DeFi Kingdoms AMA & A Call to Arms— March 23, 2023

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These are transcribed with ~90%-95% accuracy. I will cut out various banter and tweak verbiage used from each speaker to help with clarity.

Anything with an underline is a link. Underlined speaker names are links to timestamps in the recording.

Table of Contents:
1. Speakers
2. Questions & Answers
3. Call to Arms! BOUNTY QUEST

Original Recording (begins at the 12:19 timestamp):

DeFi Kingdoms Community AMA 03/23/2023

Speakers: Frisky Fox, Dreamer, Beetle Dude, Hubert Cumberdale, Pieface, Pine Cone, Bolon Soron, DrZipper

☍ Speakers

[ Dreamer ] [ Frisky Fox ] [ Beetle Dude ]
[ Hubert Cumberdale ] [ Pieface ]
[ Pine Cone ] [ DrZipper ]

☍ Bolon Soron

We’re gonna kick off things a little differently today and go over to Dreamer, who is at GDC today!

☍ Dreamer

Thanks Bolon! I ran down the street to get a better signal. We just did a stream right on the floor during the morning at GDC. We have an awesome space there with AvaLabs! They’re playing an overview of us, including the new combat testing grounds. That went out on their main channels and was picking up some great traction, I think it was around 13,000 views at the time of this recording.
.
Grateful for their support. There’s a lot of energy here. There’s about ~35,000 people in attendance at GDC. The Avalanche booth is right in your face as you come down the stairs. We’re getting a lot of foot traffic and a lot of people are coming to us. I’m speaking first though, and I’m the only one here and people are getting excited. I’ll have to give a premature “BULLISH!” before I hop off!

☍ Bolon Soron

Now over to Frisky Fox!

☍ Frisky Fox

Thanks Bolon! It’s been a busy week. Yesterday was crazy. Basically, since last Thursday, we’ve had an upgrade on the main network to use the state upgrades. These were pioneered and collaborated with AvaLabs. There was a lot of testing all through out and at 11am Pacific we rolled out the upgrade. Everything worked flawlessly and the upgrade to the Crystal token was done without a hitch. That enabled us to finally complete the last part of the splittening that we did for the Serendale 2.0 tokenomics vote from last year.

It’s amazing to be able to wrap this up and close it out. We put some updates on the interface that is more like a mini release. This added the adjustments to the Jeweler for you to see your locked Crystal balances and the unlock time on them as the year progresses. We also added a tab that allows you to claim your locked Crystal airdrop from the splitening as well.

Basically, all of those things have been MONTHS of planning that have finally come to a close. HUGE Shout Out to Magnus, he’s been very much involved with the chain upgrade aspect of it. I was involved with a lot of the smart contracts stuff that let us fix issues with locked crystal transfers, as well as other things.

For those unaware, the locked Crystal is sent out. You can go claim those as they unlock over the next year off your locked Crystal balance. I was nervous about this because at the same exact time the Avalanche X-Chain had some issues, impacting us as well. Our chain was up, it was just difficult to “access” for a while. Through all that craziness though, it all worked out great. Shout to everyone with that and we’ve finally hit this amazing milestone a year and a half later.

Speaking of Magnus, he’s out this week on his first ever vacation since he started working here. It’s very well deserved and I hope he’s able to unplug and enjoy that.

I think that’s all I have for more, and obviously there’s a lot more that happened yesterday but I’ll let Beetle Dude talk on that.

☍ Bolon Soron

Lets go over to Beetle Dude!

☍ Beetle Dude

Fox pretty much said it all … J / K!

The big headliner from yesterday, today, and the foreseeable future is the Combat Testing Grounds.

Combat Testing Grounds (Pre-Alpha)

☍ Beetle Dude

We’re really excited with what we have with this sandbox. Just taking what’s there and building on top of it with more and more. We have a TON of feedback so far that we’ll apply to it. It’s super exciting and it’s going to be an amazing platform to expand on.

Those issues that some may have experienced should be resolved to a degree. Come check out all the great abilities, animations, and etc.

I also want to point out the new NPC added in the Castle: The Artist! You can talk to the Artist and see work done by those in our community and in the greater sphere.

We’ve got a ton on our plate. There’s a megapatch in the future that we’ve mentioned with Green Pet Eggs, et al. Excited that the Green Pet Art is done. Working on utility features before we release that, so keep an eye out for that in the future. Props to SecondBestDad spending so much time creating that art.

