Illuvium | Complete presentation and game guide

With a licked design, graphics that are already eye-catching and a gameplay that we can't wait to try, I present you a very promising project: Illuvium. If we had to summarize it in a few words, I would say that Illuvium is a 3D Pokémon-like game, in an open world offering an exploration and capture mode and an autobattler mode of arena battles. This future blockchain game is developed on Immutable X (layer 2 of Ethereum) and proposes mechanics of Play to Earn.

In this presentation of Illuvium, I pass on the best info about the project available at the time of writing this article (how the game works and the Illuvials, gameplay and game modes, tokenomics, etc.). 📖

In its broad outline, Illuvium follows the principle of Pokémon. You will explore the vast open world of Illuvium in order to capture precious little creatures (the Illuvials), each one as strange as the next. To catch them, you'll have to fight them and place them in a shard that will gradually bring their life back. Of course, it will not be so easy to catch them. Indeed, the Illuvials can be more or less rare and therefore more or less easy to catch.

But if you're not interested in exploration and capture, you don't have to go through that. Indeed, if your only goal is to make arena fights, you will be able to buy your team of Illuvials directly on the marketplace in-game and chain arena matches.
There will be 2 aspects to the game that will satisfy the players according to their preferences: exploration-collection or/and combat-competition.

Besides the fact that the game is very beautiful (many character leaks are regularly shared on the Illuvium Discord), we also like the blockchain dimension brought to the concept. All Illuvials will be NFTs that you can collect, sell, buy, as you wish. Your rare and well-trained Illuvialss from Season 1 could take on a value you don't even realize.

How to play Illuvium? Gameplay and mechanics

Welcome to the world of Illuvium. A broken land, filled with wonders. Roam the vast and varied landscape hunting dangerous beasts, then capture them for battle in the arenas or trade them.

The open world of Illuvium: exploration and capture

Illuvium is an open world in which you can navigate freely and explore with your drone that follows you everywhere. In this world, you will find several things to loot and farm. First, you can farm and extract minerals and resources useful for crafts (armors and weapons for your character). But most importantly, you can hunt for Illuvialss.
A rather RPG mode (without quests) where the objective will be to capture beasts with your shards. These shards are mandatory to capture the Illuvials. They are the most important items in the game.
But be careful, the rarity level of the Illuvial you are trying to capture combined with the rarity level of the shard you are trying to trap it with, will determine the percentage chance of success of the capture.
Finally, after a successful fight, your creature will place itself in the shard. This one will look after him until he has recovered all his life points.

In the world of Illuvium, 7 large regions are distinguished. Each one with its own specificities, its own creatures, its own ecosystem. You will have to travel to several regions if you want to increase your chances of catching new Illuvials. In the most distant regions that you will discover, you will find teleportation obelisks. To travel to these regions again, you will have to pay the travel fee in ETH or sILV2 (I will explain the different functions of the tokens later).

The main goal of this open world is to hunt Illuvials. If you manage to defeat a creature after a fight, well, this Illuvial becomes your possession in the form of NFT. You can then dispose of it as you wish.

💡 Good to know: before you go exploring in the world, remember to take a supply of shards with you! It would be unfortunate if you can't capture a rare Illuvial due to lack of shards...

Illuvium gameplay arena autobattler

The autobattler system is different from turn-based combat. Indeed, the combat is built beforehand and then the creatures play alone until the end of the round or the combat.

This game mode can be played by any player with a Illuvials team. This means that if you are not very fond of exploring the world and capturing Illuvialss, well, you can do without them. Just buy Illuvialss directly from the marketplace to build a team.

There will be 2 types of arenas with different rules: Ranked arenas and Leviathan arena. In the ranked arenas, you will play the ladder and face players of your level. In the Leviathan arena, you will be able to place bets on fights, show off your collection, and other features.

⚔️ The rather original aspect of gameplay: your Illuvials are not alone in battle. In fact, your character has a weapon and armor (which are also NFTs). You will be able to buy them on the IlluviDEX (the marketplace) and improve them with gems. These items can bring buffs to your Illuvials.

It is important to strategically choose your Illuvials team in order to create good synergies and good counters. Because depending on the team you will face, your best asset will not necessarily be your most powerful Illuvial.

Course of an arena fight on Illuvium

The principle of this arena game mode is simple: you have to build a deck of 30 cards composed of Illuvials and upgrades. Once your most efficient team is formed, you can join an arena.

Once the fight is over, you will have to heal your Illuvials if you want them to fight again right away. For this, you will have to pay the appropriate amount or use healing items.

The Illuvials : creatures of the world of Illuvium

The Illuvials are the heart of the game. These creatures are NFTs listed on the blockchain as your property when you capture them or buy them on the marketplace. Your Illuvials will therefore have a monetary value defined by the market price and the community.

Classes and affinities

The Illuvials will be divided into 5 rarity groups. The rarer a creature is, the more difficult it will be to obtain. As mentioned above, the rarity of your shard will also determine the capture rate.
Each Illuvial has one affinity among 5 and one class among 5.

