Beginner’s Guide to DeFi Kingdoms — How to Start Playing DeFi Kingdoms (2024)

UPDATED AS OF DECEMBER 13, 2022

New to DeFi Kingdoms and wondering how to get started and what your options are? This guide is for you. There are a lot of great community members that have made some awesome resources and I consider this a bit of a compendium and high level outline of all of those resources to get you started on your way.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:

This guide is provided for educational purposes about the game DeFi Kingdoms only, and is not financial advice. If you are seeking financial advice, please contact a financial adviser. As always, do your own research.

BRIEF HISTORY AND CURRENT STATUS OF THE GAME

Launch (August 2021)

So much has happened since the game initially launched in August 2021, but let me try to summarize it as concisely as possible.

The game launched in August 2021 on the Harmony blockchain (RIP Harmony) with a realm called Serendale. The vision and plan had been laid out, but the only features initially available were a DeFi farm. That was soon followed by release of NFT heroes, followed by use for those heroes (leveling up, questing, summoning, etc.). There are still a lot of features that people are waiting for (will discuss those more below), but the amount of features that have been built in the past year of a bear market has been impressive in my opinion.

Launch of First Cross Chain Expansion on Avalanche Subnet (March 2022)

The concept of DFK has always been to be a cross chain game. DFK successfully launched that with the branch to an Avalanche subnet, their own chain called DFK Chain, naming this new realm Crystalvale. This chain launched on March 30, 2022, amidst ongoing development on Harmony, and also only launched with a DeFi farm. This slowed development down on Harmony a bit, and the same features were rolled out on DFK Chain

Departure from Harmony (Decision in Summer 2022)

I don’t speak on behalf of the DFK team, but from what I and many other community members saw, was that as the collapse of the markets began to unroll with the Terra Luna collapse, followed by bankruptcies of Celsius and Voyageur, Harmony got hit specifically hard by the Horizon Bridge hack. The Horizon bridge was how essentially all ETH based tokens were bridged to the Harmony chain. 100M in ETH-based tokens were hacked, creating a massive depeg of those wrapped assets on Harmony. This effectively gutted the Harmony defi ecosystem (which, in my opinion, remains crippled to date, RIP Harmony). This led to the cancellation of grants, including the large amounts promised to DFK. DFK had to explore alternatives, since, even as the golden egg of Harmony (constituting at time upwards of 95% of all Harmony transaction traffic) Harmony had to pull its grants and promises. During this time and since the launch of Cyrstalvale, markets got hit bad, and Jewel especially got hit bad. Price tanked dramatically and a large portion of the community seemed to have zoned out or exited entirely. There was all sorts of attacks on the team (which when coupled with a bear market always results in downward price pressure) and a lot of negativity in the space.

I’ve been astonished, however, that the team continued to build. Every week they held their AMAs, sometimes they sounded pretty beat down, and they continued to deliver. Call them what you’d like, but I for one have been impressed with their fortitude and resolve to continue building in this environment.

Decision to move Serendale to Klaytn (August 2022)

Throughout the summer the team worked on building out all of the Serendale features onto Crystalvale, while also working on potential equity raises for Kingdom Studios. While they didn’t do an equity raise, they did end up finding a new home for Serendale, which they believe will put them in a position of power going forward. Link here for that announcement. During that time they also essentially turned off Harmony/Serendale, and made it an outpost so that people could still access their DFK assets and bridge them over to DFK Chain, all while building out the rest of the features on DFK chain and also introducing some cool new ones, such as Dark Summoning (more on that below).

Now, we approach December 7, the launch date of Serendale on Klaytn. Crystalvale will continue to be the additional realm, with most, if not all, features being made available in both realms.

With that brief history out of the way, let’s jump into how to play the game.

1 — Setting Up a MetaMask Wallet to Interface with the DFK Game
1.1 — Setting up DFK Chain on Metamask
1.2 — Setting up Klaytn on Metamask
1.3 — Getting Gas to your wallet
2 — What can you do in DFK Right Now?
2.1 — Buying the Power Tokens ($JADE/$CRYSTAL) or $JEWEL
2.2 — Single Stake $JEWEL at the Jeweler for Passive Growth
2.3 — Gardens — Provide Liquidity for the DFK DEX using the Gardens
2.4 — Tavern/Portal— Heroes (How to Get a Hero and What to do with it)
2.4.1 — Buying a Hero at the Tavern
2.4.2 — Summoning a Hero at the Portal
3 — Profesion Quests
3.1 — Profession Quests Generally
3.2 — Fishing and Foraging
3.3 — Mining and Gardening
4 — Training Quests
5 — DFK Duels — Mini PVP Game
6 — Pets
7 — Land
8 — Roadmap Features to Look Forward To
9 — Third Party Games Building on DFK Assets
10 — DFK Helper Quality of Life Service
11 — Other Helpful Links
11.1 — Helpful Links
11.2 — Content Creators you Should Follow

The team has indicated that they will be integrating the Kaikas wallet DeFi Kingdoms so that users on Klaytn can interface with the game. That should be imminent and announced separately by the DFK team> will try to link that once available, but in the meantime, the majority of users use Metamask on DFK Chain and can also use Metamask for Klaytn.

