NFT Games with play-to-earn aspects have been getting a lot of attention lately. If you have been following our articles, you probably have seen our thoughts about Axie Infinity and alternative ways to take part in the opportunity it offers.

At the time of this writing, Axie Infinity is met with a lot of server and gameplay issues. While the majority of investors are starting to become really concerned with the future of Axie Infinity, many are still are hopeful that it will bounce back once the servers become stable. Despite this, fans of this new genre are famished with alternatives for new opportunities. This is the reason why games like MyDefiPet, Binemon, and CryptoBlades are getting traction.

In this article, we will walk you through how to set up a CryptoBlades account, and give an idea of how much one can earn based on its current price. I will not be digging deeper into the mechanics of the game as information is carefully detailed by the developers of Cryptoblades. You can read their pitch deck and whitepaper on these links: Pitch Deck, Whitepaper.

Note, however, that this article is not an investment recommendation but an exploration of this new NFT game that can potentially pique the interest of NFT-enthusiasts. As CryptoBlades is an NFT game, it is anchored on the volatility of its price in the market. May this serve as a warning and a reminder to only invest what you are willing to lose.

How to Start

CryptoBlades is a Play to Earn NFT game developed by Riveted Games on the Binance Smart Chain platform. Gamers mint their own characters and weapons in the ERC-721 standard, which they can trade in the marketplace. As a P2E game, what players earn is SKILL through gameplay and NFTs.

Requirements to play the game:

• Access to Cryptoblades game.
• Metamask Account with Binance Smart Chain network installed. It is encouraged to play the game on desktop/PC/Mac browser for maximum convenience. You can download a browser extension on this link.
• A Binance Account. If you don’t have one, sign-up using this link. (as of 7/23/2021, SKILL can now be bought directly via MEXC asset exchange, but we will not cover this process in this article)
• Access to ApeSwap in order to swap BNB to SKILL.

Here are the steps on how to start playing the game:

• Go to app.cryptoblades.io. You’ll be prompted to configure a Metamask.
• Click Configure Metamask. Just in case you missed it, you can see the network setup below:

Network Name: Binance Smart Chain Mainnet
New RPC URL: https://bsc-dataseed.binance.org/
Chain ID: 56
Currency Symbol: BNB
Block Explorer URL: https://bscscan.com/

• Once you have fully set up your Metamask, it is now ready to take BNB from other supported cryptocurrency markets like Binance and MEXC. Take note of your address by clicking your account on Metamask.

• You need to transfer BNB. In this article, we are using Binance as an example. You can directly buy BNB via Binance. At the time of this writing, I suggest that you buy around 2.54 BNB, which should be equal to 755 USD (1 BNB = 296.18 USDT). This should be more than enough to acquire at least a 4-character team and 1 to 3 weapons.
  
  Quick update as of 9:35PM PH TIME: A full stacked 4C/4W team now costs 4.72 SKILLS or around 2.09 BNB based on the latest Oracle update on CryptoBlades website. Every time an Oracle update happens, the developers optimizes the rate of recruitement and forging SKILL requirement based on the prevailing rate of $SKILLS.

• The BNB you purchased will then form part of your Binance Wallet. On Binance. click Wallet, then select Fiat and Spot. Click Withdraw, and paste the address of your Metamask account using Binance Smart Chain.

• Wait until the BNB is successfully deposited to your Metamask account. Once it’s already in your account, visit ApeSwap so you can swap your BNB to SKILL. Do not swap all your BNB to SKILL as you’ll be using a portion of it for gas (.001 BNB to recruit your first character and .0025 BNB per every combat)
• At the time of this writing, you will need 2.49 SKILL per character. This means that you will need to spend 9.96 SKILL to complete a team. You will need .3709 SKILL for one weapon. In total, you’ll need 10.3309 SKILL or around 1.99301 BNB. Note that these values may change depending on the current market prices of BNB and SKILL.
• You also have the option to look for good weapons being sold via Marketplace, and use your available SKILLs to purchase them. Once you have bought one or two weapons with good stats, you can then buy characters that will match your new weapons.

• Once you have swapped your BNB to your SKILL, you can now recruit up to a maximum four characters, and one to three weapon, depending on your available SKILL. You can recruit at Plaza and forge new weapons at Blacksmith. Forging your weapon has RNG mechanics. Here are the chances, and market price as of July 23, 2021.
  • 5+ star @ 1% chance. Estimated cost 37.09 SKILL.
  • 4+ star @ 6% chance. Estimated cost 6.18 SKILL.
  • 3+ star @ 21% chance. Estimated cost 1.77 SKILL.
  • 2+ star @ 56% chance. Estimated cost 0.66 SKILL.
  • 1+ star @ 100% chance.

• Select a character via Plaza, select a weapon via Blacksmith and proceed to combat. Take note of the combat mechanics like elements, attributes, modifiers and boost. You can read more of this in their whitepaper on page 6.
• SKILLS you have won will be awarded to you, but will have an Early Withdraw Tax of 15%. It is best to withdraw after 15 days as the tax rate diminishes by 1% per day.
• As mentioned earlier, take note that you’ll be paying a gas fee of .0025 Gas Fee so make sure that you have enough BNB on your Metamask account to cover it.
• Once you have accumulated your desired SKILL, you have two options: (1) You can swap your SKILL to USDT via apeswap then send USDT to Binance; or, (2) you can just swap your SKILL to BNB on your Metamask account. You can then send it back to your Binance account by inputting the address via BEP20 (BSC) Binance Smart Chain Network. You can find your address on Binance by clicking Deposit.

• Now that your BNB is on your wallet, you can then withdraw or trade it. There are various ways to manage your earnings via Binance.

How much can you possibly earn?

Let me give you an idea based on one of our reader’s experience. He registered two accounts with 4 characters each. The first account has a better combination of weapons and characters. Each character has 200 Stamina and can play a total of 5 rounds. Based on his experience, he managed to earn about 2.1669 SKILL for his first account, which is equal to $177 at $54/SKILL, or PhP5,850.63 at PhP50/USD.

Another friend in the industry, Migs Lopez, prepared a table for reference; and we based this as a reference to compute for potential earnings if one has 1 to 5 teams. Migs was kind enough to share with us the table he presented on his stream, which can be found on this link.

	1 Team	2 Teams	3 Teams	4 Teams	5 Teams
	4 Champions	8 Champions	12 Champions	16 Champions	20 Champions
Daily Earnings Before After Fee	5,850.63	11,701.26	17,551.89	23,402.52	29,253.15
Weekly Earnings Before After Fee	40,954.41	81,908.82	122,863.23	163,817.64	204,772.05
Monthly Earnings Before After Fee	175,518.90	351,037.80	526,556.70	702,075.60	877,594.50

Fortunately for Cryptoblades players, the developers also devised a way to compute your potential earnings based on specific set parameters.

The table above is based on a level 9 Fire-based Character with a 4-star fire-based weapon with an STR of 332 and DEX of 251.

Having multiple accounts is possible as well. Simply create a new account on the existing main Metamask account, and link it to CryptoBlades. Setting up scholars is fairly possible as well, but requires a high level of trust between managers and scholars.

Update: It is now much easier to track your earnings, character stamina and EXP gain. Check out this article we wrote about it.