Very excited to share a first look into the world of Paragon’s generative art NFT collection: The Seekers. At first glance, The Seekers is a PFP Collection with interesting utility, but it’s also a project evolution, co-authored with the community and even other collections.
In the months after we began building the Paragon platform’s rental, buy-now-pay-later, and other peer-to-peer transaction functionalities, we thought about the NFT projects we love and realized two opportunities we think we can contribute to:
- While there are many brilliant applications for the Paragon technology right now, there are still so many yet to be discovered — what if we create our own unique use cases?
- NFT communities view projects on other chains as evil incarnate and see collections within their own chain as vicious competition. But that’s not how most collectors operate — they’re in multiple projects, communities and mindsets. What if we developed a discovery engine and a collective of collections?
The Seekers combines everything we love about the projects we’re in and adds a host of unique benefits for short- medium- and long-term holders. On top of that, it works with other collections instead of requiring total commitment to one.
Overview:
When we refer to the discovery engine and a collective of collections, these are much more than friendly phrases– they’re how we’re approaching the platform and the collection.
Holders of Paragon’s The Seekers Collection– the genesis collection– will find there’s something for everyone:
- The art is what holders have come to expect from generative projects — a mix of detailed randomized character traits as well as sets, secrets and mythic combinations
- The experience integrates into the platform’s reward system — everything holders do with their NFTs benefits their account on the platform
- The game is both active and passive — time-based choices about how their PFPs will explore the Paragon worlds give holders new things to find and be rewarded by everyday
- The community is cross-collection — almost any other collection can be used in the game
- The story is driven by the holders — every action taken shapes the next season of activity and the meta
Seek:
Seeker NFTs are minted. Paragon NFTs are not. They’re found.
Seeking is the primary action for the Paragon collection, and all other actions flow from it. Seeking entails sending out your Seeker paired with an NFT from another collection (your choice of any NFT in your wallet) to seek Paragons. This means you can use your favorite NFTs alongside your Seeker. There are different bonuses and perks depending on what other collection you choose to seek with, so choose wisely (more on this in a future post)! Searches go on indefinitely– you will either recall your Seeker and claim your loot or come back to find Seeker failed in their search and receive a consolation reward. The longer you leave your NFTs to seek, the better the rewards.
Here’s the basic flow for a Seek:
Upon mint/purchase of a Seeker, you can choose to seek, then pair the NFT with another collection. After consuming any applicable boosts you’re off and searching until you recall your NFT or your journey results in failure. After a successful recall, you are awarded with loot from the corresponding drop table (different actions = different rewards).
When you send your Seeker out to seek they are always searching for Paragons. Though Seekers will rarely find Paragons, that is not the only thing your Seeker will return with. They may find Boosts that increase success chances, off-chain collectibles, the Paragon utility token and… NFTs. There will be two NFT co-collections, one of them being Paragons, available as seeking rewards (check out the end of this article for a sneak peak at concepts for the other one). These two collections will work in tandem with the Seekers and will be primarily accessed as a reward for the successful recall of your Seeker.
Quest:
Quests drive the Paragon story forward.
If you’re not Seeking, you’re probably Questing. Quests are different from Seeking in that you do not have to include an outside collection to start and instead of waiting to recall your NFT, each Quest has a specific time period. Questing is where you can first utilize any co-collection NFTs that you’ve earned up until this point, they take the place of an outside collection as your quest companion. The other major difference between Questing and Seeking is the loot pools. Questing has a more “favorable” weighted loot pool, but Paragons can only be found by Seeking.
Here’s the basic flow for a Quest:
As you can see, the flows for Questing are very similar to Seeking. Send your Seeker out to quest, choose whether or not to pair it with a co-collection NFT, then use your applicable consumables, and either complete the quest, fail, or recall early to earn your loot.
Between these two choices, Seekers have a multitude of ways to play and earn loot. For hardcore gamers trying to minmax their loot, this is a dynamic system of incentives offering endless replayability. Depending on what collections and traits are boosted, a Seeker might be more effective Seeking than Questing. Alternatively through the use of consumable boosts and strong or rare co-collection NFT(s) it might be well worth it to skip out on the chance for a Paragon and go complete a quest for rare gear.
Raid:
Raids allow holders to quest together for phat lewt.
Seeking and Questing will give holders lots to do, but there’s a third option for those looking for a true challenge. Raiding is an homage to classic raid mechanics in games like WoW and Destiny. It’s a party-based action that requires your Seeker, outside NFTs, and co-collection NFTs to party up with other players’ squads to embark on a harrowing journey.
