The NFT Crafting feature announced during Season 10 is now officially live as part of the highly-anticipated Economy Update for co-op looter shooter The Desolation.

How to Craft NFTs

Crafting NFTs, in this case NFT weapons for the time being, requires owning the following: in-game earnable crafting resources, a new premium currency called Platinum, Workshop NFT, Workstation NFT, Transformer NFT, and a set of blueprints (Weapon Set #1 Blueprint for this initial release).

Players can acquire Workshop, Workstation, and Transformer NFTs through the upcoming Requisition Box sale that is set to begin on August 14th on Open Loot. Transformer NFTs might also have a rare chance of dropping through gameplay by playing with an NFT, as they can give you the Lucky Drop chance perk. This perk could also let you earn Platinum, with a daily Platinum drop cap of 150 in place alongside a weekly Transformer drop limit of 1.

A Workshop can have multiple Workstations, and only the Uncommon Workstations will be available for now to allow players to craft weapons of any rarity. This however will change at some point later on once the second part of this big update is released. When that happens, there will be Workstations for higher rarities that you may want to get if you want to have a better chance of crafting a rarer weapon.

The Workshop is what unlocks the new room on the ship for crafting, while the Workstation determines what you can craft, and the Transformer NFT is what you need in order to craft that specific type of gear. Only Weapon Workstations and Weapon Transformers will be available for the time being, and as mentioned before, that also means there is only one blueprint called Weapon Set #1. Defeating Seasonal Bosses is rewarded with this blueprint. Last but not least, you’ll need the off-chain Platinum currency to begin the crafting process. It can also be used to speed up the time it takes to craft an NFT. You can get Platinum either by buying it through Open Loot, or by finding it in supply and sale boxes.

The blueprint currently available lets you craft 4 different weapons belonging to the “Viper Edition” weapon set. All weapons from this set feature a special perk called Viper Strike, which lets you inflict poisonous critical damage. The weapons available for crafting include the following:

• Spartan 12G Viper – Uncommon Shotgun
• Scorpio Viper – Rare SMG
• ARX-2 Viper – Epic AR
• MARK-1 Viper – Legendary MR

What Else Is New in the Economy Update?

Next to all the features related to NFT crafting, developer Stratosphere Games has added a new Extraction level in the Nordic Environment. The new challenge is titled “Disturbed Transmission!” and tasks players with finding an abandoned signal tower in a stormy location. This tower is needed to transfer important data to the Remnants, and you’ll need to power up the facility by finding gasoline to fill up and restart the generator, which you’ll need to defend from swarms of Shades in order for it to successfully activate. A timer will be keeping you on your toes throughout this whole challenge, requiring you to extract out of the mission on time to beat the level.

The player ship as well as various game modes now include a mini map on the top right corner of the screen, while the world map is now a 3D globe with regions you can select.

A new system called Weak Points of Impact has been implemented. As you may guess from the name, this system is designed to make combat feel more dynamic by making enemies have Weak and Strong Points, requiring you to strategically move around to find the weakest spot to attack the enemy at. This means that Shieldbearers now have Strong Points at the front that reduce damage by 50%, encouraging players to move around to their Weak Point at the back to deal 50% increased damage, or to at least shoot from the side where you can deal regular damage as before.

Full details on everything included in the Economy Update can be found here. This release also marked the start of The Kinetic Season 11, which runs from August 8th to September 5th with prizes up for grabs for the top 50 dungeon and survival players.

The Desolation is currently available on PC to players who bought the Founders Pack or won it in a giveaway. According to the new roadmap from the whitepaper released in May, a mobile release is planned to take place this month, followed by an open beta launch in September, so if you don’t have access to the game now, then it might not be long before you can jump into this Web3 title for free.