☍ Beetle Dude

On the art note, I did want the community to know about CinnamonBun, the artist we’ve had for a while. He has stepped away to focus on a web2 project that he’s had in development. He wanted to focus on that. We really appreciate all the work he’s done and we wish him the best of luck.

Luckily, we do have a new artist coming in soon! He was referred to us by our very own SecondBestDad. We’re looking forward to the speed and production quality we’ll get from him. Sad to see CinnamonBun go, but excited to see new talent come in as well.

☍ Bolon Soron

Before we go to the next person, I’m going to throw out some disclaimers:

a. All of the feedback you have about the Combat Testing Grounds, we would like all of it. Please use the board on the talk.defikingdoms.com or the #combat-testing channel here in Discord.

b. We will be pushing updates to the Combat Testing Grounds constantly. We will not be doing announcements for every update, so just keep playing and keep seeing what’s coming.

With that, to Hubert!

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

Hey guys! I guess I’ll start out with the Combat Testing Grounds first. To add to everything that’s been said, as we’ve had with our messaging, just a reminder:

THIS IS PRE-ALPHA — THIS IS BEING ACTIVELY WORKED ON.
NOT ALL SKILLS ARE WORKING AS WE WANT THEM TO.
STATUS EFFECTS AREN’T WORKING (like pushing and pulling).

We are working on something here — released to the public — that is access for you all to be able to see it. Stress test, give feedback, etc. — shout out to Archie for really giving us a full on document with some great points. It’s a lot of work to make a video game. There’s a lot of moving pieces, with the complexity with this there are so many moving parts that we need to make sure they all interact perfectly. You all are kind of seeing us in the stage that we’re in right now.

You are seeing us in the stage that we’re in right now

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

You can look forward to a lot of the improvements coming as we move forward. The animations and the skill… all the animation process… you’ll see revamps of some of the animations there. We’ll need to add sound effects, as well as other interactions and communications. Things are definitely in a rough stage in the moment. It is pre-alpha.

IT IS PRE-ALPHA. THIS IS NOT THE FINAL PRODUCT BY ANY MEANS

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

This is not the final product by any means. Of course, we only have those three classes in there as well. As we move along you can look forward to those new classes being added in.

I’m excited to have you all in the journey along with us on that. It’s great to be able to show off the progress that we do have. Other than that, we are still moving forward with everything else we’ve said before. The splittening and unlockening as done. The next big thing coming is the, as I’m going to label it, the “Untaintening”. Soon we will be rerolling hero genes for the “tainted” genes that’s been in the public — as well as rolling crafting genes on every hero that exists.

That’s happening soon and the mega patch for pet utility, Green Egg Hatching, and Level 10 Profession quests are in the works. There are a lot of moving parts and it takes a lot to get it together, but it’s coming.

☍ Bolon Soron

Thank you sir! Lets go over to Pieface now.

☍ Pieface

Thanks! Hey everybody, how’s it going. I’m super excited about Combat Testing Grounds… we did call it something before, but it was boring — then we spent a solid week brainstorming what we should call it. There were some, “Bloater Smash”, “Bloater Bash”, not Bloater sorry … “Blub Smash” and “Blub Bash”. Eventually we landed on this. When this pre-alpha is complete it will probably be called something else, with more brainstorming.

I would just like to know what Blub is everyone’s favorite

The Blubs. What names do you think are good? Red as Blubules? Green is the Blubbin Hood? Blue is the Holy Blubber?

☍ Pieface

I’m seeing a lot of love for the Knight blub. I’m seeing a lot of people also relate to the archer blub. And I also think it’s cute how happy the priest blub looks but, I don’t know… also, maybe the blub you hate the most is actually your favorite? We’re just as excited with this as everyone else is. I will reiterate on the feedback, all feedback is good feedback.

What you all give us makes this a collective thing that allows you all to help with this. I would love to also share that we are very excited that we are live on a platform called DeQuest

DeQuest

☍ Pieface

DeQuest is a platform where their “Journeys” earn XP and rewards. And we have a DeFi Kingdoms “Journey” there, with fun incentives to help with onboarding! And the community here can get a head start since you know everything already! This will be added to the Jester soon — I do know there is a pain point with DeFi Kingdoms and onboarding. There are a lot of great partnerships and people reaching out about that. We want to spread the love of DeFi Kingdoms and have it be more accessible for everyone.

That’s all I have for now, thanks all!

☍ Bolon Soron

Thank you Pieface! I believe Pine Cone had something for us next!

