DeFi Kingdoms AMA 8/22/24 Summary and Transcript

Summary

Hosts: Bolon Soron, Winston Jazzhands, Hubert Cumberdale, Magnus Ironroot, Sunbear, Frisky Fox, Pie Face, and Dreamer.

Bolon Soron starts the AMA by celebrating the third anniversary of DeFi Kingdoms. He expresses excitement about the milestone and gratitude towards the community and team. He mentions a special in-game accessory, Mr. Birthday, to commemorate the event.

Winston Jazzhands reflects on his journey with the project, having joined in February 2022. He shares his initial experience with web3 technology and his admiration for the team, noting the absence of “shit apples” and how the team is tightly-knit and dedicated.

Hubert Cumberdale, one of the early team members, talks about the challenges he faced balancing his electrical engineering job while contributing to DeFi Kingdoms. He reflects on the growth of the game and expresses excitement for the upcoming PvP features.

Magnus Ironroot shares his experience transitioning from a player to a developer on the team, highlighting his first project, Perilous Journey, and his passion for blockchain development.

Sunbear, a psychologist by profession, recounts his journey into the team three months after launch. He praises the team’s character and values, expressing pride in being part of a group that has been through a “refiner’s fire.”

Frisky Fox, one of the original founders, makes a brief appearance to thank the team and community, emphasizing the importance of the community in the project’s success. He reflects on the evolution of DeFi Kingdoms and expresses optimism for the future.

Pie Face, another co-founder, joins the celebration, sharing her excitement about the project’s progress and the unique backgrounds of the team members. She fondly recalls the launch of DeFi Kingdoms, which coincided with a full moon, and expresses gratitude to the community.

Dreamer, the president of Kingdom Studios, concludes the round of reflections by discussing the ongoing journey of building the game. He emphasizes that the team and community are all founders of the project, given that the game is still developing. He urges the community to remain engaged and to continue supporting the project as they approach the release of PvP, which he describes as a significant milestone.

Questions and Answers

How does the team track the outflow of tokens from hunts, and how would they adjust things if it seemed like hunts were outputting too much versus too little?

Hubert Cumberdale addressed this by explaining that the current drop rates for equipment from hunts are intended to be balanced, with hunt equipment meant to be the best available. However, the team is not overly concerned about oversupply at this stage. The upcoming introduction of durability will significantly change the dynamics of equipment availability and usage. Hubert also mentioned that as PvP becomes more competitive, there will likely be a natural demand for high-quality equipment, so the current balance seems appropriate. The team will continue to monitor the situation and make adjustments as needed.

Will there be a battle log or stat tracking for PvE and PvP battles to show how much damage was done by which hero and possibly track across multiple battles?

Hubert Cumberdale responded positively to this idea, indicating that it would be useful to have cumulative results for individual fights, whether in hunts or PvP matches. He also mentioned that if this information were made public, it could allow third parties to aggregate data and create leaderboards. However, the complexity of implementing such features means it might take some time before it is prioritized on the development list.

Will there be purchasable features like battle passes or loot boxes in the future?

Dreamer and Hubert Cumberdale discussed this idea. Dreamer acknowledged that battle passes have been successful in other games, particularly in MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games, and that DeFi Kingdoms could implement something similar in the future. However, they believe that the timing is critical, and such a feature would be more effective once the game has more foundational features in place, like PvP, crafting, and other gameplay elements. As for loot boxes, Hubert was less enthusiastic, citing potential legal issues in certain countries. Instead, he prefers the idea of random treasure boxes that can be earned through gameplay.

Thoughts on incentivizing heroes to level up, such as requiring heroes to be at a certain level to farm new runes or having different prizes for hunts and PvE content based on the level of the fight?

Hubert Cumberdale liked the idea of higher-level content dropping more valuable runes but mentioned that this would be a feature for the future. He noted that as the level cap increases, there will likely be multiple ways to obtain the next tier of runes. For different prizes based on the level of hunts and PvE content, Hubert explained that currently, the game adjusts drop rates and experience based on hero levels, but loot tables remain static. He prefers to tie loot to the difficulty of the content rather than dynamically changing loot tables based on hero levels.

Will there be purchasable base-level or loaner equipment for PvP, similar to how hunts currently loan equipment?

Hubert Cumberdale explained that there will be an equipment shop where players can purchase base-level equipment with in-game currency (gold). This will include the Squire’s equipment currently loaned for hunts, as well as other lower-level equipment. Once PvP is introduced, heroes will no longer have borrowed equipment; instead, they will have default level 1 equipment that is not an NFT and serves as their fallback gear. Higher-level heroes will still have access to better equipment, which they can purchase or earn in-game.

Transcript

[Bolon Soron]
Hello everybody and welcome, welcome, welcome to this week’s AMA with us, Defi Kingdoms. We are very excited to be here today. Honestly, we’re excited to be here every week, but today is a pretty cool day.

Today marks three years since the day that Defi Kingdoms originally launched, which is just a super cool milestone to be here celebrating with you guys. So we’re excited. It also just happened to fall on a Thursday.

So I think this is the first time that’s happened. I think that’s how years work. So previously we’ve talked about a little early or a little bit late, but today we get to talk about it on the actual day itself.

So very excited about that. We are going to take a few minutes and just talk about the fact that we’ve been here for three years. I will say, you know, honorary mention to Fox, one of the original founders.

He had a last-minute family thing come up. So he really wanted to be here today, but had to take care of something with the family. He may be able to pop in.

So if he does, we’ll see him and hear from him. If not, we’ll hear from him next week. But I know he really wanted to be here today as well, of course, because ultimately he was one of the first, right?