Because this is more of a technical threshold matter so I won’t go into much detail here and will instead direct you to the many other great guides out there, but the gist is that if you want to play DFK you have to (1) have a Metamask wallet, (2) have the wallet connected to the DFK Chain or Klaytn blockchain network using a custom RPC, and (3) have some gas in your wallet to pay for gas fees.

Gas for DFK Chain: $JEWEL

Gas for Klaytn: $KLAY

Keep in mind that to interact with the DeFi Kingdoms App you’ll need a supported wallet. Most everyone uses Metamask, but I suspect that the majority of Klaytn users will use Kaikus. Details on Kaikus integration I suspect will be announced by DFK separately here in the very near term. I will try to update this with those details once available.

What this means is that you’ll either need the Metamask web browser extension installed on a computer or the Metamask mobile app installed.

1.1 — Setting up DFK Chain on Metamask

If on a web browser, just make sure you are logged in to your Metamask wallet extension and then go to chainlist.org.

Once there you can type “DFK” in the search networks bar and DFK Chain will pop up.

Make sure your wallet is connected (top right) and then simply click on one of the two RPCs there by using the “Add to Metamask” button.

Clicking on that will then ask if you want to switch networks to DFK Chain.
Going forward, you can switch between DFK Chain and other networks you interface with on Metamask by just clicking on the networks drop down.

If doing this on Metamask mobile, you’ll need to use the in-app browser for Metamask when going to Chainlist. Make sure that you connect your wallet, and then proceed with the steps.

***MAKE SURE YOU ARE ACTUALLY USING CHAINLIST.ORG*** AND NOT SOME OTHER WEBSITE.

1.2 — Setting up Klaytn on Metamask

You can repeat the same process to add Klaytn, or you can follow the below instructions from Klaytn’s medium page.

For getting Klaytn set up on Metamask — Klaytn has produced a medium article on getting that set up:

From there, it’s just a matter of sending some KLAY into that Metamask wallet for gas to start interacting with Dapps on Klaytn network. Typically this is done by buying some KLAY on a centralized exchange, and then withdrawing it from there to your Metamask wallet address.

1.3 — Getting Gas to your wallet

For Klay, simply transfer KLAY from another wallet you already have, or if you don’t have any, but some KLAY from a centralized exchange and then withdraw it from there to your Metamask wallet.

For $JEWEL since its not on centralized exchanges, other than one small exchange that listed it on its own with very little liquidity, the best option in my opinion is to buy some AVAX, and then send that AVAX to DFK Chain using Synapse Protocol’s bridge. They will give you some $JEWEL dust as part of that, which you can then use to sell the AVAX in game on DFK Chain for other DFK assets like Jewel.

Here’s a link to the Synapse Protocol Bridge: https://synapseprotocol.com/?inputCurrency=AVAX&outputCurrency=AVAX&outputChain=53935

Now that you have a wallet that is connected to the DFK website — you can set up a profile, just select a profile pic and a profile name and enter Gaia and you’ll be welcomed by this beautiful pixel art world overlay (depending on which realm you are in)

Each of the named areas are zones where you can interact with the game.

So what kinds of things can you do right now? Here’s a high level summary and I’ll break them down more below — but most of you reading this are probably interested in how to start using the “game” aspect (which right now revolves around the NFTs).

• Single Stake Power Tokens ($CRYSTAL in Crystalvale and $JADE in Serendale) for Passive Rewards and for in-game power ups: Just buy some power token in the applicable realm and stake it at the Jeweler to earn passive rewards in the form of additional power tokens and access to in game power ups.
• DeFi Liquidity Pools: Earn Jewel by being a liquidity provider for the in-game DEX (but note that it's a DEX just like any other DEX (i.e. Uniswap) you don’t have to be playing the game to use it). Keep in mind its not just a DEX for the game, its a DEX for anyone on that chain. Back when Serendale was live on Harmony, it had the highest TVL of any Harmony DEX by many multiples.
• Heroes: Heroes allow you to (1) Summon, (2) Run quests (currently all passive quests), (3) Play the mini-game Duels, and (4) participate in third party apps that use the NFTs and tokens, such as, (as of the time of this update) DFK Fight Klub and DFK Arena. The real culminating experience will be when full in-game PVP and PVE are released, which DFK is working with Wisdom Labs, an affiliate of Wisdom Gaming, to help develop.
• Pets: These are hatched from eggs, obtained from doing profession quests, or won from raffle tickets obtained from Duels matches. These hatch into NFTs that have their owns stats and will eventually be equipped onto Hero NFTs for bonuses.
• Land: Not much is known about land utility other than that its been said it will be linked to guilds in a deep way and that it will be a fundamental part of the world play eventually.

I’ll break each of these down in more detail, but first things first, you are going to need some Jewel to get started doing any of the in game fun.

