To Burn or Not to Burn? Thorough Strategy Guide for all Smithonians
We are blessed with great projects in Q2 2022 and SmithyDAO was the first to be minted within the Treasure-verse in this quarter. I hope this medium could serve as a good starting point where people start thinking how they can excel in this game, no matter how many genesis weapons you own.
This project starts with 12,300 Genesis weapons and they were divided into 7 different classes. All of them would be wooden weapons for this season and can be upgraded to an iron one in the next season.
As for season 1, the game loop is simple: you stake your weapon to farm resources and gain experience from each gathering mission (Continuous staking will earn you more experiences per mission). Resources collected can be
Burned to gain restoration point
Burned to gain experience; or
Sold on the secondary market.
On top of gathering missions, there would be quests popping up every now and then, and weapons that meet the eligible requirements can join. Quests would last for 2 weeks and you cannot go on gathering missions once you stake your weapon for quests. The earlier you stake, the more rewards you earn at the end of the quest.
So what choices do I make? If I view this as a P2E game, how do I maximize my profit with the amount of assets I have? Is the cash reward on the Top 100 leaderboard as juicy as it sounds?
Let’s begin with all the rewards SmithyDAO is offering us in the first season:
To better estimate the monthly jackpot, it is worth noting all these figures first. It was stated on the whitepaper that 50% of secondary sale would be distributed to the top 100 players. While I am not sure the deal between TreasureDAO and SmithyDAO on how they split the secondary sale, it is known that TreasureDAO receives 5% royalties on all sales.
The volume of Smithonia Weapon is 89k $Magic over 4 days; Battlefly has ~1.3M $Magic(both Treasure MP and Tofu) volume over about 30 days; while Tales of Elleria has 200k $Magic over 6 days and Peek-A-Boo has 370k $Magic over 14 days. Considering that FP of Peek-A-Boo Buster has once reached 140 $Magic, I think it would be a tall task for Smithonia Weapon to surpass the 700k volume mark within the first month. That being said, the first jackpot would at most worth 700k*0.5 (50% secondary sale)*0.05 (all royalties received from TreasureDAO) = 17500 $Magic and therefore very optimistically, on average each player would earn 175 $Magic (of course the higher you rank the more you earn).
Quest rewards can be very juicy, it can be a genesis weapon (current FP is ~30 $Magic), a partnering project NFT, or some items that could be useful later in the game. Of course you also might gain a tremendous amount of experience (whitepaper suggests possibly 2000 exp, while at most you earn 7, 14 or 22 experience for easy, medium, hard quests every 24, 36 or 72 h respectively). To put it in perspective, 2 weeks worth of gathering is equivalent to <100 exp, while a single quest can potentially gain at least 10X as much exp.
You collect resources, treasure chests (yet to be known what’s inside) and Smithy Gold (off-chain token) on every gathering missions. Resources (but not Smithy Gold) can be directly sold on secondary market.
Strategy for different players
a) For players with only 1 free-mint weapon
Realistically, you most likely won’t make it to the Top 100 Leaderboard. There are simply too many players out there with more than 1 genesis weapon.
* While you can only burn resources once a day to gain experience, there is no daily limit on how much resources you can burn to gain restoration points. *
A reasonable player eyeing the top of the leaderboard would most likely want to hoard items and burn them all at the very last second of the 1-month period so they don’t need to burn more than what is needed. It is more than likely that you don’t have as much resources as other players, and buying resources from secondary just to burn them for restoration point would expose yourself to too much risks as we are unsure of the jackpot by the end of each month.
With monthly jackpot out of the equation, what about quests or direct sale of resources? To answer this question, we must understand that a dynamic equilibrium in the market always exists and we will have to stay vigilant to make the best decision (current situation with price of Legion Aux vs. summoning rate in Bridgeworld is a good case study). So what is at stake?
You would yield the greatest if you join a quest early, yet the opportunity cost is 2-week worth of gathering rewards. In my opinion, the quest rewards and experiences far outweigh your potential farm. With that assumption, isn’t it a no-brainer to dive in quests? Unfortunately, there also could be quest requirements (i.e. type of weapon, experiences accumulated in weapon, requirement of Smithy Gold in later seasons, etc.). There is nothing you can do if you do not own the correct weapon type, and you also have to burn resources pre-emptively to gain experience as you can only burn one resource every 24 hours (amount of experience gained per resource is not yet revealed). By burning these resources for experiences, you obviously forfeit the chance to sell them on secondary.
Here is the feedback loop of how equilibrium would be achieved: If all players play the long shot and burn most resources on a daily basis, it will drive up the price of resources in secondary and should incentivize players to sell them instead. Such interaction should also be reflected in quests. If players value gathering time and resources over quest’s rewards, fewer players would stake their weapons for the next quest, or perhaps stake their weapons for shorter period of time. However, a reasonable game developer would then increase the quest rewards to put players in a constant dilemma.