He started the whole thing. So we’re going to take a minute, reflect on that, and kind of go around the horn. I will say, and I hope that I am not stealing Hubert’s thunder with this, but he’s welcome to add to it as well.

If you’ve not seen the announcements, there is a special Void Hunt accessory drop to celebrate our third birthday. The Mr. Birthday Cakehead accessory, which is dropping over the next 30 days and does offer some taunt resistance as well. So get out there and hunt and see if you can find some cakes.

Outside of that, I’ll just say for myself, you know, DFK launched three years ago. I came in a few weeks after that. So it’s coming up to my three-year anniversary with DFK as well.

And it’s just, it’s been an absolutely amazing three years. It’s just been such a wild ride and so much fun and something that I just never expected to be able to do in my life. So it’s been a real blessing and opportunity for me personally.

And I just, I want to give a huge shout out to our community and a huge thank you to all of you guys. Absolutely love you guys. We say it regularly, but we would not be here without y’all.

And on days like this, it’s just that extra reminder, you know, being able to go in Discord and just genuinely just have fun with y’all, you know, hang out, talk about DFK, talk about life, talk about whatever. It doesn’t matter. We just have such a good group of people who are here on this journey with us and it makes me grateful all the time that I get to spend so much time with you guys.

And then as always super grateful for this team. You guys are absolutely awesome. Love working with you guys and the things that we have done so far and will do that is the the Royal we where I include myself.

Just really really excited for the future. I think it’s super cool that we’re celebrating our third year anniversary and also, you know, in the build-up to PvP super excited for what’s to come really really proud of everything that has been done and just can’t wait to keep delivering with you guys. I’m just going to more or less go in the order that I see people on my screen.

So I’m going to kick it over to Winston.

[Winston Jazzhands]
Thanks Bolon. I joined the team in February of 2022. So it was kind of a little bit a little bit after the launch and the things happening and I it was actually the first project I tested was perilous journey.

So it was shortly after that that we launched it and I got to really cut my teeth in the Web 3. I was going to I am there. I am just got to learn a lot about web 3 and a lot about how that technology worked.

I didn’t really know much about it. I was kind of a Bitcoin Ethereum enjoyer, but didn’t really use them for anything, you know, so it was really exciting to get to know that side of this project just to learn the technology and how it tied into web. I came from a web background and did quite a bit of extensive website stuff weird website stuff.

Not like the weird you’re thinking of probably but weird. So I don’t know. The skills that I had transferred right into this like I was into this nerdy technology stuff and I was familiar with web and it was a perfect fit.

I actually worked with Fox at another job for Defi Kingdoms. Yeah, we all existed before this and just got to know him like as a as a dude like as a developer as a co-worker and he ended up being like a development manager where we were working. So it was super cool to be have him as a boss even, he’s a great dude.

So that was a big selling point for me when he approached me and just kind of said “I’ve just working on this project. I know you’ve been working at that other place still and maybe you should come check out this project a little bit” so and my skills transferred pretty well and everybody was awesome like there weren’t any so every place I’ve worked before there’s been shit apples, you know, and the shit apples just kind of like it’s not a particular like person or I wouldn’t say like, oh these people are always shit apples or like But there’s always some one or two stinky attitudes that like infect other people and other people just kind of like see that attitude and they’re like yeah, I’m gonna that’s how I feel too and even though they don’t really feel that way they kind of build on that and so that just like doesn’t exist on this team like I don’t want to I don’t sounds like silly but like it’s I don’t know team is really tight.

Everybody is a super cool and dedicated to the project. So it really has been awesome to work with everybody. So yeah, perilous journey was my first hopefully, you know, not the last time we get to kill some of the heroes.

Dark summoning was really fun to got to kill a lot of testnet heroes doing that crazy ones to just like wild just throwing, you know, all kinds of wild stuff in there that you wouldn’t expect. But yeah, just like recently in the last so I spent two years kind of under the radar working on stuff. But in the last year, I’ve been able to kind of, you know, crack open the hatch of my dungeon and get to know some of the community and you know participate in some of the community events and I’m really looking forward to getting whooped by all of you in PvP.

It ain’t it ain’t far. I’m not a very good PvP like I’ve said so it’s going to be. It’s going to be tough for me.

It’s not going to be easy. But yeah, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you to the community. I will I will wrap it up here and we’ll move on to I think it’s I think Pie Face is next but move on to Pie.

[Bolon Soron]
Thanks everybody real quick before that which I’m actually going to throw a curveball in that order. But first and foremost kudos for cracking open the dungeon door and a huge shout out for the the YouTube videos in particular and the tutorials that you’ve been putting together there. They’re absolutely phenomenal and I know the community greatly appreciates them as well.

Also, did you see that you’ve been dubbed a new nickname by chat?

[Winston Jazzhands]
Oh Reaper hands Winston Reaper hands.

[Bolon Soron]
Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

[Winston Jazzhands]
One more thing. Sorry. I almost forgot before I pass it on.

I’m giving away gore blade after this so to have a shot at winning that you want to put HBDDFK in the chat just like that just like I did. If I win it, I will double it and run it again. So yeah, we’ll do that whenever we’re done with everything else.

I’ve already got the thing set up here and yeah, it’s capturing. So cool. Yeah.

Thanks Bolon.

[Bolon Soron]
Perfect. Yeah, make sure y’all throw HBDDFK all caps. Into chat will remind you a couple more times as well.

I’m going to zigzag a little bit. We’re going to go down over to Hubert.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Whoa, okay.