2.1. — Buying the Power Tokens ($JADE/$CRYSTAL) or $JEWEL

You’ll need the power token of the specific realm to do pretty much anything in the game, here’s how you can buy some. You can find the contract addresses for these in the DFK Discord.

Power Token for Crystalvale (DFK Chain blockchain):

Power Token for Serendale (Klaytn blockchain):

For purposes of illustration I’ll run through these steps on Serendale, since most Crystalvale users will already be very familiar with this. The names of the zones, however, are the same between Serendale and Crystalvale.

If in Serendale Next, choose “Central Marketplace” (Crystalvale only has one marketplace)

Next, interact with the Trader:

Next — select a token from your wallet that you will trade for the power Token or $JEWEL, note that it will need to be a token for which there is Liquidity on the DEX. You can see all the various pools for which there is liquidity on DFK Chain right now by going to DexScreener and navigating to Avalanche DFK Chain:

https://dexscreener.com/avalanchedfk

By sorting by volume you can see what trading pairs have liquidity.

For Klaytn — the initial pairings with incentivized liquidity pairing are as follows:

• JADE:JEWEL
• JADE:KLAY
• JADE:AVAX
• JADE:USDT
• JADE:BTC
• JADE:ETH
• JEWEL:KLAY
• JEWEL:AVAX
• JEWEL:USDT
• JEWEL:BTC
• JEWEL:ETH

But anyone can create a pool with any two tokens that they want, it just won’t be “incentivized” and receive emissions of $JADE.

Source: https://medium.com/defi-kingdoms-official/defi-kingdoms-serendale-klaytn-launch-details-d960caafffeb

By clicking “Confirm Swap” it will create a Metamask approval pop up.

After signing that transaction in your wallet you’ll have your power token in your wallet a few moments latter.

2.2 — Single Stake $JEWEL at the Jeweler for Passive Growth

Jewel, unlike the power tokens, is no longer spent directly to do things like summon, level up, etc. Instead it is now the core governance token and fee sharing token with the protocol. By buying and staking Jewel at the Jeweler you can receive cJewel (in Crystalvale) or sJewel (in Serendale) in return. The c/sJewel in turn allows you to receive passive returns in the form additional Jewel, as well as access to power ups.

I won’t get too in depth in this article on how c/sJewel works, but you can read more about it here from DFK’s main medium page:

The Jeweler function used to produce what was called xJewel, but the c/sJewel construct has a lot of benefits, all outlined in the article above.

Suffice it to say, that you get s/cJewel for staking it. You get more s/cJewel depending on how long you stake it for (up to three years). A portion of all power token spend in game (e.g. Jade/Crystal) goes into a wallet, which sells that Jade/Crystal, purchases Jewel, and distributes that to s/cJewel holders.

You can claim your allotted s/cJewel from passively staking this whenever you want and as often as you want by going to the same Jeweler to claim it.

Power Ups

Soon we will be able to start accessing power ups (some hinted to have been bonus XP, bonus stamina recovery) that will make your heroes more powerful in some way and to be able to access them you will need s/cJewel. You wouldn’t spend the s/cJewel, rather you will say “of my X cJewel, I want to allocate 10 to this power up.”

We await further details on this, but hopefully it will be released soon.

Pros and Cons of Staking with the Jeweler (Not financial advice, just my opinion)

Pros:

• No risk of impermanent loss.
• Voting rights
• Rewards and airdrops to people who hold s/cJewel
• No time commitment needed — set it and forget it.
• No fees to deposit.

Cons:

• 50% slashing withdrawal fee if you withdraw any time (even one day) before the period you specified when you staked it.
• APR returns often not as high as the providing liquidity in the gardens.
• Opportunity cost of using the Jewel on things like buying/selling/summoning heroes.

The official DeFi Kingdoms has a really great article specifically about the Jeweler.

2.3 Gardens — Provide Liquidity for the DFK DEX using the Gardens

Gardens — this is simply what the game refers to for the liquidity staking for the Dex. This has been a part of the game since the very initial stages in August 2021.

The official DeFi Kingdoms also has a great article on Gardening (again the images are from before the Gardens zone artwork revamp, but the concept is still the same). So I won’t get too in depth on HOW you provide liquidity in the gardens but instead I’ll give you some conceptual background and some pros and cons on staking liquidity in the gardens.

Help links on how to provide liquidity in the Gardens:

• Official DFK medium article on staking in the gardens.
• Official DFK docs/whitepaper.
• Inner Grove Youtube Channel Beginner’s Guide to DFK created back for the launch of Crystalvale on DFK Chain

General information on providing liquidity:

Because DFK is also a DEX (decentralized exchange) it has to have a source of liquidity to be able to facilitate all these trades. Like with all DEXs, that liquidity is provided by the people like you and me. How it works is that we say, “Hey, I’ve got some Jewel (or Crystal or Jade) and I’ve also got some AVAX/KLAY/ETH/BTC, I’ll pair them together into a token ($100 worth of Jewel and $100 worth of ETH) and stake it in the DEX and the DEX will use that as a source of liquidity in order to be an automated market maker.”

