2 years of dCrops - celebrating anniversary and Growing King Weed!

Friday, 28th of April 2023 [12]

I was quite surprised when I read that #dCrops game is already 2 years old. Around 2 years ago is also when I created my first account on Hive, without really knowing or understanding Hive ecosystem.

I do wish I took time to explore it then, but I was busy writing elsewhere and Hive seemed a bit daunting at the time. I guess I was also busy learning valuable lessons about crypto in general.

Had I done this, I would also be celebrating 2 years of playing dCrops game, but it's not how things went. Nonetheless, I would like to wish a very happy 2nd anniversary to dCrops game creators and all the gamers who were here since game inception.

Since the game anniversary is coinciding with Easter Event and we also have a writing competition organised by @drops and @OCD going on, I decided to write about my experience in participating in limited time events.

While I wasn’t here at the very beginning of the game, dCrops was actually the reason why I decided to give Hive a closer look towards the end of last year. I had read a few dCrops related articles on other platforms and I thought this could just be a game for me.

Back in a day I always loved playing farming games on facebook. I always hoped that all the money I earn there would actually be real money. P2E games came quite a few years later, but earning money in these is not quite as easy as earning fake money in other games. It’s not like you can click all day and night and eventually grow a big heap of money.

There are however many various ways of earning through these games and dCrops is no different. In another article I will share the various ways I learned to earn money through P2E games, but for that's not today's topic.

My experience with participating in limited time events.

Since I started playing dCrops game there have been 3 limited time events within the game. Although all of these events follow the same pattern, my experience with them has been very different each time I participated in these.

The formula of the special events:

• complete various in game tasks and earn event items (this time round we have Easter Eggs),
• pay 5000 CROP to bribe the event character (Easter Bunny) to be able to give and receive special event items (Golden Eggs during Easter event),
• open special events items for a chance to win a prize (Golden tickets, various sponsored prizes in the form of NFTs and tokens, CROP tokens),
  
• exchange golden tickets for limited edition NFTs, ALPHA and BETA packs and crafting materials,
  
• exchange event items (Easter Eggs) for more special event items (Golden eggs), reward chest ++, mystery seeds or boosters,
  
• send special event items (Golden Egg) to other players or dCrops NFTs to dcrops.events to get points to participate in the raffle that takes place after the event is over.

Haloween Event

I must say that the first event was pretty much the most enjoyable to me. I’ve only just started playing the game, I had just a couple of lands and seeds and the event that was the first of this kind in dCrops game caught me by surprise.

I earned a few event items by planting and harvesting my small farm, I exchanged them for mystery seeds and I was happy. I had no expectations and everything was a bonus. I didn't even look at the main prizes, cause I knew they were way above my level at the time. I guess this is why I really enjoyed that first event the most.

OVERALL SCORE 10/10 1️⃣0️⃣

Xmas Event

In a few weeks since Halloween till Xmas my farm has grown a little, I had a small stash of CROP token and I’ve already earned some Hive through writing articles. When the event started, I was pondering for a few days whether to bribe Santa to be able to send and receive extra gifts and by the time I have finally made up my mind to do so, I purchased overpriced CROP tokens and joined the fun a few days too late.

By that time the best sponsored prices were already taken and collecting golden tickets was so slow, that all the prizes were gone by the time I had enough Golden Tickets to exchange for anything. Luckily the moans of many were heard and additional ALPHA and BETA packs were added, so I managed to exchange my golden tickets for 1 ALPHA pack.

From the bribe gifts, apart from very few Golden tickets, I received a few common NFTs and mostly x times 2 CROP tokens.

I’ll be honest - I was utterly frustrated with the statistical chances of winning various items. While the description says there is 30% of winning 1-50 CROP token, the amount of times I have won 2 CROP tokens was overwhelming and the times I have won any amount above 6 CROP tokens at a time was 0. Statistically the chance of this happening is close to zero. The description should really say 1-10 CROP token in my opinion.

20% of winning golden tickets was also not quite to any statistics I learned at the uni and I had a feeling that not all of the event items were added to the event page, but I had no idea how to check it. Numbers just didn’t add up and/or match the description on the event page.

Overall the Xmas event was not a great success for me. Out of 23 Hive I spent on CROP tokens for the bribe, I have calculated the value of my prizes at 25 Hive. Sure, I ended up on plus, but if you add my frustration to it, I’d say it wasn’t really worth the hassle.

The highlight of the event however was a writing contest. Writing is what I really love doing and since there was 1000 event items to win for every entry, it was a no brainer to participate.

Winning would be a bonus, but for that I would have to align to a gaming style of writing, which isn’t quite my style 😉

Nonetheless, I was very happy with my 1000 extra event items and I immediately exchanged them for Reward Chests ++.

In general Xmas event was a learning journey for me:

• I have learned that if I want to spend my precious Hive to bribe the event character, I have to do so from day one, as the chances of winning anything special are slimer with every day of delay.

• I have learned that buying CROP for the bribe should also not be left till last minute or else I’ll overpay again.

• I have pondered the possibility of keeping my harvest until next event, but I have scrapped that idea when I realised how many other people will be using this tactic, which will mean that I’ll receive very little CROP for the shares I’d sell during the event.

OVERALL SCORE 4/10 4️⃣

Easter Event

Well, I thought I was well prepared for it. My farm has grown even more since the Xmas event, I had purchased CROP tokens well in advance to make sure I wasn’t overpaying this time. I was ready to bribe the Bunny from the day 1 of the event and very pleased with myself. I even had a few extra crops to sell for more Easter Eggs.

