Card-based blockchain RPG Legendary: Heroes Unchained has officially been updated to Epoch 1, marking a wider release of the on-chain game while transitioning over to the Base network.

What Is Legendary: Heroes Unchained Epoch 1?

Epoch 1: Age of Heroes marks a big new phase of the play and own title that comes packed with a variety of new features in order to deliver an even better blockchain gaming experience than in past alpha versions. With this new update now live from November 8th, developer N3twork Studios has embarked on a “journey as a first-of-its [kind of] ecosystem for digital ownership, creation and play.”

Through this first game of their web3 gaming ecosystem, players have the opportunity to gain ownership of heroes, land, and various assets while enjoying hero progression, ecosystem-building features, and core gameplay mechanics right in this new release.

You can start playing right now for free through web browsers by heading to the game’s official website where you will have to either connect your own wallet or create an account using email or Google to have a wallet automatically created for you. A dedicated blog post has been published with step by step instructions for both new and returning players who would like to migrate their assets to this v3.0.1 launch.

Once you’re in, the game will guide you to minting a free Starter Pack from which you can get 5 unique hero cards to play with. This will allow you to play the PvE Dungeons mode, where you go on interdimensional battles by setting up a team of 5 upgradable heroes. Later on, you can take on PvP gameplay through the Portal mode.

Dungeons are divided into tiers, and each run uses up a certain number of Energy, of which you have a total of 60 at the beginning. Each dungeon run consists of a 2D map featuring a couple of nodes you can choose to progress through to reach the end. Each node represents a different gameplay activity, and it’s up to you as to which path you’d like to take, with each dungeon giving you 3 options at the start. You can come across battle nodes, boss fights, treasures, and more, earning potentially various rewards after each successful fight, possibly even Energy. You’ll want to complete the whole dungeon though if you want to make it out with all your collected rewards.

If you pick a battle node, you will get to fight the enemy AI, with both sides having all 5 hero cards deployed to the battlefield. Here you get to enjoy turn-based strategic gameplay, attacking opposing cards while using specific card abilities to your advantage, if the hero has enough mana points, which regenerate after every turn but also when you take down enemy cards. You don’t decide on which card you want to use in a turn, as the game displays in which order are cards set to be played, but you do get to pick the opposing card that you’d like to attack. All heroes are divided into different elemental affinities such as water, earth, and fire, so you’ll want to attack a card on which your card’s element has the advantage in order to deal more damage. If the opponent’s card you’re attacking has an affinity advantage over your card, then the damage you deal is reduced. Next to using various abilities, including Ultimate Skills of each card, you also have the option to use consumable items from your inventory during a match.

If you level up your heroes from Starter Packs all the way to their maximum level, they then turn into tradable NFTs that you can sell on the new marketplace.

What’s New in Epoch 1 of Legendary: Heroes Unchained?

This phase introduces the marketplace, Gold Founders Packs, a Guild System, Artifact System 2.0, new dungeon biomes, extensible metadata, OpenSea integration, the ability to play to earn Champion Series heroes, and more.

With this first Epoch release, competing for the top of the Dungeon and Portal daily leaderboards is rewarded with one of the Champion Series NFTs, some of which can be seen in the above image. Next to earning a variety of NFT heroes as leaderboard prizes, the game now also has its very own marketplace where players can trade their cards on the Base network, giving the community new ways to play and own various different cards to customize their deck with. You can buy using ETH but also via credit/debit card, making this crypto game easily accessible to traditional card gamers. These NFTs are now said to be fully decentralized and even possible to use for other games and projects, thanks to giving NFT holders the ability to write custom metadata attributes to their heroes, inputting their own stats that can be used in other web3 games supporting those NFTs.

With the new Guild System, which unlocks once you upgrade a hero to level 7, players can now create their own in-game clans and work together to progress through a guild progression system, completing various events while earning 3 different types of guild currencies. These currencies are needed to level up the group’s rank and tier, and you can donate them to your guild to earn Loyalty XP, which may bring future benefits. Each Guild can have 4 different member roles, as well as its own unique sigil marker or team logo that you can create by choosing from a variety of customization options.

Learn more about all the new features in the official release notes. According to the whitepaper, Legendary: Heroes Unchained will undergo a total of 4 Epochs, but there’s currently no specific timeframes available for the launch of upcoming phases.