Ultimate [Defi Kingdoms] Beginners Guide: How to Get Started
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Welcome to the Defi Kingdoms beginners guide! In this long article, I will go over the nitty gritty details about the game so you can refer to them as you play the game.
Table of Contents
How to Play Defi Kingdoms
Update: You can now buy Harmony ONE directly in game via the Docks from the Dockmaster. You can pay via credit card for a small fee. You can check out the tutorial here.
As a Defi game, you are going to need to convert fiat currency into Harmony (ONE). This one in itself can be troublesome at the time of writing, as there is a lot of roadblocks that can prevent you from quickly getting it and start playing the game.
When I first started out, getting Harmony to my Metamask wallet took 1 month as I went through Binance.us and they are notorious at just preventing you from moving your Harmony, in addition to making you wait 10 days (after depositing fiat with them) before you can transfer your Harmony to your wallet. I no longer recommend Binance for buying Harmony anymore.
Since that incident, I switched to crypto.com. I highly recommend it as I had no trouble getting my money there and buying Harmony, then transferring it to my Metamask. The other crypto exchange that I found good was Kucoin.
Head over to crypto.com and sign up on their website. Or you can also go to the app store to get their app.
Once you have downloaded the app, proceed to sign up. Use your preferred email to sign up. Then head over to your email to find the email verification code they sent you.
If you are a US citizen, you will be prompted to enter your phone number. Unfortunately, New York citizens are currently excluded and cannot use the app. After this is done, you will need to go through the verification process. You need to provide them the following info:
- Your legal name and home address
- Legal ID (Front and Back)
- Photo Verification
For your ID, driver’s license or any government issued ID will do. Have a copy that is already scanned (both front and back) on your phone so you can upload it without any issues. After this step is completed, the final step is to take a selfie without glasses or anything that can block your facial features.
The verification process after this will be anywhere from 1-3 days. The platform is easy to use. Next up, you want to deposit money via your bank.
You can link your bank account to use ACH transfer or use wire transfer. ACH transfer is free but takes 3-5 days usually, while wire transfer is within 1-2 days but it will cost you money depending on your bank. They will send you an email on the details on where to send your money to. Wire the money and wait for the money to show up on the account.
Once money is in your account, you can now buy Harmony!
Crypto.com does charge a small premium on buying it from them, as their exchange prices is a little higher when buying. But it is better than getting your funds held hostage by Binance. Once you have bought your Harmony, you will want to add your Metamask wallet address that is already converted into Harmony address.
In order for your Harmony (ONE) to show up on your Metamask, you need to first add the network to Metamask.
Here is the official link to how to do so: https://docs.harmony.one/home/network/wallets/browser-extensions-wallets/metamask-wallet/adding-harmony
Next, you want to go to https://explorer.harmony.one/. Put in your Metamask address located on the top. It will convert that address into the Harmony version. You will need that address to transfer your Harmony to your Metamask. You will know you have the correct address when it starts with oneXXXXXXXX.
That will be the address you will input in your crypto.com wallet. You will want to choose the external wallet section.
Use the oneXXXXXXXX you got from explorer.harmony.one page and use that as the external address. Keep in mind that you will still need to wait an additional 24 hours before you can transfer out to your Metamask wallet. This concludes the tutorial for crypto.com and you are now finally able to get some JEWEL on Defi Kingdoms after logging in!
General Map
This is what the general map looks like at the time of writing. There will be more additions as the game evolves and adds more content on their road map. The most common places you will most likely frequent is going to be the Jeweler, Marketplace, Gardens and Tavern.
Marketplace
The marketplace is the most visited area in the game. This is where you do all your cryptocurrency transactions.
Trader
The trader is where you exchange your cryptocurrency to various others. It is the main place for you to trade between different currencies with much cheaper gas fees. The two most common currencies are ONE and JEWEL. You can also exchange them for other currencies like BUSD, WBTC, 1ETH, 1USDC, DFKGOLD and so on.
JEWEL is the main currency and you will need ONE for network fees. They are low cost (pennies per transaction) compared to Ethereum, so it will not cost you an arm or leg. You can use JEWEL to buy/sell in game items or stake them in the Bank (Jeweler) for a decent yearly APR.
One of the other key functions in exchanging them to other currencies is to create LP (Liquidity Provider) tokens to earn interest yield in the LP Gardens. In order to do that, you will have to split 50% JEWEL and 50% (Insert Currency Here). You will have to take it to the Druid to make them, which will be explained below.
