PART 2 of 2 Series as written by Drakon Master Slade
This 2-part article was written by Drakon Master Slade based on his experience as a Drakon Master in Drakons.IO. Slade participated in both Drakons’ private and public beta, and still an active Drakon Master.
The Drakons.IO Team liked the article that we requested his permission to publish it in our page as an official guide to Drakon Masters! We’ll do more collaboration with him in the future so read on his journey for some insights, tricks and tips in becoming a Drakon Master Squire to a Grand Master! #BeADrakonMaster!
Here is the much-awaited 2nd part article about Battles and Strategies
Drakons battle each other in the Arena section of the Drakons.IO platform. These battles are turn-based. Depending on which of the battling Drakons has more remaining HP over its maximum HP at the end of eight turns, the winner is decided.
2.1 Movesets
Drakons battle by using Action Cards. For simplicity, let’s call them skills for now. You will find these Action Cards in the Battle Cards Selection.
Let’s say a Drakon has two skills: Attack and Defend. Now, both these skills will be in a card form and you can select which skill is used in which turn. There is a total of eight turns so you can only add up to eight skills, one for each turn — let’s call this set of eight skills that you choose a “moveset”. It can be:
Later on, as you level your Drakons up, they will receive additional skills. As mentioned from previous article, a Drakon requires orbs to Level Up. On the image below, it shows that it has 13,546 Fire Orbs which is more than enough the required 77 Fire Orbs to Level Up this Drakon from Level O to Level 5.
Additional skills like Magic power attack, stuns, health regeneration, etc. are higher skills that only become available at set intervals of Rune levels (multiples of 5 currently). Once a Drakon is levelled up, it will unlock a new skill and on this example, a Level 5 Fire Drakon unlocks Flame Burst card move or skill.
In the screen capture below, you will see a list of all available skills in the top panel titled “Battle Cards Selection.” You may also notice the “i” in each card which means additional information or details of your card. It is important to study the details of these cards for you to master its uses.
From here, you can choose a sequence of cards to build your moveset. The moveset for this Drakon is shown. Note that after placing all cards, the Attack Points is 0 and this is encouraged as you are maximizing the offensive moves of your Drakon.
Typically, movesets require fine-tuning over time. This is the core strategy part. Sometimes, you will gain valuable insight from a battle view and adjust your cards accordingly. But that strategy can be countered by a different Drakon simply because it has different skills or an advantageous element. After all, it’s a strategy game and requires genuine conviction to master.
2.2 Matchmaking
Once you send a Drakon to battle, it will be matched up with a same-level Drakon from another DM and you’ll be given a battle result.
There’s often a queuing time involved in battles so patience is key. You can also see the “Battle Replay” video.
However, I recommend you see “Battle View” after every result is in. Here, you’ll be able to find out what happened turn-by-turn faster.
2.3 More on Action Cards
In a card, you will see a digit on the top-left. This is the Attack Point (AP). Each Drakon has limited Attack Points. You have to carefully decide how to use this pool. Each Drakon Rune level will only allow you to use a certain amount of AP, so you have to be very conscious about spending it. If you are not careful, you’ll end up using high-AP moves early on and find that by the time you’re selecting a card for the second half of your moveset (the last 4 turns), you are all out of AP. This will force you to choose 0 AP cards or low-AP cards only.
Balancing attacks and defenses is critical to succeed in battles.
In the sample below, this Fire Drakon has 11 Attack Points to use at Level 5. So if you are using the Flame Burst, you need to spend 5 Attack Points leaving you with 6 more Attack Points to spend.
Another point is if you use high AP cards too much in the first four slots, for example below, you will have barely any attacking potential left in the second half of the battle.
Generally, it’s a good idea to spend AP uniformly but certain specialized movesets (especially those that counter certain other movesets) require AP-heavy first half or second half.
As you know now, all these creatures have different health points, elements, and attributes (Agility, Strength, and Intelligence). You will need to strategize a Drakon based on these properties. For example, a Drakon with high HP might not need a healing skill and a Drakon with high magic power will need magic attack instead of physical attack skill in its moveset. These skills will have higher AP costs and so you need to carefully deduce which Drakon needs which moves to make the most sustainable usage of your limited pool.
