Foraging | Release Info & Mechanics
Ready, Set, Forage! 🐓
In less than 36hrs, you’ll be using your roost to give you a boost…
At 11.59pm on the 30th of September UTC — Foraging [Open Alpha] will go LIVE.
Foraging is the latest and greatest expansion to hit the Chikn ecosystem and sets the foundation for new forms of idle gameplay, NFT upgradability and ecosystem growth. You’ve been following the resource reveals and gobbling up the Roostr and FarmLand floor; now it’s time to reap what you’ve sown.
Foraging introduces new utility to your chikn, Roostr and FarmLand — now they can be used to produce even more NFTs through resource accumulation and crafting. This update also gives utility to all traits and rarities across the ecosystem for the very first time.
But beyond the immediate value propositions (aka more chikn-centric fun), Foraging prepares the entire ecosystem for a step up in scaling. Foraging will eventually allow us to bring utility to any NFT by enabling them to gather resources on FarmLand. That’s not just chikn, Roostr or third-generation chikn NFTs — that’s any NFT from any chain bridged over to Avalanche. The poultry conquest of Solana and Ethereum is coming.
In this release, we go through everything you need to know to get foraging on your farm. This is a massive update, so make sure you read everything so that you’re across it all.
Welcome to Foraging
The day starts like any other — you’re up before the crack of dawn, filling up your mug with a hot cup of Trader Joe’s 100% arabica. You gaze out your window as the pre-dawn light fills the sky and find a moment of complete peace. *Bgaark!*
With the first rays of sun glistening off the ominous Tungsten Cube behind your farmhouse, you head to the coop. You stop to admire your hefty roost for a moment before opening the gate, releasing your chikn and Roostr for the day.
Over the course of the day, your Coqs roam your FarmLand in search of their favorite food and a comfy spot to roost. Sometimes, however, they peck up something more — Resources of every caliber that could be crafted into something quite useful indeed. Ever interested in the greater good, they deliver these raw materials to you, knowing you may well have a higher purpose for them.
Every day you send your roost out, every day they return with the Resources they’ve foraged from the grounds of your little piece of on-chain paradise.
This, dear friends, is the life of the humble chikn Farmer.
Foreword
Foraging is our most complex product release to date and marks our first major off-chain infrastructure. It relies extensively on APIs and interfacing with the blockchain, so things will naturally be a bit different from our past releases that live almost entirely on-chain.
Foraging will be released over a staged rollout, with a series of key releases leading to full foraging functionality. The initial release is an open alpha for the community to begin testing the foundations of the product completely free of charge.
This initial open alpha will last for one week, and enables everyone to get familiar with foraging and set up their roost to optimize results. You won’t be charged any tokens to use the alpha, and all resources gathered will be reset to zero at the end of the week.
The reason for this release plan is twofold. First, it allows us to introduce Foraging into the ecosystem with minimal risk, as each stage is isolated. Second, it means we can collect community feedback, fix any issues, and rebalance and adjust the mechanics at every stage, ensuring that the fully developed product is as good as it can be.
Throughout this process, there may be hiccups, downtime and technical bugs which we will always iron out ASAP. Early alpha rollouts are important enablers of innovation, and we thank you in advance for your patience over the rollout — as well as your valuable feedback. As the weeks progress, we’ll introduce other exciting components such as blueprints, crafting, minting and decomposing.
For some of the version releases, we will be leaning on a small group of community members for testing before they go live. Keep an ear out for beta testing opportunities!
Along the way, we will also be releasing new craftable items in batches as a way of continually expanding what Foraging can do. There’s also a surprise release in V2 that should stir up some excitement as the rollout continues.
Foraging Rollouts
Open Alpha
- Testing accumulation of resources and off-chain infrastructure
- Gathering feedback from community
Version 1 — Accumulation
- Send your NFTs out to forage and collect resources.
Version 2 — ????
- A mysterious release appears — can you figure out what it’ll be? We’ll feed you some more hints in the lead-up to the release, but always remember that none of our products function in isolation. Everything is connected…
Version 3 — Crafting
- Craft items and equip them to chikn, Roostr and FarmLand.
