Malum’s forces gather, but the mightiest Heroes and Dragons in the land stand ready to fight. Will you take the battlefield?
Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG has come a long way since landing on the Gala Games platform. It’s been an exciting past year, with long-time players of the mobile game finding a new home with Gala and new players discovering this amazing RPG/puzzle hybrid!
Web2 to Web3
Dragon Strike was first released in 2019 as a traditional mobile title. While the core gameplay loop has stayed true to what made it so fun in the first place, last May we implemented the ability to fully own your own Heroes within the game.
Since then, players have been able to browse and list NFT Heroes on the official Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG OpenSea collection or NFT Harbor. For those who still prefer the old fashioned way of summoning their Heroes through the game, they can summon NFT-Ready Heroes directly from The Summoning Portal or grab a Scroll of Minting and turn any maxed out Hero into an NFT!
This added a lot of new strategy and possibilities for building your team, but we weren’t done yet. In July of last year we opened up the ability to compete for a weekly $GALA prize in the Gala Games Leaderboard. This leaderboard aggregates your progress from the regular weekly events and the arena, adding a multiplier for the amount of NFT Heroes within your party.
With these changes, Dragon Strike was brought up to speed in the web3 world. While it maintains the super-engaging event and battle loop that was so fun in its web2 version, there are more ways players can engage with their Heroes and meta strategy!
New Heroes
Before coming to Gala, Dragon Strike had tons of content in the game, but long-time players were after new strategies and updates to freshen their experience within the game. While the Gala Games Leaderboard created entirely new ways to play, there was a little more that the team had cooked up.
Gala Gold users saw an all new 5-star Hero drop into the game in August, with the mighty Aurum the perfect compliment to the gilded group. All members got a drop of this exclusive card as just another Gala Gold membership perk!
Aurum wasn’t about to be the last new Hero on Dragon Strike, however. Starting in August, 20 new Heroes entered the game through the weekly event Hero rotation. Many of these Heroes transformed the long-hardened strategy executed at the highest levels, shaking up the competition and creating new ways to reach the top.
Celebrations and Events
As usual, Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG still has some extra fun added in at holidays throughout the year. Whether it was looting the Halloween dungeon or stocking up on sweets during the Winter Event, these added events always have a way of changing up the game and giving everyone a new angle on strategy.
Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG has only been on GalaChain for a little while. Who knows what kinds of parties are in the future!
Battle On!
Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG still has more plans and content charted for it. This game was originally developed by Ember Entertainment, and came to the Gala family when they joined forces with us.
We have no firm dates for future content in Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG as of yet.. With so many new Heroes added to the mix recently, there’s no need to keep disrupting the battle for the top with new strategies. The community echoed this sentiment, in fact, near the end of the release of new Heroes last year. New stuff is great, but eventually you’re after some sort of stability to execute the plans you’ve laid out for your army!
Just in the past 10 months we’ve come so far bringing this game into the web3 world without compromising what made it great in the first place. If you haven’t checked out Dragon Strike in a while… hop in and give it a go!
Only a few days until the next Tournament… better sharpen those swords and ready your dragons! Download Dragon Strike: Puzzle RPG – Android – iOS
If you haven’t started playing Champions Arena yet, this might be the perfect time to build a collection of NFT Champions and hit the arena!
For one week, we’re adding $1k in $GALA every day to the Champions Arena reward pool, giving players an opportunity to earn even more rewards!
The Infusion Event runs Friday, March 1st through Friday, March 8th.
Lots of Ways to Play
With its strong focus on RPG combat mechanics, Champions Arena is a truly unique experience for players, created by RPG megafans who grew up playing the classics. With well over a hundred individual Champions to collect, each with a set of unique abilities, the combinations are virtually endless.
Collect daily rewards and blast through PvE campaign battles to buff your collections and craft the perfect team of Champions. Then when you’re ready, hit the PvE arena and play with NFT Champions to earn victory points, which translate each day into $GALA in the daily reward distribution.