[Bolon Soron]
Hey guys got to keep you on your toes.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
So of the people on the stage here, I think I’m the second most senior member. I joined the team very early in September after the project launch. So not a founder, but I did get in pretty early and yeah, I mean wild ride is a kind of thing an understatement when I when I joined I was still working my electrical engineering job full-time and trying to like design heroes and figure out what we were doing, you know how to make everything work in web 3 and like didn’t really have any free time at all for like three months as I was trying to transition from getting to a place where I could quit my old job and just do this full-time. So it’s pretty is a pretty crazy time.

And then after that, you know switching over to being full-time on this project. It’s it’s been you know, we’ve had a lot happen. I’ve learned so much.

It’s been great working with everyone on the team here. You know, we did have kind of a period of chaos with a whole bunch of bad things that happened that we lost a lot of our team at that time and I think you know who we have now is I think we’ve really refined ourselves into like a super tight super effective team for for who we have and like, you know, super grateful to be able to work with everyone that we have here. And yeah, I mean there’s been so many things that we’ve we’ve done with with the game since then.

I mean we started out with just all there was was just jewel and and essentially, you know LP farming, you know added added heroes added pets added equipment added like the duels minigame and a second realm and just all these all these features profession quests and finally we got to avoid hunts, you know, we’re still building our combat engine right now, but you know, the game is really starting to I think flourish as far as you know, we still have so much more to go but there’s it’s become a lot more playable from where it started.

We have PvP around the corner as Winston mentioned and very excited for that and what’s going to come with that. And yeah, it’s just it’s been a very crazy journey one that I think I’ve you know, learned a lot grown a lot had a lot of different unique challenges, you know, I worry that if I ever need to go back into the engineering world that I probably forgotten too many things at this point. So, you know want the project to just keep going so I don’t have to think about that and you know, so looking forward to the future.

But yeah, that’s all I got for now.

[Bolon Soron]
Thank you. Thank you Hubert and we’ll kick over to Magnus.

[Magnus Ironroot]
Hey everybody happy three years. So I was a little bit late to the party in joining the team. I joined I think three or four months after launch but DFK and other DeFi protocols at the time on the chain that shall not be named actually got me interested in blockchain development enough where I just quit my corporate job called Turkey and then started a blockchain boot camp and pivoted my dev career in the blockchain dev.

That was a fun just kind of dive into it. I was really cool to go from being a player of the game to writing smart contracts for DFK like a week after finishing up the solidity boot camp. I think the first thing I worked on were stones and crystals and then shortly after that started working on perilous journey, which is fun.

First big contract to work on so that was exciting. Since then learned a lot more about blockchains and smart contract development from the front lines just kind of trailblazing as we go. We do a lot of that here on the team and so we’ve learned a lot how to work together really well and it’s always fun to reflect on where we started from and I like to look back and just see how much we built together since I’ve joined the team.

So can’t thank the community enough for continually using enjoying the things we build and also asking us to build cooler and cooler things as time progresses. So thanks for continually challenging us and allowing us to build cool things for you guys. That’s it for me.

[Bolon Soron]
Thank you. Thank you. And in another curveball, we’re going to go down to sun bear.

[Frisky Fox]
Oh, yeah.

[Sunbear]
Thanks for trying to figure out what to say.

You know, I joined the team. I feel very privileged to say I’m a part of this team.

I joined the team about three months after launch. I learned about the project a week after launch from Pie and Dreamer as they were excitedly telling me about about what they were doing and and yeah, I I’m a psychologist. I’ve worked at universities for the last, you know, couple decades and and I just really loved what was happening.

Not just the hype of it, but just like the vision of it and the excitement that I could see, you know with with Pie and and Dreamer and Fox and others just tango tango really sold me to that that voice on the other end from the team that was like guys. We got this, you know, so just some really cool people and an amazing vision that drew me in and you know, I got to do some fun things. We got we did some charity.

We did some community building. We worked on community grants. We my first job actually were helping out with DFK was event planning.

I was at the first event after I’ve been hired for like two days with bowl on and dreamer and and and everybody down in Miami hand and how it stuff at the we won’t say the name that that shall not be named booth. But yeah, just just a lot of really good people here and I agree with what’s been said like we’ve had a lot of people that that I mean we’ve had people that have left for various reasons mostly just wanting to go live a different kind of life than the chaos that web 3 can be but this has been a refiners fire like the team we have I pride myself in finding teams for us to work with that have the same character and values and and strength as as people as teams that we do and and I believe we’ve done a good job of that. So anyway, just really grateful to be here. Thanks for celebrating.

Happy happy three-year birthday for us. I cannot wait to see what this next year looks like as we release the the funnest parts of the game. So happy birthday everybody.

[Bolon Soron]
Thank you. Thank you and surprise appearance. We do have the Fox so we have our you know, two of our founders as well as our president left to go but I know Fox has some stuff going on as well.

So I’m going to jump to him so that if he needs to run he is able to hello Fox anything you want to say about it being our three-year birthday completely up to you. Whatever comes to mind.

[Frisky Fox]
Shoot. Hopefully you guys can hear me. Okay.

Sorry. I’m actually on my way to see a doctor but yeah, I caught about half of what some are said and it’s just some bears such a great guy. I remember the first time meeting him and we just went in for a hug.

I think it was just like natural. It’s like first time meeting and he’s such a great guy. But no, it’s it’s crazy.

I honestly don’t believe it’s been so long and yet also so short when you look at all the things we’ve done. It’s just crazy how much has been done and it’s been a wild ride the individuals that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over here at DeFi Kingdoms, you know, it’s it’s just been amazing. You know, there’s this really intelligent really smart really skilled people really good at what they do every single person, you know, the stuff that they do.

