After its closed beta playtest earlier this year, free to play MMORPG Ember Sword is now officially going to mainnet with its public Early Access launch on December 2nd at 1 PM CET, meaning in-game assets and $EMBER tokens are actually fully on-chain this time around, allowing players to play to earn NFT rewards.
What’s Included in Ember Sword’s Early Access Launch on Mainnet?
A piece of the web3 game’s world of Thanabus will be playable on launch. Specifically, you will get to explore a bigger version of Solarwood. There will be 5 large and dangerous areas to adventure and battle in solo or with friends: The Capital, Millwheat, North Dalland, Witwood Quarry, Espire Plains, and Sunrift. Over time, developer Bright Star Studios will unlock access to more environments, giving players more places for PvE and PvP action RPG gameplay.
Everyone starts off with basic equipment, and you’ll need to craft tools such as a pickaxe to start gathering various resources that you’ll need to upgrade your crafting bench. With a better crafting bench, you can upgrade your gear to be more prepared for the dangers that await in the wilderness.
Thanks to a player-driven economy, players can also trade resources amongst each other, so if you can’t find or get to certain higher-tier resources, then you might be able to strike a deal with someone who has what you’re looking for. These resources are only possible to earn in-game as off-chain assets. In-game gold, basic emotes, basic wearables, and all weapons are actually off-chain. This means that players can’t pay to win by utilizing on-chain features, as everything powered by web3 is related to trading and upgrading NFT cosmetics, and buying land plots. Land utility will be added in a later phase of Early Access, and will give holders the opportunity to upgrade their plots with various vendors and services to provide to other players, enticing them to spend time on their land so that landowners can earn $EMBER rewards.
You can take on various quests by finding signposts scattered throughout the world. Quests range from collecting resources to defeating enemies, rewarding you with varied loot while helping you level up your skills. When venturing out from safe areas into PvP arenas and zones with better rewards, your collected resources are not safe. Bears, wolves, bandits, hostile robots, and more foes can be encountered throughout your journey, alongside various other players who may or may not be friendly. Dying in these PvP and PvE battles could result in the loss of your resources, but not on-chain cosmetics. Your NFT cosmetic items are safe, even if you die in these combat-enabled environments.
Players will have a variety of customization options to change the appearance of their character, adjusting body features, hair, and more. Next to the character’s physical look, you will also have the chance to earn numerous skins and emotes, including character and weapon skins. There will be seasonal skins that have a chance of dropping when defeating various enemies. Skins and emotes are tradable assets that you can buy and sell on the Mintle Market, an NFT marketplace powered by Mantle, the Ethereum-based layer 2 network that teamed up with Bright Star Studios in August this year to help the studio onboard web2 gamers to the blockchain-powered MMO. Collectibles are divided into 4 different rarities, and you can also purchase them directly from The Premium Shop. It’s also possible to merge 4 assets using $EMBER tokens to get a rarer item, burning the old assets in the process. In September, the developers launched the Ember Sword Origins Collection on Rarible, giving the community the opportunity to buy chests containing exclusive skins, animated emotes, and $EMBER tokens.
Post-launch, the studio plans on releasing expansions to provide an even better blockchain gaming experience. These future phases will introduce land ownership features and more Premium Shop offerings such as pets, but they’ll also further add more gameplay content to enjoy and new territories to explore.
How to Start Playing Ember Sword Early Access
This is a free to play launch that is open for everyone to enjoy on web browsers by registering for an account on the game’s official website. That’s all you need to start playing, but if you want to earn NFTs through gameplay, then you’ll want to connect EVM-compatible wallet as well. The release will initially start off with a server in Singapore, but more servers will likely be added as time goes on. If you own Land, a Badge, or an Origins Collection Chest, then you should have already received an email to start playing early. Anyone who doesn’t own these NFTs though will have to wait for the public release that is scheduled for December 2nd, 1 PM CET.
For the Early Access release, the developers recommend playing Ember Sword on Windows using Chrome or Edge, with Firefox also supported but not recommended. You might be able to play on MacOS as well by using some commands that remove some of the known visual issues, with the instructions available in the official announcement. A mobile version is planned to be launched in the future.