You can even collect in-game (non-NFT) Champions, then mint your favorites into NFTs by purchasing and spending the corresponding number of Minting Scrolls in-game. Once minted, your Champions are yours to play and earn with, or even to list on a secondary market or bridge to another blockchain.
Exciting Updates
There’s always something new in Champions Arena, from new Champions to exclusive rewards, from limited time promos to increased drop rate events. Anytime is a great time to start building that Champion collection and playing on your favorite mobile device. Browse NFT Champions on the OpenSea secondary market here.
Building a massive open world of exploration and adventure is no walk in the park. The team has been hard at work squashing bugs, shipping updates and polishing the game’s unique look and feel, making Mirandus a truly magical place.
You’ll find a more in-depth list of recent tech stat updates at the bottom of this article!
Mirandus Offsite
The team just finished an awesome offsite meetup with the Mirandus Directors and key community members in Austin, TX February 8-10. The offsite was vital for discussing decisions in the game design that affect all vectors of Mirandus. We now have consensus about major game features like looting, combat contribution, MTRM connections with GalaChain, Exemplar data and more.
Greetings from the Mirandus team and community at the Austin offsite meeting!
We can’t emphasize how important it is to collect and embrace community feedback and input through this process. We have brilliant minds in the community that love Mirandus as much as the team and it’s amazing to see how we all want to make the greatest game ever.
In a Fireside Chat with the team sometime next week, we’ll offload all the decisions and share our latest updates on the tech stack. We’ll let you know in Discord what the date and time will be for that Fireside Chat soon.
Hinting at things coming in the future
A new era of Mirandus is coming. The next tech test will prove vital for monitoring the tech stack and running diagnostics on issues in real time, as well as flushing out the most elusive problems.
During the upcoming tech test servers may be taken down whenever major problems arise, and remain down until the problem is solved. We thank you in advance for your patience while those problems are dealt with.. Additionally, certain features and parts of the game may be selectively disabled during the test so we can troubleshoot those areas.
Check out the tech test screenshots below!
Specific Tech Stack Updates
Reworked the few remaining ModRequests into the new fully server-authoritative format, mainly surrounding Equip/Unequip/Draw/Sheathe.
Delivered the cemetery/purgatory system and we now have a full death loop stood up. By putting players somewhere, we can more easily try out different options for how we handle death, and it dramatically simplifies the code in the event someone logs out dead and comes back later.
Built an automated unit test for all the item manipulations, so we know if/when we break something instantly.
Fixed some bugs with spawning and also made dead creatures spawn a dynamic tag for “Carnivore Food” so creatures that want meat can find it. We kind of had that working before, but it was a bit hacky, so we got to remove that code we don’t want to support moving forward.
Improved the concept of our NPC AI “making progress” so they can figure out they are outmatched during combat, one way or another, which allows them to be smarter about target selection or choosing when to flee.
Dug into the asset bundle rebuild issues and uncovered two important details that we solved to make our workflow faster.
Improved our environment art team tools to quickly switch prefabs to atlased-material versions so we can A/B check that things look right with final high performance materials.
Built the initial version of the Mint Manager, which also handles the movement of MTRM into and out of player records from GalaChain. The first version is just a mock DB system that lets us test without needing access to the chain, but the real version will be built soon.
Worked on phased vocoder for the voice modulator, focusing on this early as it’s one of the hardest, riskiest parts of the voice system left.
Made big strides toward solving some dependency issues with the asset bundle system. This will improve our build download size drastically.
Tech Art is putting some extra effort into helping the character team get the new human and female Exemplar models in as we discovered some issues with the skeletons. This will get us really close to final character assets for Q1.
Fixed a bug issue with environment atlasing and the sampler states not working properly, which had to do with poorly documented lightmapping behavior when building static geo.
Created an admin control page design that will allow QA/CS to help players even without logging into the game (sometimes critical when things are truly broken).