2.4 More About the Defense Card
A Defend reduces the damage taken by 50%.
The Defend card is special and one that requires further elaboration.
As you can see, defends don’t cost any AP, so you can cram them as much as you wish in your Drakon’s moveset.
However, using it consecutively might not be the best idea. See example below between two Level 10 Air Drakons:
Every consecutive time you use Defend, its effectiveness in reducing the damage taken decreases by 5%. So, if the first turn the Defend card reduces 50% damage and if you use Defends consecutively, the damage reduction will go like this:
50% — 45% — 40% — 35% … and I hope you never plan to use more than four consecutive defends so let’s not go beyond that.
As seen on example, despite successfully achieving a Full Rage, it doesn’t guarantee a winning outcome in the end.
Needless to say, to retain the maximum effectiveness of the Defend card (50%), you need to alternate Defends and Attacks.
Defends also have an additional effect. They have an exact 50% chance of fending off against status effects (Stun, Petrification, and Burn). What that means is that with a properly timed Defend, you can deflect troublesome status effects that can cripple your Drakon majorly and turn the tide of the battle.
Well, you cannot know the moves of your opponents in advance, so it’s a good idea to review your battles and see how enemies usually afflict status effects. Adjusting your Defends in a fitting way will make sure that your Drakons are protected against most of the statuses instead of being continually harassed.
2.5 Other Concerns During Battle
There are things in battle that you can’t control.
1. What moveset your enemy has is something beyond your jurisdiction, so to speak. So, for example, if you have physical attacks lined up for the first three turns in your moveset and the enemy has three defends in a row, all your attacks will deal lower damage overall.
2. Double attacks have a higher chance of happening with high-speed Drakons like Earth or Air ones. If you’re up against those, you’ll possibly take more doubles overall.
3. Critical damages happen by themselves and when they do, they can sway the battle in their favor.
4. Remaining health is counted as a percentage, not a number. So, if you’re paired up with a high-HP enemy Drakon, then even if you deal tons of damage, you might end up losing more percentage of health.
If you’re interested in learning what I’m talking about then let’s take a simple example as seen below. Earth Drakon has 53,270 health and the second one, the Fire Drakon has 45,770 HP. Earth Drakon deals total 7,840 damage against Fire’s 8,491 damage. So, in terms of Damage, the Fire Drakon has the advantage. But because the Fire has lesser HP, it lost 15.94% of Health (45,770–7,848= 37,922 remaining health) against the Earth’s 17.15% Health (53,270–8,491 = 44,779 remaining health). So, even if you dish out more damage but your remaining health is lower than the enemy’s, you still lose.
2.6 Game Modes on Drakons.IO
You’ll find three game modes in the Arena, let’s see what these are all about.
1. Classic battle mode: Here, you can train and level-up your Drakon with the Orbs you earn with each battle (both wins and losses give you Orbs, though losses give you fewer).
2. Ranked battle mode: Here, you can compete in a leadership ladder. Each win adds medals and each loss takes away some. This is the competitive niche. Each Drakon will need to be synced to the Ethereum blockchain to compete in the Ranked mode.
There are daily, weekly and overall Drakon Masters in the Leaderboard, so if you want to be listed, better win a lot of Ranked Games.
There are also Drakon Leaders. Even if you are just a squire or a Sergeant as a DM (as shown below), you can still own a Champion Drakon because of its victories in Ranked Battle. If you want a good fighting Drakon, best to scout in the leaderboard and make an offer to its Drakon Master, who knows it might just be for sale.
3. Challenge battle mode: In this mode, you can challenge a particular Drakon master to test your skills!
Challenge mode is where you will put your Orbs to a secondary use. As you know, the first use of the Orbs is to level up your Drakons. Additionally, if you want to challenge a particular DM, then you will need to put some Orbs as the prize. These Orbs make up the prize bounty for the winning Drakon.
