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As mentioned in my first story “Crypto Failure”, I am using this outlet to reflect on the mistakes I am making during my journey through the crypto/blockchain world and help others avoiding these mistakes.
What is Alien Worlds?
It is hard to describe Alien Worlds properly because it is still very early in its development and nowhere near all planned features are functional at this point.
Binance Research describes Alien Worlds as “NFT DeFi metaverse that simulates economic competition and collaboration between players”, which does not make it a lot clearer.
I will focus on the parts of the game that are actually functional at the moment; for the roadmap, I refer you to Alien World?s Medium page.
Right now, Alien Worlds is nothing more than a way to mine the in-game currency TLM and some story around it.
There are six planets to chose from when you want to mine and there is a variety of tools you can use for mining. The planets all have a unique setup of various types of land like mountains, volcanoes, or deserts.
In addition to the selection of the right plot of land, you also need to select your mining tools from a wide range of options. You can either find new tools while mining (I have not found a single tool in a month playing Alien Worlds) or purchase new tools from the AtomicHub market.
The mining itself is rather unspectacular; you simply click a button, wait for a few seconds and then claim your TLM reward.
My experience with Alien Worlds
I came across Alien Worlds during the first days of looking into cryptocurrencies and was intrigued by their grand plans:
In the Alien Worlds metaverse, players can acquire NFTs (digital game items) to mine TLM, engage in battles, and complete in-game quests. Depending on their strategy, players may purchase and assemble NFTs that best suit their gameplay. Additionally, players may engage in governance by electing the Councillors of six Planet DAOs, and thereby influence the direction of the game.
When I started playing Alien Worlds I was very disappointed by the poor UI (unfortunately, Medium won?t let me paste Alien Worlds screenshots here) and very limited gameplay options.
On the other hand, TLM was valued at around $6 on CoinMarketCap and I was able to mine 1 - 2 TLM per day which, in my lazy mind, meant I was making $6 - $12 a day.
Even though I was somewhat skeptical about this, I took the number from CoinMarketCap at face value without putting more effort into research. I did, however, research how I could increase my TLM yield and decided to spend around $50 in WAX on an additional tool (basic explosives).
Had I done more extensive research, I had noticed that this valuation came from a single exchange at almost no volume and would go down dramatically, once the volume goes up. Once TLM had been listed on Binance, the value of TLM went down to about $0.4, making my profits a lot smaller than I was hoping for.
In addition to the decreased prize of TLM, due to the influx of new players, the TLM yield went down substantially. Despite my better tools, I still mine 1–2 TLM per day, now worth around $0.3.
Another issue plaguing Alien Worlds is the CPU issue. To get players to stake WAX, the game only assigns a very limited amount of CPU to each player, leading to massive delays in mining. The only way to get around this is to stake WAX in your cloud wallet. I have staked 70 WAX and this has resolved that issue for me completely; I have not had a single CPU error ever since.
Failures to avoid
Apart from the obvious “if things seem too good to be true, they probably are”, there are a few other points I can highlight here.
- Research which planets have the highest TLM yield before mining. The yield depends on the planet's mineable TLM and the number of people mining there. I recommend you check out GoodVibesMining?s data on the mining pot?s size for each planet.
- Save on commissions. Each landowner in Alien Worlds can set a commission of 0 - 20% for people mining on their plot of land, this commission reduces your yield when mining on that land so choosing a plot of land with low commission increases your yield
- Think about which land and which tools fit your daily schedule. All tools need to be charged for a specific time before they can be used (eg 20 minutes for basic explosives) and all lands have a multiplier to that time (eg 5x for an active volcano) so, depending on tools and land, you can either mine in rapid succession or, as I do, you choose to only mine a few times per day
Conclusion
If you are looking for a fun game to play, Alien Worlds is not for you, yet. It might become a real game at some point but currently, it really is just a way to earn TLM.
If you think this could become a real game at some point in the future, earning TLM now could give you a headstart. As it is not a lot of effort to mine TLM (I click the “mine” button around six times per day to earn my TLM), you might as well.
Additional Ressources
- Planet Mining Pots
- Land Plot Data
- Alien Worlds — Getting Started with Mining
- AtomicHub NFT Market
- Binance Resarch: Alien Worlds
