What is Axie Infinity?

Introduction

As I became increasingly interested in the crypto space, I discovered via twitter, a new phenomenon called play-to-earn gaming. It's an exciting pokemon-like crypto game called Axie Infinity, where players actually earn crypto-tokens and convert them into real-world currency just by playing for fun, it sounded too good to be true.

First impressions

At first, I was pretty sceptical as I knew how many crypto scammers are out there, but as I started to learn more about it I realised it was as good as it appeared! What I really liked about it was although anybody could benefit from playing the game it was particularly helping people in lower-income countries such as the Philippines where many people have lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

How does the game work?

Axie Infinity functions similarly to pokemon, each player has 3 characters on their team; these characters are called Axies and are NFTs (Non-Fungible-Tokens), they will be explained more later. Every Axie has multiple cards/moves that it can use, you are randomly given them every turn or when using specific cards. The moves can do lots of different things such as attacking the enemy team, giving useful effects to your Axies, healing your Axies and much more!

As there are so many different moves, there are countless unique strategies that can be utilized. Axies all have different amounts of health and the objective is to defeat all of your opponents Axies by getting their health down to 0.

What are the different Game Modes?

In Axie Infinity there are two different main game modes to play, arena mode and adventure mode. In arena mode, you battle against other players in PVP to get rewards whereas in adventure mode there are different levels to beat usually consisting of multiple waves of NPC (Non-Player Character) enemies which all need to be defeated to complete the level and be able to play the next level.

Which Game Mode can make you more money?

The amount of money you can make from each mode depends on how good you are at PVP because players who are very skilled at PVP will make more profit from rising up the leaderboard and getting better rewards but if you are not very good at PVP you may make more money from PVE/adventure mode as losing PVP games will make your ranking on the leaderboards go down meaning you will get less money from winning PVP battles.

How can I start playing for free?

One problem with Axie Infinity is the starting price because the axies are in high demand and they are NFTs meaning to get just the minimum three axies required to start playing it can sometimes cost up to $1000+ and sometimes more if you want to get very good ones. The price can go even higher depending on the fluctuating price of ETH.

However, luckily there is still a way to start playing for free - by joining an Axie Infinity scholarship program that lends axies to new players who can't afford them, allowing players to start to play and make money (SLP) for themselves and for the managers who lend out the axies. This program is traditionally called a scholarship program. Here at redstarbird we are setting up our own scholarship program, and joining the program is completely free. All you need to do is follow the steps to apply here: redstarbird Scholarship for Axie Infinity.