to the game-world for the current patch, but you’ll get the hang of it without it. (Just be careful because it’s not a clear tutorial video, just a quick tour of the game.”
“Oh! So cool! I love it! Where’s the bulldozer?”
“Well, it’s not far from your starting position, but just look for vehicles with a glowing green circle, because those glowing green circles indicate a spot where you can perform Farming Tales actions.”
“Ah, I see it! A bulldozer with a green circle and a sign that says ‘Build And Harvest’, yay! So my farmer-guy is standing in the green circle, what do I do now?”
“Press ‘E.’”
“What’s ‘E’ do?”
“E is the main ‘interaction’ button in Farming Tales.
If you want to perform any actions or interact with any farm buildings or equipment, you’ll probably need to press ‘E’, so remember that.”
“It worked! Now I have a top-down view of my farm, divided up into a ‘grid’, I assume this is where I get to place buildings?”
“Correctamundo, Little Miss Mensa.” Emma stuck her tongue out at my oh-so-satirical exaggeration of her intellect.
“OK, but I’m not sure how to place our chicken coop, do I just click anywhere on the grid?”
“No, you must use the ‘build and place’ UI.”
“What’s UI?”
“You don’t know? C’mon, I thought you kids were ‘hip to the lingo.’”
“Did you just criticize me with the phrase ‘hip to the lingo?’ Shyeaaaah boomer, I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit. And did it occur to you that maybe I don’t know abbreviations like ‘UI’ because I’ve been busy making money off thirsty insta-creeps, not taking computer science courses?”
“Sheesh, did I hit a sore spot? You don’t have to snap, I just figured most people knew that UI stands for ‘user-interface.’ Anyway, UI is the menu bars and icons, buttons, and progress-meters in most games, and it’s what you’ll use to place your buildings.”
“Is it this beige-colored bar along the button with a few buttons above it?”
“Yes, exactly. That ‘hotbar’ is where all your ‘placeable’ buildings and animals will show up, and the buttons above it decide whether you’re placing a building (‘B’) or an animal (‘A’).”
“What’s that other ‘percent-sign’ icon there beside them?”
“Oh, that’s planned for the future, it’s for ‘boosters’ or something, I believe. I’ll be honest with you, hon, the Farming Tales team seem to be super-passionate and super-active. They make upgrades and improvements to the game all the time, this coming January 23rd they’re set to launch a totally new and improved User Interface. Further down the road they’re aiming to launch a full fledged town, complete with shops and marketplace, called New Waxchester. Even sooner than that, they’re releasing ‘wildflowers’ which are NFTs that will only cost a tiny bit of water to upkeep, and which will generate daily CBITs, to help beginners get things rolling in-game.”
“OK, well I clicked on ‘B’ to place buildings, and it showed me an icon on the beige bar. I hovered over it and it told me that this icon is our ‘chicken coop.’ What now? Click it?”
“Yep, click it then position your mouse over the grid and you can place it almost anywhere on your farm. It’ll light-up green in ‘allowed’ locations, and it’ll turn red in ‘disallowed’ locations.”
“Is one place better for buildings than another?”
“Well, some people just place things randomly. Others like buildings located close to the center of their farm, so they can build out. Still others like to organize starting from one edge, which can be nice, but if you do that, I recommend starting with the edge closest to your vehicles, otherwise you’ll spend most of your play-time just walking back and forth from your vehicles to your buildings which are super-far away. Also , when placing buildings, make sure there’s a little distance between the building and the fence.”
“Makes sense. I’ll put it here.” Emma chose a near the edge of her farm closest to her vehicles. “Wait, nothing’s happening!”
“Breathe and relax, lil miss. The WAX Blockchain can sometimes be a bit sluggish or laggy and apps that run on it such as Farming Tales, can sometimes take a moment or two to register your actions, depending on how many people are using the blockchain at the time. Sometimes a transaction may ‘fail’ and you may even have to click again.”
