A Step By Step Walkthrough of How To Get Ready to Play The Game
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Table of content
Introduction
Hi folks! Welcome to my first ever starter’s guide on The Nexus.
Joining a new Web3 Game can be a little disorienting compared to a traditional one. I’ve been following Guild of Guardians (GoG) for 4 months now, and I’m still learning new things all the time.
Not that GoG is a particularly complicated game, but there are a lot of steps involved in getting set up if you want to get the most out of it.
This is the perfect time to join. Immutable and the Guardians Guild Limited foundation are putting up huge prize money to help promote the game. But you have to act fast if you plan to compete for a share.
In this article, I’ll go through the steps you need to follow to get ready to play. We’ll cover the basics, how to get connected with the community, and everyone’s favorite topic, the assets.
This guide is meant for you if you’re new to the project or even to Web3 Gaming in general.
Let’s get started!
The Basics
This first section will take you through the fundamentals of setting yourself up to play Guild of Guardians.
Here’s what we’ll cover.
- How to create an Immutable Passport account
- How to Move your assets to your passport account
- How to install the game
It’s a very straight forward process. If you’re already comfortable with this, feel free to skip ahead to this point.
How to Create An Immutable Passport Account
Guild of Guardians (GoG) was developed using Immutable’s gaming infrastructure. It uses a wallet called Passport to let gamers manage their assets across a growing list of games — including GoG.
Passport is easy to use and simplifies a lot of blockchain complexities so all you have to worry about is your portfolio.
Anything you earn in GoG will be deposited to your Passport account. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with it if you intend to take advantage of the game’s play2earn(P2E) features.
The sign-up process for a Passport account is very simple.
All you have to do is navigate to https://passport.immutable.com/ and click on the sign-in button. You’ll then be prompted to choose a sign-in option using Google, Apple ID or an email address.
If you don’t have an existing Passport account, you’ll be directed to a screen that asks you to agree with a set of terms and conditions.
Once you agree to those, another pop-up will ask you if you want to connect to your passport dashboard. The dashboard is the interface you use to manage your assets, so I highly recommend you choose “yes”.
Once that’s done, you’ll be directed to your Passport’s main screen. And that’s all there is to it!
***IMPORTANT*** KEEP YOUR ASSETS AND TOKENS SAFE!
1. Enable two-factor authentication on your email or Apple account.
2. Set an Alpha-numeric password with at least 12 characters
3. Don’t register with the same account you use for everything else
4. Never accept direct messages from people you don’t know
5. Don’t click on links from untrusted sources
How To Move Your Assets To Your Passport Account
In this section, we’ll cover how to move your assets and tokens onto Passport to use them in the game. If you’ve already figured this out, you can skip ahead.
GoG was originally built on Immutable X (IMX) — Immutable’s first network.
The game was recently moved to a new one called Immutable zkEVM to allow better integration of Web3 features in the game.
Immutable took care of moving any GoG gaming assets you held on IMX to Immutable zkEVM for free — as long as you linked your IMX wallet to a new Passport account before March 4th, 2024.
If you missed that deadline, your assets were migrated to the wallet you connected to IMX when you purchased them.
You’ll need to manually transfer them to your Passport account if you want to use them in the game.
You have two options.
The first is to transfer them manually to your Passport’s wallet address.
This option is for folks who are knowledgeable about crypto and I won’t explore it any further in this article.
The safer way is to use the Immutable toolkit built into your Passport account.
You can find step by step instructions from the Immutable team here. Just remember that you need to have $IMX in the wallet where your assets are stored to pay for transaction fees.
Tokens, like $ETH and $GoG, weren’t included in the migration, leaving you to figure out how to move them yourself.
If you need help with that, check out this post I wrote that compares a few different options to deposit your tokens to Immutable zkEVM.
How to Install The Game
Ok, I get most people don’t need my help installing a mobile app, but I suggest reading the part on referral codes before you move on. If you already know all this, please feel free to skip ahead.
Once you have your Passport account created and you’ve sorted out your gaming assets, you can head to the Playstore or App Store to download the game.
There isn’t much to it, and I assume you know how to install an app from either platform.
When you reach the main screen, tap on the “Sign in with Immutable” button. This will take you through the same sign-in process you completed when you created your Passport account.
If this is your first time playing the game, you’ll start the tutorial and receive you first in-game Guardians.
You’re free to explore the game’s different features once you’re done with the tutorial, but you’ll want to take a second to enter a referral code. Doing so unlocks new quests with additional rewards.
