One warrior’s journey – from noob to Level 30. This is the most comprehensive 9Lives Arena review and guide to level 30.
9Lives Arena is a beautiful, selfie-worthy atmospheric and engaging fantasy PvP combat. Harking back to Dark Souls, Mortal Kombat, and even World of Warcraft in its gameplay. Along with the PvP aspect of AAA like combat and helpful resource companion (Ooogy), it involves crafting weapons and armor for your character, whilst leveling up skills and spells for better options and cast times in a battle. 9LA is a true play to earn game, as the marketplace contains only cosmetic items and Ooogies.
The game has a couple of distinctive and well executed concepts that create a world you keep coming back to.
One unique feature they’ve included is the idea of permadeath. This comes into play when you reach level 30 and you gain access to the ‘Summoning’ pad of the 9LA Arena. It’s a sight to see and the open space grandeur of it creates a perfect backdrop for epic battles. Once you enter this main arena all the items you are holding are locked to your character no matter where you go. If you lose 9 fights and lives in the main arena, the character and items are cemented into eternity via the monolithic statues that line your training ground. You won’t be able to use them again, but don’t worry, you’ll want to create another character from what you’ve learned.
Another truly innovative aspect of the game is the Enjin powered blockchain blueprints they use to enable crafting and customization of your character. This innovative use of ERC-1155 is a real step towards blockchain skins proving to be better than non-blockchain. The rarity and ownership of the blockchain skins are guaranteed. These blockchain blueprints aren’t necessary to play though as you get generic non-blockchain items within the game.
What is necessary though is Ooogy, and you get him too in-game, although blockchain Ooogies are available. Ooogy is your resource pet/companion and he does the grind for you. He collects resources necessary to craft with, including but not limited to iron, leather, gold, and runes, plus does the crafting for you. You’ll find he’s super helpful to reach level 30 and be competitive. All you need to do is to keep him fed by fishing, a relaxing past time?
9Lives Arena is a game that will change the landscape of gaming I feel, its blockchain aspects are well constructed and enhance the game. I could see other games in the future copying the approach.
The game is currently in Alpha but offers a great experience, you can forget it’s alpha until ya kicked.? The team behind 9Lives Arena has both marketing and game development depth, and you’ll see that’s the case when you play. Their plan is to keep developing this from the Alpha stage all the way to console and an independent mobile app for Ooogy. They’re set to create a pretty awesome game, and it’s already one of the best I’ve ever played. I’d have never dreamt an Alpha could be this engrossing.
Interested? If so, here’s a journey from noob to level 30.
Starting off you need to get access and download the 9LA game. I suggest visiting the 9LA Telegram chat to arrange. Once you have access you can create an entry character.
The entry character is a barbarian with the spirit animal ‘Tiger’ and you can use two-handed weapons. Give your character a cool name, choose the spells you want, and then enter the training grounds.
Once you enter the initial chamber press F1 and it will bring up the controls for movement, attack, etc. Get a feel for moving around. Also, you can press Enter, and it will bring up the global chat in the bottom left. Type a question there if you have one. You’ll find others who are on are pretty helpful.
Within the training grounds, there are a few areas of interest. Each of these areas are entered by stepping on the circular pad in front of them. Firstly, there’s the monolith with the Enjin logo on its forehead. Here you can link your Enjin wallet via the monolith and use your blockchain blueprints.
Next to that, you can also find a scarecrow to practice combat. There you can try out your spells and moves. (of note: other than in a fight, you can only cast spells near a scarecrow).
Also in that vicinity, is a Forge, where you can turn iron and gold ore into refined bars workable in the smithy. Wood is required to keep the forge lit. Check how much wood you got.
Next across the stone hall you can find three other areas of interest. These are your smithy, chest of inventory, and spell book.
At the smithy, you can craft weapons from the blueprints of armor and weapons available to you. Inside the options, you can see your reserves of iron, gold, leather, and bone. You can click through the armor and weapons and click craft if you’ve got the resources required. These items selected to craft will pop up in the queue to be crafted by Ooogy.
In the chest of inventory, you can store what you craft. In the spellbook, you can level up your spells as you journey to become a level, 30 warriors.
The final area of interest in this section of 9LA is just at the entry of the open roof area (training grounds), to the left of the spellbook. Here you will find a pad and is the training pad to combat other warriors. A little green light will show up in the Training Area circle (Top middle of the screen) if someone is on the pad. Feel free to have a go, although being level 1 with no strong armor or weapons you’ll probably get beat. But at least you can see what you are fighting for!