“I guess it’s just ‘blockchain things’, and I’m kind of spoiled by Hive’s crazy fast speed I guess.” Emma turned her attention back to the screen. “Oh, you’re right, it worked now.”
“Great, and I think you can ‘demount’ (dismantle) your buildings and place them elsewhere by double-clicking on them in the grid, but that’s something we can figure out later.”
“Hooray!” Emma exited the ‘build’ menu and moved her farmer over to her newly placed chicken coop. “It’s beautiful, I love it. Look, there's a spot for chicken feed and a little ‘water place’ there too. So cute! Now how do we add our chicken into the coop?”
“It’s very similar to placing buildings, so you tell me!”
“OK, I think we go back to the ‘build and harvest’ bulldozer, press E, get the building grid back, press ‘A’ on the hotbar to display our animals, and then click one and put it into the coop?”
“Pretty much. One important thing though, make sure you ‘select’ your desired building first, which will show you that building’s ‘empty slots’, for example your chicken coop has two empty slots waiting for a hen.
“OK, then I just double-click the animal in my hotbar and it automatically pops in to fill the slot of my selected building, right?”
“Yes, you got it!”
“Yay! This game is fun! So just to make sure I’ve got it all so far…
I learned that to get started with Farming Tales I should:
- Sign-up for a Wax Cloud Wallet at all-access.wax.io
- Find a way to fill my Wax Wallet with ~270 WAX(P) (depending on the market.)
- Login to wax.atomichub.io , browse the ‘farmingtales’ collection.
- Buy an animal + building combo using WAX(P) tokens.
- Login to play.farmingtales.io, move to the bulldozer (aka ‘tractor’), press E to open the Build & Harvest grid.
- Place my building, then place my animal inside my building.
And there we have it, I’ve started my Farming Tales journey, yes?”
“A small note, I believe you can start with a ‘garden’ too, but most people start with animals from what I could tell. Anyway, you’re right. Very nicely summarized, Em, even if you are kind of showing me up with your conciseness.”
Emma turned her chin up, stuck her tongue out, and made a ‘thhhhppppt’ sound. Kids these days, eh?
“Great, I’ve got my farm started…
…Now how do I start earning some crypto?”
“Ah, do you have wealth-dreams and dollar-signs in your eyes, mm? What have I told you about greed and being focused on money, Emma Brown?”
“C’mon Dad, I know all that, I’m not greedy, but it’s called Play-2-Earn for a reason, y’know?”
“Fair point. Well, your animals earn SEST tokens daily, which you can claim by ‘harvesting’ from them, as long as they’re fed properly and you have charges left in your ‘food & water’ meters.”
“I assume SEST tokens are Farming Tales main cryptocurrency?”
“Yes, one of two or three, depending on your whether you include WAX or not.”
“And what do I do with SEST?”
“Well, it can be used to further invest in your farm but you can also swap it for WAX tokens.”
“I see, I withdraw SEST, convert it to WAX, and then convert it further into USD?”
“WAX can be converted into U.S. Dollars through many digital exchanges, yes, but if you’re already on Hive, I’m sure you’re familiar with this process, or able to look it up, yeah?”
“Yeah, I can figure it out. But I noticed…
…you said something about my animals must be ‘fed properly?’”
“Yes, feeding your animals (and watering any plants) on your farm is a key part of succeeding in Farming Tales, without it, you’ll have nothing to harvest, and you won’t be earning much at all.”
“How do I feed animals on my farm?”
“Well they feed automatically, but like most farmers, your job is to make sure you’ve bought food and water for them, by topping up your silos.”
“Oh, so like, go to AtomicHub and buy food NFTs and water NFTs?”
“Heh, good guess but no.
Food and Water aren’t actually NFTs, they’re just in-game items you buy with CBITs.”
“Wait, what the eff are CBITs? I already learned that I need to use WAX tokens for all my NFTs and interactions in Farming Tales because it’s on the Wax Blockchain. I also learned that I earn SEST tokens from my animals if they’re fed properly. Are you telling me I need yet another token?”
