Neon District guide

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Neon District is a role-playing game (RPG) built on the Polygon blockchain. It's playable on browser, and it's set in a futuristic, dystopian world. The game was fully released in 2021 by Blockade Games.

Neon District is free to play with earning opportunities, thanks to being built on blockchain technology. You form teams of four and deliver pizzas to earn Neon, the in-game currency, or ambush other players and take their Neon.

Neon is used to buy weapons, armor, upgrading your team and loot boxes (Gear Crates). The more you upgrade your characters, the more they're worth, and the better you do in the game. So while the game is free, the more you play and upgrade your NFTs, the more you can earn.

Highlights

• Free to play
• Played on browser
• Built on Polygon
• Could be great for newbies

• Passive gameplay
• Simple signup
• Sell in-game assets on third-party marketplaces
• Battle other players

What is Neon District?

Neon District is a cyberpunk, role-playing sci-fi game developed by video game company Blockade Games. The game is built on Polygon and players earn Polygon (previously Matic) and Ethereum NFTs.

Neon District's main goal is to deliver pizzas. It's like DoorDash on a blockchain, except it's set in a dystopian world. You earn Neon, the in-game currency, by sending your team on deliveries, which you use to buy power-ups to increase your owned NFTs' values.

Or you can go the antagonist route and send your team to ambush other players and steal up to 50% of their Neon. Or both.

Image source: Neon District

While your team is fulfilling pizza orders, your team may have to fight players attempting to ambush you.

Players have a team of four characters, each equipped with armor and weapons. There are also difficulty tiers that open up new game modes. And to top it all off, the game is completely free to play.

Neon District has a solid fan base with its Discord at over 12,000 members and nearly 30K followers on Twitter.

Playing Neon District

To play, go to portal.neondistrict.io. On the main site, you'll see two options: Login and Register.

Follow these steps to start playing:

1. Select Register. Create a username, enter in email and create a password. Your Neon District account doubles as a wallet, but you can also connect a Web3 wallet on the Ethereum Mainnet if you choose.
2. Claim your free stuff. New players are given a free character, 300 Neon and five Juice. The 300 Neon you're gifted is enough to buy three more characters, which is enough to get a full party. To get your free character, select Claim a Free Character on your dashboard.
3. Buy three more characters. A team of four characters is required to play. There are six character types: Demon, Doc, Genius, Ghost, Heavy and Jack. You can change the gender and skin tone of your owned characters, as well as equip them with better gear with earned Neon.
4. Delivery. With a full team you can start delivering pizzas. Select the Neon Pizza tab, then select Delivering Agents to start a shift. You're promoted to select a Tier (an area), and you must complete 42 shifts in Tier 1 before accessing Tier 2, which allows you to ambush other players. In Tier 1, your team can't be ambushed.
5. Monitor your team's progress. You can see how your team is doing while they're fulfilling their shift. Each shift is around eight hours long, with around seven to nine deliveries per shift. Each delivery starts automatically after the previous one ends.
6. Collect your earnings. As your team continues to deliver pizzas, you can see how much Neon you've earned. You can "bank" your earned Neon to your account, which allows you to spend the currency on in-game items such as armor and weapons. Banking your earned Neon also protects it from being stolen if you're ambushed by another team.

Image source: Neon District

Once you've completed 42 delivery shifts in Tier 1, you can enter Tier 2 where you have the opportunity to ambush other teams. When you ambush other players, the battles play out automatically.

As you play and earn Neon, you can buy better weapons and gear, or buy items required to level up your character and gear:

• Neon used to buy characters, gear and level-up items.
• Juice is used to level up your character, bought with Neon (also called "bottled XP").
• Parts are used to level up weapons and armor, bought with Neon.
• Gear Crates cost 500 Neon and gets you four random items.

The item power ups have rarity as well: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra-Rare and Legendary.

Image source: Neon District

What is the Neon District token?

The in-game currency of Neon District is called Neon. You can buy it by selecting Buy Neon on the top-right corner of the main site. You can buy Neon with a credit card or with ETH (you need a connected ETH wallet).

Neon is awarded for playing the game, either by completing deliveries or ambushing other players. You use the Neon to upgrade your characters, gear and weapons, making them more valuable. The in-game currency isn't available on exchanges and must be bought on the site for crypto or with a credit card.

It looks like NULL may not be available to purchase on an exchange in the US.

You can still purchase NULL by using a decentralized exchange (DEX) instead. Decentralized exchanges are web applications that run on blockchains like Ethereum and allow users to trade any asset directly with one another.

How to purchase NULL using a decentralized exchange.

1. Find NULL on a decentralized exchange and make sure NULL can be traded for ETH which is the native asset of Ethereum. Popular DEXs include Uniswap, SushiSwap and 1INCH.
2. Buy ETH to trade for NULL using an exchange like Gemini. You will need to purchase enough ETH to swap for NULL as well as ETH to pay for transaction fees on the Ethereum network (known as gas). You can use a service like Etherscan to get an idea of how much gas fees currently cost.
3. Transfer the ETH into a web 3.0 wallet like MetaMask to connect to the DEX.
4. Trade ETH for NULL on the DEX of your choice, following the instructions on screen. Make sure to leave enough ETH in your wallet to pay for gas.
5. Wait for the transaction to finalize and the NULL tokens will arrive in your wallet.
6. You may now keep the tokens in your web 3.0 wallet or transfer them somewhere more secure like a hardware wallet.

You can follow the same process when you want to sell your tokens, or come back to this page to see if they can now be traded on an exchange in the US.

How does play-to-earn work with Neon District?

Play-to-earn methods include:

• Delivering pizzas — Play the Neon Pizza game mode to deliver pizzas to customers and earn Neon.
• Ambush players — Once you make it to Tier 2 you can ambush other players to steal their Neon.
• Sell in-game assets — You can upgrade your in-game assets to increase their value and then sell them on NFT marketplaces, OpenSea or Arkane Market.