They’re like top of their field. So there’s it’s just been amazing. The the stuff we’ve built has really pushed the envelope of the whole industry.

You know, you see a lot of other projects that that we like run into when we’re at events and things and they’ll come up and they’ll say hey like you guys inspired us or like we like really love what you did here. And so that made us start thinking about this and even from within our own community. There’s a lot of cool things that have been built and you know, that’s what it’s all about is building pushing the envelope trying to see you know, what what can be done with this technology?

There’s so much potential with blockchain in general and the stuff we’re doing is more on the fun side of it and and all that but it’s also, you know, it’s it’s a very serious experiment to to see like, you know, what what kinds of synergies can we unlock through putting a game on the blockchain and it’s been amazing to basically feel those out as we go a lot of it. We had pretty good ideas of going into it and as we went it’s like oh like this thing that we hadn’t maybe at the start considered it is actually possible because of the technology or this thing’s possible or there’s other really cool like projects that have started up that that allow us to work with them to create things that are even better than than like what was there or what was actually possible. I guess three years ago, you know, we started over on Harmony and since then have expanded to Avalanche and Klaytn and on to like Metis now and each of those expansions has really leveled us up in the stuff that we’re building and doing and all at the same time.

We’ve got, you know, like really cool things happening with like the game and the lore and and the skills and like the actual play of the game and all kinds of stuff there. So it’s kind of like we’re doing the traditional game stuff while also trying to be a tech company at the same time and it’s fun. It’s fun.

So yeah, I guess just want to say thank you to everyone on our team and also a huge shout out to everyone in our our community. You guys are great. If we didn’t have a community then there’s no point in doing what we’re doing like there’s no point we are doing it for all of you guys and you know, we love it like we love this project and you know, I’m excited to see what like will happen over the next three years, you know, there’s just so much that has been built and what’s to come.

I feel like it’s just going to be amazing. I’m super stoked about that. And yeah, that’s it for me.

Thanks for listening to my mini TED talk, I guess, but I’m sure like you guys are all sick of hearing from me anyways every week, but I’m just excited to be here. Thanks everyone. Happy birthday.

[Bolon Soron]
Thanks Fox. Thanks for making the time to stop by and we always appreciate you. All right, real quick.

Just a reminder HBDDFK in the chat. If you want to be entered into the Goreblade drawing at the end of this AMA, so make sure you get entered in. Let’s see.

Let’s go over to Pie Face and then we will wrap it up with Dreamer afterwards. Pie Face the co-founder.

[Pie]
Yes. All right. It’s been a while since I’ve joined one of these but I definitely had to for our birthday and everybody on three.

One, two, three. Happy birthday to DFK. All right.

I just had to.

[Bolon Soron]
I don’t want to make everybody’s ears bleed.

[Pie]
All right, just kidding. But I had to. I hope I win some sort of bet or something.

But anyways, yeah, I’m really glad to be here. To talk about the birthday because yeah, just to echo a little bit of of what everyone has said in a little bit different of a way is that this team is definitely a scrappy bunch. I think we have very come from very unique backgrounds.

That’s honestly like tailors each of us to be on this team and to be working together and it’s I think working in crypto requires a little bit of extra embracing of the chaos. I think that’s definitely a requirement being in the crypto industry because it’s just so new. It’s it’s volatile.

It’s it’s also exciting too. But yeah, and a fun fact of what during three years ago when DFK was launched, it was actually on a full moon and we just had a full moon just yesterday or a couple days ago. So it’s kind of nice and fun to kind of feel that energy again of the full moon.

So it’s kind of a way that I am reminded of the DeFi Kingdom’s birthday as well because it’s like, ah, it’s we were it was really exciting to talk as a team back then. We were like, oh man, August 22nd. That’s a full moon.

But yeah, I’m just either way in in general. I’m just so grateful to everybody in the community. There’s people who see the vision and like the value of the whole all of DeFi Kingdoms and enjoying playing the game as well and and the entire journey.

And so I really appreciate all of you guys who have stick with us and like follow us and stay in the know on what’s going on with with us and what we’re building because I love sharing about DeFi Kingdoms where when you talk about it, everyone’s eyes always light up. Everybody kind of knows who we are because we just they know that we’re really making something and and have some sort of impact in the crypto industry. So yeah, we’ve had I think our first year.

It was like the year of DeFi and then the second year. I think we even like dubbed it. We’re like it’s the year of the game and we came out with hunts and this year we’re really really bringing it all together and making it how how we all see it and be able to really play with each other.

So I am just you know, feeling the feels and appreciate everybody and yes, I will turn it over back to Bolan and I won’t sing anymore.

[Bolon Soron]
Hey, you’re welcome to sing. I’m not I’m not singing. No, I greatly appreciate you Pie and somebody mentioned earlier and it reminded me we got to get Tango on an AMA just for the voice here soon.

But last but certainly not least, let’s kick it over to our president of Kingdom Studios, Dreamer.

[Dreamer]
Am I the only one that turned his camera on?

[Bolon Soron]
No, Winston did.

[Dreamer]
Hi everybody. I was sitting here trying to think of what story or thing I should tell. So I think I’m going to do a combination of what people went over but on the topic of being founders, you know, we had Fox here.

We have Pie here. They were among the first I think four core founders. I heard from Hubert, you know weeks later, you know getting involved and it was a slower run up.

But it’s been instrumental to everything that we’ve put out Magnus and Winston seems like they came in similar time. Maybe just after Sun Bear when we’re working on Harless Journey and we were working with Avalanche and Bolan. I think I think a week after and maybe a day after I joined I remember a call with Bolan and others pitching how they could add value.