Druid
The Druid is where you come and either create or buy seeds to farm in the gardens. There are 2 options:
- Create Pool – This option is to create a new liquidity pair that is not in the gardens.
- Buy Seeds – You can create your 50/50 pair here on existing pools that are already in the gardens.
Both can be used to create your LP tokens, but if you want to make it easy, just pick Buy Seeds to create them. You will need an equal amount of each currency and a small amount of ONE for transaction fees. For those that are completely brand new, you are going to need a digital wallet like Metamask to even do this. Below is a good video of how the entire process goes in providing liquidity for the different pools.
If you prefer to read, here are is the official guide on teaching you how to do so:
And for those that are new to staking and LP gardens, please read the white paper:
Vendor (Item Shop)
The vendor is where you can find in game items to buy and used for various quests or improvements in the game. Currently, there aren’t too many items yet as the game is not fully developed. You are going to need DFKGOLD to get the items. The only way to do it is to either earn the gold in game via mining, fishing or you buy it directly with JEWEL or other currencies.
Stylist
This function was recently added and now you can customize your profile picture. Changing pictures will cost a miniscule transaction fee.
Jeweler
The Jeweler is basically the bank. You can stake your JEWEL in the bank and earn an APR (variable) which is 1/3 of the trading fees on the DEX. Your JEWEL that is stored gets converted into xJEWEL.
This is good for players that just want to stake and invest in the game without having to play it. The DFK team also does airdrops to players that hold xJEWEL, so it can be beneficial to always stake some here.
The manager at the top of the jeweler allows people to transfer their locked jewels to another wallet without the risk of losing them.
Gardens
The Gardens is where you get to farm JEWEL by providing liquidity for specific cryptocurrency pairs.
What is a Liquidity Pool(LP)?
A liquidity pool can be thought of as a pot of cryptocurrency assets locked within a smart contract, which can be used for exchanges, loans and other applications. –finextra.com
This pool provides the pair of currency to always have liquid assets to help traders or investors be able to buy/sell between the two currencies without any issues. In return, you get a certain percentage of the transaction fees generated for providing the liquidity. They call this the Automated Market Maker (AMM) or Liquidity Pool Provider.
In DeFi, traders provide liquidity to Decentralised Exchanges (DEXs). That is what Defi Kingdoms does in their gardens. Here are some common LP pairs:
- JEWEL-ONE (most popular)
- JEWEL-AVAX
- JEWEL-LUNA
- 1WBTC-1ETH
Total Value Locked (TVL) – This tells you how much money is locked in the pools in total. This will fluctuate as price of jewel changes.
How To Buy Seeds for a Specific Pool
In this section, we will go over how to provide liquidity for the JEWEL-ONE pool. Since this is the main trading pair for the game, it has a high chance their price moves relatively close to each other, hence reducing the chance of impermanent loss, which will be explained in the next section.
Step 1: Convert 49.5% ONE into JEWEL (keep 0.5% ONE for transaction fees)
If you click to the trader, it will tell you how much ONE you have that you can convert to other currencies. In this example, we will be converting to JEWEL. There is a convenient 50% button you can use so you don’t have to do the math.
Step 2: Go to Druid and Add Seeds
Step 3: Go to Gardens and Deposit into the JEWEL-ONE pool
Risks of Liquidity Pools
Just like stocks and forex, the liquidity pools also carries their own risk. When the price of the LP pair goes down, so will your LP token value. The biggest risk of providing in the liquidity pools is impermanent loss.
Impermanent loss happens when you provide liquidity to a liquidity pool, and the price of your deposited assets changes compared to when you deposited them. The bigger this change is, the more you are exposed to impermanent loss. In this case, the loss means less dollar value at the time of withdrawal than at the time of deposit. –Binance Academy
For example (simplified with easy numbers):
- I stake 1 JEWEL and 100 ONE in the respective pool on Defi Kingdoms JEWEL-ONE Garden
- In a week 1 JEWEL is equal to 200 ONE
- If I held my initial 1 JEWEL and 100 ONE, I would have gained 50% (100 ONE is the same, but my JEWEL is now worth 200 ONE)
- Being an AMM in the JEWEL-ONE pool on Defi Kingdoms, my gain is less than the 50% of what I would have made if I simply held both assets
The APR helps offset some of the risk. As long as both prices of the asset does not diverge and go opposite ways, the impermanent loss will be minimal. It is called that because the loss is not realized unless the stake is withdrawn. If JEWEL goes back to 100 ONE, and I withdraw my funds, then there wouldn’t be any impermanent loss.