You can enter a referral code by tapping on your avatar in the top-left corner of the main screen. On the next one, tap the “Settings” tab at the bottom. Enter your referral code in the corresponding field.
To get your own referral code to share with your friends, tap on the “View My Referrees” button. Tapping on “Find A Friend” will copy your code to your clipboard. Paste it somewhere (like notes) to reveal it.
Now that you’re all set to play the game, you’ll want to follow the community to stay on top of things, get rewarded and access exclusive features.
Community
Web3 titles offer a much more intimate experience than traditional games.
Development teams in the space offer more insight on the game’s development, better rewards for loyal fans, and new social gaming mechanics.
To take full advantage of GoG, you’ll want to:
- Join the main Discord, Bookmark the Website and Follow Socials
- Start collecting community rewards
- Join a guild
Join the main Discord, Bookmark the Website and Follow Socials
The main forum for all things GoG is the game’s Discord server.
It’s your hub to find out about special events and announcements, and connect with OG project supporters. I’ve learned so much by just hanging out within the community and learning from better players.
You’ll also want to follow the GoG team’s X account. News about the game usually breaks there first, and a number of GoG content creators (including yours truly) are active on there as well.
Finally, you’ll want to bookmark their website to access important companion features to the game like Eri’s Store and the Altar of Sacrifice. You’ll use both frequently to buy and craft new Guardians and items.
Start Collecting Community Rewards
Guild of Guardians is Immutable’s flagship game, and it’s sparing no expense promoting it, Passport and its new zkEVM network.
There are a number of programs out there designed to reward you for being active in the ecosystem. If you’re going to play the game anyway, you’ll want to check these out.
Taking part doesn’t cost you anything, and you come out of it with a little extra you can use to build up your account.
You can read about Immutable’s reward programs for GoG in this post.
Join A Guild
You should expect that joining a guild will be important in a game called “Guild of Guardians”.
Guild will have access to exclusive features, such as:
- Crafting artifacts that grant passive bonuses
- Selling artifacts and splitting the reward
- Access to exclusive game modes like Guild Raids and Guild Wars
- In-game bonuses
Only a certain number of player-owned guilds can access these features — meaning spots are limited.
I’m an officer in Oh Canada Eh, and we have spots to fill. We’re a group of content creators and gamers who want to help others learn how to play the game and get exposed to Web3.
We welcome players from all skill levels, including F2P. If you’re looking for a positive atmosphere with a great group of people dedicated to your success, come check us out on our Discord server.
Set Your Goals and Your Budget
Guild of Guardians is a P2E game with an open economy where you can purchase, sell, and trade items. That offers a lot of opportunities like:
- Accelerating your progress through the game by purchasing upgrades and Guardians right from the start
- Customizing your roster by swapping Guardians with other players
- Earning from the game by ranking on leaderboards, staking and selling assets on the open market.
Capitalizing on these opportunities is a matter of strategy, time and money.
Of course, you can also choose to completely ignore this and just play the game.
You would never guess GoG is a Web3 game if no one told you. It’s one of the things I like most about it.
Since your involvement can range from nothing to several thousand dollars, I’d like to encourage you to think about the following before you start looking at purchasing assets:
- What do you want from the game? Are you playing for fun or do you want to turn a profit? If so, what’s your target?
- What do you need to do to get there? Do you have to reach the top of the leaderboards on a weekly basis to reach your target? Or sell a certain number of Guardians at a certain price point? Can you invest the time and money to reach your goals?
- Does that fit within your risk capital? Under no circumstances should you consider video games a safe investment. Are you ok with losing your money if the game doesn’t pan out?
Defining your goals and setting your budget is essential to avoid making costly mistakes when it comes to play2earn games.
Gaming Assets
And now the part everyone loves to talk about — the gaming assets!
Guild of Guardians has built up quite a collection over the last three years. The goal here is to help you figure out which ones are worth owning, and which ones you can pass on for now.
- About digital ownership
- TokenTrove, The Altar of Sacrifice, and Eri’s Store
- The Tokens
- Energy Booster
- Guardians
- Pets
- Guild Tokens
- PFPs, Idols and Prayers
About Digital Ownership
Guild of Guardians is a Web3 title where in-game assets can be converted into digital property you can own.
This is done by linking it to an NFT with a unique serial number that’s registered on an immutable public ledger against your Passport account.
These ownership records can be transferred to others (like a deed), which allows you to trade or sell them on an open marketplace.