You are rewarded in two ways by doing so — you get a portion of fees generated by the DEX when trades occur (proportionate to the amount of liquidity you provide compared to the total liquidity provided) AND if you provide liquidity for one of the “incentivized pairs”, you will receive free power tokens (Crystal if in Crystalvale or Jade if in Serendale) that is minted and allocated to liquidity providers as a reward.

These power tokens that are minted and provided to liquidity providers has a system in place to prevent people from just dumping it all and how they do that is that a portion of it is locked depending on when you claim your garden rewards. There is a LOT that I could go into detail on this, but you should really just read the official section of the whitepaper about the Gardens which explains this locking concept very well. The TL/DR on Garden rewards is that you can choose to stake LP tokens and not claim for a long time and have more unlocked Jewel when you claim later on, or you can claim now and consistently at the cost of having a portion of the rewarded Jewel locked up (and you can’t use the locked Jewel on anything in game or otherwise) with the benefit of being able to start putting the unlocked portion to use immediately.

Locked power tokens can be unlocked early via Mining profession quests, and will otherwise unlock linearly over the course of 1 year, starting on the 1 year anniversary of when that token launched.

For Crystal, that means locked Crystal will start unlocked March 30, 2023.

For Jade, that means locked Jade should start unlocking on December 7, 2023.

Gardens Pros/Cons and Tips:

Pros:

• Potentially higher APR than single staking $JEWEL.
• Flexibility to withhold claiming to get more unlocked when you claim or to claim frequently. The option is yours to fit tor your strategy.
• Access to locked tokens, which can then be mined via mining quests.

Cons:

• Risk of impermanent loss associated with any sort of liquidity providing.
• Power tokens may be subject to fluctuations as different in game events that require in game activity occur. For example, a summoning event might temporarily boost the price of $JADE or $CRYSTAL, but wouldn’t necessarily do so for $JEWEL to the same extent.
• There are withdrawal fees so if you might need the funds quickly, think twice before depositing these, 8% if withdrawing in 1 hour, 4% if withdrawing within 1 day of staking, 2% if withdrawing within 3 days of staking 1% if withdrawing within 5 days, 0.5% if within 5 days.
• These are not the same as staked in the Jeweler, so staking in the gardens does not qualify you for snapshots/airdrops or give you the right to vote on proposals, with a few exceptions where they have done a snapshot based off your power token holding that is paired in LPs.
• The amount of power tokens emitted to liquidity providers goes down over time (and at the same time the ratio of unlocked Jewel to locked Jewel goes up (meaning more unlocked Jewel)), you can see a schedule of the Jewel emission rates for liquidity providers in the DFK Docs Garden page.

Tips:

• The withdrawal fee timer is based on when you first deposit liquidity into a pool, so if you deposit more liquidity into the pool, any withdrawal fee for the entire pool of liquidity will be based on the time of your first deposit, not any subsequent deposits (i.e. you deposit $1 into a LP pool then 8 days later deposit $1,000 into the same pool and then later that day you want to withdraw it all, you’d be hit with the 0.5% fee (between 5–14 days) rather than the 4% for withdrawing within 24 hours.
• If you find yourself moving in and out of the pools frequently, one thing you can do to remedy (1) above put a small amount of liquidity into the pools you use frequently so that you can deposit into them at a later point and immediately withdraw with little to no fee.

Unstaking your LP: Once you are done in the Gardens and want to unstake your LP tokens and get the two underlying separate tokens back into your wallet you can use this guide from long-time community member Albus to get your tokens back.

2.4 — Tavern/Portal/Quests — Heroes (How to Get a Hero and What to do with it)

Heroes is where most of the game aspects come into play. So how does one get a hero? Either by summoning one themselves (which requiries owning at least one, or by purchasing one through the in-game marketplace, the Tavern).

The heroes have stamina bars, experience bars, HP, MP, attribute points, skill points, rarity, passive and active skills separate from the skill tree points, active and passive genetic traits and more. It’s all on-chain data associated with your NFT as well, so other apps have been able to leverage that data and create third party games using these NFTs. I suspect we will see more and more of that as time goes on.

So how many heroes do you need to play, how do you get your hands on one and what do you do with it once you do? That’s what I’ll highlight here, and then in the next section provide some beginner’s guide with my tips.

How many Heroes do you need to play DFK?

You’ll only need one hero to do the current quests. But the more you have for certain quests, the greater rewards you can receive. Duels (covered more below) uses teams of 1, 3 or 9 heroes. The DFK team has announced recently that for full PVP that is being developed by Wisdom Games, you’ll need a team of three heroes to participate.

Several peeople are running profession quests with hundreds of heroes.

How do you get a Hero?

You have a few options on how to get your first hero.

2.4.1 First — the easiest way is to go to the Tavern and buy one once you have your hand on some Jewel that you bought from the marketplace. The Second way would be to summon a hero (but this requires you to have at least one hero of your own).