Below are a few calculators to help you visualize the gain and losses:
White Board Crypto has a video that gives you a good idea on how to use it with 3 versions:
The other risk is the price of both your assets go down. Both your currencies lose value and your overall LP token loses their value. This is the same as buying a stock and it goes down. However, the saving grace is that you will be earning a yield while your asset value decreases, thus minimizing your losses a bit. It is similar to buying a stock that pays dividends but their stock price went down.
Tavern and Heroes
The Tavern is where you look to hire heroes to help you with PvE and PvP content. The Agent is where you can buy, sell or hire a hero. The Barkeep allows you to search for all available heroes in the game. The hero market is highly speculative and prices will change depending on the meta and constant updates.
Heroes have the following:
- Type – Fire, Water, Wind, Earth Air, Dark
- Location – Plains, City, Desert, Swamp
- Rarity – Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, Mythic
- Base Class – Warrior, Knight, Archer, Thief, Pirate, Monk, Wizard and Priest
- Advance Class – Paladin, Dark Knight, Ninja and Summoner
- Elite Class – Dragoon and Sage
- Exalted – Dreadknight
- Profession – Foraging, Fishing, Mining and Gardening
- Generation – Ranges from 0-11. Generation 0 heroes are very valuable.
- HP and MANA – Not currently in use yet.
Chart made by Albus on the Class Hierarchy
There are 8 base classes and Generation 0 heroes are one of the 8 base classes. Advanced, elite and exalted classes can be created by summoning. The reason why Gen 0 heroes are valuable is because they have unlimited summon potential and can be used to create new heroes. 2 basic classes can create an advanced class, 2 advanced classes can create an elite class and so on. This is an incredibly expensive process and is not recommended for new players.
A summoned hero will always be 1 generation higher than the highest generation of the 2 classes that were used to summon. Higher generation heroes have less summon chances compared to lower ones. For questing, generation isn’t too important unless you are summoning.
The rarity and class of a hero also determines how much bonus stats they get.
- Base class – 0 bonus
- Advanced Class – Base stats +5
- Elite Class – Base stats +10
- Exalted Class – Base stats +15
The class and subclass well determine how your hero grows as he/she levels up. Also, a hero’s stats will affect how well he/she does in profession quests.
Hero stats are utilized in professions and PvP.
- Strength
- Agility
- Endurance
- Wisdom
- Dexterity
- Vitality
- Intelligence
- Luck
Basic class hero stat distribution.
The base stats increase when a hero levels up. The primary and secondary classes determine the probability of a specific stat increasing when the hero levels up. Here is a link to the stat increases from the Defi Kingdoms team:
A hero’s base stats can be boosted. A boosted stat will be green, purple or blue.
- Green: One time +2 to base stat.
- Blue: Added % chance of stat increasing
- Purple: One time +2 to base stat & increased chance stat growth
Professions
There are currently four professions that your heroes can specialize in. Fishing and Foraging are already ready to go at the time of writing, while Gardening and Mining are still in beta versions.
Fishing is a profession where you try to get a variety of fishes and possibly collecting rare items along the way. The standard stamina cost per attempt is 7 Stamina for a hero. You can send up to 6 heroes per attempt. However, if the hero has the foraging profession, it only costs 5 stamina per attempt.
Each hero can attempt 5 times per day. Each subsequent attempt has an increased duration time. 1 hero stamina is recovered every 20 minutes. When your hero is done with the quest, they also gain experience as well.
A level 3 Monk with fishing experience and decent agility and luck stats.
The main stat for heroes to look for is Agility (AGI) and Luck (LCK). Below are the classes that do well in this profession.
- Ninja (85/60)
- Thief (70/65)
- Sage (75/55)
- Dread Knight (60/60)
- Dragoon (65/50)
Below is a chart showing you the duration based on the the number of heroes you send (time is in seconds).
| Attempts | 1 Hero | 2 Heroes | 3 Heroes | 4 Heroes | 5 Heroes | 6 Heroes |
| 1 | 20 | 50 | 80 | 110 | 140 | 170 |
| 2 | 50 | 120 | 190 | 260 | 330 | 400 |
| 3 | 80 | 190 | 300 | 410 | 520 | 630 |
| 4 | 110 | 260 | 410 | 560 | 710 | 860 |
| 5 | 140 | 330 | 520 | 710 | 900 | 1090 |
When you forage, you can get the following items below.