So how can you level up your warrior?
The main areas to level up your character is by fighting and crafting.
When you craft, you gain items that have better stats. Your items are grouped into 4 tiered colors. Blank (generic), Green (basic), Blue (better), Purple (best).
When you fight, you level up and this unlocks the power of your spells and you can allocate points to the spell you want to be most powerful. For every win, you go up a level. For every two losses, you go up a level.
What’s the quickest way to level up?
Get Ooogy to work. So let’s go wake him up. Ooogy is your ever-helpful resource companion, he collects and crafts for you. At the entrance of the chamber found up the few steps to the right of the smithy, there is an automatic rock wall entrance. Step towards it and it opens leading to steps heading down to the beach.
At the bottom of the steps, you will see two monoliths again. Looking towards the steps, the one on the left is your Skill Shrine, the one on the right is your Ring Shrine.
Skill Shrine – Here you drop in items to sacrifice to the shrine. As items are dropped in the gold circle starts filling up. When this circle is completed you get a new skill that you can choose from: Weapon style, Spells, Spirit Animal, & Bloodline.
Ring Shrine – takes same items as Skill Shrine but will produce rings with enhanced stats.
To start with the Skill Shrine is the shrine of importance but I’ll get back to that.
In front of the Skill Shrine, towards the beach, you will find a big pot. This is where you need to put fish to feed Ooogy. He won’t lift a finger if he’s out of fish. Just behind the pot to the right, you’ll probably see Ooogy sleeping on his bed. Leave him be, for now, he won’t do anything without breakfast ?
So how to get Ooogy fed and working?
Head towards the water, once you are in deep enough, a rod will come out and you can click to cast. Once a fish is on line, an orange dot moving left to right will show up at bottom of screen. Click the dot when it’s in the blue bar and you catch a fish. A fish can be small, big, uncommon, rare. All fish can go into Ooogy’s pot.
You may also catch other items like runes, rings, or even old boots. Keep your runes and rings, but other items can be sacrificed in the Skill Shrine. Along with the shells you tend to collect running on the beach.
To start with, I suggest you catch 10 or so fish and then head back to the big pot. Step on the pad, and then place the fish into the pot square. An orange bar will grow and there’s now food for Ooogy. Head over to Ooogy and press K. This will grab his attention. You can press K whenever you are near to command Ooogy.
In the Ooogy commands, you see a few options. Not all of them are unlocked but here are the ones you need to know about.
Chop Wood – Ooogy will chop wood and take to the forge. He won’t light the forge but will drop off wood needed to burn.
Mine for Ore – Ooogy will mine for ore that’s necessary to craft with.
Craft something – Ooogy will head to the smithy and craft the items you’ve queued up.
Collect items for Skill Shrine – Ooogy will collect shells, bones and leather. Leather and bone are needed for crafting armour and weapons too. All other stuff goes into the shrine and levels it up. When you unlock a skill you can then use it for the next character you create.
Collect items for Ring Shrine – same as above, but best to focus on filling up Skill Shrine first.
First, I’d start with either chopping wood (if you need it for forge) or mine ore. Ooogy will then go off and keep doing what you’ve asked him until his food and energy runs out. Whilst he’s working he will mine ore, drop off at forge, collect iron and gold bars that have been melted and take them to the smithy. Whilst at smithy he will also craft any items in the queue if the resources are available.
Let’s go back to the smithy and wait for Ooogy. From Ooogy’s pot, you go straight up the steps between the two shrines and into the hall. On the right is the smithy. Go into it and it’s a good time to explain.
Crafting in more detail.
Crafting is essential to give your warrior the best armor and weapons he can take into battle. At level 1 you start off with just the basic gear. Each time Ooogy crafts there is a percentage chance on what tiered item he will craft. The highest tiered item (purple) has the lowest chance of being made.
Each item requires a certain amount of Leather, Iron, Gold, etc to enable craft plus one Rune. This can be seen underneath the item you are crafting. If there’s not enough of one resource its number will be red. Ooogy can take care of these reserves if he’s fed, and you keep track of the forge being lit and ore being deposited. If your leather or rune reserves are low, then get Ooogy to collect for Skill Shrine. He picks up leather, runes, and bones whilst collecting for it and brings back to Smithy.
You can craft items for the various parts of your body. Head, Arms, Chest, Legs. Pick one part and craft its item. And click craft again. Fill up your queue with one item. Ok so by chance Ooogy has just arrived and starts banging away, you can see the items to craft have a blue line that shows up now. He will craft each item in the queue. This crafting takes like 10 secs or so. So, the items are crafted, and you got one basic item (no color) and also a blue item. Hovering over the items and looking at the stats you can see the blue item is better. Take the items and put them in your character’s inventory.