The Tavern is the in game marketplace and also the interface to view any hero minted and also send heroes to a specific address for free (if transferring to a friend, for example).

How do you get a Hero? Buy a Hero at the Tavern!

By clicking on the NFT Agent at the Tavern you can (1) buy a hero, (2) sell one of your currently owned heroes or (3) list one of your heroes for hire (you can only rent heroes out for summoning, not quests (for now).

The Tavern buy and sell feature has some really great features where you can filter to exactly what you are looking for. Once you find the hero you want you’ll just select purchase and approve the MetaMask confirmation that comes up.

As of the time of righting this, the floor price of a hero in the Serendale Tavern is 22 $JADE, which at today’s prices is roughtly $5.02.

Tavern Buying Pros/Cons and Tips:

Pros:

• You know exactly what you are going to get (there’s not RNG in buying a hero like there is when you pull a hero NFT in summoning)
• You can filter and get exactly what you want (I.e. a knight with at least 5 summons with the mining profession gene).

Cons:

• You are subject to prices dictated by the market.
• You don’t get that exciting feeling of opening a hero crystal — hard to beat the excitement of pulling that hero NFT when you open the crystal to see what you get!

Here are my tips for shopping at the Tavern:

• Read my comprehensive guide on breaking down each aspect (currently known) of a hero card. You’ll need to understand what is in this guide for the below items to make sense most likely.
• Make sure you always check out how many summons the hero has left! You don’t want to buy a hero with 0 summons left if you are planning to try your hand at summoning.
• Make sure you check the generation of the hero. When summoning the cost of Jewel to summon is governed by the Generation of the hero. Essentially when you summon, there is a base cost of the Power Token + 2 for every subsequent summon you do with that hero (read more on this in the next section where I talk about summoning).

How do you get (another) Hero? Buy another or summon your own hero at the Portal!

2.4.2 — Summoning a Hero — Another way to get a hero (and in my opinion the more fun way) is to summon your own hero. ONE THING TO KEEP IN MIND IS THAT SUMMONING YOUR OWN HERO REQUIRES THAT YOU OWN AT LEAST ONE HERO.

Summoning a hero is a two step process and here is what you’ll need:

Summoning Step 1 — A hero in your wallet (either one that you’ve purchased or one that a friend has sent to you using the Tavern send hero feature using the Barkeep)

Summoning Step 2 — Gaia’s tears — you can buy this token from the DEX (i.e. the Marketplace Trader) or you can get them from any quest currently useable (wishing well or any of the four profession quests — I would definitely just do profession quests since the wishing well only gives you tears). You can buy Gaia’s tears just like you would any other crypto on the DEX at the marketplace by importing the address into the DEX and then purchasing using your crypto.

For summoning with a basic hero you need 10 Gaia’s tears for each basic hero (Archer, Monk, Pirate, Thief, Warrior, Knight, Wizard, Priest)

For summoning with advanced heroes you need 40 Gaia’s tears for each advanced hero (Ninja, Summoner, Paladin, Dark Knight)

For summoning with elite heroes you need 70 Gaia’s tears for each advanced hero (Dragoon, Sage)

Summoning Step 3 — Power Token— to pay for the summoning cost. Whenever you summon with a hero, each hero will have an associated Jewel cost that goes along with it. That cost is determined by a base price that depends on the generation of the hero + 2 Jewel for every subsequent summon after its first. Here is a really helpful chart created by community members to illustrate how much of a power token (and Gaia’s tears, a separate NFT) are required to summon.

So, as an example, if you had a Gen 3 and a Gen5 and you were using their first summon — you would have to pay 36+56 Power Token (Either $JADE or $CRYSTAL) (Total of 92 Power Token). As you can see it gets pricy using later generation heroes to summon. Whereas using two Gen1 heroes on their first summons would only cost 32 Power Token (16 + 16).

Summoning Process

Summoning and Genetics gets very complex and is outside the scope of this beginner’s article, but some really helpful HIGH level guides and detailed articles are below:

• Heroes can mutate into advanced classes with the right combinations, those combinations are possible by using the pairing shown in this infographic from community member Stronghold.

• The generation and number of summons is very important when summoning.
• Rarity of the hero summoned depends on the rarity of the heroes used to summon, see the following chart:

Because of how complex the gene and summoning system is, I highly reccomend you read up on it, two of the best articles, which are from a while ago, remain true, and they can be found from core team member Mr Zipper here:

Mr. Zipper’s Deep Dive on Advanced Hero Summoning

Mr. Zipper’s Deep Dive on Hero Genetics

Mr. Zipper’s Deep Dive on Active and Passive Genes

Summoning Pros/Cons and Tips:

Pros:

• Very high upside, if you pull anything other than a common (grey) card such as an uncommon (green), rare (blue), legendary (orange) or mythic (purple), you immediately have gained a lot of value. I won’t go into the nuances of rarities, but the official DFK medium made an article about Hero rarity and its impact on stats if you are interested.
• There’s nothing more fun than opening up a crystal to see what hero you pulled.
• You can really get into min/maxing by selectively summoning with the right classes, subclasses and stat and profession genes.
• Can be cheaper than buying a hero if you have at least two of your own heroes.
• You can make some really good money with the right pulls.