| Image | Name | Chance | Gold Value | Use Case |
| :/ | Nothing | 50% | None | None |
 |
Bloater | 23% | 2.5 | Alchemy |
 |
Ironscale | 9.015% | 5 | Alchemy |
 |
Lanterneye | 9.015% | 10 | Alchemy |
 |
Redgill | 6.015% | 15 | Alchemy |
 |
Sailfish | 1.015% | 12.5 | Alchemy |
 |
Silverfin | 1.015% | 100 | Alchemy |
 |
Shimmerscale | 0.915% | 75 | Alchemy |
 |
Blue Pet Egg | 0.01% | Market Price | |
 |
Shvas Rune | 1% | Market Price | Level up Hero |
 |
Gaia’s Tears | ? | Market Price | For Summoning |
Fishing, much like Foraging, is a beginner friendly profession to get into. It does require more active gameplay as you need to come back and re-start missions once they are completed.
Not all precious plants can grow in the garden, as opposed to what Druids would make you believe. Let’s see if we can find some here.
Foraging allows you to get items for Alchemy, which you use them to create potions or other useful items for your heroes. You can also get rare items like the Shivas rune or Grey Pet Egg, which both are quite valuable and are sold on market price. In order to forage though, you are going to need at least 1 hero.
For foraging, the key stats of the hero you want are Dexterity (DEX) and Intelligence (INT). Below are the classes that do well in this profession.
- Dread Knight (75/65)
- Ninja (75/50)
- Dark Knight (55/70)
- Sage (40/90)
- Summoner (45/85)
- Archer (80/40)
A level 2 Monk forager that has been used and needs to be recharged.
The standard stamina cost per attempt is 7 Stamina for a hero. You can send up to 6 heroes per attempt. However, if the hero has the foraging profession, it only costs 5 stamina per attempt. Each hero can attempt 5 times per day. Each subsequent attempt has an increased duration time. 1 hero stamina is recovered every 20 minutes. When your hero is done with the quest, they also gain experience as well.
Below is a chart showing you the duration based on the the number of heroes you send (time is in seconds).
| Attempts | 1 Hero | 2 Heroes | 3 Heroes | 4 Heroes | 5 Heroes | 6 Heroes |
| 1 | 20 | 50 | 80 | 110 | 140 | 170 |
| 2 | 50 | 120 | 190 | 260 | 330 | 400 |
| 3 | 80 | 190 | 300 | 410 | 520 | 630 |
| 4 | 110 | 260 | 410 | 560 | 710 | 860 |
| 5 | 140 | 330 | 520 | 710 | 900 | 1090 |
When you forage, you can get the following items below.
| Image | Name | Chance | Gold Value | Use Case |
| :/ | Nothing | 50% | None | None |
 |
Ragweed | 23% | 2.5 | Alchemy |
 |
Rockroot | 9.015% | 5 | Alchemy |
 |
Darkweed | 6.015% | 10 | Alchemy |
 |
Redleaf | 6.015% | 15 | Alchemy |
 |
Ambertaffy | 4.015% | 12.5 | Alchemy |
 |
Goldvein | 1.015% | 100 | Alchemy |
 |
Swift-Thistle | 0.915% | 75 | Alchemy |
 |
Gray Pet Egg | 0.01% | Market Price | |
|
Shivas Rune | 1% | Market Price | Level up Hero |
|
Gaia’s Tears | ? | Market Price | For Summoning |
Due to foraging needing you to come check your heroes often, some people prefer other professions where you don’t have to check in all the time. However, this profession is good if you are active and can collect your items often.
Gardening allows you to gain additional Jewels in the liquidity pools. This profession is good if you have a large amount of money in the gardens. Otherwise, it is best to stick to Fishing or Foraging.
The preferred hero stat for Gardening is Wisdom & Vitality. Below are the classes that do well in this profession.
- Ninja (85/60)
- Thief (70/65)
- Sage (75/55)
- Dread Knight (60/60)
- Dragoon (65/50)
Unlike Fishing and Foraging, it takes 12 minutes to drain 1 stamina of the hero. However, if your hero specialize in the Gardening profession, it only takes 10 minutes to drain 1 stamina. A gardening hero will only take 240 minutes to be completely drained, assuming he/she has 24 stamina.
You can only have 1 hero in 1 gardening pool. You will need to select which pool you want your hero to be in. Below is the formula for how much Jewel your hero can earn:
earnRate = launchBonus (rewardPoolpoolAllocationLPowned (0.1+ (WIS + VIT) / 1222.22+ (GrdSkl) /244.44)) / (43,200- (7200 * geneBonus))
Here is a simple breakdown:
Reward Pool – Quest pool wallet balance
Pool Allocation – Percentage of JEWEL allocation assigned to a specific Garden
LPowned – Percentage of the LP owned by the player
GrdSkl – Hero’s gardening skill rounded down to the nearest whole number. For example, 1.8 skill is rounded down to 1.
geneBonus – Proper bonus 20% boost on JEWEL return, increased rune and tear drop rate, reduced 1 stamina consumption time
launchBonus – Launch bonus for 4 months. It starts at 5 and decreases by 0.5 every two weeks until it reaches 1.