“Well, yeah.” I shrugged, extended my arms, and turned my palms to face the ceiling. “And you probably won’t like it, but the easiest way I know how to get CBITs requires yet another website.”
“OMG, Dad, seriously? Can’t I just use one of the three tabs I already have open here?”
“Be gentle Em, the game is in beta, I’m sure it’ll get easier. For now, just pop over to the Alcor Digital Exchange at https://alcor.exchange , select the ‘WAX MainNet’ from the dropdown in the topright, and click login. Approve the popup window and it should automatically connect to your Wax Wallet, super-easy, barely an inconvenience!”
Emma’s brow furrowed and her tongue peeked out over her upper-lip but she did as I instructed.
“Oh! That was easy!”
“It is, and actually there might be an even faster way to connect to Alcor Exchange with the ‘Wax MainNet’ already selected, just goto wax.alcor.exchange instead.”
“Thanks, I appreciate making the stuff easier and easier for me.”
“Yep, and now it’s just a couple more clicks and you’ll have plenty of CBITs for your Farming Tales feeding frenzy.”
“ Ok, thanks, I feel better now.”
“You feel better now? Well, that’s wonderful! The world collectively exhales, babygirl.”
“Be nice!”
“I really am...
…And the nicest thing now is to show you how to swap WAX for CBIT.
So, please click ‘swap’ in the top-left menu on the Alcor Exchange website.” I instructed Em in a dignified ‘fatherly’ voice.
“Done.” Emma clipped brightly. “It took me to a new screen. What next?”
“On the left you’ll see a spot for two separate cryptocurrencies. Change the first one (marked ‘sell’) to WAX.”
“Done, and?”
“Change the second currency (marked ‘buy’) to CBIT.”
“I did it, do I have CBITs now?”
“Almost, just click the button labeled ‘Swap WAX to CBIT’ underneath the currency boxes, and you’re all set.”
“Well, it worked, easy like you said, but I did have to ‘approve’ the transaction in the popup window too, which you neglected to mention, Dad.”
“Oh, yes, I can’t believe I didn’t mention that. I’m sooooo sorry Emma, how will I ever make it up to you? Shall I build you an ice castle?”
“That does sound appropriate, but I’ll settle for a hug for now.”
“So gracious of you, milady.” I gave Emma her hug. “Anyway, if you log out and log back in to Farming Tales, the game should reconnect to your Wax Cloud Wallet, detect that you own CBITs, and display your current CBIT balance to you when you click on ‘wallet’ in-game.”
“I’m trying to click on the ‘Wallet’ button in Farming Tales but I can’t!”
“Ah, that’s because you’re in what I like to call ‘character mode’ or ‘walk-around’ mode or ‘game mode’, you need to be in ‘cursor mode.’”
“How do I do that? It doesn’t tell me this anywhere!”
“I know, I had to figure it out by guessing, but it’s the ‘Q’ key on your keyboard. Press ‘Q’ once and it will turn ‘cursor mode’ on and let you move the mouse around and click on menus. Press ‘Q’ again and it will toggle you back to ‘walk-around’ mode and let you move your farmer.”
“Great, that worked! I see my wallet balance and it looks good. So now that I have CBITs in my wallet, how do I get food for my animals or water for my non-existent garden, I guess?”
“Actually, you have your CBITs in the wrong wallet.”
“Double-you. Tee. Eff. Hold up. Hold on a second here. All this time I’ve been using my Wax Cloud Wallet and you’re telling me there’s another wallet somewhere that plays a key role in Farming Tales earnings?”
“Haha, um, well, yes.” I blushed, because I knew Farming Tales had quite a few nuances to it, and I was bordering on overwhelming my dear daughter, but I had to explain the ‘two-wallet’ system or she’d never earn.
“Ugh, Daaaaad, so lame–
OK, well how is my 'in-game wallet' different from my 'Wax Cloud Wallet?'”