With that said, if you are planning to HODL and you don’t have much time to chase the market trend, just burn your resources for experiences on a regular basis. A dagger with 500 experiences will always worth more than a dagger with no experience. For quests, just join them as soon as they are available if you are eligible for them.
b) For players with multiple weapons
Quests should also be your top priority and therefore first and foremost, you might want to acquire different weapon types on the secondary market. You would probably also want to try your luck in the top 100 Leaderboard, and obviously you would want to stake resources on 1 or 2 weapons. It is not sure whether the leaderboard will be transparent for all players throughout the month (or maybe they do things in Copium-war style: updating you the top 100 restoration points daily). But regardless of its transparency, at this stage, the top 100 leaderboard is quite a gamble to me for several reasons:
Last-minute burn: As mentioned previously, rich players can burn all of their resources at the end of each cut-off period. In order to chase the run, amount of resources that were burnt might worth more than the share of the jackpot you are rewarded. Foreseeably, it would be hard to tell when to cut loss and when to keep chasing.
Uncertainties in Jackpot: At least in the first month, this pot of gold does not seem to be able to grow a lot. Resources burnt for restoration point might worth more in the secondary market in the short run or in experience in the long run. The amount of the total jackpot and % allocation of jackpot to each top 100 players are also big question marks. It would be impossible to have gains well-calculated at the end of the day.
But one thing we have to bear in mind: after each cut-off period, the top 100 will be rewarded in $Magic and their restoration point will be set to 0, which means the top 101–200 will then immediately move to the top 100. Therefore, in periods with small jackpots (which you could track it on Treasure MP), you would have a better chance to earn more if you stay out of the top 100 before the cut-off date, and gamble again in the subsequent month.
In other words, if you find yourself lingering at 90th in the last few days with few resources to burn, just stop. Wait for other players to catch up and take your spot.
c) For both small and big players
While being lucky could possibly get you to Hall of Fame (HoF), being equally unlucky could also be a blessing in disguise. One of the most interesting features of SmithyDAO is the Hall of Shame (HoS). Though the exact reward/compensation is yet to be determined, it is tailor-made for the most unlucky players who top the list.
Undoubtedly, if you hold more than one genesis weapons, it will only make sense if you buy the Smithy Pass which will be released soon. The Smithy Pass is only 5 $Magic and it will ensure gathering missions being 100% successful (Fail rate otherwise ranges from 30–45% from hard to easy quests). On the other hand, if you hold 1 free mint wooden dagger and you don’t want to invest in the game, and also you fail the first few gathering missions, you might as well just pray and hope you fail even more in the future to top the HoS.
Similarly, for big players, while you pile up all your weapons in a wallet with a Smithy Pass (each wallet only needs one Smithy Pass), it would be worth taking the risk to just place a wooden dagger (yes, I assumed you will have more than 1 dagger if you consider yourself a big player) in a separate wallet without a Smithy Pass and hope it fails all the way.
The first season of SmithyDAO is still an over-simplified version of what the game envisions to be. They work directly with the TreasureDAO, so rest assured that they are here for the long term. Their whitepaper has already offered us a sneak peek on what we can expect in later seasons:
6 new skills (mining, gathering, forestry, blacksmithing, herbalism and crafting);
Introduction of companions (you can also view this as an airdrop based on rarity of your genesis weapon);
In-game marketplace utilizing their off-chain Smithy Gold;
Adventures which drive the main storyline as after all, SmithyDAO is a heavily lore-focused game.
The use of T1 treasures in their game shows their potential incorporation in Bridgeworld (Let’s not forget Bridgeworld will eventually transform into a game, not just a passive-stacking, treasure-farming game). There are other projects (i.e. GorillaDAO) who has openly spoken in AMA that they would love to have SmithyDAO as their arsenal. SmithyDAO changed their name from SmolWeapons as they aim to be the crafting layer for the whole of Bridgeworld/Smolverse, so apart from weapons, you can foresee their expansion collection to armours as well. For what it is worth, their whitepaper has not even touched on how these weapons below(shown in the sneak peek channel in Discord) can be forged. It was only briefly mentioned in an AMA such that crafting of legendary weapons might incorporate the use of Treasures in BW.
While people always consider floor price and volume to be the benchmark of how successful a project is, we have to understand that SmithyDAO is not a PFP project. In essence, ~95% of the NFTs are staked now and holders are seeing the potential growth of this project over time. Align with TreasureDAO’s vision, the value and longevity of a project is determined by the level of integration with other projects. This is what differentiates a stand-alone hyped project and a project which spirals through the whole Treasure-verse to build the entire infrastructure.
I was late to the Bridgeworld party and the FP of Legion Genesis is now ~5k $Magic (almost all time low since its emergence).
FP of Genesis Weapon is now ~30 $Magic.
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