In that time at launch, it seemed like every day or week was like a month or longer. Because you know, I think back at that time. I feel like that first phase was like, I don’t know, you know when you think back when you’re a kid in high school seems like 10 or 15 years and there’s only three or four years depending on the school you went to we’re three years in I feel like we’ve lived multiple lifetimes and the fact is we’re all founders because the game is still being built.

The game is still far from even the core Foundation in which we can add unlimited content on top of in perpetuity. Once it’s complete the game feels like a game to all of us many of us in stay one because we saw the vision and slowly some of us were converted along the way, but man, it’s fun. People are having fun.

It makes sense. It’s applying technology and we’re showing people every day. I saw somebody tweeting something on on X about PvP and some idiot hopped on there was like scam bro, but everything that has come and gone in this space that is not added value that has scanned people that has fallen short people need to know that we stand completely separate from all that BS and they will we’re seeing fewer and fewer of those but they’re still out there.

We still have a lot of work to do on our name recognition and we are all founders in that effort. There were founders along the way from the build side from the marketing side from the company side from trying to legitimize things and make things last long-term from raising capital the animations the art the play testing the never-ending videos being created by you founding players the additional tools. This is three years of a birthday of a dream that started three years ago, but it’s nowhere near complete.

We need more we need harder. We need faster and we need to make sure we take us some time to enjoy it together and have fun because I think of three years at my old job when I worked at a bank that I sat at a computer seeing people all day and just kind of 100 miles an hour. I felt like I knew them kind of like family and although I feel similar with the team here and the community in many ways, I think we could do better to look out for each other a little bit more.

I think that we’ve gotten to the point where we avoid being overly negative or critical and we have trust but with PvP now we get engaged and having a little bit of fun together. I love the the kind of jabs that go back and forth in a respectful manner with the the community made guilds. I hope that we have some people from the team able to have some private matches with those in the community and those that we bring in that we have fun with it is initially this was meant to be an innovative idea that brings people into web 3 take control of your finances and in a nostalgic fashion have fun with gaming and apply tokenization to everything within the game.

We’re doing it. We’ve been crushing it. There’s been milestones along the way.

I think my favorite promotion we did was on Halloween when we did the plague touched and void touched like skin variants and the heroes and dark summoning. What a cool idea and in the game. There’s unlimited like applications of these type of things with perilous journey heroes with gen zeros with our visages as well.

So as this all comes to the head with PvP with tournaments and hosted tournaments, I hope that we’re all excited and proud of where we are where we’ve come from and whenever we hit another rough patch, please think back to the two dozen different times when everybody’s like, oh, this is this is a game ending, you know, DFK is dead blah blah blah. No, we aren’t we haven’t and we won’t be, happy birthday. We’ve done a lot.

We have a lot more to do. Let’s get to it. Let’s go.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

Thank you all and thank you everybody who’s here listening and just being a part of this journey with us greatly appreciate all of you quick reminder if I can find the right comment there it is type HBDDFK in the chat to be entered into a giveaway from Winston for a Gore Blade. We will be drawing the winner at the end of this stream. Of this AMA.

So speaking of it is still an AMA. We have some questions that have been asked and we are here to give you answers. So we are going to jump into some questions.

We are kicking off with straight into Hubert our Hubert thinking in the paradigm of private matches. It would be cool if there was some way to incentivize people to challenge the very best players and teams like something like a bounty reward for taking down someone who has an undefeated team comp or even something player enabled where we could place bounties on beating someone thoughts.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, that would be an interesting idea. I’ll just say that you know, we do have some plans with with private matches that we haven’t really announced and I think some of them kind of go along these lines but not exactly in the way that was described but I could see it working out that way once we have it, but it’s something that won’t be like right at launch. I don’t think we have we have just a whole bunch of different things that we’re trying to meet first, but we do want to make the private PvP match experience, you know a bit more spicy than just you know, just challenging people with no like no additional systems beyond that.

So we do have something in the works it, you know, we’ll talk more about it as we get closer to it being ready, but for the meantime, it will be you know, we’ll have private matches. We have our upcoming, you know, I think starting tomorrow. We’ll be having you know, you guys can get a sneak peek by watching the creators.

I know I think on Saturday at least I’ll call out a shout out to Wowie and Matty Pesk and the Bogside Chat guys.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I know we have many others that will be doing that as well. So not to just call out one specific group. I just had watched their summoner breakdown or analysis, which I thought was very entertaining.

So just wanted to shout that out. But anyway, yep, so long little aside there, but we do have some plans. So yeah.

[Bolon Soron]
Hey, and I mean chat immediately picked up. It wasn’t a no, which is quite interesting. But yeah, that stream with Wowie and the Bogside boys will be Saturday at 8.30 in one of the time zones. I don’t remember which. I believe the current first planned stream is what the DFK with Emerson and Sir Worm tomorrow at 4.20 p.m. Eastern, which is just shy of 26 hours from now. So I believe they are going first, which will be the first look at PvP, which is super exciting.

So make sure you tune in. Make sure you keep an eye out. We’re going to be trying to promote everybody that’s making content.

So make sure you keep an eye out so that you can see what’s happening. And let’s see next question for you Hubert. Well, two questions related to incentivizing heroes to level up.

The first one being, could it be an idea that the next rune that comes out to go past level 20 could only be farmed by heroes who meet a certain level themselves? So something like you have to be at least level 15 to get that rune. And the second one being thoughts on having hunts and PvE content.

