Axie Experience Points (AXP) are Here!
Axie Experience Points (AXP) are Here!
AXP is the the foundation for axie progression and part upgrades.
Key Points
AXP can now be earned in Origins with more game integrations currently in the oven 🧑🍳
Axies are now dynamic on-chain NFTs that can be improved with time, effort, and skill. AXP can be used to level up your axies on-chain through a process called ascension.
If you played Axie during 2018/2019 or have any low-id axies— check your collections 👀
Dear Lunacians,
Today we take a major step forward in the Axie universe— the introduction of Axie Experience Points (AXP) and Axie Levels. This marks the first step towards vertical progression, enabling axies to evolve from digital collectibles into lifelong friends and family heirlooms.
How To Get AXP
Starting today, you can earn AXP by playing Origins. Each ranked battle in Origins that consumes stamina will grant each axie on the winning team 150 AXP. Therefore, the max AXP an axie can earn daily is 4500 AXP. AXP is axie-bound and cannot be transferred between axies.
In order to earn 4500 AXP in a day, an axie would need to be a on a team that won all 30 of its stamina-consuming ranked arena battles.
We are working on adding AXP to as many Axie experiences as possible! This includes both first-party Sky Mavis built games and partnered games.
Imagine using your favorite axies in Origins, Homeland, and Doll in pursuit of precious AXP. We’re transported back to nostalgic memories of leveling our favorite Pokémon in pursuit of their evolution.
Learn better by video? We got you. Check out Ryan’s video tutorial below:
Ascension
Once an axie has gained 13,310 AXP, it will need to ascend via the axie management page on App.axie. Ascension will sync your off chain level onchain. You can think of it as a “save point”. In the future this process will cost AXS, adding more utility to our precious Axie Infinity Shards. This fee is waived for the initial release.
If an axie has reached its max cap for AXP, it will not continue to earn AXP unless the axie has ascended via App.axie.
There are 3 ascension points at level 9, 19, and 29 respectively.
1st Ascension: 1 to 10 > 13,310 total AXP needed
2nd Ascension: 10 to 20 > 110,480 total AXP needed
3rd Ascension: 20 to 30 > 334,170 total AXP needed
You’ll want to get as much AXP as possible on your axies. Why? Because the higher your axie level, the more parts you’ll be able to upgrade. In essence, ascending does 3 things: syncs level on chain, raises an axie’s level cap, and let’s you upgrade a part of your choice. So after an Axie reaches level 30 and ascends 3 times, it’ll be able to upgrade 3 body parts to level 2.
Will you recruit your friends, family, and scholars to help you level up your axies?
Our support team has also put together a step-by-step overview of the ascension process here.
Why Is AXP Important?
First, AXP and axie leveling are important because they’ll allow you to upgrade your axie’s body parts.
But there’s something deeper at play here.
We believe that “meta-games”, embodied in ideas like AXP and Axie Core, are what make web3 gaming special. While legacy game developers attract players solely through immersion and/or fun, blockchain-infused games have the potential to introduce additional mechanics.
Axie has a few meta-games bundled into it:
The game of building a game alongside a community and aligning incentives to maximize network value.
The game of playing Axie Infinity to maximize its positive impact on your career, education, and family. Real world implications.
The game of playing and allocating effort between various Axie experiences to maximize the value, power, and aesthetics of your Axie Infinity digital collectibles.
The last example is where the Axie Core meta-game comes into play and we believe that it’s the key to getting both the web3 gaming space and NFT space to the next level.
Until now, Lunacians have been able to acquire hundreds and thousands of NFTs within the Axie ecosystem. There are now millions of axies. However, we’ve always envisioned axies as important parts of our identity. Digital pets. Digital friends. To get there, we need to have systems where you can infuse your axies with your time, effort, energy, and skill. Systems of vertical progression rather than horizontal progression. Deeper vs. wider. AXP lays the foundation for Axie Progression. Axie Progression is all about converting time, effort, skill, and resources, into making our axies stronger, cooler, rarer, and more personalized.
Recent events in the NFT space have shown that this is needed. NFT projects have relied on airdrops and constantly increasing supply to reward their collectors but these tactics create dilution over time and have diminishing returns.
A dynamic NFT is an NFT that can be improved over time. NFTs are growing up and Lunacia has a front row seat. We believe that with this launch, Axies have become the first gaming NFTs of any significance with on-chain leveling— making them the most used dynamic (or evolving) NFTs to date.
Wen Part Upgrades?