Version 4 — Minting items as NFTs
- Move items on- and off-chain to trade on the secondary market.
Version 5 — Upgradability
- Upgrades for crafting, item slots and more.
Version 6 — Decomposition
- Decompose items back into resources.
Open Alpha — Accumulation
The open alpha release of Foraging allows chikn and Roostr owners to begin experiencing what accumulating resources from their FarmLand feels like, completely for free.
This open alpha will last for one week and give us time to test our off-chain infrastructure and user experience live with the community. You will have an off-chain token balance of 1000 EGG and 20,000 FERT tokens ready to use, and all resources and balances will be reset at the end of the alpha period. Shortly after, real EGG and FERT deposits will be enabled and true Foraging will commence.
There are some things you’ll need to begin Foraging (these numbers are variable and subject to change).
- FarmLand — larger than 1 Bigness
- At least 1 chikn (any KG) or 1 Roostr (24KG minimum)
Cost per Forage (flat fee):
- chikn = 6 $EGG
- Roostr = 60 $FERT
Note: These amounts may vary in the final release and/or over time.
On entering the foraging page, you’ll notice a prompt from Metamask to sign a message to prove ownership of your assets. This won’t charge you any AVAX, but will have to be signed on every session, so if you disconnect your wallet you’ll be prompted to sign again on reconnection.
When Version 1 releases, you need to first take your $EGG and $FERT off-chain and into our API-based application to begin foraging. On the backend, you’ll be burning these tokens to take them off-chain, then re-mint them when you decide to take them out of the API and back on-chain. For the alpha release, you’ll already have a (fake) balance provided for you.
Due to the sensitive nature of a token mint contract, we will withhold the withdraw feature in version 1 until a future release to ensure there are no security risks. Until then, any tokens deposited can be utilized in-game but should for now be considered burned and irrecoverable, so please do so at your own discretion.
Once you have your tokens, select one of your FarmLand NFTs to explore. The higher your FarmLand’s fertility, the higher your chance of successfully foraging all resources. You don’t need to have your FarmLand activated to forage on it.
You can also use $FERT to increase your chance of success for individual resources, but as with regular fertilizer, it needs occasional replenishing. These $FERT boosts only last 28 days before needing refertilization. You can deposit and utilize as much or as little $FERT as you’d like over the month.
Note: A successful forage gets +1 corresponding resource per tile, and the chance of successfully foraging a tile is independent from all other tiles.
Once you’ve selected your FarmLand and fertilized the resources you are aiming for, select the chikn or Roostr you want to send out foraging. Remember, any Roostr must be at least 24kg to forage!
Matching the traits of your Roostr or chikn to your FarmLand tiles increases the chances of a successful forage of the corresponding resource. Which traits match to what Resource is a secret for now; we’ll leave the discovery to the hivemind…
You’ll need particular Resources in varying quantities to craft certain items, and certain items will be more valuable than others. We’ll be releasing some sample blueprints to help you get an idea of what you can focus on accumulating for crafting. As we release more updates, your thoughts will probably turn to how you can maximize your roost’s foraging potential in the new meta 😉
Before your feathered friends get to work, you’ll be charged the $EGG or $FERT foraging fee. Note that this won’t prompt a MetaMask transaction alert — these tokens are already off-chain and these transactions will be recorded on the backend.
Your chikn and Roostr will then individually forage on each tile in your FarmLand (excluding your starting Barn tile). While on a tile, there’s a chance they’ll find the resource that’s produced there.
You can only forage with one chikn or Roostr per tile of your FarmLand simultaneously, so get burning that $EGG and expanding that land! Keep in mind that all foraging Coqs will traverse every tile of your FarmLand each time they forage.
Once your feathered friends have departed on their journey, put your feet up and wait for them to return. Foraging time is subject to a few different parameters — of course, the quicker you can complete a forage, the sooner you can get your roost back out there for another round!
Foraging time follows a few metrics:
- Each FarmLand starts with a base time of 24hrs.
- In the initial release, this time is fixed for all chikn and Roostr.