In the future, there are also plans to make Orbs the entry ticket for challenges or an exchange utility against certain capabilities.
2.7 What is Rage and How Does it Impact the Battle?
Rage is an additional damage applied to your normal attacks. It’s only triggered when you’ve successfully defended against an enemy.
So, when an enemy uses an attack turn on your defend turn, your next attack will be amplified with additional rage damage. In all likelihood, this additional damage is going to be extremely helpful in winning each match so plan your defends carefully.
If you manage to counter enemy aggression with properly set defends, then the battle will always be in your favor.
Rage damages are not static. They vary based on how many consecutive successful defends you’ve had. To acquire the maximum rage damage, you have to defend four times in a row. See example below:
Not practical in each moveset, but surely something to keep in mind. Stacking two or three defends will be a staple part of your experimentation — and if it happens to work out, then there’s no harm in including it in your core strategy as seen on the outcome of this example.
But also keep in mind that consecutive defends don’t stack additively. By the fourth consecutive defend, you will be defending only 35% of the incoming damage. You need to think whether the rage is worth it or not. (as shown on example in item 2.4 More about the Defense card)
2.8 More on Status Effects
We talked about status effects. In this section, I’m going to talk about them in a little more detail. Feel free to refer to this section later on when these status effects finally materialize in your movesets (Rune level 5 onwards).
Drakons have the typical moves — attack and defend. Besides that, they unlock sort of special attack cards. These usually have a damage quotient and a status effect.
Every Drakon unlocks its element’s equivalent of status effect. The first status effect move is unlocked at Rune level 5.
A status effect starts affecting the opponent from the next turn. So, if you use a stun move on turn 4, the stun will apply to the enemy on turn 5.
Status moves also lose effectiveness if used consecutively. The effectiveness will decrease by 15% for each consecutive status move you use.
To counter a status effect, your first line of defense is, well … the defense card. Defends will ensure you don’t take as much damage as you would otherwise. Second, you can also perfectly counter the status effects by using your own.
If both Drakons have stuns on turn 4, both of them get stunned on turn 5, thus neutralizing each other.
The only exception is self-healing status effects. As it’s applied to the Drakon using it, these effects cannot be dampened in any way. The move that currently gives self-healing is the Water Drakon’s Swirling Splash. See example below:
Let’s see what status effect/magic attack cards are available for each element:
Air Drakons have the special move Suction. Suction stuns the enemy Drakon. Getting stunned means the affected Drakon will be unable to act during the effective turn as it will push back the card to next move. So if you use an attack card on Turn 8 but a Stun effect was made against you on Turn 7, then your Attack card or last card will be useless.
Earth Drakons have the special move Stoning. It petrifies the enemy Drakon. Getting petrified means the affected Drakon’s next move will be totally cancelled. So if an enemy on Turn 3 used a petrify card against you, your card on Turn 4 will be cancelled or will be regarded useless.
Fire Drakons have the special move Flame Burst. Flame Burst deals burning damage on next turn to the opponent Drakon and a possible stun to the opponent Drakon.
Water Drakons have the Swirling Splash status effect that damages enemy and which is also a skill cast on the Drakon itself, healing it on next three turns.
Remember, all these special moves also damage the enemies and are eligible to be amplified (by Critical Damage, Double Attacks or Rage, for example).
For guidance, here is a chart of Skills and Status Effects specific to each Drakon and at what level it will be unlocked, as well as the required Attack Points needed to use each skill or status effect:
So, that’s all for now…I hope this article encourages you to #BeADrakonMaster and for all those who are Drakon Masters already, may you win more battles and keep on shuffling those moves.
For those who missed the last article, follow Drakons in Medium and read it from this link
Drakons Note: The details such as game play, implementation, etc. that was written on this article were verified to be factual by the Drakons Team as of publication and some images were provided for better illustrations. However, as Drakons.IO is continuously improving the game play and UI/UX, there might be changes in the future and if these changes are major, we will announce them either on separate articles or in Drakons official Discord Channel and Telegram Channel.
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