Neon District is an early access blockchain game that just launched it's alpha phase several days ago with a game mode called Neon Pizza which is a PVE and PVP game mode. But before I continue with the details Neon District is a browser based tactical RPG with cards set in cyberpunk world where you equip 6 different classes with blockchain NFT equipment and it runs on Matic/Ethereum networks. One unique part of the game is that the cards are not individual like in other card games, here cards come randomly with weapons and characters choices, weapons and characters have 10 cards per which then can be replaced with potential better cards when you level your characters and weapons. You start the game with one free character and 300 free Neon to buy 3 more characters. There are 6 character classes but only 4 team slots, so you will need to create a balanced team. Good team composition would look something like Heavy, Doc, Demon and Ghost. There are two more less used classes, Genius and Jack. Every character can level up and gain new cards or stat boosts, you can also upgrade every piece of equipment that you get through box openings.
Ingame currency called Neon is your most important asset because you buy everything with Neon, including loot boxes for gear, juice for character leveling, and parts for equipment leveling. Every equipment piece is a potential unique NFT item because you can choose to make it truly unique and one of a kind because of randomized leveling choices. Through item leveling you can get three choices, better cards that replace your default cards or you gain stat boosts, so you can in theory get a very strong item or unusable crap. Weapons get new cards while other equipment pieces like legs, torso, arms and helm only get stat boosts like increased HP, Armor and other stat boosts.
Your base classes also get stronger cards while you level them and just like items can be sold once they reach lvl 4. Those heroes can also have insane card combinations which makes them more valuable than other heroes who had bad luck while leveling. Of course the more money you spend ingame your chances of having pimped up characters increases a lot compared to free to play players. Pay to win, yes indeed.
Once you decided what kind of team you want it is time to enter Neon Pizza mode. First part of Neon Pizza are deliveries, this is your passive Neon income. You need to send one team to deliver pizzas and you can get 150-200 Neon daily with that method. 2nd part of Neon Pizza is a PVP mode where you can ambush other players and steal their Neon with high risk high reward gameplay. The more time you keep your fenced goods the higher chances are that some stronger player will ambush you and steal your already stolen Neon. Generally you want to ambush 5-6 teams during 5min time and quickly bank that precious Neon before you get robbed. More time you keep it you risk getting hit by Informant Network which is a 3rd Neon Pizza mode that is essentially a bounty hunting mode for those who want revenge against their robbers, if someone successfully defeats your target you get half of your stolen Neon back, if they hadn't banked it before they got bountied. As you can notice there is a fair amount of complexity in these last two modes, but also it means you will hang on refresh button while doing ambushes. One thing to note battles are resolved automatically with basic AI that doesn't use all the cards, all that will be changed soon, you can however test your teams on practice mode where you can test all your cards without AI limiters.
This is just the first part of what this game will offer and there are still many modes to come including a story mode where you can take out your geared Pizza delivery teams for a ride. I personally spent around 80$ worth of Ethereum for (10k)Neon to jump start and level several characters, I also opened some boxes and leveled up my weapons and some other equipment pieces, so I have a pretty decent team, probably in top 50 right now, but there are also decent amount of whales with mega gear that will be impossible to beat. If you don't want to pay anything you can still create an account and get Neon through passive pizza deliveries, that method could net you 4k Neon monthly which you can spend to buy 8 loot boxes or level up your characters, it is up to you what you want to do first. My approach was to have two teams, one for passive deliveries and one for ambushing, you want your ambush team to have the best gear, 2nd part was to get good gear on my ambush characters, then I leveled my ambush team, then I upgraded the best gear pieces and all that can be done for 10k Neon.
There are many pieces to this game and can be a bit complex when you first start but with time you will get to know how things work, I'm 5 days in and while I definitely am not the best player out there my team is top 20 on ambushes leader board. Developers from Blockade Games noted that the balance ingame right now is not finalized so everything can and will change over time, if you want to go in and try the game out early here is my referral link. This is and will be one of the more interesting blockchain games out there.
My team has been getting crushed in ambushes. I'm just sticking to being a f2p for now and seeing where I can work myself up to.
You are playing too, that's great. I wanted to speed things up and have a chance to ambush people successfully. Once you gear up it definitely becomes more interesting.
I missed the first week but glad I caught it in time for the second week.
I should at least pick up this week’s rewards for playing if I understand it right.
I wonder about that reward part too, it's not perfectly clear, this will also be my first week. It seems the ladder resets weekly and people get some kind of rewards. Tomorrow is the reset day so we will find out.