- In subsequent releases, the size of your NFT will impact the foraging time. The more KGs you’re packing, the quicker you can forage.
- Subsequent releases will also include another crucial way to reduce foraging time, letting you get ahead when it comes to farming those Resources!
When the day is over and the chooks come home to roost, you’ll be able to claim your resources from your inventory. You’ll begin with a capacity of 100 Resources that you can store, but you can burn 10 $EGG to increase the capacity by 50, ad infinitum. If you don’t have enough space to store your resources, you’ll forfeit them when you claim.
Once you’ve secured your bag of goodies, you can send your NFTs out to forage again. Check out the blueprint samples below to see what you should be aiming to accumulate.
If your chikn and Roostr are listed for sale in our marketplace or abroad, you will still be able to Forage! No need to unlist (other than common sense, of course). However, if your listed NFT gets sold while it is actively foraging, any collected but unclaimed resources will be forfeited. They won’t go to the new owner: they will be destroyed forever.
Note that when interacting with the blockchain for foraging, the blockchain data syncs up with our back-end and may cause slight discrepancies until the sync completes. This should take a matter of seconds, but be patient if you notice somethings off after selling or transferring your NFTs while foraging.
Blueprints 👀
If the early releases of Chikn harked back to simpler agrarian times, Foraging and the Crafting update throw us into the avian industrial revolution.
The items you craft have different uses that come in handy across the Chikn ecosystem. As we mentioned before, items and their blueprints will be released in batches, ensuring you’ve always got something new to work on with your roost.
To craft an item, first acquire all of the Resources required by the blueprint. This is where the traits of your chikn and Roostr and the tiles of your FarmLand become important — we’re excited to see how you all crack the gameplay meta! You’ll also need some $EGG and $FERT as part of each blueprint too.
Once crafted, your new item will appear in your inventory, ready to be equipped to either your chikn, Roostr or Farmland. Some items will be infinitely craftable, and some will have a limited supply, so get in quick before you have to pay a premium on the secondary market.
Note that these blueprints and effects may change before release and are examples only.
Name: Avian Adrenaline
Effect: Reduces foraging time by 30 minutes, decreases forage success by 2% for all ???, ???, and Lumber tiles.
Type: Consumable (chikn/Roostr)
Number of Uses: 24
Blueprint:
??? — 25
Mech — 5
??? — 1
Name: Fresh Topsoil
Effect: Increases the chance of foraging ??? and Lumber by 4%, decreases the chance to forage Gold by 2%.
Type: Consumable (FarmLand)
Number of uses: 24
Blueprint:
??? — 30
Lumber — 5
??? — 3
Name: Rusty Pickaxe
Effect: Gives +3% chance of a successful forage on all ??? tiles, increases base forage time by 30 mins.
Type: Equipable (chikn/Roostr)
Slot: Torso
Supply: 20,000
Blueprint:
Lumber — 75
Mech — 10
Tungsten — 2
Well I guess that’s all from us here at HQ…
Oh wait, one final point — the one that has been of utmost contention in the coop:
“Will we have to unroost our chikn and Roostr to Forage?”
There are terrific arguments both for and against this notion. However…
It is with great pride that we can inform you that you DO NOT have to unroost your chikn OR your Roostr to send them foraging — this even includes those in Roostr daycare. Such is the power of our non-custodial staking contracts, robust tokenomics and strong user engagement ✨
This means you can grow your KG, collect $EGG and $FERT, AND expand your FarmLand, all while Foraging. Any changes to the KG of your chikn or Roostr, or the bigness of your FarmLand, will be reflected in the subsequent (not current) forage.
SNEAKY DEVS… LFG 🔥
What’s next?
With the open alpha ready to go, we are setting our horizons to a smooth version 1 release. Once we are living and rolling, our attention turns to Version 2. Will this special release finally help answer the question: what is LAFF (Life After $FEED Farming)? For the stickybeaks among you, perhaps the answer has been right under your nose all along…
Until then, get your feathered companions clucked-on and FORAGING!
Bok Bok,
The Chikn Team 🐔🌱❤️
