The great Ferris Bueller once said:
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you’ll miss it.”
And we’ve definitely been guilty of putting our heads down a little over the last few months. You can hardly blame us. Our awesome community has given us the chance to deliver everything we hoped for when we imagined the STARKADE universe. There’s a lot to do, and we’ve been working all hours to make it happen.
But recently, we sat down to fine-tune our schedule to make sure everything was progressing as well as it could be. And we made the conscious decision to look at what we’d done, rather than just what we were doing.
And — wow — we’ve been busy.
In the last eight weeks alone, we’ve:
1. Launched our new Fighter Directory directory at starkade.com
It may be in its first iteration (with updates already in the works), but it’s a permanent home for all our STARKADE fighter NFTs. A filterable directory that’s easy to navigate and designed around what our community wants and needs to do — allowing Recruiters to browse, research, and dig deep into the data of our collections.
2. Opened the gates to Training Ground
This was a big deal for us. Training Ground was the first major release that allowed holders of STARKADE NFTs to really start engaging in the STARKADE universe. And there’s a lot going on under the hood.
In the run-up to launch, we fine-tuned super-clever smart contracts and staking mechanisms, planned the strategy to ensure complete randomisation, and sketched out the user interface, design and build. We also wrote training updates. More than a thousand of them, tailored to each of the 16 unique Megastar trainers.
We’re really excited to see all of you enjoying training, buying new fighters and discussing how best to equip and train them on our Discord.
3. Welcomed STARKADE Credits to the universe
We launched STARKADE Credits into the world, via an initial Recruiter credit drop alongside Training ground. This marked the launch of our in-game economy, so it required some deep talks about the optimum value for credits and how we expected the flow of credits to work across everything we have planned.
Plus, we’ve enabled claimable credits for all fighters in training, as well as regular bonus credits for all Megastar holders.
All Recruiters can see their credits accumulating, when connected at starkade.com. Ready and waiting to be spent within the excitingly anticipated Legion Arena, and on a STARKADE Crate, or three.
We plan to carefully monitor credits over the next few months, to ensure we’re building an economy that works for you.
4. Deployed a major metadata update to our collections
STARKADE: Legion and STARKADE: The Lost fighters collections, now include even more metadata to get your teeth into.
- A Stats Total, to help you calculate your fighter’s might.
- A ‘Yes or No’ entry, so you can see if they’re currently In Training,
- A record of Training “Levels”, which showcases how many Combos, Fighting Styles, and Taunts a fighter has claimed via Training Ground.
You may have already spotted a few extra data entries on fighter listings. But if not, pop over and check them out — they work particularly well for viewing on OpenSea:
→ STARKADE: Legion, on OpenSea
→ STARKADE: The Lost Fighters, on OpenSea
Hopefully the extra metadata will give you a little more information to sniff out some bargains out there in the marketplace.
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I’m sure you’ll forgive us a little pat on the back every now and then. When you start a business or project — especially in a new and quickly-evolving space like web3 — it’s far too easy to just keep driving yourself onto the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. And we’re determined to enjoy this, just as much as we’re determined to do it well, and do it right.
But there’s a good operational reason for looking back too. We want to make sure that we’re pacing ourselves correctly, giving our community a steady but evenly-paced stream of things to engage with and enjoy, and not having a huge bottleneck of stuff followed by a yawning gap.
With that in mind, we’ve decided to adjust our STARMAP slightly, so there’s a more even pace of releases between now, the end of the year, and beyond.
That means that we’re now planning to release STARKADE Crates in the autumn, closer to the intended release of Legion Arena. And then ensure that our tabletop game goes into production this year, and that we can build up to the glitz and glamour of the very first STARKADE tournament.
A big reason for this is Training Ground. It’s an important feature, and it only just launched around three weeks ago. Quite frankly, we were concerned we weren’t giving Training Ground enough time to breathe before hurtling into the next thing, and that that might not give it enough time to shine.
So we figured:
- We’d give you a little bit more time to explore and enjoy Training Ground — equipping, plugging-in, selecting a Megastar to train with, and keeping an eye on your training updates and credit income. After all, the first wages for Megastars will be released tomorrow (July 29th) and that’s going to add a whole new level of value and intrigue.
- We’d allow you to space out your spending a bit. Those who are engaged in Training Ground are already spending multiple (albeit small) gas fees at the moment. We want to make sure that people can enjoy the STARKADE universe, and spread their outlay out over several months, rather than make you feel you need to spend on many things at once.
As far as STARKADE Crates are concerned, the smart contracts are complete, and we’re currently in testing mode using our current inventory of ‘goodies’ (such as Power-Ups, Items and some ‘nice surprises’).
We’re going to use the additional time to build up a bit more time for focused marketing and momentum. And we’re going to take everything we’ve learned so far, and use it to build up more anticipation for what we’re delivering.
But there’s something else too.
Our team has had a crazy-load of awesome ideas for additional goodies that STARKADE Crates could offer. Many of these will be added in future Aeons. However, we discussed a couple of ideas that could work NOW, and we were kinda gutted that we wouldn’t be able to squeeze it into the initial launch inventory in the time available before launch.
By giving ourselves a little more breathing room, we can now make that happen. Which is super exciting.
So — to recap — our very first year in business is going to wrap up like this:
Autumn ‘22
Crate Drop 001
Legion Arena Beta
Legion Arena Launch
Tabletop Game Finalised
Winter ‘22 - Spring ‘23
Tabletop Game Manufacture > Release
Live STARKADE Tournament
And in the meantime, we’re going to be giving you all the things you’ve come to expect from our team and our project, including:
- RAD art, from the desk of our very own Signalnoise (aka James White)
- EQUIPPING AND BATTLING hints, from STARKADE’s Canadian Game Sage Lucas Gardiner
- COMMUNITY activities and events, from games to gatherings, led by our lead community manager Robert Castillo and our spectacular Starkadians
- LORE updates and new stories from the STARKADE universe
- EYE-CATCHING tweaks and improvements to how our site, Training Ground and other assets look, thanks to our talented front-end and design team
- EXCITING new ideas on how to make the most of your NFT
- AWESOME giveaways, including some of our legendary Ultra-rare Megastar 1/1s
- …and a Discord full of gifs, chats, and mysteries.
And, of course, we’ll always be in the Discord to chat and shoot the breeze. We hope to see you there.
Love and respect,
Naomi White, CEO — and the entire STARKADE team.