Cons:

• Also a lot of downside if you use two really great heroes and pull a crappy common.
• There’s a lot of RNG involved, including, among other things, recessive genes not shown on the card, so you could breed a ninja and a summoner to get a sage and end up with a warrior randomly, which will be a costly.
• It is addicting!

Tips:

• Read the whitepaper/docs on Professions Quests
• Read my comprehensive guide on breaking down a hero card and all the aspects to consider when shopping for a hero.
• Heroes have stat genes (the blue/green/purple stats on the back of the card) and profession genes (one of the professions highlighted in green on the back). Those are beyond the scope of a beginner’s guide like this, but check out my comprehensive hero card guide.
• We have limited information on adventure and combat (both PVE and PVP) quests for now, so the only thing you can really plan around with certainty are the profession quests. You can see which classes are the best for each of the professions with the below chart BASED on their stats — however, stats are only part of the equation when it comes to the success rate from the quests:
• Use the chart above to see how you can summon advanced classes. Note that its not a guaranteed rate (due to recessive genes its about 14% unless you have aligned recessive genes) but the only way to get these advanced classes is by mixing the basic classes as shown in the chart.
• If you plan on summoning you really need to read MrZipper’s Comprehensive guides on recessive genes (Deep Dive — Hero Genetics and Deep Dive: Active & Passive Genes)

As of the time of this most recent update to this article (December 13, 2022) there are several quests one can do. This section covers the “Profession” qeusts, which are titled that because they align with a “Profession” gene that all heroes have, listed on the back of their card.

Profession quests, which include

• Foraging;
• Fishing;
• Locked Power Token Mining;
• Gold Mining; and
• Gardening quests

3.1 Profession Quests Generally

The best use of your hero’s stamina right now is spent doing the profession quests. I won’t get too in depth on it here, but it almost always makes sense to just run the profession that that hero has the gene for. Here’s an article I wrote on this over a year ago, which remains true.

Profession Questing based on Prof. Gene or Stats? | by Samichpunch | Medium

You commence a profession quest by clicking on the applicable NPC within the profession zone. This zone provides for Lvl 0 profession quests, meaning there is no barrier to doing them. There will in the future be Lvl 10 profession quests, which will require, among other things, that your hero has lvl 10 of the applicable profession to be able to run it.

Each Profession Quest reward is based on (1) the level of your profession (shown on the back of the hero card) and (2) two applicable stats. This chart shows which two stats benefit which professions, and which classes are the best for that profession based on the growth rate of those stats. I won’t get into much detail on that here — but my Comprehensive Hero Guide gets into more detail on this:

3.2 Fishing and Foraging

These were the first two to release and they quests consume 7 stamina per quest attempt or 5 if you have the profession gene. (and take 20 seconds per quest). By sending them in a group you get the efficiency of sending more at once and saving on gas and time, but it also takes slightly longer for the group of quests to complete than if you just ran it solo.

Stamina starts recharging once you hit the “complete quest” button after the time based on the above table has run.

If you cancel the quest before completion, it will burn all stamina and return no rewards.

Profession Gene: If you have the profession gene, then it reduces the stamina cost to 5 per attempt, meaning at lvl 1 you can go on 5 quest attempts at once, which is a huge increase in questing volume compared to someone without that profession gene.

Rewards from Foraging and Fishing:

We have the drop rates for various items that can be received from questing:

The chance to get “Nothing” goes down and the chance of the other items goes up pro rata as your profession skill levels up.

In addition to these item drops (which you can sell for gold at the vendor or at the marketplace if people have created a liquidity pool for it), you have a chance to increase the skill of your profession. This is in essence almost like a reward. You may get no extra skills to the profession, and you may get some decimal amount added to it (always in single digit amounts (e.g. 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4)).

Going to skip the pros/cons list here for now because there’s no reason you shouldn’t be doing profession quests at this point.

Tips for Foraging and Fishing Profession Quests:

• Read the whitepaper/docs on Professions Quests
• Read my Lost Annals of Gaia volumes — which have a lot of helpful nuggets of knowledge about profession quests.
• Send your heroes with the profession gene in a group WITHOUT intermingling with heroes without the profession. If you mix them, the max amount of attempts for the group will be limited to the lowest amount of all the heroes in the group. So if you send a group of just heroes with the foraging profession gene foraging, they can go 5x, but if you send 5 foragers and 1 miner, the entire group will only be able to go 3x. Just split them up and send them separately.
• Send your heroes with the applicable profession gene first. That way you can complete their quests and start regenerating their stamina (which will be drained to 0 rather than down to 4 (assuming 25 stamina) like the heroes with a misaligned profession gene).
• Unless you have a card with a high rarity and great class to align with a profession that is NOT their main profession (i.e. their green profession on the back of their card) then I would just run whatever profession they have the profession for. This is because stats only account for 1/3 of the rewards from your profession quest. The profession skill itself accounts for 2/3 of it. When you can run 5 quests each time as opposed to 3 quests, you will be pumping through the quest faster and theoretically leveling up that profession skill faster, which has a great impact than stats. The reality is, late game with a mythic you aren’t going to be spending its stamina on professions anyways you’ll be doing combat and other type quests.