You’ll have the option to convert your in-game assets into digital property using Ascension.
Ascension Seals — an in-game resource you can purchase or collect — to convert a regular in-game Guardian into digital property.
What I like most about GoG is that you don’t have to get involved with its Web3 assets if you don’t want to. You can play the game entirely on Web2 — but you’ll miss out on a lot if you do.
TokenTrove, The Altar of Sacrifice and Eri’s Store
Before we get started on the assets themselves, I want to familiarize you with these three important features. Each of them allows you to buy or craft new Guardians and items outside the game.
Pro Tip: Consider allowing pop-ups on these sites to avoid your browser blocking transactions.
How To Use TokenTrove
TokenTrove is the official secondary marketplace for GoG. This is where you can buy and sell your on-chain assets to and from other players.
The marketplace is really easy to use, and best of all, there are no transaction fees when you purchase assets.
To get started, navigate to https://tokentrove.com, connect your wallet using the button on the top right and select the “Guild of Guardians” collection on the left hand menu.
This will take you to a screen with the different Guild of Guardians asset collections. Let’s purchase a Guardian in this example.
Clicking or tapping on the Guardian collection will open the marketplace interface with all available listings.
From here, select the Guardian you want to purchase, then click on the “Buy” button.
If this is your first time purchasing from TokenTrove, a pop-up will appear asking you to authorize spending the tokens in your wallet.
Once you do, another pop-up will appear for you to authorize the transaction.
Click on the “accept” button to complete the purchase. A notification message will appear at the bottom right corner of your screen to confirm you successfully bought the listing.
Selling your asset is a little more complicated, so I’ll cover that soon in another post.
How To Use The Altar of Sacrifice
The Altar of Sacrifice is a Web3 feature that allows you to “sacrifice” (destroy) your digital assets to create new ones with utility in the game.
So far, you can only use the altar to burn prayers or craft Cracked Hearts.
The first item gives you a random Core One or Gen One Guardian, and the second is used to upgrade an eSports or Founder Guardian’s enlightenment level.
Using the Altar is very straight-forward.
Navigate to https://altar.guildofguardians.com/ and and sign-in with your Passport. This will take you to the Altar’s user interface.
From there, you simply click and drag your assets into the grid on the right hand side. You can also sacrifice $GOG tokens by using the field just above the “Sacrifice” button.
Once you add all of a recipe’s ingredients, the “Sacrifice” button will turn yellow. Click on it to start the crafting process.
You have to add the right combination of assets —or recipes — to activate the button. Here is a list of active Altar recipes:
- Rare Cracked Heart: 3 rare Guardians + 1 $GOG
- Epic Cracked Heart: 3 rare Guardians + 2 Epic Guardians + 10 $GOG
- Legendary Cracked Heart: 3 rare Guardians + 2 Epic Guardians + 50 $GOG
- Random Core One/Gen One Guardian: 1 prayer
- Prayer of random rarity: 5 rare Guardians
The team plans to add more recipes through special events in the future. They may even feature digital assets from other Immutable games like Gods Unchained or ChronoForge.
If this is your first time using the altar, a pop-up window will ask you for permission to spend your $GOG tokens.
Once you accept, another pop-up will appear for you to approve the sacrifice.
Once you accept, you’ll receive your item after a short delay.
How To Use Eri’s store
Guild of Guardians will feature an in-game store that sells gaming assets (not digital property), and Eri’s store that exclusively sells Web3 ones (digital property).
Using Eri’s store is similar to TokenTrove. You connect your wallet, select the item you want and approve the transaction.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any sales going on at the moment, but I’ll be sure to update this section at the next opportunity.
The Tokens
GoG uses a few cryptocurrencies to settle transactions that happen outside the game on TokenTrove, Eri’s Store and the Altar of Sacrifice.
Sales on TokenTrove are mainly settled using Ethereum ($ETH) and $GOG.
The $GOG token was created specifically for the game, and has additional uses such as:
- Crafting recipes at the Altar of Sacrifice
- Staking it for rewards
- Voting on proposals to improve the game
Meanwhile, Eri’s store only accepts $USDC based on its one and only sale to date.
You’ll need all of these tokens to participate in the game’s open economy and get the most out of it.
The easiest way to get all of these tokens in your Passport is to use the Immutable Toolkit to swap one for the others. Find out how in this post.
Energy Boosters
At long last, we can get down to the business of the gaming assets themselves, and the first one you’ll want to consider is the energy booster.
