Author: FaultProofBen
Gm!
Last Friday, I wrapped up what had been the busiest week in WASD’s short history.
Over a five-day stretch, we held 🏆 The WASD Cup 🏆 our first-ever tournament in Sky Strife, and published three articles (WASD pieces now go out on Monday, Thursday, and Friday).
It was a very fun (albeit long) week, and by Friday afternoon, I was ready to get some rest.
But then, just as I climbed into bed to take a much needed nap, a new version of Primodium dropped.
Primodium is a strategy and resource management game that I’ve written about several times here on WASD.
On Friday, the team launched the latest update to the game (v0.7.1) which will run for four weeks and comes with numerous new features, gameplay, and performance improvements.
Since the release, Primodium has taken the world of onchain gaming by storm.
It’s already attracted 300+ players over the past six days!
I’m incapable of doing things in moderation, and Primodium is incredibly addictive.
So naturally, I spent my entire weekend and the first half of this week playing the game in an attempt to top the leaderboard and, of course, bring glory to the entire WASD Nation.
Today, I’ll tell you all about this experience by walking you through the rise, fall, and rebirth of the WASD Republic Primodium Base.
As per usual, I’ll also sprinkle in some my takes on different facets of the game.
As always, the following is based on my interpretation of a series of transactions.
It may or may not be correct, you’ll have to check the chain to see for yourself ;)
Now, let’s get to it!
NOTE: The piece assumes a basic understanding of Primodium and its mechanics.
If you are unfamiliar with the game, I’d suggest you read the section of Onchain Lore III titled “Primodium 101,” which covers the basics.
What’s New
Before I recant the tale of the WASD Republic, let’s go through the key changes brought about in v0.7.1.
PVP Base Raiding and Pirate Asteroids
Raids are by far the most significant addition in this latest iteration of Primodium.
Rather than only fight over control of motherlodes (neutral asteroids with deposits of four high-value resources), players can now use their units (armed forces in the game) to attack each other's bases directly.
To do this, a player will select a base they want to target, choose an amount of units they want to deploy, and then send out their fleet.
After this, a battle will occur, resulting in a winner and a loser.
The attacking player will then receive a portion of the defending base resources based on the cargo capacity of the units they sent.
Players can also raid Pirate Asteroid, a new type of CPU-controlled bases with resource deposits.
For the most part, raiding is a TON of fun, as it intensifies competition and adds new elements of strategy to the game.
With that said, I think there could be some tweaks to its mechanics, such as adding more complexity to combat, and not having the attacking player earn resources regardless of whether they win or lose a battle.
Objectives
Primodium now has a quest system in the form of Objectives.
Objectives are different tasks or milestones, and range from raiding a certain number of bases to hitting a production quota of a given resource.
When players complete an Objective, they’re rewarded with resources or units.
Although Primodium vets will not need them for guidance, I think Objectives help provide direction for newbies and a nice progression boost for all players.
New Unit and Building Types
There are two new types of units in v0.7.1: Minutemen Marines and Trident Marines.
Represented by smol troops in the game’s UI, these marines are the cheapest units to produce and store, as each only takes up 1 unit of housing compared to 2-3 for drones.
Minutemen Marines are pretty useless, but I think Trident Marines represent the best value of all units when it comes to effectiveness in combat relative to production and storage costs.
Marines are trained in Workshops, one of three new buildings in the game, and can be stored in another new structure, Garages.
Garages are smaller housing facilities, which when upgraded to Level 2, provide a far better bang for your buck than Hangers, their larger, more expensive counterpart.
A final new building type is the SAM Launcher. SAMs provide a minimum level of defense for bases and cost a whopping 700 Titanium (one of the four aforementioned motherlode resources) to create.
Friday - Sunday: The Rise
Now that we understand the key changes from this Primodium update, let’s get into some gameplay.
When I opened Primodium for the first time, I immediately noticed that the game loaded quickly and without issue.
This was a nice change compared to v0.7, when there many instances in which the game would never load at all.
Anyways, after taking a moment to marvel at the sleek new UI, I emphatically placed down my first Iron Mine, linked wasdgaming.eth (The official WASD gaming wallet) to my account, and was off!
After accumulating some Iron, I began the usual Primodium production sequence.
I mined Copper, Lithium, and Sulfer, which I then used to construct factories to produce Alloy, Iron Plates, and Photovoltaic Cells.
These factory outputs were critical, as they are needed to build units (more on later).
This core game loop is as fun and engaging as ever, and my whole weekend was soon consumed with the pursuit of resource accumulation.
While I played, I noticed it took longer to reach the resource thresholds needed to upgrade my Main Base. I liked this change, and I feel it gives this version of Primodium far greater legs than the last one.
Slowly but surely, as the weekend rolled on, wasdgaming.eth climbed the ranks of the leaderboard.
And by Sunday morning, I was in first.
I was euphoric - My grinding over the weekend had paid off!
The WASD Republic had become a WASD Empire.
In hindsight, this euphoria was just masking signs of hubris. This is because after reaching 1st place, I began to splurge on vanity purchases.
I spent a combined 1000 Titanium on Stinger Drones, the units with the highest attack rating in the game that can be destroyed just as easily as any others, and the aforementioned SAM Launcher.
However, my biggest miscalculation was sending out this fateful tweet.
Looking back, the tweet clearly got the attention of my competitors.
A few hours later, I saw that I was tagged in a tweet by my friend at Fun Blocks, who challenged WASD Republic (Empire) to a war.