We have 80% confidence that we’ll be able to deliver on level 2 part upgrades this year. If we execute smoothly, it’s possible for us to deliver sooner than you’d think (IE before the Holiday season). On the art side, we’ve completed level 2 art for all classes except for Reptile and Bug. The complications and difficulties here are similar to AXP/leveling. It needs to be technically flawless and the numbers need to make sense. This is an area of intense focus for us at the moment!
Upgrading parts will also require materials, which can primarily be earned by releasing axies.
Sharing Thoughts Around The Math
We know there may be many questions around how we came up with the numerical backbone behind AXP. To share our thinking around AXP math we’ve conducted a Q&A with Trung himself!
Q: How did you come up with the numbers for AXP, especially as it related to the steepness of progression and how it relates to difficulty.
A: The third-degree polynomial is commonly used in RPG games for several reasons: (a) its steepness makes the game easy and appealing to players at first, then scales more quickly in later stages of a player's journey to give diminishing returns at the top of the competition, which helps balance the economy and the fun progression, (b) it is more future-proof because AXP gained in later stages can always be scaled up to compensate for the difficulty and give a sense of more rewards.Q: How long do we project maxing out an axie will take right now and in the future?
A: Right now it's around 8 months. As Axie Core progresses this number might be reduced a bit, but ideally not less than 6 months. This is to balance between grinders' time and the cost from people who are willing to pay for AXP books/rare candies.Q: How will AXP be allocated between Axie games?
A: Players are free to play different Axie games, but each game has a different AXP limit according to its "tier". Generally, there are three conceptual tiers: "big" (normally mid-core to hard-core) games, which people often play only one of at a time, taking up 75% of the daily AXP limit (e.g., Origins, Homeland); "mid" (normally casual to hybrid-casual) games, which take up 35% of the daily AXP limit (e.g., DoLL); and "small" (normally hyper-casual) games, which take up 15% of the daily AXP limit. The distribution of games into tiers is related to the game's depth and how much meaningful time/effort people spend in the game. The tiers could be changed in the future based on further observation and data, but for now, it's the initial structure to learn more about player behaviors. Different players will have different tastes and optimizations, which lead to a different distribution of games played.Q: Why is there a hard cap for ascension right now?
A: The ascending level can be thought of as the star level in other games, where players increase the maximum level of a character (and may gain a skill point). Currently, there is a cap on the level, so Axie players need to submit an on-chain transaction. While this is a manual process, it offers several benefits: (a) it synchronizes the Axie level on-chain to support more interoperable interactions, (b) it boosts on-chain activities, and (c) it integrates with the AXS economy.Q: How might the leveling speed and hard cap change with part upgrading? Will there be things like rare candies in the future?
A: Please also see (2). Furthermore, Axie Core is a live and on-going system which evolves over time. This requires a lot of live operations: releasing more features and economic interactions, making adjustments/trade-offs, and collecting/analysing data. Axie Core is designed with evolvement/transition as one of the core principles, not just for one moment in time.
AXP Launch Challenge!
The first ten players to reach level 30 with their axies will be rewarded with their very own Japanese axies. In addition, the first hundred players to achieve this milestone (level 30) will be gifted a unique Origins avatar and avatar border. We are cooking up a third reward tier right now. Hollup.
Please note that you must sync your axie to level 30 on the Ronin chain to qualify as the timestamp of the transaction will serve as proof of your accomplishments.
Legacy Experience Points
From Fall of 2018 to Winter of 2019, axies fought in auto-battles and received experience points that could be used for breeding. With community feedback, we decided to sunset this experience point system in favor of SLP as many players voiced their desire to “buy exp”. Gaming would never be the same.
Today we’re bringing those experience points back. If you played Axie during that golden era, or have low id axies from that time— check your collections…
Note that these axies will also receive materials when that feature arrives. Materials will be used to upgrade body parts and will be mostly earned via releasing. We will talk more about materials soon!
Infinite Experiences Linked Through Axie Core
AXP serves as a unique tool for game creators and builders, enabling them to connect directly with the Axie Core system. AXP can also be used to encourage player involvement and align in-game actions with behaviors a developer wants to incentivize. For example, if a game creator wants players to tackle more dungeons, they could structure their system to issue more AXP via dungeon bosses than other in-game modes.
We envision using AXP as an extra incentive for Axie game developers to hit traction and development milestones. The greater success a game achieves, the more AXP they could have allocated to them.
To streamline this review and appraisal process, we're currently developing comprehensive guidelines and requirements for 3rd party Axie experiences to integrate into Axie Core systems such as AXP and eventually, materials.