VOLKS MYTHICA. A P2E METAVERSE GAME.
Hi! I am sexypotato, an active member of the IOTA community aiming to contribute and make your research easier if you want to learn and potentially invest into projects of the ecosystem. I am just a trader, investor, and crypto enthusiast. My research focuses only on general and external key indicators related to their value proposition, their businesses and their tokenomics, but not in the code, as I am clearly not a developer.
My goal is to write at least one article per week about a chosen project, but it’s hard work and I’m also doing other things so there’s no guarantee I can make it happen. Meanwhile, you can find a full list of IOTA projects here.
Disclose: This is my own interpretation of the public information available of a project, but it is by no means a financial advice and each investment decision should be taken carefully and by each person alone, so DYOR. Besides, English is not my native language so I might find it difficult to describe certain things in a proper manner, naturally.
Today I’m gonna talk about VOLKS MYTHICA, a play to earn (P2E) metaverse game led by Kami Labs. And for the record, I am not shilling Kami Labs at all here as I am not invested in them and they barely know me in discord. It’s just that as a history lover I cannot wait to talk about the bloody mythological combat strategy game!! So let’s get into it.
What are VOLKS? What is VOLKS MYTHICA?
Do you like Axies Infinity? If you do, this one will like you ‘moar’. Why so? Because Volks are, like Axies, unique NFT collectible characters that can battle each other, breed and grow in value through their rarity and set of NFTs items attached like weapons and mystical powers. But thanks to the new IOTA tokenomics, your Volks can actually own their own NFTs, which at the same time can hold other NFTs within! So in essence your main Volk NFT becomes upgradable. And you can use or sell all of them together as one big NFT set, or individually. For example your Volk NFT can hold a samurai sword NFT, which can hold inside a special magic NFT that gives it more cutting power. And all these NFTs could be combined to create a super Volk warrior NFT that you can sell in the marketplace or stake for higher rewards. Or you can just sell the magic power NFT of your sword NFT to another user, keeping the volk and weapon with no special power, or even sell your powered sword and buy another weapon for your volk. As you see, anything is possible here.
Volks is the German word for ‘Folks’ or just people, but sounds cooler. And ‘Folklore’ or Folk-Lore is the literature (lore) of the people (folk), or a collection of fictional stories of animals, people, myths & mythology, etc. that get transmitted mainly verbally from generation to generation.
In this sense, Volks Mythica is the decentralized virtual metaverse world that supports these multiplayer battle games and technologically perpetuates in time (on a DLT) these volks developing stories or ‘Folklore’. Basically anyone can create their own story that will remain forever, participating in battles and collecting these NFT characters and items to earn rewards.
And the first folklore to be embraced by Volks Mythica is the Japanese one, aka ‘Minkan denshō’, which represents a culture steeped in informal tradition, honor, elemental balance, and harmony, and was shaped during millennia by mythological bestiaries, heroic tales of fantastical trials and fabled religions. Based on these japanese stories, each player on Volks Mythica starts on their own territory from where they embark on a journey to tame the elemental chaos, fighting to restore harmony to the world. They start with a set of Volks that team up and are strategically led into battles. And winning these battles and missions unlocks new sections of the map and also offers collectible NFT drops of accessories, potions, spells, and additional assets. Pretty cool!!
Dafuq is an NFT?
An NFT is essentially a digital asset or token that is unique or not fungible, that most of the times references a file in a certain format like for example .jpg for an image or .wmv for a video, with an unique ID (but it can also reference a physical asset) on a digital ledger like the IOTA tangle; and another file which contains the metadata or key information about that tokenized asset. For example, this little cute Rusty NFT that I bought from the Rusty Robot collection:
This boy is unique and its metadata contains the name, the description and features, and that it’s the most handsome among all the other bots (except for the invisible one which is the rarest and coolest in the collection!! You lucky bastard Mark @fish192 😆).
The metadata of an NFT is often stored on centralized databases of companies like OpenSea, the most used NFT marketplace. This way they can pull in rich data for digital assets and easily display them in-app. Digital assets on a given smart contract are typically represented solely by a unique identifier (the seed), so metadata allows these assets to have additional properties, such as a name and description. But to avoid all the risks centralization implies, it can also be stored decentralized, using the IOTA IPFS implementation that I referred to in my previous article.
How does the game work?
Initially, you’ll have to connect your MetaMask wallet to the game, until Charlie aka our wallet Jesus gives us a nice present with a multi-asset Firefly version, to be released soon™. In the future, it’s possible they integrate digital identity and verifiable credentials as they are pioneers with Tangle Labs, but no guarantees. Once connected, Volks Mythica will check what NFTs you have in your wallet and if you have some Volks NFTs and the metadata is accessible, they are imported into the game with all their features and boom … you are ready to play. And if you ask which device you’re gonna need to play, it’s gonna be a desktop game initially.