Before I get to that, let’s talk about the dynamics of base raiding for a moment.
Unsurprisingly, soon after the update dropped, players began relentlessly attacking each other's bases. Rather than be aggressive, make enemies, and engage in a resource-intensive war, my initial strategy was to stay out of these conflicts and take an isolationist approach.
Empires like the Romans, Dutch, and British, fell due to overextension in foreign conflict.
The stakes may not be quite as high in Primodium, but I still didn’t want to repeat this historical mistake.
So instead, I sought to build up an enormous stockpile of units and turn my base into an impenetrable, impossible-to-conquer fortress (hence the SAM Launcher).
I had done a good job remaining disciplined and following this gameplan until the declaration of war from Fun Blocks.
I knew I could not back down and had to project strength. I was also very confident in the might of my unit armada - So I accepted their challenge.
However, it was late on Sunday night and I was tired, so I decided to begin my invasion the next day, thinking I would remain on top throughout the night.
Little did I know what I would wake up to.
Monday: The Fall
I woke up Monday morning to find the WASD Republic in ruins.
I was only asleep for seven hours, but in that period, my base was raided 18 TIMES by Fun Blocks, Gink.eth, and others.
My unit defenses were entirely wiped out, and resources plundered.
In terms of the leaderboard, I had been knocked down from 1st all the way to the low 50s.
It was a humiliating and humbling defeat, and even led my newfound rival Gink.eth to take a victory lap on Twitter.
However, the carnage was only just beginning.
Throughout the remainder of the day, my base was raided over and over again, stunting my recovery efforts by wiping out any units I tried to produce.
I was attacked so many times by Gink.eth that I even thought he may have written a script to automatically raid my base at a set interval (something that I think would be pretty cool and want to investigate further).
I was infuriated and spent my entire Monday fuming.
The whole ordeal was also incredibly distracting, as I was torn between defending my Primodium honor and finishing an article.
Nonetheless, despite the relentless raids, I began to re-accumulate resources.
By Monday evening, I was back to as high as 20 on the leaderboard.
But then, in typical FaultProofBen fashion, I committed a self-rugging for the ages by accidentally upgrading my Workshop not once, but TWICE.
You see, the button to demolish a building is placed directly above the button to upgrade one. This means that it’s possible to fat finger and accidentally hit “upgrade” instead of “🗑.”
Perhaps I was not paying attention, or was just flustered by the repeated attacks. But I wound up wasting 30,000 Copper and 20,000 Sulfer on the upgrades, with the meager benefit of increasing my speed of my Marine production by 40%.
Following the mistake, I plunged to 87th on the leaderboard.
At this point, I was despondent.
I had sunk tens of hours into the game over the past few days, talked trash on Twitter, and now had nothing to show for it.
I thought about just rage-quitting Primodium right then and there.
After this colossal blunder, I went for a walk to cool off and touch grass. Given my obsession with the game and inability at the time to focus on anything else, taking a break probably would have been a good decision.
But again, Primodium is addicting. And I HAD to save face.
So, I decided to keep going.
Come hell or high water, the WASD Republic would rise again.
Tuesday - Wednesday: The Rebirth
To get back to the top of the leaderboard, I first needed to counter to the seemingly endless number of raids.
At this point, my base had been raided 32 times in a less than 18-hour period.
I decided the best way to handle this problem was to orient my base entirety around defense and fueling the unit war machine.
To begin this process, I spent 500 Titanium to expand the size of my base, meaning I would have more room to build structures and produce resources.
I used this extra space to load up on Garages to increase my housing capacity, and built more Alloy, Iron Plate, and Photovalic Cell factories to boost the rate of production for these unit-oriented materials.
I also knew that I needed to increase the speed at which I created new units, so I built multiple Drone Training Centers and Workshops to produce multiple batches of them simultaneously.
I even placed large production orders just before I went to bed, so that way there would be a continuous stream of new unit output while I slept to help blunt the effect of overnight attacks.
In the future, I plan to write a script to automate that process – But I don’t know enough Solidity at the moment.
On Tuesday night, I went to bed nervous, unsure whether this plan would be successful.
When I arose on Wednesday morning, I saw…
(Drumroll please)
…that it worked!
Although I had experienced some overnight raids, my unit defenses and resources remained largely intact.
And what’s more, wasdgaming.eth was back in the top 10 on the leaderboard.
It had been a whirlwind 72 hours, but the WASD Republic had risen, fallen, and risen again.
We were so back.
The Primodium Wars Continue
All in all, the new Primodium update is a ton of fun.
Yes, it's still far from a finished product.
There are many bugs, such as the inability of some players (including myself) to upgrade past Level 5, issues with raiding bases, and more.
However, the underlying gameplay is incredibly addicting, and with the addition of raids, v0.7.1 is a 10x improvement over v0.7.
I have not had this much fun, been this obsessed, or gotten this worked up over a game in years.
Furthermore, if you hop into the Primodium Discord, you’ll see that I’m far from the only one with this level of passion for the game.
I think is a very bullish sign for Primodium, and onchain gaming as a whole.
I’m just about done, but before I go, here’s one piece of advice I have for new players.
If you talk trash on Twitter, the inhabitants of the belt will humble you.
So, be humble.
But if you’re not, at least have the perseverance to back it up.
In the meantime…may the battle for Primodium supremacy continue.
Thanks for reading!
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