☍ Pine Cone

I looked at my notes and I realized it’s been a month since I said anything to the community about GraphQL. With this recent patch for this week we enabled it for the game API as well. I wanted to mention and to share the new API link that community developers should use if they interact with the game API instead of the GraphQL.

https://api.defikingdoms.com/

☍ Pine Cone

There are some issues with the API. It’s due to the ISP. But DrZipper can talk much better on that for you all.

☍ DrZipper

I have a couple of things with a few hats then hop off the stage. As Pine Cone said, there are a number of users with issues with the API. They can’t see their heroes, their profiles, etc. We’ve narrowed it down to some ISP issues, correlated to their SSL certificates. They’re just blocking access to the game API.

Users with Spectrum seem to be most effected

☍ DrZipper

We’re going to reach out to them as best as we can. Right now, the best thing we’ve seen is to use a VPN. At least until things get cleared up. There isn’t anything on our end we can do about this.

For the other hat, Beetle Dude already totally stole my thunder but, uh — we are, from the Kingdom Building side of things, we can finally announce the launch of the Artist in the castle.

Figure 3 — Artist NPC in the Castle

☍ DrZipper

We have a handful of great content creators there now, but we will definitely bringing more to you in the future. A quick shout out to each currently:

a. A Candor Gander

b. Adventures in DeFi Kingdoms

c. Crypto Grady

d. DFK Today

e. Mythic Squad

☍ Questions & Answers

[ DFKChain Status Updates ] [ Trader UI/UX ]
[ Status Effect Items] [ Moving Hero Hire ]
[ Quarterly Jewel Claim ] [ Deferred Hero Sales ]
[ CTG Paywall ] [ Lvl10 Prof Quest Names ]

Q uestion #1

Would any of the Discord bots be capable of reporting on the Status of DFKChain? Particularly the average number of transactions over the last 5 minutes, or something similar.

A nswer

☍ DrZipper

Sure! I think that would be a good thing for the gasbot to track. Give it some chain stats. I think that’s a great idea, we’ll look into it.

Question #2

We did the trader UI update, but it’s not currently displaying the path taken if a transaction goes through multiple pools. Is that coming later, or removed?

Answer

☍ Beetle Dude

We are actively working on getting that back in there.

Question #3

Negative status effect causing items — the semi dark theme of two yet unused items… do you plan on having items in the game that we can craft to put negative status effects on our enemies?

Answer

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

Lets see… I posted an emoji in the chat to demonstrate my feelings on this

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

I will just say that we are planning on having more items that are usable than what currently exists in the game. We’ve been talking about various things to this regard. There’s no reason we have to have all of the usable items only for support or buffing of your heroes. Any other specifics beyond that is a little too early to say.

Question #4

We’ve talked about this in the past… but it’s been a while. Any thoughts on moving the hero hire function to a separate NPC / Location?

Answer

☍ Beetle Dude

Yes, the eternal debate. I know we’ve discussed this as one option. I think we’ve gotten to a pretty good spot with the current restrictions. It’s not out of the question, it’s dependent on resources. We’d probably want to have a new NPC or something — maybe at the portal to facilitate that. On the other hand, my fears are centered around people who have used it already, the way it is, for so long.

Question #5

The quarterly Jewel claim being distributed to s/cJewel holders, from the splittening. When is it coming?

Answer

☍ Frisky Fox

Ah, yes! We are due for that. The concern we have every quarter is that it has a noticeable impact on the underlining tokens. So we like to spread it out now. Our current plan is to distribute it into 10 smaller chunks over 10 days.

The longer term plan is to automate it. And so, of course, I started with the longer term plan first, because that’s me and how I roll. I actually have some code that’s ready to go for that part of it. All of our tests are passing.

What I want to do now is manually claim 10% every day over the next 10 days. Make it a smooth claiming to add Jewel to the Jeweler for cJewel holders. If you hold cJewel you’ll see a bump there. Once that’s done and down to zero, I will implement the change to automatically claim it.

Any time anyone claims any stuff from the Jeweler it will also claim from the vesting as well. It might be fractions of a cent every time during the day that this condition is met. It should start tomorrow and occur over the next 10 days. Then we will upgrade it when it’s completed.

Question #6

Any plans to buy heroes in the tavern with deferred fees?

Answer

☍ Frisky Fox

We talked about this a lot in our tokenomics committee. The thing with these deferred payments is that they are not using a liquid asset. It’s not meant for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) transfers.