Aside from getting more jewels, your hero can also pick up potential items below.
| Name | Chance | Gold | Use Case | |
 |
Bluestem | 9% | 5 | Alchemy |
 |
Milkweed | 4% | 12.5 | Alchemy |
 |
Spiderfruit | 6% | 10 | Alchemy |
 |
Green Pet Egg | 0.02% | Market Price | |
|
Shvas Rune | 1% | Market Price | Level up Hero |
|
Gaia’s Tears | ? | Market Price | Summoning |
Mining(Beta)
Mining helps you unlock JEWEL you own at a quicker rate. This profession is good if you have a lot of unlocked JEWELs. Otherwise, it is better to stick to Fishing and Foraging.
The preferred hero stat for Gardening is Strength & Endurance. Below are the classes that do well in this profession.
- Dark Knight (85/60)
- Paladin (80/80)
- Dragoon (80/70)
- Warrior (75/65)
- Knight (70/75)
- Pirate (70/55)
Here is the formula that is used to determine the unlocking process.
maxUnlockRate = (1000*(0.25+(STR+END)*0.000625+(MinSkl)*0.0025))/(6*(1000-166*geneBonus))
MinSkl – Your hero’s mining skill level.
GeneBonus – GeneBonus has a straight forward 1 or 0 value based on whether or not Mining is your Hero’s Profession Gene (the green profession).
Here is an example of on how to calculate the formula. Let’s take the following hero stats.
In this case, the formula would be:
(1000*(0.25+(12+8)*0.000625+(2.3)*0.0025) = 268.25
This number will then be divided by either 6000 or 5004 whether he/she has the mining profession.
lockedRatio = (6*(1000-166*geneBonus))
Since the unlockRate for this example is 268.25, then:
- With Mining Profession -> 268.25/5004 = 0.0536 JEWEL per tick
- Without Mining Profession -> 268.25/6000 = 0.0447 JEWEL per tick
So having the mining profession is roughly a 20% increased efficiency in unlocking JEWEL. Also, the amount of JEWEL you have locked will impact how much JEWEL you can unlock. The max is 20k JEWEL. Anything higher means you will unlock at the same rate as having 20k JEWEL. You can also add assistants to help the main miner if they cannot reach the maximum unlock rate. Finally, there is a JEWEL jackpot system added where every 15 stamina spent by your main miner will give a 10% chance to unlock a maximum of up to 10 locked JEWEL.
Portal
This is where you try your luck in summoning much rarer classes and heroes. This is where the game gets expensive and could be fun, as luck will play a big factor. Since I have not yet tried summoning, I will link you an article (by Warr305) and a video guide (by Chrisocurrency) that breaks down how it works:
Castle and Docks
Currently, the castle is the place where you can get Land.
As for the Docks, this is where you can access multichain, Harmony and Terra Bridging. Recently, Perilous Journey has been added in anticipation to Crystalvale. It is optional but it does offer a high risk high reward journey.
This quest does not involve any bridging. All rewards except CRYSTAL for survivors will be distributed in Serendale on Harmony, and all surviving Heroes will return there upon the completion of the Journey. CRYSTAL rewards will be distributed in Crystalvale, so they will be inaccessible until the launch of DeFi Kingdoms: Crystalvale at which point an in-game mechanic will assist with RPC configuration and allow players to access the expansion, bridge JEWEL if they desire, and access their rewards.
Since this is a one time event for now that ended on 16th March 2022, it remains to be seen if they will do another one when they expand to a new chain.
Right now, you can also get Harmony ONE directly via a credit card, which lowers the barrier of entry of having the hassle of going through crypto exchanges.
Resources
Below is a list of useful links and places where you can find more info about Defi Kingdoms:
- Defi Kingdoms Whitepaper
- Defi Kingdoms Discord – You get the fastest updates here.
- Useful Links – A list of useful links, guides, tutorials regarding the game.
- Samichpunch Medium – Gives analysis, latest updates and transcripts for easy reading.
- Kingdom.Watch – Useful for checking your JEWEL value.
- Lila’s Ledger – Great for references in reporting taxes.