Having different prizes based on the level of the fight.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, good questions. So on the first one, I think we probably will do something kind of of that nature where the content that drops those runes would be kind of higher level. I don’t know that it would be like specifically looking at the level of the heroes, but just, you know, kind of having it be a fight that’s probably higher level than 10 or 12 or fights, I should say.

That’s going to be a little bit further out because there’s a lot of extra stuff that needs to come along with the level cap being increased. So, you know, I wouldn’t expect anything right away for that. But yeah, I do like that idea.

I will note that there will likely also be some tie-ins with Divine Essence as well to be able to create it that way too. So there will likely be at least two different ways to get the next rune. And then the second question, I forgot what it was.

Let me look at that again. Oh, for different prizes. So yeah, I mean with the hunts right now, we do kind of do that by just kind of changing the drop rates of runes and you have in theory more luck with a higher level team.

So you also have a higher chance to get loot as well and more experience. So we do do that right now. We don’t have it do like completely different loot tables or anything like that at the moment and I don’t think we’re going to do that probably for at least the two Void Hunts that exist right now.

But I guess in general, I prefer to kind of keep loot tables more static and just have them be tied to content that’s more difficult rather than have the same content have dynamic loot tables in terms of like actually like completely different things that you can get if it’s this level versus that level. So that’s kind of at least where my mind goes when doing design and making decisions on these type of things. But yeah, hopefully that answers the question.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, sir.

So this one has a caveat at the end, so I’m going to read it all. But how does the team track the outflow of tokens from hunts? I imagine this is also pretty specifically equipment, I believe.

How would the team adjust things if it seemed like hunts was outputting too much versus too little? I realize this is a complicated question because one, gear has a finite durability versus the crystal used to pay for them. Two, the value of tokens fluctuates daily.

And three, the drop rates are RNG based rather than being something funded like raffles. But just any thoughts on the overall mentality of kind of tracking those drop rates?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, so I mean in terms of equipment and like having too many, it’s kind of hard to say right now because we don’t have durability yet and I think that’s really going to change things. So at the moment, I don’t think we’re really too concerned that there are too many being dropped. I assume probably a lot of people think there are too few, honestly, but at least in the game state as it is right now, the hunt equipment is meant to be the best available.

So, you know, we want it to be a little bit harder to obtain and I think right now I feel like it is in a pretty good spot. But, you know, once we get to durability happening and we have other systems and, you know, other loot as well or other equipment as well that’s coming, you know, we’ll definitely be taking a look at, you know, how that’s going. I think with PvP, for those that want to be really competitive, they’re likely going to want to have equipment or like the best equipment they can get or at least really good equipment.

So, you know, I think it’s going to be in a good spot. I’m not too worried right now, but, you know, the game is going to continue to evolve as we add more things and we’ll just have to keep monitoring things as things change.

[Bolon Soron]
Most definitely. I’m going to snag a question from chat. We’ve talked a little bit about durability before.

Can equipment break completely or it only needs to be repaired?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
So, we’re not going to have like any automatic breaking. Like if you get to zero durability, it’ll just break, anything like that where you have to like really pay attention. But if it does get to zero durability, the impact is essentially that you would default back to using your level one equipment during that time.

So, you know, that can be pretty devastating. So, you know, we will have kind of warnings as far as, you know, you have equipment that is low in durability. You might want to repair it.

And then, you know, when you run out of repairs available, then your kind of your options are either to restore it with the divine essence, with greater divine essence or to just turn it into equipment dust or and you’ll also have an option to turn it into a visage at the same time. So, that would be kind of like the lifecycle of equipment, you know, so at the expense of one or multiple heroes, you know, you can keep it going if it’s something that’s a pretty rare piece that you don’t want to lose. But otherwise, yeah, you know, once it is all the way, if you’re not going to take that step of restoring it, then it is essentially at its end of its life cycle.

So, awesome. I appreciate that.

[Bolon Soron]
No, that was great. Thank you for the impromptu. Speaking of equipment, for hunts, we are currently loaned equipment.

When it comes to PvP, is there going to be purchasable base level equipment or loaner equipment or how will, or how is that plan to work since, to your point, the current equipment cycle is supply would probably nowhere meet demand.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, so we do plan on having an equipment shop that runs on gold and that will supply essentially the Squire’s equipment that’s being borrowed right now for the hunts that will be available as well as other equipment for lower levels as well, which just, you know, for those that, as I say, you know, we don’t have lower level hunts or other PvE content. So the only thing I’d recommend to use the lower level equipment on right now would be if you have lower level heroes that you want to use for PvP, you know, they won’t really be able to equip the higher level gear or if they can, it still likely be that they’re not optimal for it. Like they’ll have too low of dexterity for their weapons or, you know, they might not meet strength requirements.

Things like that. So yeah, I think, you know, I hope to see people doing PvP with lower level heroes. I think that’ll be fun to have a kind of a little bit more limited set of options and, you know, just seeing what people can do.

So that will be available if you want to do like level 6 hero hunts or not hunts but PvP or level 3 or even level 1. But for level 1 and 2, I would recommend you just use the default equipment that you’re going to have. So basically there will no longer be any borrowed equipment once that happens.

Every hero will essentially have level 1 equipment that’s not an NFT. It’s just like what they fall back to, like what they were summoned with, which is super old rusty gear. And that’s always there for them to use if they need to.

But yeah, there will no longer be any freebies as far as equipment goes.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Thank you, sir. Going to give you a quick break and jump over to Dreamer.

All right, I’m going to do my best with this question. Not a simple question, but would love to hear the team’s thoughts on this. In Web 2 games, developers often have a kind of average user, especially in the free-to-play area.