It’s more of us, as Kingdom Studios, opening the possibility to the players to use locked tokens as a deferred payment for things in the game. We are the ones assuming the risk on those purchases. If it’s in the Tavern, it’s a different story. Other users are selling NFTs which are circulating, who also want to receive circulating Crystal as well. It doesn’t work the same way, it’s not the same ideology.

The question is, if they used deferred funds for payments, does the seller receive it as unlocked and have to wait for it? It’s not really apples to apples in terms of other features. This is a very Peer-to-Peer aspect of the game.

Question #7

Why did we decide on a power up to access Combat pre-alpha?

Answer

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

So, one of the main reasons of that is to ensure that those that are testing are being genuine. It mitigates grieving issues. It can’t be spammed as much, due to the c/sJewel requirement. This isn’t an actual fee, just a “proof of holdings” requirement.

It is also a feature we put a lot of work in to and that, to get access to it, has some degree of requirement. That’s the main thing. As you’ve seen, even with just this release, we did have issues with the sheer amount of people bombarding the system. It grinded to a halt almost. The stress testing, we want to make sure we’re doing it in a controlled way — this is our way of doing that.

Question #8

Any thoughts on the naming convention of the profession quests, to separate them from “hero level”?

Answer

☍ Hubert Cumberdale

Saw that! I was thinking about it… I do understand that confusion, so I think we could potentially look at changing it. The thought that came to mind was something like, “Skill 10 Profession Quests”, and just remove the word “Level” entirely. Makes sense. Great question, will talk about it and see if we decide to change it.

☍ Call to Arms

[ First Call to Arms ]
[ Call to Arms Request *NEW *]
[ Call to Arms * EXPIRED *]

Hi Everyone! Kujo here!
I am piloting a new “Side Quest” program. I call this “Side Quest” a “Call to Arms”. There will be no scheduled time for when a Call to Arms is raised. There can be as many Call to Arms active as one can think of, but generally won’t go over 1, for now.

There will be a bounty paid out to whoever meets the condition(s) of the Call to Arms. Rewards will often times be Jewel, but they will vary in amount and may be any other token in the DeFi Kingdoms game economy.

☍ First Call to Arms:

The first Call to Arms was completed by long time community member, Longzai! This was a Knight bounty (in honor of the Knight Moderators of the DeFi Kingdoms Discord), requiring that the user defeat the blubs in the Combat Testing Ground in under 20 minutes, with Knights only.

Longzai has decided to pay it forward and has requested that the Jewel reward be forwarded to the next bounty reward.

☍ * NEW * Call to Arms — March 24, 2023

A new bounty has been sought, adventurers! We are looking for the fastest possible time to beat the blubs! There are no restrictions on classes, skills, items, or consumables. The bounty will be paid out to the adventurer with the fastest time by Monday, March 27, 5:00pm ET.

Bounty Reward: 50 + 50 bonus for 100 total Jewel
** UPDATE ** DeFi Kingdoms has included an additional +3 Swiftness Stones!
Bounty Request: Defeat the Blubs as fast as possible!
Bounty Deadline: Monday, March 27, 5:00pm ET.
Bounty Restrictions: None

CONVERTED TO:

Central Daylight   Time (CDT): March 27, 4:00 pm
Pacific Daylight   Time (PDT): March 27, 2:00 pm
Mountain Daylight  Time (MDT): March 27, 3:00 pm
Eastern European   Time (EET): March 27, 10:00 pm
Central European   Time (CET): March 27, 9:00 pm
British Summer     Time (BST): March 27, 9:00 pm
India Standard     Time (IST): March 28, 2:30 am
Japan Standard     Time (JST): March 28, 6:00 am
Central Standard   Time (CST): March 27, 4:00 pm
Australian Eastern 
Daylight           Time (AET): March 28, 7:00 am

To be eligible to win, your submission must include:

— A screenshot of the full battle, including everything in the battle from blubs, to time, as well as the URL in the address bar — victory screen is optional so long as all blubs are dead. (don’t leave anything in the screenshot you don’t want others to see, example below)

— The “battle id” of the session

You can find the “battle id” in your URL / Address Bar during the fight, appended to the end of it
For example, this is the battle ID of the below session:
c4bfadbc-6276–4aac-9a06–12d033658b45

However, I highly recommend a sharing a recording as well — the last 10 seconds of combat is all that’s needed.

Post your submission to https://twitter.com/DeFiKujo
Either reply to the this tweet (below) that contains this Call to Arms or @DeFiKujo

Example Submission Screenshot:

☍ * EXPIRED * Call to Arms — last 5

• March 24, 2023 — Knights Only in under 20 minutes, Longzai (50j)

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