5 affinities (elements): Water, Fire, Earth, Air, Nature.

Sometimes, two affinities can be combined to obtain very powerful forms of Ascendants. For example: Air + Water = Frost / Fire + Fire = Inferno / Fire + Air = Shock / Fire + Nature = Conflagration / etc. These new affinities created by the combination of 2 basic elements, give the Illuvial a much higher power.
Moreover, an element has more or less power depending on the element it opposes. For example: Water > Fire and Fire > Nature.

5 classes: Fighter, Guardian, Psion, Rogue and Empath.

As in many RPGs, the classes have an importance on the way the battle will be played. Ideally, you should be able to put together a team whose affinities and classes will create good synergies. Here too, powerful Ascendant forms can be found thanks to the combination of 2 classes (Fighter + Rogue = Slayer) or of the same class (e.g.: Psion + Psion = Invoker).

Evolution of Illuvials

Your Illuvials will be able to evolve to a more powerful form (yes, I told you, we're going back to the main principles of Pokémon). To obtain an evolved Illuvial, you need to gather 3 copies of its normal form with their battle power raised to the maximum. The battle power naturally increases as your creatures fight. Note that the new creature obtained can have affinities and classes totally different from those of the beasts used for the fusion.

In addition, your 3 NFTs that were used in the merge will be burned, and a new NFT (the Advanced Illuvial) will be mint (listed on the blockchain as your property).

Illuviary: the Pokédex of Illuvium

The Illuvium development team will choose to present a completely empty Illuviary at the launch of the game. Indeed, your Illuviary will fill up as you discover new Illuvials. So no spoilers, no leaks, you will be able to keep the surprise effect and discover by yourself the 150 Illuvials (approximately) planned for this season 1.
Be careful not to get spooled by the community on the Discord or other social network.

In the Illuviary, you will find the biological information of the creatures, but also a big part of the history of Illuvium. Indeed, the latter will be revealed as you discover them, which will make you want to capture as many bugs as possible.

🤞 Fun fact: If you are the first Illuvium player to discover an Illuvial, your name will forever appear next to your discovery in the global Illuviary database.

The tokenomics from Illuvium

You will find 3 tokens in Illuvium of which I will present the different aspects. However, I will not go into too much detail about the tokenomics, the supply, etc. So for more information on this subject, I invite you to consult the section tokenomics from Illuvium's whitepaper.

ETH : token main game

The main token of the game is ETH (the token of the blockchain Ethereum). So it is not with the token ILV, but with ETH that you will make all your in-game purchases. Here is what you can do with ETH in Illuvium:

• Improve the stats of your Illuvials.
• Purchase shardss needed to capture Illuvialss.
• Cosmetic purchases (armor, drones, etc.).
• Regenerate the health of your Illuvials and resurrect them.
• Bet on the outcome of matches in the Leviathan arena.
• Paying for travel expenses in the different regions (via obelisks).
• Buy items for sale on the IlluviDEX (the in-game marketplace).
• Buy virtual land.

ILV: token of governance

The token ILV is a token ERC-20 of the blockchain Ethereum. It is the governance token. This means that when you own tokens ILV, you have the possibility to vote for decisions concerning the game, its evolution and its improvement.
If you have any, you can choose to place them in staking. This long-term operation allows you to earn rewards by blocking a certain number of tokens. Illuvium has introduced a new staking platform, V2, which is more ergonomic, more fluid and offers new features.

I won't go into the technical details of the staking V2. But if you are interested, I invite you to read our article on how works Illuvium staking V2 for new users. I'll explain exactly what it is and the steps you need to take to connect your wallet and claim your rewards.

sILV2: in-game currency

The sILV2 has no value outside the internal Illuvium economy. Indeed, it cannot be used for player-to-player transactions. It can only be used for in-game purchases such as shards, inter-region travel, weapon and armor crafting, etc. In short, you can use this currency to make almost any purchase that requires ETH. This sILV2 currency is mainly obtained through the staking rewards of ILV.

Illuvium Marketplace: The IlluviDEX

You are beginning to understand that each element of the Illuvium environment has a name in reference to the game. It is thus under the name of IlluviDEX that you will find the official marketplace in-game. This is where you will be able to sell or buy all the elements of the game that come in the form of NFTs. It will be mainly Illuvialss, but you will also find different items.

The IlluviDEX is therefore totally managed by the DAO of Illuvium (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). It is therefore obvious that the rarest and oldest Illuvials in the game (those of season 1 for example) will have a significant monetary value on the market.

💡 If you still don't understand some of the technical terms, feel free to check out our crypto gaming lexicon to better understand the basic concepts.

A mobile release is planned for a "mini-game" application called Illuvium Zero. This app will be available on iOS and Android and is still under development. Illuvium Zero will be based on resource management and extraction. Indeed, you will be able to create a small virtual complex that will extract materials to use for crafts in the PC game. Clever!

Disclaimer: The content of this page is provided for information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Never invest money you are not prepared to lose and always do your own research.