Wrapping up the navmesh exploit detection and look-at data for NPCs so they can pay attention to things while doing something else.
Migrated code over to the new ModRequest system, pulling the PlayerMove out of that system since it’s the one thing the server doesn’t need to respond about. If you cheat, it’ll do something worse than roll you back…
Upgraded the spawning system data to properly use material tags for determining where things can spawn in the environment, and if something is required but missing, avoid spawning at all. Also, popping small things in is ok, but trees grow into place slowly now.
As the most ambitious and extensive gaming project in the Gala ecosystem, Mirandus is gearing up to really show the world what GalaChain can do. Get ready to experience a fantasy world that’s more immersive and imaginative than you ever thought possible. Learn more about what makes Mirandus so special at Mirandus.game.
For this issue of Gala’s Latest and Greatest, we’re taking a look at Champions Arena, the epic RPG battler built by the incredible dev team at OneUniverse. This amazing group of accomplished game devs had a special place in their heart for RPG battle mechanics like those found in the old school classic console RPGs with which many of us grew up and sharpened our strategy skills.
They were captivated by the endless strategic combinations of both attacks and defenses, different abilities from different characters, the variety of equipment and weapons, and of course, incredible and timeless character art. Envisioning a new type of game that embraced and elevated the battle mechanics while placing beautiful art on a pedestal, the OneUniverse dev team conceived the idea of Champions Arena.
Battle All Day
What truly sets Champions Arena apart from other mobile RPGs is its strong focus on battle above everything else. In the various types of arenas, players can collect and deploy over a hundred different Champions, with new Champions being added regularly with new updates.
With so many unique Champions, each with its own set of abilities and buffs, the strategy combos are virtually endless, even for the most dedicated players. Upsets and surprises are always possible, and through proper strategy, it’s possible to defeat Champion teams with much higher levels–If you play your cards right.
Grind or Compete
With both PvE and PvP modes, Champions Arena allows players to alternate between many different modes of gameplay to always keep things fresh. There’s always a way to grind in Champions Arena.
Take on other players with your best Champion teamin the PvP “Arena” mode, where gameplay is measured by Seasons, each lasting several weeks. Within each Season, players battle for Leaderboard positions, competing for piles of loot in the form of Gems (used to buy various in-game items and equipment), Arena reward chests (containing super rare equipment and items) and Minting Scrolls, which are used to mint collected in-game Champions as NFTs on GalaChain.
NFT Champions
Because we’re running on GalaChain, players have the unique option to own their Champions as minted tokens (NFTs), allowing them to trade on secondary markets and transfer to other users. Browse the secondary market on OpenSea
Daily $GALA Rewards are also distributed for those who play with NFT Champions that are minted on GalaChain. From a reward pool determined each day by how much was spent on in-game purchases throughout that day, victorious players receive a portion of $GALA equivalent to their victory, compared to other NFT owning players.
Ownership is not required at all to play the game and collect Champions, but owning unlocks the ability to earn rewards in the PvP Arena. Through the use of Minting Scrolls, every Champion has the ability to be minted as an NFT on GalaChain. This allows players to level up their favorites while collecting Scrolls, then mint them as tokens once they’re ready to take on the competition in the Arena for real rewards!
So Many Rewards
With Daily Quest rewards, Idle rewards and more, there are so many ways to convert your time and energy into Champions Arena in-game loot. Additionally, the team is always spinning up new ways to unlock excitement.
Valentine Rewards
Right now, complete tasks in the special Valentine category to accumulate Love Medals to spend on Champions, items, equipment and more in a special in-game store! You have just over two weeks left to grind out these exclusive Valentine Challenges before the opportunity is gone!
From February 7th-February 20th, 500 Love Medals will be given away beach day, so be sure to login daily!