Once the event has started, I looked at Golden Ticket prizes and my eyes opened wide when I saw a Fairy Garden. Since I bribed the Bunny from day one, I thought it would be easier to accumulate 15 Golden Tickets needed to get that cute Fairy Garden.

Needless to say that all 75 Fairy Gardens are gone and I have accumulated only 5 Golden Tickets until today. I even went against my initial plan of spending Easter Eggs only on the chests and I purchased 7 Golden Eggs in hope for some Golden Tickets.

I found 1, which helped me get an ALPHA pack while they were still available, but these have all sold out now. Still I am grateful I managed to get enough golden tickets for the packs in time.

I think it took me around a week of watching the Fairy Gardens disappearing at fast rate to realise that it is out of my reach and start exchanging my rare Golden Tickets for packs. I managed to buy one of each and really not hoping that I’ll get enough Golden Tickets for anything else.

The highlight of this Easter Event for me was the sale of King Weed seeds. Couple months ago I won #HashKings Valentines writing contest and I purchased tons of BUDS when the price of them dropped some weeks ago. I spend some of them on Echo tamer in #Mutera and I was happy I kept some, cause when King Weed seeds went on sale, I was just on my laptop and snapped 4 of them.

However, it turned out that the price of seeds was missing a lot of 000’s, so the sale was restarted and I managed to quickly unstake my buds and again snap 4 seeds. Added bonus was that the first 4 ‘fake’ seeds were converted to wood and so far wood has been the rarest building material to find for me, so I was very happy with extra 4 of those.

I must say, I really love my King Weed seeds, although @queenstarr and I both think that the graphics size is way to small in comparison to other seeds and we would also rather see nice buds that grow out of it, rather than the same graphics of the seed.

Other than that, King Weed is a winner! It can be planted in every one of 4 seasons and it gives 3 x 20 shares for each seed. It takes 5 days to grow, which is moderate time and normal cooling time applies to it, so it can be planted once every 15 days.

Other seed NFTs with the ability to be planted in multiple seasons are legendary and way above the price I can afford to pay for 1 NFT, so participating in this special sale was really a huge bonus for me. It would be great if similar partnerships were agreed for future special events.

As for the rest of Easter Event, it’s not really much to say. My suspicions of some Easter Eggs missing from my basket were this time confirmed by the Easter Event bot in dCrops Discord. I searched my username and added all the Easter Eggs and the amount I received according to the bot was very different to the amount on my game screen. I wrote about it in help room and @scriptkitty very kindly added the missing eggs to my basket. I was very pleased with the fast response too.

Later on there were more missing eggs, but I kinda gave up on counting and raising questions. I don't like being a pest ;) . As I scrolled through the bot messages again today I realised what happened. I had purchased 8 ALPHA packs in hope for many Easter Eggs, as I read that the amount received for purchasing is 50-300 Easter Eggs.

As I scrolled through the event bot I realised some of my packs only received 1 egg each.

The same happened with the quests I completed that also show 50-200 eggs per action.

My bad really, cause as I re-read the description on events page, it says that each action has 75% chance of receiving the Easter Eggs. I guess 1 Egg is given in other 25% chances, rather than 0. At least this explanation calms down my OCD and there are less numbers that don’t add up.

There are still 2 weeks until the event ends and I’m hoping to collect a few more eggs to exchange for Reward Chests, but I’m surely not holding my breath for golden tickets.

Another highlight/surprise of the event was cashing in on gold from the golden egg I received yesterday:

What have I learned from Easter Event?

• Firstly to manage my expectations better. With my 8 lands and a few seeds to grow in each land in each season I don’t really stand a chance to collect enough Golden Tickets for the main prizes, hence why I should not be racing for them, but rather spend my event items wisely - on Reward Chest 😁

• Read the announcements in Discord to make sure I don’t miss any special sales that might be going on. This time I was lucky - next time it would be best to be prepared.

• Stacking up my CROP by selling shares in seasons I accumulate them and by buying from the market when the price is lower was a good move. Thanks to the rising price at the time of event I also managed to sell some CROP with profit and as a result the bribe cost me 11 Hive, rather than 23 Hive for Xmas Event.

OVERALL SCORE 8/10 8️⃣

In summary, the overall scores for the limited events are purely my subjective opinions and reflect my knowledge and expectations at the time of the events happening.

The bigger picture is that the events are fun and engaging and they show the developers dedication to make the #dCrops game a success and fun for the players. In that respect the overall score is 10/10.

In a few years since I joined the cryptoverse I have invested and lost many $1000's from my own pocket and I must say that if I was wise enough to explore the Hive ecosystem and invest in dCrops game at the very beginning, I would most likely multiplied my 1000's rather than loosing them.

Still, I am very happy and grateful that my curiosity about dCrops game lead me to take #Hive seriously, because it is an amazing and complex platform, full of great people and developers and opportunities around each corner.

This article was written for dCrops writing contest through my alt account for the main account @fantagira that I use to play the game. All pictures used are snaps from the dCrops game play and Discord.

Useful links:
dCrops game: https://www.dcrops.com/game
My refferal link to the game: https://www.dcrops.com/?ref=fantagira
dCrops Wiki page: https://wiki.dcrops.com/introduction/welcome-to-dcrops
dCrops Discord: https://discord.gg/9vdqwRyhn8