The game will start with 25,000 unique NFT Volks, and 25,000 NFT Mythical Items. These NFT items are combinable in the game and provide cool features & powers to the Volks and include weapons, armours, items, magic and gears. More NFTs are minted in different ways as users play.
To participate in battles in the open arena, you’ll need at least two Volks (it’s a team game, remember?) that you can buy, breed, or steal if you are a hacker 😛. Each Volk falls into a specific category of elements (air, earth, fire, water plus the fifth still unknown one) with certain strengths and weaknesses. Each battle allows you to play with two (2v2) or four (4v4) Volks and to do it in quest mode (single player) or against another player (multiplayer). Once you enter a battle, the combat system generates an order of attack for all your Volks which is dependent on their features, statistics and accessories. So the order of events and the usage of all your Volks and attached mythical items opens up a multiverse of possible outcomes, depending how they are used. Consequently, your strategic leadership is crucial here to change the course of the game and influence the final outcome and to win or lose each round and the final battle, like for example in the way you use certain items such as potions, spells or enchantments. And the better you are as a general, the higher the chances you have to defeat.
Let’s play for fun! No way, we play for ‘da money’ 😃
Like in any other P2E, players here can earn rewards by winning battles, by collecting and selling rare Volks and Mythical Items while playing, by breeding new Volks and selling them in the marketplace, by staking $JADE (in-game token) and/or $VOLK (governance token), and by completing in-game challenges. These rewards in $JADE tokens can later be sold on a DEX or used to buy new items or new Volks in the Marketplace. Of course playing is cool, but earning while playing is far cooler!
And breeding works similarly to Axie Infinity, you just lock two mature Volks of the same generation and some $JADE tokens for a certain period of time to breed a new baby Volk that will eventually join your collection, and the rarest the baby Volk the more $JADE are needed to breed it.
Who builds it? Who is the team behind?
Volks Mythica is another project of the umbrella company Kami Labs, a digital technology studio that specializes in metaverse and decentralized experiences from NFT Gaming to virtual spaces. Therefore, the core team of Kami is also building Volks alongside Elysi and Inspyrd. You can check their profiles in my previous article (the first six of the full list). But in addition to them, there are currently another five individuals collaborating. And they plan to expand the team over the next month as soon as funding is secured.
WEN? Any ETA? Any BETA?
WEN ready. But seriously it’s hard to say really, as neither the Shimmer Network nor Assembly on the IOTA network have been implemented. But their plan is to release a closed private alpha and later beta testing first and a public one after that, both in Shimmer and later on Assembly, and we can expect this to happen closer to the end of 2022 if certain milestones are achieved. Perhaps a demo before a beta release to pump us a bit.
Any TOKEN? What’s its tokenomics?
Even though Adamsky insists it’s all about the game, come on Adam … show me the tokens!
From the documentation we can read the Tokenomic Paper is coming soon™ but we know in advance that there will be two different tokens: $VOLK for governance and $JADE as the ‘in-game’ token, plus the Volks characters and Mythical Items NFTs. And while no ETA, from the paper we can know there will be 4 public sales of 2,500 booster packs each, hence 10,000 packs in total. Each pack contains a random mix of five different collectible NFTs which can be Volks or Items, so it’s gonna be fun to discover what we get out of ours. And these 10,000 packs with 5 NFTs have all the 50,000 NFTs I’ve mentioned above (25,000 Volks + 25,000 Items). But let’s wait for the paper release to get more details and perhaps a nice airdrop.
What’s its social media engagement?
Similarly to Elysi, for the moment they are not very active on Twitter and have around 1,800 followers, but to me that’s fine as they are focused on building instead of hyping. And let’s face it, for IOTA it’s just too early. However, I went to check every tweet they’ve made and the support from the community is quite strong. In addition to Twitter there’s a Discord server you can join anytime and participate in open discussions, where there’s way more activity with around 350 community members. And you can also listen to the podcast episode with Thomas. All links below.
Conclusion:
I’m really hyped about this one. While still early, it is one of the first metaverse game being built on the ecosystem that implements the IOTA tokenization framework with endless possibilities and many competitive advantages with its competitors on other chains. And the team is the same as I’ve researched last week so I can confirm they are highly professionals. Like Elysi, Volks Mythica it’s definitely a project to follow closely in the coming months.
Address for IOTA Tips, without any commitment 🤗:
iota1qquntznjan46urarg2xns77rupp32z3759u7kh638pew5jf2y4ha2k0h9zd
Sources:
Website: https://volksmythica.com/
Paper: https://www.volksmythica.com/docs/intro.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/volksmythica
Discord: https://discord.gg/9vPaXKaG
Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/79WZsRIdfMfNunsMsXMt1n
Invest safe. WAGMI!