What are Neon District NFTs?

At the time of writing, there are three types of digital assets in the Neon District game which include Characters, Gear and Shells. Each NFT has one of five different rarities: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Ultra-Rare and Legendary. Players can also buy asset sets.

Characters

Characters can be either Demons, Docs, Geniuses, Ghosts, Heavies and Jacks. Players can customize characters' gender and appearance.

• Demon — Demons are specialists in combat with incredible agility and speed. Demons also have other strengths, such as health, tactics, stealth and hacking.
• Docs — These characters are healers. Docs are for "when things go wrong" and can control bacterial nanobots, as well as influence their behavior.
• Genius — Geniuses are "creatively destructive." They are gifted with incredible intelligence and can solve a wide range of problems.
• Ghosts — These are assassins. They can alter perception and cloud a situation to their advantage.
• Heavies — Heavies are extremely strong, with their stature alone having the ability to affect how others feel.
• Jacks — These are extremely talented hackers with the ability to affect the outcome of events that depend on probability. Those qualities come in handy when they're hacking through encryptions.

Gear

Gear includes anything needed for combat: armor, weapons, costumes and other equipment. New players may want to buy gear crates to prepare their free character for missions.

To buy gear crates, you need to buy Neon, which can be purchased using ETH or credit card from the top-right corner of the game's main window. Hit the Get Gear button to purchase gears from the main dashboard.

Shells

Shells are skins that grant characters or gear boosted capabilities, or the chance to create assets with stronger stats than other characters or gear in the same class. A shell allows you to pick the rarest among items like weapons, armor or characters in a game

Asset sets

Asset sets include:

• Season Zero asset set. Season Zero only includes Shells. Shells include Demon Dark Legs, Demon Dark Feet, Pistol, Demon Dark Body, Demon Dark Head, Jack Pants, Ghost Head, Riot Shield, Doctor Legs and Jack Body. Shells are the key to constituting great battle teams. There are currently 45,000 shells in Season Zero.
• Season One asset set. Season One assets include characters and gear. Appropriate gear is needed to prepare characters to battle for victory. Gears available in Season One include head armor, body armor, and protection for arms and legs. The effectiveness of gear depends on the mission and the opponent's weapons.
• End of Days asset set. The End of Days assets include limited-edition loot crates containing all weapons. Like all assets in Neon District, loot crates are NFTs. Loot crates can be acquired for 500 Neon, which can either be purchased or earned through gameplay.

How to get NFTs on Neon District

Buy Neon District's assets on NFT marketplaces such as OpenSea or Arkane.

Visit the Neon District official page to buy Neon District assets from OpenSea. Navigate to the gears tab showing items with their prices and a Buy Now button on the main page. There's a filter to select new items, items on auction, or items on offer. Choose Buy Now on any gear of your choice.

You can also buy and sell gear and characters on the Arkane Market. Arkane offers cheap and fast transactions.

You must have a Venly wallet to store purchased NFTs using Arkane Market. After opening an account on Venly, search for Neon District from the search bar at the top of the page. Select the Buy button for the asset you want to purchase.

Other crypto games and NFT projects

How to sell NFTs from Neon District

If you want to send your in-game assets — characters, gear, etc. — to a third-party wallet to sell on the secondary market, follow these steps:

1. Go to settings — In your Profile, go to your settings and turn on the Wallet Manager in the Advanced User feature. Toggle the button labeled Wallet Manager.
2. New wallet tab — With the advanced settings turned on, you can see a new wallet tab where you can transfer your in-game assets to an outside wallet.

Image source: Neon District

While you're looking at your in-game assets, you'll see a new button labeled Transfer, which allows you to send that asset to your Ethereum or Polygon third-party wallet. From there, you can list the NFT for sale on OpenSea or Arkane Market.

About the Neon District developers

Blockade Games is a game development studio that focuses on blockchain-based games. Neon District is the studio's flagship game franchise, but they also created Plasma Bears.

The development team consists of experts in blockchain technology, art, game design and programmers. Their funding comes from Chain Reaction, XSquared Ventures, BlockTower and other blockchain-focused venture capitalists.

Chris Chapman, the Executive Producer of Blockade Games, is a major advocate of avoiding pay-to-win game economics. Not only because it's unfair for non-whales, but because the game gets boring if you can blow through the game by simply buying top-tier assets. He stated, "Just whatever you do, don't let them buy a bigger "instant win stick," on Blockade's official blog.

Apart from game development, the company offers other game developers infrastructure on which they can launch their own blockchain games.

On November 24, 2021, the developers raised $5 million and received a valuation of $23 million — co-led by Animoca Brands and Digital. There were multiple investors including Roham Gharegozlou from Dapper Labs, Meltem Demirors from Coinshares and others, as reported by Blockade Games' blog.

Neon District roadmap

Beyond December 2021, the developers are working on:

• Keeping the game free to play.
• Fixing reported bugs.
• Player vs. environment (PvE).
• Adventure mode and story.

Neon District had its first tournament in December 2021, we can probably bet on more tournaments. To stay up to date, check out Neon District's Discord server, Telegram and Twitter.

Bottom line

Neon District has a clean look, simple sign up and is free to play. The earning methods are simple, making it a great blockchain game for experienced players and newbies alike. And who doesn't love pizza?

The ability to customize your character and upgrade your gear to make them more valuable is a cool feature. The more you play, the more you can earn — and you don't have to invest any money into the game to get started.

Neon District has a transparent development team and a "free to play" focus, evident in the play-to-earn methods, free characters given at sign up and the Executive Producer, Chapman, stressing the importance of "pay for convenience" over pay to win.