Gods Unchained - Crafting is live, but how is the experience?

I thought I would share my experience using the long-awaited crafting and share my thoughts on it. Hopefully, you will find some use or entertainment in it. =)

Connect or not?

The first thing you might have seen was the whole "connect your wallet" in the game client. I don't know why the Gods Unchained team thought that was a great solution to the thing. And given the fact it was delayed as well I can only say that I expected more from them, especially as it was a super fast fix to move it to the web browser.

If you are unaware of this. The way they implemented the wallet in the game client had you enter your seed phrases in order for you to be able to connect it. So kind of an unforgivable sin in the crypto space.

But I digress. It is sort of fixed now. But so far we are off to a rocky start. And I am not talking about the Sylvester Stallone Rocky here, but more the shit rock that finds its way into your shoe and eventually end up giving you a nice set of blisters. That is the rock I am talking about. But let us move on.

Crafting and how is it done

When you log in on the website you are taken to the crafting screen. You are greeted by the new Smith who I assume is responsible for the actual crafting. You will also see a selection of the cards you are able to craft.

From here you just click on the card you want to craft and it will bring you into that card's specific crafting section. Let's take a look at what that can look like for Wakian the new light legendary.

On the right side, below the legendary card you have selected to craft, are the cards that are part of the recipe. Now as you click on one of the cards, an image of that card will appear on the left side. After you have marked a card on the right side, you then have to click on the image on the left side in order to "add" the card to the crafting. As you can see in the picture above, I have added 5 Refractor Guardians out of the 10 needed. You can also see that the cards you have added change their appearance on the right. Now all you need to do is add all 10 of the cards. And then press the "Craft" button at the bottom right.

Do note that this crafting to not require any gods for you to be able to do it. But it does require 200 flux.

After you have pressed the craft button you are treated by this AAA game animation. Must have been this they were working on that caused the delay. Now however it is important to note that you need to approve the transaction in your wallet. And after that is done all you need to do is what. It can take 1-2 minutes until the crafting is done if you are unlucky. Mine was completed in under 1 minute. But I have talked with others who said it took them some time.

And now you should see this window appear, and yes I forgot to take a screenshot of the crafting of my Wakian card, but got it for the second one. =)

My thoughts on the crafting experience

Time to get to the review? part. where I share my thoughts on this crafting experience. Was it worth the wait? Was it all it was cracked up to be? Well to be completely honest, no. It underperformed in more or less all ways it was able. First of all, it was delayed. Sure they have a small team on Gods Unchained. But this crafting was something they had known about for a long time. And they where able to set the ETA on when it would be available themselves. And yet it was delayed.

The second point is how the wallet was implemented in the game client. That's just laughable. I would expect something like that from a company who have no prior experience with cryptocurrencies at all. But that is not the case with Gods Unchained, or their parent companies. That means someone in charge has had to "ok" the way it was done. And it is just baffling to me. It is a clear F- in grade on this alone. Not considering the delay or any other thing.

The actual experience, first of all, it was not intuitive to me at all. It took me a little while off click around until I managed to figure out how it worked. And having to click on one card at a time to the right, to then "deposit" it on the left side in. And do that for all the cards one and one. I felt like I was back in the late 80ies or early 90ies with how clunky it was. Why the f do I have to click on a card and then click on the small card on the left side? Why can't I just pick the 10 cards I want to use to craft? Or better yet as all the cards are the "same" why not just allow me to simply press the craft button and then just ok the transactions?

After I have gotten carpel tunnel from all the unnecessary clicking. I am then greeted by a janky burning animation. That was exactly the crowning achievement of this experience. Why not simply have some smithing sounds? Or have a hammer banging on an anvil? I can probably come up with 10 better things other than whatever that burning thingy was.

All in all this crafting experience gets a big fat F- from me. Even if I would disregard the whole wallet thing, it was not up to par with anything one would expect. And while I in jest referred to the burn animation as an AAA game animation. It is not about that, there are one-person indie games that outperform and over-deliver time and time again. The only thing I can think of as the reason why it is as it is is that no one has tested it. Someone in charge gave a developer a post-it note with the following on.

I can't really recommend this experience to anyone. But on the other hand, if you want or need the cards for a deck then there is either, do it, wait, and hope it gets better of buy the cards.

But I would love to hear from you what your experience has been with the crafting, if you have done any that is. Or perhaps you foresaw this and have held off from crafting. Either way, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

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