“Farming Tales requires two separate crypto wallets to play properly, but they can both be interacted with from inside the Farming Tales interface. Your Wax Cloud Wallet is what you’ve been using mainly for everything so far, and it allows you to manage ‘staking’, trading currencies on Alcor, withdrawals, deposits etc. But there’s also a tiny little in-game wallet in the top-right corner there, see it?”
“Oh yeah, it has two token icons there, I’m guessing SEST and CBIT?”
“Exactly. And you see how they both have zeroes next to them?”
“Yeah…”
“That means you have zero ‘in-game’ currency, because all your SESTs and CBITs are sitting in your ‘external’ Wax Cloud Wallet, which you’ve been using to navigate Farming Tales blockchain transactions and actions. Unfortunately, actually playing the game and taking care of your animals requires you to have some SESTs and CBITs in your internal, in-game wallet. Basically, honey, you need CBIT in your in-game wallet in order to top-up the food & water in your silos.”
“How do I transfer SEST or CBIT into my in-game wallet?”
“You got into ‘cursor mode’ (press Q), then click on ‘Wallet’, it pops up a window containing your Wax Cloud Wallet balances (SEST & CBIT), with a deposit button and a withdrawal button next to each. Which button do you think will ‘move’ CBIT from your Wax Cloud Wallet INTO your in-game Farming Tales wallet?”
“Hmmm… well, withdrawal usually means ‘taking out’, so I’m guessing the ‘deposit’ button next to my CBIT balance will move CBIT from my Wax Cloud Wallet into the Farming Tales internal wallet.”
“You’re one-hundred percent correct. So just type in how much of your current CBIT balance you’d like to move, then click deposit!”
“But how much CBIT should I move from my Wax wallet to my in-game wallet?”
“Good question. Walk over to the green circle where your silos are, and tell me what the sign says.”
Emma did as instructed and mumbled some of the words under her breath, then she exclaimed “Five CBITs! That’s how much I’ll move for now.”
“That sign may change depending on the market or game patches, but for now, yes, it costs 5 CBITs to refill your food supplies.”
“Wooooo! I pressed ‘E’ on the silo, it had a ‘refill food’ button and a ‘refill water’ button. I clicked ‘refill food’ and it worked, all because I had the proper amount of CBIT in my in-game wallet, right?”
“You got it, Em.”
“And now I can top up my food and water silos, right?”
“Yeppers! Now, since food and water are regular needs for your farm, that means you’ll need to be spending on them daily.”
“Hey, I thought I was supposed to be earning, but all I’ve done so far is pay!”
“Well, like many crypto games, it’s a fun investment, Emma, and you said it helps the farmers in real life, right? Besides, it doesn’t have to be so costly, you can set up your farm to mostly ‘pay for itself’ if you do it right.”
“How?”
“Well, by staking some SEST into the game you can cover your food costs.”
“What’s that mean, is it like when I stake on Hive Power on the Hive Blockchain?”
“Similar yes. It means you ‘invest’ or ‘tie up’ some of your SEST currency into Farming Tales internal wallet, rather than withdrawing it to your Wax Cloud Wallet or an external exchange.”
“And how does that help?”
“Well, the more SEST you stake, the more CBIT you earn and accumulate daily. Stake enough SEST and you’ll earn enough CBIT to feed and hydrate your animals, without investing further, but we’ll get into staking later. For now, just know that you’ve got a handle on Farming Tales fairly well. ”
“Woo! I’m a Farming Tales pro! I learned how to use WAX to get buildings placed & animals housed. I learned to use CBITs from the Alcor Exchange to get my food and water topped up. But I still don’t get how to play-to-earn!”
“We’re getting there, now that all the basics are taken care of, it’s your time to earn…
You earn by ‘harvesting’ your crops and animal products.”
“Let me guess, I do it near those vehicles with the sign that says ‘Harvest All’, right?”
“Well, that is the easiest way to do it, yes, but since that button harvests all your chickens, cows, goats, bees, gardens, etc. altogether, it may cost a good chunk of gas fees and CBITs to do it, so you’ll want to make sure you have enough. As a beginner, I harvested each animal manually and individually to start, before I got into ‘Harvest All’, and honestly, I kind of prefer it.”