Like many mobile games, your playtime in Guild of Guardians is gated by energy meters and tickets.
Energy boosters permanently increase your energy cap so you can play the game longer. They also let you regenerate energy faster and exceed the cap by using energy potions.
In short, an energy booster will let you advance in the game faster, and complete more runs to rank higher on leaderboards.
If you want to earn from Guild of Guardians, having an energy booster can greatly increase your chances.
You only need one per account, which makes them a great value at their current price point.
Find it on TokenTrove.com
Guardians
Guardians are the most important assets in the game for obvious reasons, and we’ll cover their mechanics in more detail in part 2 of this starter’s guide when we tackle how to play the game.
For now, you should know that you’ll need at least a full squad of 5 Guardians to play. You can easily obtain Guardians for free inside the game. You can also purchase them in the game or from other players.
- Guardian fundamentals
- Sample squad — free
- Sample squad — under 100 USD
- Sample squad — under 500 USD
- Sample squad — under 1,000 USD
- Sample squad — over 1,000 USD +
Guardian Fundamentals
Guardians are split into four collections. There are big differences between them, and you can read all about it in this post.
To summarize:
- You can only get Founder and Early Adopters (eSports) Guardians by purchasing them on the secondary market.
- Guardians from these collections are generally more powerful
- Core One Guardians are easy to collect from playing the game.
- You can only get Gen One Guardians from Premium Banners using calling stones.
Building an effective squad starts with knowing about classes. Classes define the roles your Guardians are meant to play on your squad. You can read more about classes in this post.
There are six different classes in the Guild of Guardians. Here’s what each one does:
- Tanks — Soak up hits and prevent enemies from reaching your back row
- Warriors — Can take a hit and deal moderate amounts of damage
- Assassins — Teleport to the enemy’s back row and deal high damage to the weakest enemies
- Rangers — Ranged units that deal the highest damage out of all classes
- Mages — Main magic damage dealers with varied skills and abilities
- Support — Mid range magic units with buffs, debuffs and heals
There’s a lot to learn about squad building, so I came up with this list of teams to help get you started.
Market conditions fluctuate. The Guardian prices below won’t be the same by the time you read this article, so make sure to revise the squad’s current price before you purchase a Guardian.
Sample Squad — Free
This first squad is made up of all Core One guardians you can collect in the game for free.
Atticus is one of the best damage dealers from the Core One collection.
In this squad, you pair up two tanks up front to keep the enemy away with Flix in support to keep them alive. Grisell is there to replenish Atticus’ energy so he can keep firing bombs.
Find Them On Token Trove:
Sample Squad — Under 100 USD
This budget squad includes a very balanced mix of Hydris Founder Guardians with higher starting stats and a few Core One guardians to keep costs down.
Takati is a great tank who can shield the front row. Acquiris applies healing and a powerful defense buff. Elohatt contributes some healing too, and she shares damage dealing duties with Derisda.
The squad receives a big synergy bonus for including all Hydris Guardians, and an even bigger defense bonus whe you level up the Herals of Hydris rune.
Find Them On Token Trove:
Sample Squad — Under 500 USD
This price range is a bit tricky because you have to balance weaker Guardians with stronger ones.
With current market conditions, that means relying on eSports Guardians or Reborne.
Brownwyn, Stratos and Reborne all have great damage dealing potential. Pairing her with Aquiris greatly increases your damage resistance and defense.
Grisell also brings a little healing, but she’s mostly there for the synergy bonus with Reborne and to keep Bronwyn firing her laser.
Find Them On Token Trove:
Grisell
Sample Squad — Under 1,000 USD
A Guardian budget of 1K is also tough because a good Founder Guardian will eat up most of your budget.
On top of that, you’ll have to fork out even more to upgrade them quickly if you want to compete.
Your options basically boil down to building around a few very good Founders, or spreading things out evenly.
Here’s what that first one could looks like.
Even after the nerf, Lia is still one of the best damage dealers in the game. The purpose of this squad is to have her pulverize the enemy by spamming her ultimate after Gwynn packs the enemy together.
Cyrus is the best tank in the game, and his job is to keep the enemy at bay while Flix keeps him alive.
Find Them On Token Trove:
CyrusFi
A more balanced squad could look like this.
Aurant and Stratos are two good eSports tanks. Stratos can taunt and create a distraction for Juno to disable the enemy’s back row.
Juno, Aurant and Flix get a Terra synergy bonus. Meanwhile, Tian Long and Stratos provide a counter against Cinder.