3.3 Mining and Gardening Profession Quests

Gardening and Mining are fundamentally different in how they work from Foraging and Fishing because instead of saying go on x quests, where each quest costs stamina, you instead say, go do Gardening/Mining for x Tics, where one Tic is on point of Stamina (i.e. a Miner with 27 stamina points can go mining for 27 tics, and each tic takes 10 minutes of time, whereas if you don’t have the profession gene (i.e. if you go mining with a forager) then it takes 12 minutes per tic.

The possible rewards are noted below. The calculation for Gardening is complex if you have LP tokens in an incentivized pool so check out the docs and the articles below.

There’s a lot to consider on these so I’ll just drop some really helpful articles written by me and the official DFK medium account — but then include my tips below:

• Samichpunch Article on how Gardening Works (Note that stamina regeneration while in Queue is now different and actually regenerates while queued)
• DFK Medium Article on how Gardening Works (Note that stamina regeneration while in Queue is now different and actually regenerates while queued)
• DFK Medium Article on how Gold Mining Works (Note that stamina regeneration while in Queue is now different and actually regenerates while queued)
• Samichpunch Article on how Jewel Mining Works (Note that stamina regeneration while in Queue is now different and actually regenerates while queued)

These articles are a bit older, so now there is no “Jewel Mining” instead there is Locked $CRYSTAL mining and Locked $JADE mining, and then there is Gold mining (a separate token) in both Crystalvale and Serendale.

My general tips for these are as follows:

• Try to get your hands on at least 5,000 locked power tokens, that will allow you to hit maximum locked mining rewards with 18 miners (3 groups of 6). If you have less than 5,000 then you don’t need a full set of 18 miners
• Put even just $1.00 into each of the gardens.
• Select your best miner as your lead miner and then only send miners with the same amount of stamina and with the profession gene together in a group, otherwise the non-profession or lower stam miners can gimp the other miners.
• Mining, both Locked Power Token and Gold generally seems to have been the most profitable profession quest to run.

4.1 Training Quests Generally

These burn stamina in the same way that Foraging and Fishing do. Each attempt at the quest is 5 stamina (no bonuses for profession), and your success rate depends on how high the applicable stat is. There are 8 training quests, one for each of the stats, and the quest is a test against how high your stat is, the higher the applicable stat, the higher the rate of success.

This infograph summarizes where each training quest NPC is (but you can access quests through the multi quest menu), what you can receive from a quest, and the odds of success as your stat increases. Huge shout out to Stronghold for making this beauty.

My general tips for training quests:

• I wouldn’t bother running these until you have at least 25–30 of the applicable stat. Once you get above 35, you start to get a lot of XP from these.
• If you are stam potting and have over 28 of a stat, I would definitely run training quests as the fastest way to level up.
• This and Duels is the only way to get attunement crystals in the game right now.
• These are the least profitable, but they are the best way to get XP the fastest if you have enough of the stat.

DFK Duels is NOT the “PVP” that everyone is waiting for and that Wisdom Labs is working on. Instead, it is a minigame that is based on your hero cards various stats.

DFK Has a guide on how duels works here:

But generally speaking, hero cards face each other in a 1v1 battle (but could be 9 cards, which would be 9 1v1 battles, and a random stat will be drawn, and the card with the higher stat wins. However, there are bonuses that can apply to the stat number. In addition to a stat being “drawn” randomly, a “background” will be drawn, and if it matches your hero, then they get a bonus to the drawn stat. Likewise, if your element beats the element of the other hero, you get a bonus.

Duels Season 2 is about to start up this week. Season 0 happened on Harmony, Season 1 happened on Crystalvale, and Season 2 should be available in both Serendale and Crystalvale.

Playing Duels does not take stamina, and can occur while the hero is questing.

Playing Duels awards Raffle tickets, which can be used at the Raffler NPC in the castle. The raffler has raffles going on constantly and you can decide how many tickets to throw in. Currently the Raffler is the only way to get several items, such as both regular and greater enhancement stones and both regular and greater attunement crystals.

Additionally, for playing duels you obtain ranks, as you hit certain ranks you win in game rewards with some of the higher rank rewards being some of the better items you can currently obtain in the game.

Playing Duels costs a little bit of power token and gold. If you win, you are refunded your gold, if you lose you lose your gold. In both scenarios you lose the power token. If you win, you get tickets, if you lose you get a small fraction of the tickets you would have gotten if you had won.

Take a look at the article above and also join the Duels strategy discord channel for more tips from some of the pros.

I also won’t get too in depth into this, but suffice it to say that there is an entire market for pets right now.

Currently there are 5 pet eggs.