“Why?”
“Because it gives me more control, I can harvest some geese, but leave some chickens unharvested, to make it easier to earn more SEST or CBIT daily. Plus it keeps me attentive to the game and my animals, rather than just auto-piloting and clicking ‘Harvest All’, but I do use both options.”
“OK, well, I’ll do it your way and play around with the ‘Harvest All’ button later. So how do I harvest manually then?”
“Easy, you head over to your ‘build & place’ grid, double-click on one of your placed buildings and it pops up a window showing the animals housed within that building. Then you click on an individual animal, and another window pops up showing a green ‘harvest’ button. Click it, and the SEST you’ve harvested will show up in your in-game wallet.”
“So I can harvest individual animals with just a few clicks?”
“Yep! And once you manually click ‘harvest’ or ‘harvest all’, SEST will instantly appear in your internal in-game wallet, so that SEST icon will no longer have a zero next to it.”
“Cool, I’ma do it!” Emma clicked the ‘harvest’ button next to her hen’s icon in her chicken coop. “Did it work?” she asked, brimming with curiosity.
“Take a look at your in-game wallet and see!”
She exited the ‘grid’ screen and sure enough, 7 SEST had appeared in her in-game wallet. “Yay! I earned my first SEST in Farming Tales, and it was fun and easy!”
So let’s see if I remember everything I’ve learned so far:
- Get a Wax Cloud Wallet and fill it with like ~270 WAX or so, (but it may change drastically depending on the market.)
- Login to AtomicHub and buy an animal NFT & a building NFT from the ‘farmingtales’ collection.
- Login to Farming Tales, walk to the bulldozer, and open the Build & Harvest grid.
- Place my building, then place my animal inside my building.
- Login to the Alcor Exchange and swap some WAX tokens for CBITs.
- Transfer those CBITs to my internal in-game wallet, then head to my silo and click ‘refill food’ (or do a similar thing for watering gardens.)
- Now that I have enough food/water, I can manually click ‘harvest’ on individual animals or I can click ‘harvest all’ to bulk harvest everything if I have enough resources like WAX for gas fees, CPU/RAM, and CBITs for food/water.
- Ta-da! I am successfully farming and earning SEST in Farming Tales! Right?
“Wow, I bumbled around for hours yesterday, but when you summarize it you make it sound so simple. You’ve nailed it perfectly, at least, for this version of the game.”
Emma sprung off the computer chair and did a cartwheel, her gymnastics and cheer habits kicking in.
“Whoa there, I get that you’re excited, but you might want to hold-up a minute.”
“How come?”
“Well, how much have you earned? And do you know how to cash out your earnings?”
“Oh, snap! No! I don’t have a clue about that stuff.”
“Would you like to?”
“Yes please…
What’s the SEST to USD conversion?”
“Ah, that’s a bit tricky, but I’ll do my best.”
“Why?”
“Because SEST isn’t a publicly traded cryptocurrency. It’s just a token on the Wax Blockchain, and the only way I’ve found to look up it’s price is the Alcor Exchange, when set to Wax MainNet.”
“Hmm… I thought WAX was like HIVE though, just another cryptocurrency, right?”
“Yes, WAX is, SEST isn’t. While SEST prices are hard to google, WAXP prices are readily available on many Digital Exchanges, and it’s fairly easy to look up or google it’s price. The same goes for it’s conversion-rate to US Dollars.”
“OK, then how about we convert our SEST into WAX(P) so it’s more like a ‘real’ cryptocurrency and no longer an in-game token, right? And then… and then we convert or sell whatever WAX we have into USD later!”
“Look at my little prodigy explaining all the financial hoops. Yes, that’s exactly what I was going to suggest, but you beat me to it…
Go from SEST to WAXP to USD.”
“What can I say, when you’re beautiful and brainy like me the world pays attention.” Emma tossed her hair over her shoulder with a flip.