If I had to choose between the two, I would probably pick this one. It won’t be as powerful at the start, but it will eventually catch up and deal more damage than the first.
Find Them On Token Trove:
Sample Squad — Over 1,000 USD
If the sky’s the limit, you’ll want to build around the three most sought after Guardians — Tavros, Lia and Cyrus. These three together cost more than 1.4K USD on the secondary market.
Since they’re the best healer, damage dealer and tank in the game respectively, you can fit any other legendary Guardians around them. Here’s an idea for a formation with synergy bonuses.
This mixed Cinder/Umbrus squad strikes a good balance between offense and defense. Tieroc grants his squad mates passive energy regeneration so they can spam their ultimates.
Find Them On Token Trove:
If you need more help figuring out your starting squad, you can follow my X account for tips on squad combinations or follow my blog for more detailed articles on game theory.
I also recommend you follow ToadManSam and Tomahawk’s twitch stream every Sunday at 7 p.m. EST
You should also check out the GoGHeroes.com for quick reference to Guardian stats and abilities.
Pets
There isn’t much to say about pets at this point other than they won’t be in the game until August 15th. For now, all we know is that they’ll provide some sort of passive bonus to your team.
Pets are only available on the secondary market, and legendary pets can set you back as much as 500 USD.
Keep the following in mind if you decide to purchase one or more:
- Pets are still in development, and any details we have may change from now until August
- There aren’t that many legendary and epic pets in circulation, so there’s a chance the team will make new ones available
Given where pets stand, they should probably be at the bottom of your priority list for now.
Guild Tokens
Guilds in Guilds of Guardians are ownable assets. But are they worth the purchase price?
Guild members earn by crafting exclusive artifacts and sharing the proceeds. Guilds will also benefit from exclusive leaderboards.
As a guild owner, you get a first cut of each artifact your guild sells. Higher rarity guilds have more members, potentially faster crafting times as a result, and give you a bigger share.
That may seem lucrative on paper, but there’s a lot we don’t know, like:
- What will crafting these artifacts involve?
- What kind of utility will they have?
- What will the market for these artifacts look like?
- Will guild leaderboards include prizes that you can sell or trade?
Guild tokens, especially legendary and mythic ones, are big expenses. They also take some effort to manage — so don’t approach these as a source of passive income.
My advice is to make sure you’re committed to the game and want to be a guild leader before you jump on one of these.
Find Them On Token Trove:
PFP, Idols and Prayers
If you navigate around TokenTrove, you’ll notice Guild of Guardians has an avatar collection and a few other odds and ends.
The avatar collection is a series of portraits that were released when the project first started in 2021.
They don’t have any utility in the game, but you’ll be able to set them as your avatar instead of the current default ones.
If you head to the collection titled “Other”, you’ll come across these items.
The ticket looking ones are called prayers, and you can burn them at the Altar of Sacrifice to obtain a random Guardian. You can read more about that special event here.
The two statues, called Idols, were given to the community as a reward for participating in the prayer event — along with an airdrop of $IMX tokens.
They also don’t have any uses in the game. Their price is high because the team hinted they’ll feature in an Altar recipe in the future.
Conclusion
That concludes part 1 of my GoG Starter’s Guide.
If you followed along step by step, you should be all set to join the community and play the game.
You’ll want to set your goals and your budget before you start purchasing assets.
If you decide to go ahead, you should consider an energy booster first. The extra energy will let you level up faster and hit higher scores in competitive play.
Once you’ve settled on that, you can start building your squad of five Guardians.
GoG’s battle system is deeper than it looks, and it takes time and experience to craft the perfect team.
If you need help, you can lean on my content by following me, and you can follow other great content creators who focus on GoG.
Another great way to up your game is to join a guild. Oh Canada Eh welcomes players from all skill levels. Come learn the game with us in an inclusive and relaxed atmosphere.
Part 2 of this guide will focus on how to play the game. There’s a lot to cover, so expect me to drop new content in smaller articles at first to help you digest things.
Until then, I’ll see you in the game!
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Useful Links:
- Guild of Guardians Website: https://www.guildofguardians.com/
- Guild of Guardians Discord: https://discord.gg/gog
- Guild of Guardians Whitepaper: https://portal.guildofguardians.com/
- Immutable Toolkit: https://toolkit.immutable.com/
- $GOG Token on CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/guild-of-guardians/
- TokenTrove: https://tokentrove.com/
- Oh Canada Eh Discord: https://discord.gg/wCAjr2FeEE
