I started to get ready for this sale last Wednesday, by un-staking a lot of wax which was staked to CPU and NET. I knew I would not be using my account much before the sale. I also knew it took 72 hours to un-stake and if I didn't get the packs I wanted, I could simply re-stake the wax back to CPU to be able to continue playing Alien Worlds. With no news of any links though, I was starting to worry.
I decided I had to infiltrate the community. It was a choice between using either the Telegram or Discord apps. Let me see... download a program from the internet and put my real phone number in? No thanks telegram so I headed for the Discord community. It became clear that these people were close to the game developers but the actual devs preferred the Telegram app (or maybe they're incognito in Discord?). It was clear though that some of the players in Discord were responsible for gambling aether in the search to uncover the unknown elements within the R-Planet game; and this is a gamble best made with deep pockets.
My experience on Saturday could have gone either way. I did not see this community at its best but who can blame them? Every minute or so new people would arrive in the general discussion channel, with varying levels of language competence and would ask the same questions. "When rigs?", "Where link?". Others would complain about experiences they were having transferring from another crypto-currency into wax and flooded the chat with questions about one exchange or another. Others would ask how much they could expect to earn from packs or how much they needed to have staked in CPU? The community handled these questions with varying levels of sympathy which is understandable since none of these issues have anything whatsoever to do with R-Planet. The community also wanted to buy rig packs, not just for profit but because it's an integral part of their favourite game. One of the moderators even set up a few in-chat games where he posted a link to a free NFT but you had to edit the link in some way to be able to claim it.
The sale arrived and thanks to my knowledge of wax and preparation, I was as ready for it as I could be. The link went live; I pressed buy. I didn't think I would get one but I did. My sons account did not (I used Anchor while his account uses the cloud wallet). I rushed to logout and log back in with another account which had just enough wax in it. I managed to get a second pack. At that point I was thinking "is this real? I did use the right link didn't I? did I get scammed because all these other people are complaining in the Discord channel?". To check, I logged into R-Planet and opened the pack I got for my son. Sure enough, out popped 6 shiny new rigs (4 x 150 ae/hr and 2 x 250 ae/hr for a total of 1100 ae/hr). At that point I decided I wouldn't stick around any longer and turned everything off for the day.
On Sunday, I logged back in and started to spread my unspent wax between accounts so I would be able to play again. I split the rigs too so my son would have a small passive income from half the pack. I was unsure about the second pack. When I mentioned to my wife the previous day that I'd managed to get the packs and they were selling for ten times the purchase price her immediate response was "Have you sold them yet?". I was quite shocked by this; no pause or hesitation. Of course our circumstances could be better so that thought began to fill my mind. I checked the prices on AtomicHub for the packs and the individual rigs. I went back to the discord server. Players were posting images of the lucky packs they had opened. There were still some people bringing their baggage and complaints to the chat. The guy posting the links to the free NFTs was there giving clues as to how to win again.
I decided I had to know what was in the second pack so I chose to open it. I got luckier than the first time (2x 400 ae/hr, 2x 250 and 2x150 for a total of 1600 ae/hr). With my original 400 ae/hr rig still staked, I logged in and staked the rest. At 2,000 ae/hr I had achieved a level-up in the discord ranks. Essentially the higher your staking power, the higher your rank on the server. I had gone from guppy (<2k hr) to crab (2k-10k). I still felt it was a game for whales and I would never earn enough aether to actually be able to craft any of the elements which award an NFT which can be staked. The cheapest to make seemed to require around 5 million aether which will take me 104 days (by which time the first 600 which give an NFT will all have been created). I did start looking into the game though and even started to craft some basic elements. I haven't got NFTs for these but there does seem to be a long-term game plan to make them useful. Then something happened which I didn't expect. The moderators did a drop for some free promo NFT cards. People in the chat got the links and because it was only seconds before the drop went live and it had a private key needed for claiming, everybody in the chat seemed to get one or more of these free NFTs.
Apparently they do this drop every week and there is a plan to combine several of the set into another NFT which will have a staking value in R-Planet. Since Sunday, I have spent quite a bit of time on their discord server. It made me realise they are a community who just want to bring new players into their game. The trouble is they saw an influx of vultures who saw the chance to make money. A lot of those new rig packs are currently on sale in the AtomicHub market. Lots are not being bought yet because of peoples greed but having them listed instead of earning aether is helping nobody. I'm so glad I unpacked my second pack and while I may not be perfect and might occasionally sell off some aether when I need wax, I have chosen to be a part of this community as much as I can be. At least any aether I sell from now will be used to buy something which earns more aether until I hit that 10k aether per hour level.