“Oh brother,” I murmured. “Anyway, the market changes drastically, and so what I’m about to tell you will probably be out of date tomorrow, but for now, here’s how the rates work out:
1 SEST = 0.0274 WAX
And…
2.38 WAX = 1.00 USD
So…
87 SEST = 2.38 WAX = 1.00 USD.”
“Oh em gee, thank god you did all those calculations for me, otherwise I would've had to bat my eyelashes at some guy and get him to help me instead.” Emma said laughingly, batting her eyelashes directly at me.
“Ahem, as your father I’m not sure I want to know, and didn’t you just tell me you were beautiful and brainy?”
“Yep, and knowing when to use which talent is clutch, like when trying to calculate SEST to USD, for example.”
“You’re incorrigible. So now that you know in today’s market, 1 US Dollar is about 87 SEST, how much can you earn?”
“Let me see, I seem able to ‘harvest’ about seven SEST every hour or two, right?”
“It depends on which animal and building combo you have, some are longer intervals, some are shorter, some yield more SEST, some yield less.”
“OK, but for a beginner like me, with just my hen and my coop, I can get about seven SEST every hour or two it seems.”
“That’s about right, at least for the current game patch.”
“Which means if I watch it closely, and click ‘harvest’ often from now until bedtime, I can squeeze in about twelve harvests total, so by the end of day I can earn 84 SEST, which is about one whole US Dollar!”
“Well said, and you can do a similar thing with daily passive CBIT earnings from your ‘staked’ SEST too. Plus, just imagine if you had even more buildings and animals on your farm, you could really start raking it in.”
“This is so exciting!”
“And I haven’t even taught you how efficient your farm can be once you invest in upgrading to ‘rare’ or ‘epic’ buildings and animals.”
“My mind is blown, Dad, this is awesome. Farming Tales is so fun and you saved me soooo much trouble learning it. Mia and Cass are gonna love it.”
“You know, it’s cute, fun, and potentially profitable, I’m kind of into it myself, maybe your Mom and I will play.”
“That’d be awesome! But just so we have an even playing field, are there any special tips or tricks you have to do well in Farming Tales that you haven’t told me yet?”
“Oh, you mean like do I have secret ways to win?”
“Exactly. Do ya?”
“Well, maybe a few:
- Animals tend to make more money than gardens/crops, but that may change, since it depends on the market.
- Geese + geese shelter is a really good starting building because the ‘common’ level has slots for two animals, so you can start multi-harvesting fast.”
- ‘Rare’ and ‘Epic’ buildings offer more slots for animals, so they’re worth getting if possible.
- ‘Harvest All’ costs a ‘convenience fee’ and uses up lots of your food and water so be careful with it.
- We haven’t talked about the fisherman’s pier or lumberjack yet, but they’re pretty profitable.
- Experiment with staking SEST, since the more SEST you have staked, the more CBITs you’ll earn on them (kind of like ‘interest.’)
- I’m not sure how much you want to invest but it may be worth upgrading your water & food silo NFTs to ‘rare’ or ‘epic’ level so your food and water costs are lower and you get to keep more of your profits. (In fact, at the current time purchasing a ‘common’ animal and a ‘common’ building will actually lose you money, so I highly, highly recommend starting with a ‘rare’ animal and ‘rare’ building instead, although supposedly when Farming Tales releases ‘wildflower’ NFTs, they may help earn beginners enough CBITs to make ‘common’ NFTs worthwhile, we’ll see.)
- If you’re comfortable diving into yet another app, you can get the ‘TACO’ crypto app and use it to harvest on Farming Tales via mobile phone, but I’d stick with desktop access for now.
- There’s lots more to Farming Tales I haven’t even mentioned, like how you can invest in real-life honey, saffron, and hemp and have those products shipped farm-fresh to your door. Or the upcoming shopping town ‘New Waxchester.’ Trading, staking, boosters, airdrops, and more.
I could probably head back to ‘the lab,’ explore Farming Tales further, and come up with some interesting strategies involving trading NFTs on the market and so on, but that would be another giant talk, sweetie, and your Mom’s giving me the evil eye from the kitchen because we’re supposed to be going out.”