Events and Promos
Be sure to check all the Events so you never miss out on potential rewards. The best way to get as many rewards as possible is to keep up a daily login streak–The more consecutive days you play, the greater your rewards. Even without purchasing Summon Tickets, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can build up a solid collection of Champions simply by logging in daily and collecting your gameplay rewards!
New Champions
New Champions are released in each new Season. To ensure that they get into the hands of the hungry players, these new Champions are given a greatly enhanced drop rate from Summon Tickets throughout the first Season of their arrival!
Until the end of the current season, you’ll have an increased chance of summoning both Deros and King Titan, the brand new Champions in the game!
For Sale in the Gala Store
Sometimes you’ll have the chance to purchase Champion Boxes directly from the GalaChain store, which contain already-minted NFT Champions of various rarities. But you’ll have to watch the store closely because these Champion Boxes tend to sell out quickly!
Gem Packs are always available in various quantities, and they’re the best way to beef up your Champions Arena collection quickly! Starting today (February 8th) in honor of the Lunar New Year celebration, all Gem Packs are 15% off in the Gala store!
Looking Forward
Look out for exciting new events, new purchase and reward opportunities, and new Champions entering the fray throughout 2024–Check out the Update Roadmap below from the UneUniverse team!
Time flies when you’re defying fate, and Mercenaries, it’s time to set your clocks again! Season 2 of Eternal Paradox started less than 2 weeks ago on January 24th, bringing with it a whirlwind of fresh content, powerful heroes, and legendary rewards. Gear up and get ready, because there’s still plenty of time this season to turn the tides of fate for the good guys!
For this next issue of “Latest and Greatest” we’re featuring Eternal Paradox and some of the latest excitement from the magically charged land of Elysium.
This game is a brilliant fusion of 4x and RPG battle mechanics, a well balanced combination of competitive PvP action and narrative-driven PvE, repeating every 49 days in a paradoxical time loop of legendary proportions. The stakes could not be higher!
Learn more about ETIME rewards and the Eternal Paradox economy in the Litepaper.
Start playing now on your favorite mobile device: Android | iOS Don’t forget to leave a review in the app stores!
Meet Akari
This enigmatic new mercenary joins the fray, blades flashing and secrets swirling. Watch her dominate the battlefield with breathtaking agility and lethal grace. Even though time repeats in the Eternal Paradox, you never know what might happen, so prepare your summons and get ready to bolster the ranks!
Play with the Team
On February 6th, members of the Gala team got together to hit the Eternal Paradox themselves on the latest edition of our live show, Gala Plays! Get some great game tips and a taste of the adventure in the Paradox by watching the replay below:
Mercenary Tomes
Mercenary Tomes are currently available in the Eternal Paradox store, each one allowing you to summon a minted Mercenary of any rarity, Rare or better. The Nature’s Fury Mercenary Tome gives you an unparalleled 6% shot at one of 4 different Legendary Mercs: Torsten, Emma, Ekon or Zahra. You’ll even have a combined 2% chance to get one of the same Mercs in the coveted Ancient rarity! The best part… Nature’s Fury Mercenary Tomes are 34% off for a limited time, available for purchase by credit card, GALA, ETH or ETIME!
We’re pouring time and magic into crafting thrilling new ways to use your precious ETIME. Snag an Ancient ★7 (Wind Type) while you can, a legendary warrior whose power can turn the tide of any battle. Keep your eyes peeled for more ETIME treasures to come!
Power up your Fortress with another exclusive ETIME sink available now in limited supply: Fortress of the Wild. This Skin is a one-time purchase for ETIME only–it doesn’t expire at the end of the season and your enemies will tremble in fear. Additionally, because this item is connected to the Breath of the Wild tribe, your Mercenaries within that tribe will get some valuable buffs when you play with this skin!
Stay tuned for more news and revelations as the end of the season approaches. Mercenaries, destiny awaits! Sharpen your blades, hone your skills, and prepare to defy fate once again. The Eternal Paradox beckons!