• Blue — obtained from fishing profession quests
• Grey — obtained from foraging profession quests
• Green — obtained from gardening profession quests
• Yellow — obtained from mining (Locked power token OR gold) quests
• Gold — obtained from the in game vendor in exchange for gold.

You can obtain them also via the DEX as some people have created liquidity pools, or by doing p2p trades with other users.

Currently only grey and blue eggs can be hatched. Yellow and Green would be next.

You can hatch using one of three options, from cheap to most expensive. The most expensive method incubates much faster and has a higher chance of being a higher rarity hero.

If you really want the low down on pets you need to go to Stronghold’s website and read all about them, there’s quite a bit.

Currently they have no utility, but once lvl 10 profession quests (more on that below) come out, they should also be introducing pet utility, whereby you can equip your hatched pets like equipment and receive bonuses.

If you look around the Serendale map, you can see various land plots. There are 50, and they were won from raffles late in 2021.

There is a marketplace for land in the castle. Currently land plots only exist on Serendale, but will exist on Crystalvale too.

The utility is unannounced, but it has been hinted that it will play heavily into guilds, travel and crafting. They will release more and more plots, likely in the form of tournaments they said, as they roll the fog back on the map.

• Lvl 10 Profession quests and Pet Utility

They’ve indicated these as the next two items on the roadmap. Lvl 10 profession quests means you have to have profession skill lvl 10, not that your hero must be level 10.

Pet utility means that you will be able to equip a pet to a hero and gain various bonuses, the details of which have not bee disclosed yet other than high level teasers such as combat bonuses (things like Evasion and Crit chance) or Xp bonuses, or profession quest bonuses.

• Land utility
• PVP and PVE Combat — Wisdom Labs has partnered with Kingdom Studios to work on this. You can check out an awesome AMA that the team held with Wisdom Labs here:

DeFi Kingdoms AMA with Wisdom Labs (the Team Creating PVP and PVE) (December 13, 2022) | by Samichpunch | Dec, 2022 | Medium

• More Roadmap — They also announced last week that they are working on a revised roadmap, so that should be in the docs soon once they complete that.

There are some pretty cool games that people have created using the Hero NFTs from DFK.

The two current ones are

1. DFK Fight Klub [Link to their discord]
2. DFK Arena [Link to their discord]

These can be accessed through Archivist NPC in the castle, or by clicking on their discords above. I personally really like Fight Klub. It is a discord based game, that uses your heroes and there is a lot of skill and strategy involved.

DFK Fight Klub — one thing that is really cool about Fight Klub is that you can spend power token and win raffle tickets by playing their game. I highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t it is a lot of fun.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention DFK Helper. This is a quality of life service that automates a lot of the more mundane tasks and makes managing large hero pools much easier. I’ve been using it and love it. It has helped me to spend my limited time focusing more on hero theorycrafting for upcoming PVP and DFK Fight Klub, as well as just overall summoning and playing the hero market.

You can learn more about their service in their discord:

https://discord.gg/jDsf7ZzEPN

11.1 — Helpful Links

DeFi Kingdoms Official Docs

My index of DeFi Kingdoms Articles — I’m in the process of refreshing my strategy guides, but most remain accurate and this is your go to to find transcripts of all of the old AMAs.

MrZipper’s medium articles.

Albus’ Helpful links medium article

DFKAnalytics.com — Awesome tool for querying hero data.

Stronghold’s Website — Your go to source for infographs and in depth information about all things DFK and strategy: https://dfkeggspert.com/

Adventures in DeFi Kingdoms — they have a podcast, and some awesome hero querying tools, including a matching service to help find good summoning pairs as well as estimate results of a summon. (https://dfk-adventures.herokuapp.com/)

DFK Alerts — a Chrome extension designed to help players manager their heroes via browser notifications.

11.2 — Content Creators You Should Follow

Myself (Samichpunch) of course. You can find my various socials here:

Samichpunch Medium: https://medium.com/@samichpunch
Samichpunch Twitter: https://twitter.com/Samichpunch
Inner Grove (Punch Squad) Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChEe39RczjmF75lI2Fe8BxA?app=desktop

Other DFK Content Creators you should be following:

• Adventures in DeFi Kingdoms: https://www.youtube.com/@adventuresindefikingdoms9830
• Kristian Peter: https://www.youtube.com/@KristianPeter
• Bogside Chats: https://www.youtube.com/@bogsidechats5746
• Mythic Squad: https://www.youtube.com/@mythicsquaddfk
• Crypto Grady: https://www.youtube.com/@cryptogrady3141
• Sgt Filthy McNasty: https://www.youtube.com/@sgtfilthymcnasty3106
• Rock808: https://www.youtube.com/@rock808

If I’ve missed you and you want to be included in this list and have shown a history of creating quality DFK Content message me and I will add you to this list.

You’ve got a long journey ahead of you learned about this game and there’s so much in the pipeline. This is by far the most outstanding community I’ve ever been a part of. Join the discord and holler, you’ll find an army of friends waiting to help you.

Good luck!