There are several things to understand about Axie lands. First of all you are not late to the party. Only 1/4 of the Axie lands have been sold as of yet with the sale being made at 2019. That means 3/4 of Axie lands are yet to be sold and everyone will have the chance to get some at future sales. The sales are yet to be announced but it is expected it will take a few more years before all of them are sold. In the meantime if you are impatient to get one you can get them at Axie marketplace.
There are 4 different land rarity tiers and every lands consists out of 64 blocks (8×8):
- Savannah – marked orange on the map (5349 have been sold at initial price 0.05 ETH)
- Forest – marked green on the map (5359 have been sold at initial price 0.16 ETH)
- Arctic – marked white on the map (4171 have been sold at initial price 0.45 ETH)
- Mystic – marked light-blue on the map (2338 have been sold at initial price 1 ETH)
Also a special Genesis plot (marked dark-blue and edging red square in the middle of the map) which were not available to buy and the only way of getting them was small % chance when buying land crates (0.07% – 1.4% chance); 75/220 have been available by now.
What is land gameplay and how to value different lands?
Unfortunately land gameplay is yet to be introduced to the game but it should happen soon (during 2021). Luckily there is a lot of stuff already known which can help you when evaluating different lands. We will try to explain those in the simples way.
First of all lands will be the place where 3 of your Axies can “chill” and from where they can start (and finish as they need to return from) different adventures. They will also travel faster over the land that you own. It is generally considered that the land closer to the center of the map will be better as a lot of (bigger) adventures and events will be located there (your Axie has to travel there and that takes time). The “Chimeras” that players defeat on the map will often drop some rare NFT loot so it may be an important part of Axie gamplay. The big red square in the middle of the map represents Axie devs area where they will implement and drop the most of new things.
Owning a land will grant its holders some “passive income” in a way that a lot of different structures will be buildable on those lands (some may be available only on a particular land type (rarity)). Those structures will have many functionalities such as crafting ingredients, housing (more) Axies, fishing, resource production and more as the game develops further. There is also a special advantage for having more connected plots. As we already meantioned 1 plot consists out of 64 blocks – meanwhile some structures will take up to 6400 blocks to be built. So more connected lands guarantee more buildings and bigger buildings that can be built upon them. They will also give Axies some different buffs and allow them to travel faster.
Some important features of the map explained
By looking at the map you can see some strange markings which all represent something, the best land plot is the one that has as much of these landmarks as possible:
- Roads – represented by a long light-brown line in-between land plots. Axies will use them when traveling to and back from adventures. That means owning a land next to the road will make other players use the neighbouring land plots more than those that are further way. That means more income to the player owning that land and that means that those plots are more valuable
- River – the wide blue line where “fishing” will be available. It is still unclear what kind of advantages this will bring so it is hard to value the land plots next to it. Being next to the river but further from the road might not be the best deal to take. Good thing to do here is buying the ones next to bridges (places where roads go over river) as those plots will not have any travelling disadvantages and better yet they might have some extra advantages for being next to those bridges.
- Nodes – the pink squares, rectangles and plus signs. The bigger they are the better they are. Extremely important part of the map. These will be the places where all the PvE and events will take place – that means where (NFT) item drops will happen. It is also a place where different (NFT) resources will be harvested – some of them common and some extremely rare. Those resources will be used to build structures, upgrade Axies and buy different goods from markets and shops. All of this means that a player owning a node(side) plot will have a higher turnover rate so these plots look like the most valuable of all
- Corners – simply the land plots that have roads touching them from two sides. Being on the corner means there is a big chance that more Axies will be travelling across your land as it will shorten their traveling time by “cutting road corners” and that also means more profit for the land owner
When purchasing lands it looks like the best way to go is to own different types of them as different land types will have different resources available and you will most likely need all of those. Of course it might be hard to do as land plot prices have recently gone through the roof so be reasonable when buying your first (or next) land. If you do decide to buy – just buy the one you can afford as Axies Infinity and its lands seem to have very bright future.