While Raiding is similar to Questing, the big difference is the lack of a recall option. There is no tapping out early to ‘save’ your NFTs during a Raid, your party will either be successful and complete it or fail trying (and get a consolation prize). After choosing your Seeker to Raid, you can add a combination of “Minions” & Paragons to pair with other holders’ Seekers to fill your Raid party. From there it will be up to the combined efforts of your party’s NFTs to secure the rewards that come with a Raid completion.
Seeking, Questing, and Raiding make up the basics of the Paragon collection mechanics, but stay tuned to future posts for more detail on Loot, Boosts, Stats, Leveling, Quest Criteria and more.
Now that we’ve covered the mechanics that make up Paragon’s game, let’s take a look at the approach to art and story.
Art & Story:
The art is generative. The story is too (sort of).
In the coming days, we’ll be sharing the art in all its evolving detail. However, this article is about mechanics, so rather than a proper art sneak peek (which is coming), we’ll focus on the approach to art… and to story.
(Note: all the art here is work-in-progress <WIP> — much is sketch or concept and is shared to illustrate approach, not final art)
When designing the lore surrounding the collection, our team settled on a mixture of mid-fantasy, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk, and otherworld.
Sound crazy? Read on…
The Seekers collection spans 4 distinct realities all brought together through calamity and a mysterious power only the Paragons can channel. Each reality is distinct and it’s from them we draw the genesis characters for the collection:
- Denizens of the Nexus — where the story begins, a reality of adventurers, wizards and simple people trying to survive as other worlds collide with theirs
- Fremen (working title, you Dune fans will get it) — survivors from a harsh reality not their own
- Synths — from a reality where humans have learned to augment themselves for utility, efficiency and even survival
- Shifters — from a reality where every human isn’t just that– at adolescence, each experiences The Change, transitioning from human to animal and they make a choice: return to their people a shapeshifter, or remain the animal forever– an Eternal
Given the flows of how Seek/Quest/Raid work, you can imagine what the worldbuilding for Paragon might start to look like. But it’s the choices holders will make that will give everyone involved agency in the outcomes and evolution of the adventure. The story is designed to be community-led.
So we had to approach the art in an open-ended way as well.
The Seekers PFP Collection will be both generative for most NFTs as well as prescriptive in certain scenarios (there will be trait sets, combos, etc). The reality-based nature of the characters will necessitate a simple logic to the generation of the individual NFTs:
- All Seekers will have a Reality trait, designating from which reality they come
- Some traits will be universal, available to any NFT in the collection
- Some traits will be reality-specific, only assigned to NFTs with that reality trait
- Some traits will only be on Paragons
In addition, we’re taking an interesting approach to character in terms of head/face combinations. Take a look at this diagram (it’s sketch art) to get a sense of how the Paragon characters will be put together:
Splitting the head into 3 distinct traits instead of doing head/eyes/mouth/etc as traits themselves gives us an interesting palette for combinations while maintaining consistency (and is at the root of how we’ll approach the characters from this or that reality).
In addition, Seekers will be armed with gear both fantastic and mundane, which provides them with both a visual and a stats-based trait affecting the mechanics of the collection:
As we play with traits for Kai here, you can get an idea of how the trade outs for a Nexus, Synth and Shifter addition will work in the context of the numbered setup above:
The genesis collection will stand alone as a complete collection, but the story (and project) will evolve over time. Subsequent seasons will introduce new realities (and thus new NFTs in new collections). If you end up liking certain traits or art, don’t worry– we’ll do everything we can to put it all to good use.
Bonus: A Minion Sneak Peek
Seekers starting from the Nexus don’t always have to venture out seeking or go on quests alone. In a reality all their own lives a varied race of creatures that have a special attunement– called Affinity– for the power that Paragons manifest. That Affinity is part of their very being and they’re inexorably drawn to Paragons, wherever they may be.
Thus, Seekers have begun to bring these companions with them, greatly increasing the chance to return from their journeys successful.
There’s so much more to share, but we’ll leave you with these sketches for this race of companions who represent the 3rd collection: The Minions (rename contest incoming).
PS If you’re interested in having a hand in the ongoing development of everything we’ve shared (or if you’re just interested), follow along on Twitter and Discord as we build this project and bring the collections to light. And if you do, say hi!
PPS Oh, and if you happen to find The Black Key, do NOT, no matter what happens, use it. Please. Just don’t.