Calculations are then made to determine how many users the project needs to be profitable or successful. Is there such a metric in DFK, even if the business model and user behavior is constantly expanding and it is very different from classic gaming? Ideally, the total fees of the player base increase with every feature.

If we look outside of grants, partnerships, that kind of thing, do we have an idea of how many players or users it’s estimated to be essentially sustaining the project naturally?

[Dreamer]
And that just kept going. It was a lot of words. I think it was kind of answered in the question.

This is really hard for us to answer. If we think through it and we say, okay, if our input to like an overall predictive model is number of players or users or unique active wallets, that would require everything else to stay constant. So the price of tokens, the buy rate, the sell rate, the mint rate, the burn rate, everything is on hold.

If we were to just do that and then look at how many more players we need to be self-sustaining, we could do that analysis. I think the answer would be a lot more. But in reality, things change very quickly.

If we look at the rewards, the value of rewards in game goes up, usually with more people that come in and caused upward demand on whatever is required to get those rewards, whether they’re like game tokens, jewel for power-ups or other PvP heroes and so on. So we would likely, in an event where we’re progressing towards like being self-sustaining outside of grants and other like third-party sources of capital, we would need to see adjustment in price tokens or the price of tokens, the number of transactions and the number of players. Now, it could just be one of those.

It could be a combination of all of them. But if we say, if we were to 10x our players, but at the same time, in doing so, things change where per player transactions go down dramatically. That could actually cause a decrease in overall profitability.

So it’s very hard to solve for. The very honest, clear answer is we’re far from profitability in the environment we’ve been in, but we’ve been in that environment for over two years now and we continue to find ways to build and ship and put out foundations of the game that we can add to. So a lot of the money from VCs and others is going to infrastructure a lot of these chains and infrastructure don’t have good sources to pull from to actually add value and transactions and users on chain.

We do. Raising is incredibly hard and we found a lot of success in finding chains that we can work a deal out where we provide them some value. We decentralized our presence in the space by adding another blockchain, as we’ve known, as we’ve experienced, blockchains don’t always last forever in a safe fashion and we get to build more of the game.

So we are continually looking for these deals. They aren’t always deals with the new chain. I think with Visages, it’s another form of monetization that has been successful, not only with our own IP, but the IPs of others and collaborating with other sponsors.

We’re going to be doing similar things for tournaments as well. And as we’ve been doing for hunts, finding other ways to compensate and motivate players to continue to play the game, have transactions and have tokens be bought. But if we were to look at one variable and just say this is the only control, although SQL, I think we’re probably a 10, 20x on player base, but the reality is with increased players, with increased momentum, with increased trending coverage, streaming, we would hope to also have a potential appreciation in some way across the many assets within DeFi kingdoms.

And if that were to happen, there’s kind of an upward snowball effect. The rewards for playing go up. There’s more interest from people that are playing for different reasons, especially those that are looking to earn as they play.

As they continue to come, we see kind of a revitalization of the whole economy and monetization of the product. But right now, we’re too far away to think of that. We have to make sure that we have everything on our side to continue to build, survive the very volatile industry and make sure that as we get through this cycle, we come out on top.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome. Thank you, sir. Don’t go anywhere.

I have a another question for you, which actually is kind of a perfect tie-in to that question. Anyway, do we have plans to have one-time or recurring purchasable things such as battle passes or loot boxes?

[Dreamer]
There’s a question. Are we doing that? Or do we want to?

[Bolon Soron]
Do we want to, I guess?

[Dreamer]
I imagine Hubert’s going to have something to say here, too. But I would say we’ve seen these be really successful in other games. I think the idea of adding a battle pass, even like with BFK Duels, as complete as that is, and the on-chain rewards.

Hypothetically, you could say with this amount each season you get, here are your free rewards and here are your premium rewards. We’ve seen that with, I don’t know, battle passes exist in MOBAs a lot. I think League of Legends has a lot of success in theirs and many others.

The question is, can we do it? Yeah, we can. Is that better than many other things that are incremental utility?

Probably not at this stage. We really have to get the foundation out, which then allows us to add content and lore and gameplay on top of. I think that that stage when we have releases or expansions or new things that progress either the storyline or the engagement with players.

So like once PvP and hunts and travel and crafting and all these things are out, having new major bosses or potential dungeons or different types of hunts or utilization of rare drops from there. You’re adding content on top of that and as that content comes out, it’s a lot easier at that point to have like some type of a subscription or battle pass. We could do it now.

I feel like it’s stretching a little bit, but it has been something that came up. I think it’s a good idea. The timing of the good idea, I think, is really important.

But Hubert, I’ll pause. Anything to add there?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, I think you said it really well. I generally like the idea of battle passes. And, you know, I think if we were a little bit further in the future, it’d be easier for us to think about these sort of things.

But at the moment, I’m not sure that it would be as effective as it could be. You know, if we had PvP out and we had a bunch of other features, more heroes and more players, I think there’s a point where it makes a lot of sense. And I think if we go a little too early, it’s more a matter of us spending our resources to do something that may not be as impactful as it could be.

So I tend to agree, same sentiment there. On the topic of loot boxes, I’m not as keen on those, at least in that form of just buy a loot box and see what you get. I mean, I have seen, you know, we’ve all seen various games do that sort of thing.

There are also kind of laws that can kind of get in the way in some countries about loot boxes too. So, I mean, it kind of opens up some cans of worms if we were to go with that route. Though, I mean, like random treasure boxes just that you can get through other ways in game, like through gameplay and things like that, that’s more along the lines of like the kind of loot boxes I would like to see.

