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PASS card FOMO to 21,000 ETH, how to play the full-chain RTS game Sky Strife?

Read this article in 17 Minutes

There is no God who dominates everything here. You and I are players, and we are also operating this virtual world.

While the blockchain gaming industry is experiencing a wave of growth, the concept of "full-chain gaming" is also gaining more attention. On November 27th, the full-chain RTS game Sky Strife launched Season 0 testing on the Redstone Holesky testnet, and also began casting the Sky Strife Season Pass.

The starting price for the Sky Strife Season Pass is 0.005 Holesky ETH, and for every Season Pass that is minted, the minting price increases by 50%. Although the minting price for the Season Pass is constantly decreasing, the speed of the decrease cannot offset the price increase caused by players rushing to mint. Just one minute after the minting began, the minting price had already reached 1.45 Holesky ETH.

After another 4 minutes, the casting price has reached 83 Holesky ETH.

1.5 hours after the start of casting, the casting price has exceeded 900 Holesky ETH. At this time, the official announced an accelerated decrease in the casting price, which is expected to decrease by approximately 650 ETH within a day. However, the casting price has only slightly fallen since breaking through 21,000 ETH...

Currently, only 38 Sky Strife Season Passes have been minted, and some players can be seen on Twitter seeking to purchase Holesky ETH to mint the Season Pass. However, even without the Season Pass, we still have the opportunity to play the game.

How to participate in Sky Strife testing for gameplay?

1. Visit the game testing website https://playtest.skystrife.xyz/ and connect your wallet. Approve the request to add the Redstone Holesky testnet to the website. Once approved, your wallet will automatically switch to the Redstone Holesky test network.

2. Set your game name and then click "Save and Continue". At this step, you will need Holesky ETH to complete the on-chain interaction.

3. Now let's get some Holesky ETH. The following faucets are available for use:

https://stakely.io/en/faucet/ethereum-holesky-testnet-eth, this Faucet will stop working once there is a certain amount of Holesky ETH in the wallet, so it can be used first.

Then you will be asked to submit the corresponding tweet link. Copy and submit the tweet link, wait for verification to succeed, and you can receive Holesky ETH.

https://faucet.quicknode.com/ethereum, the mainnet wallet needs to have at least 0.001 ETH to receive Holesky ETH provided by the Faucet, which can be claimed once every 12 hours.

After connecting the wallet, the "Wallet Address" field will be automatically filled in. Please note that the option on the right side of Ethereum should be selected as "Holesky", and then click "Continue".

You can choose to register a QuickNode account to get 8 times Holesky ETH, or click "Generate the tweet..." to send a specific tweet and copy the tweet link to the "Tweet URL" column to get 4 Holesky ETH. Of course, you can also do nothing and just click the blue button at the bottom to get 1 Holesky ETH.

https://holesky-faucet.pk910.de/, here you can mine Holesky ETH using PoW. I tested it last night and was able to mine 5 in about 10 minutes.

4. After obtaining ETH, you can successfully set up your name and enter the game. Before entering the game, you will be prompted to transfer a certain amount of Holesky ETH to your game wallet to cover in-game expenses. As this is a blockchain game, every operation in the game requires a transaction fee in Gas. You can click the blue-gray button to automatically deposit 0.001 Holesky ETH, or enter any amount of Holesky ETH below and click "Transfer".

5. Back to the main interface, we will see many game rooms waiting to start in "Open Matches", but most of them are not playable. Some are set by the host to only allow Season Pass holders to join, and some require an "Entrance Fee", which can only be won by playing games. So what should we do? There are two ways. One is to wait for a Bodhisattva to accumulate enough "Entrance Fee" and open a 0 Entrance fee welfare room that all players can join, such as the #351 game in the figure below. It is recommended to keep an eye on Discord. Bodhisattvas usually ask if anyone wants to play together before opening a welfare room in Discord.

Additionally, at 8am and 8pm every day, the project team will release some free rooms for everyone to play in. You can wait and enter the room when it becomes available. In short, only by participating in the game can you win Entrance fee, and you also need Entrance fee to create a room.

Game Mechanics

This is a RTS (real-time strategy) game. In the game, our goal is to send troops to destroy the opponent's "Settlement Base", and to do so, we need resources. Every game turn, the system will allocate "gold" to players based on the number of "bases" and "gold mines" they control. Players can use "gold" to send troops from their "base" and balance controlling mines/bases, defending their own base, and attacking other players' bases to win the game.

注意，不要一直保持不动，这并不是最佳策略。在游戏中，通过击杀其他玩家的单位或摧毁他们的基地，也可以获得黄金。如果您玩过星际争霸、魔兽争霸等 RTS 游戏，就能够很好地理解——如果你不采取行动，别人就会去采矿，生产更多的兵力，更快地发展，只靠资源就能消耗你的实力。

Take the 4-player map Cauldron as an example. The players' initial bases are distributed in the four corners of the map, and there are a total of 6 mineral points on the map that can be contested:

The blue squares represent the initial base location, and the yellow squares represent the gold mine location.

In the middle of this map, there is a base that can be contested. The health and armor values of this base are slightly lower than the initial base, but it can still be destroyed and provides gold income every turn. Taking control of this middle base is very helpful for controlling the nearby four mining points.

After entering the game, each player will receive 1000 "gold" and 1 initial "hero". The "hero" has stronger health and armor than any other producible unit. Then we can click on our initial base, select units, and start production.

The duration of a round is 15 seconds, and there are many things to do during this time. You need to control the base's violent soldiers, control your own units to move or attack. Once there are too many units to control on the field, it's easy to get overwhelmed. Therefore, it's important to determine the priority of what needs to be done each round based on the situation on the field.

Click on the produced soldier to control its movement or select an object within the movement range to attack (occupying mines and bases is also considered an attack).

Currently, there are five types of producible units in the game: "Swordsman", "Plunderer", "Knight", "Archer", and "Gunner". Each unit has its own strengths and weaknesses in terms of attack power, siege power, health, armor, mobility (movement range), and attack distance. The amount of "gold" required for production also varies. We need to consider the situation on the field and form our combat power accordingly.

In the game screen above, we can also see that there are stones and trees on the map, and these two terrains will have different effects. Units moving onto trees and rocks will gain armor bonuses, but also require higher mobility from the units.

As the game progresses, the gold reserves of the base and gold mines will be depleted, no longer providing players with gold income in each round. The initial gold production cycle of the base lasts for 8 minutes, while the bases and gold mines available for competition on the map last for 5 minutes. This setting prevents players from staying at home and requires everyone to go out and compete for resources on the map, while also keeping the total duration of a game within a reasonable range.