Now to equip your char with new items. Head over to the chest. Inside here you see your character on the left and boxes to equip items. Head, Chest, Arms, Legs, Weapon, and Rings. These boxes correspond to the armor/weapon you are crafting. There is also space for you to put your excess/good items on the right.
Take the blue item and put it in the associated box. Now you got blue tiered protection. Of note, to start with, don’t worry about magic stats at all, be concerned with strength, physical crit, life leech.
So that’s the process of crafting. Keep up that cycle and you will get good gear soon enough. Green, Blue, Purple (best).
Ok, so no-one wants to craft all day, I want to fight. Let’s say you’ve crafted a couple of items and you got some protection.
Before heading to the training pad in the open area, head to spells, and make sure you’ve allocated the points available to you. The number is on the top right. People suggest that it’s better to beef up one skill rather than sharing the points around. Basically, it’s good to have an attack spell beefed up, and maybe health if only new to the game.
Check if the green light is on for the training area (it’s center top). Again, that means someone is on the pad. Or ask in global chat to see if anyone is around. If really new, maybe check F1 again for the keys. But when standing on pad it will say ‘Waiting for Match’ – when someone else hits the pad, it changes to ‘Summoning’. You will both then be transported to the training match.
Start fighting.
Main things to remember here:
Your spells (activated by 1 2 3 4 5 on keyboard) need to be pressed twice when starting out. Once to charge and once to execute. Each time you cast a spell it eats mana (shown by blue bar) and has a recovery time until you can use it again. Keep an eye on the bottom center where your spells are, when they are full color, they are ready to use again.
The more you roll (space), run (shift), or block (right mouse) it will eat at your stamina, shown by an orange bar. If your stamina is low and you get hit, you will lose a lot more life (shown by the green bar).
You can jump with E, and if using a double handed sword you can press Q for a lunge shot and bleed your opponent.
After the fight is won, the spoils of the chest go to the victor, and you can let your opponent know it was a ‘gg’. Then hit resurrect.
You are back into the training ground. If you won you leveled up to level 2. If you lost, you will need to lose again to level up. If you leveled up, you can go to your spellbook and allocate the points to your spell of choice. As the level of your spell become more powerful plus in higher levels become one-click use (you don’t have to charge them).
Now you’ve gone through the basics, if you keep fighting, you can quickly level up your character in both spells and gear, plus on the side keep up the cycle for a productive Ooogy ie Fishing so he’s fed, plus have him mining ore and wood (when required), collecting for the skill shrine to keep leather and rune stocks up, plus making sure your crafting queue is always full.
Also when selecting gear, along with purple tiered, choose items that have the best strength and physical crit. Being alpha these are the only stats that are implemented in the backend.
Fast Track
A fast track process to unlock the skills from the Skill Shrine: Have Ooogy mine heaps and keep the forge lit, you will gain lots of refined gold. It isn’t used so much in crafting armor or weapons so you can pump it into the shrine, unlocking skills, spells, and bloodlines quicker. This gives a lot more options for creating your next character.
So we fast track and your character is now level 30. You can enter the Main Arena…
Your level 30 char can gain access to the Main Arena via the steps and door at the back of training ground. Entering here you cross through a vast chamber with massive statues. You can equip these statues for aesthetics and is another place to hold items if your chest is maxed out.
Head straight through and underneath the legs of a massive statue, then down steps to Main Arena summoning pad. If the green dot is on for the main arena before you get on, then it means someone else is there.
The biggest thing to note here for first-timers to the main arena is that when you enter the Main Arena all the items equipped to your character will be locked to your character. A prompt will make you aware of this before accepting the match. If you’re happy with that, you get teleported to the main arena. It’s epic and vast compared to the training ground.
If you lose in this arena you lose a life, and you will see the number of your belt go down. That represents how many more lives you can lose in the Main Arena until your character becomes a spirit, and immortalized by a statue in the training grounds. No need to worry though, you can always fight as much as you want in the training ground, and even when your character loses all 9 Lives in Main Arena, it also opens up a character slot to build a new character where you can try new spell combos and char options. Out with the old, in with the new.
Well that’s the basic journey from Noob to Level 30. Hope this helps a little. There’s heaps to discover in this game, and I found it worth the time to get to know it. Even if I am regularly….
I always come back for more. ENJoy;)