So I guess in my mind, that’s, you know, I don’t know that I want to go with just like just buy loot boxes kind of thing, but yeah.

[Bolon Soron]
Awesome, appreciate both of you gentlemen. Hubert, thoughts on having a battle log to show for PvE and PvP how much damage was done by which hero or potentially even further stats than that and potentially tracking like across multiple battles, that kind of thing.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
Yeah, I like that idea. I don’t know how hard it would be to implement, but I think it would be pretty cool to be able to, like at a minimum at least, be able to see kind of the results of, I guess, the cumulative results of a fight, whether it’s a hunt or PvP match. You know, extending it further to leaderboards and things like that could be a little bit trickier because, I mean, people could potentially just kind of trick it, you know, fight themselves, have like level 20 heroes go against level 1 heroes and just do massive damage to them, stuff like that.

So, you know, we’d probably need to think about that more if we wanted to go that route, but at a minimum, I think just cumulative results for a given fight would be useful to have and, you know, if that information were public, then I think it would also allow third parties to potentially aggregate that information and kind of have a leaderboard that’s not official as well. So, I do like the idea. I don’t know how far down Beatles list it would have to go to put it on there, but maybe we’ll mention it.

[Bolon Soron]
The infamous list, which also, shout out, there’ll be a post about this coming as well, but we hit 400,000 hunts yesterday. Emerson played the 400,000th hunt, so super excited for that as well. That’s a huge milestone to hit also and just happened to coincide with our birthday, which is cool.

Alright, we are going to pause questions there. There are a few more questions. We will hold them over to next week, but we are coming up to the top of the hour.

So, I am going to turn it over to Winston for this Gore blade raffle. Nobody panic. It’s all going according to plan.

Now, everybody hopes that you win.

[Dreamer]
Heat?

[Bolon Soron]
Wind dual wielding.

[Dreamer]
I mean, if you got two, you want to fire it up again?

[Bolon Soron]
Yeah, top right. There’s a draw again. Peer pressure, guys.

Peer pressure can work wonders sometimes. Look at that. The power of suggestion.

Kowalski, perfect, awesome, awesome. Really appreciate you, Winston, throwing up some Goreblades. That’s awesome.

So, thank you very much. Real quick reminder, if you are getting your hunts in, keep an eye out for the Mr. Birthday Cakehead accessory with Taunt Resistance. So, super excited for that as well.

It will run for 30 days. So, make sure you get in there and get some cakeheads. Shout out to SecondBestDad for the Mr. Birthday. Absolutely love that accessory. Given that we are at the top of the hour, I am not going to go around the horn. If anybody has any final comments that they would like to throw out, go ahead and unmute and do so.

Otherwise, we will close it out with Pie Face. So, Pie Face, please hold because at the very least, you’re going to give us a good old bullish. But anybody else have any final comments they want to add before we wrap up?

[Hubert Cumberdale]
I’ll just say before when you receive a Mr. Birthday, it’s a full cake, but then you get your head in there. So, how does that work?

[Bolon Soron]
The logistics are to be determined. Awesome. As always, thank you to everybody who’s tuned in.

Thank you to everybody. Oh, we’ll go back to Dreamer. Sorry.

Thank you to everybody who’s tuned in. Thank you to everybody who will listen to this later. And thank you to everybody who asks questions to make these AMAs work.

Talk.DeFiKingdoms.com or the AMA Questions channel in Discord. But please do keep the questions coming.

[Dreamer]
Over to you, Dreamer. Yeah, I just wanted to put an invitation out there. We’re passing our three-year mark.

We’re on the verge of our biggest release ever. A lot of the details there have yet to be shared. It’s not necessarily make it or break it.

I don’t want to say that, but I do want to say this is a huge opportunity where we all need to step up. Every time there’s a tweet, every time somebody retweets another person’s tweet in the community or comments on it, makes a video. If we get out there and we revitalize that early stage, that day one excitement from our community, it will be contagious.

We will draw others in. It’s pretty fun seeing active Web3 gaming creators see PvP tested and are just like blown away. It’s really awesome to see people testing, come back and talk about how fun it is.

An ongoing chess match and things in the works that are going to make it even more competitive, fun, and replayable. I just hope that everybody feels not only excited and trusting the process, but that you’re committed to continue to help spread the word. The Metis fam is starting to support us a little bit more.

Other people are looking at us. This relaunch and our event that we’ll have in Salt Lake City is going to be a huge kind of re-entry into the space, kind of with an enhanced identity than we’ve had in the past. We now won’t be just a game that can compete with others and say we’re playable, but we’re on the verge of being the most on-chain, playable, competitive, and streamable game in Web3.

That’s our goal. That’s what we want to get to, and this third milestone is a small little victory along the way. We need to aim for bigger victories, continue to have each other’s back, and as much as you can do, reach out to old friends that used to play.

It doesn’t have to be public. Sharing some support of content creators that are tirelessly putting stuff out, maybe without as much love as they could get. We appreciate you.

The positivity goes a long way, and I won’t say the B words. I’m saving that for Pie, but on this very special day, we hope that everybody feels appreciated and have fun doing those hunts and getting those Mr. Birthday cake heads that I thought they were made with a hole in there so you can shove your head in there, but I guess only second best dad knows.

[Hubert Cumberdale]
You got to eat it out.

[Dreamer]
I’m not playing that one.

[Bolon Soron]
And on that note, over to Pie Face. Any final comments in the Bullish?

[Pie]
Wow, that’s a great soundbite. Yes. Well, happy birthday, DSK.

We are in our PVP era and we are just super duper excited about it. It makes me feel so bullish.

[Bolon Soron]
See you guys next week.