“All good, Dad, you’ve been a huge help, and I already texted Mia to come over, I’m so psyched to teach her!”
“Alright, you kids have fun in the play-to-earn cryptosphere, and make sure you’re not just greeding for cash, I raised you better than that.”
“Puh-leeze Dad, it’d be nice to earn, but honestly, I’m just in it for the cute animals and to support real-life farmers, if I happen to rake in some CBIT & SEST, all the better..”
“Good,” I nodded.
“OK, I’m off! First Farming Tales, then the world!”
Author’s Note: Hooray! That ends my guide to getting started in Farming Tales, a play-to-earn NFT/Crypto game on the Wax Blockchain, but they have a Hive account & community and are aiming to integrate their game with the Hive Blockchain in the future, which is pretty exciting.
It seems like the game is experiencing rapid growth, backed by a truly solid team spearheaded by lycos, who are focused on making a real, high-quality, long-term project (unlike some other NFT games I’ve seen.) I’m very new to the game, just recently introduced to it by @phage93 , also part of the Farming Tales team, and between he and @cynshineonline ‘s help, I managed to figure out everything I’ve written above. I think the game’s pretty cool. (It’s actually the first blockchain game I’ve ever played, and it was on my List 5 NFT Games To Watch.)
Hopefully it remains relevant and helpful as the game evolves, but please be aware that future patches may make some of what Emma and her father have learned obsolete.
Here’s a final quick-summary of how to get started in Farming Tales:
Get A Wax Wallet
Sign-up for a Wax Cloud Wallet at all-access.wax.io , and find a way to fill that Wallet with ~270 WAX(P) (depending on the market.)
Buy NFTs from AtomicHub.io
Login to wax.atomichub.io , browse the ‘farmingtales’ collection, and buy your first 'rare animal' + 'rare building' individually, using WAX(P) tokens.
Place Your Buildings/Animals In-Game
Login to play.farmingtales.io, move to the bulldozer (aka ‘tractor’), then press E to open the Build & Harvest grid, and place your building, then place your animal inside my building.
Swap WAX Tokens For CBITs On Alcor Exchange
Login to the Alcor Exchange and swap 8-10 of your WAX tokens for CBITs.
Deposit CBITs In-game Wallet; Buy Animal Food
Transfer those CBITs to your internal (in-game) wallet, then head to your silo and click ‘refill food,’ so your animals are fed and harvest-ready. (or do a similar thing for watering gardens.)
Harvest!
Now that they're fed, manually click the ‘harvest’ button on individual animals or click ‘harvest all’ to bulk harvest everything (if you have enough resources like WAX for gas fees, CPU/RAM, and CBITs for food/water.)
Ta-da! Barring any errors or mistakes, you should be successfully farming and earning SEST in Farming Tales!
Thank you so much!
Yep, I'm so grateful to you! Thanks so much for reading, commenting, sharing, and even skimming. I appreciate you and wish you a fantastic Farming Tales experience, and a wonderful day.
Want more Farming Tales resources?
Official Website: https://farmingtales.io
Game Login Site: https://play.farmingtales.io/
FT Whitepaper: https://nodo42.gitbook.io/farming-tales-the-game/
FT NFT Marketplace: https://wax.atomichub.io/market
SEST & CBIT Exchange: https://wax.alcor.exchange/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/farming_tales
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChyoCjZDe6pc2v_0jfz2j7A/videos
FT Discord* Server: https://discord.gg/4U6Hum3CFd
Farming Tales On Hive: @farmingtales & created/hive-151527
A Farming Tales Strategy Guide: @libertycrypto27/farming-tales-my-buying-strategy-after-7-day-of-play-la-mia-strategia-di-acquisto-dopo-7-giorni-di-gioco-engita
*Note: The Discord Server is at time of writing the most engaged, active, and up-to-date source for Farming Tales info, and it has a giant FAQ there with many devs and players offering advice.
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Stock images courtesy of epic stock site, Envato.com