The strategy behind survival mode
Illuvium's marketing has ramped up and Private Beta 2 is closing in. What do you need to know before playing Illuvium?
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Andrew Wall has started to truly ramp up the content creation at Illuvium and we have seen more videos in August than the past 3 months combined. Not only do they have incredible guests and a wealth of information but they give us a sneak peak to everything being worked on behind the scenes. Given the delays from the Illuvium team on the launch dates of Illuvium and Illuvium Zero we can see that they aren’t far away.
In this newsletter I have some really interesting topics to cover:
The revealed Illuvitars utility and what it means for the Illuvium metaverse as a whole (and more utility?)
ETH and the broader crypto markets have retraced recently. Is this the bottom or can we expect surprises moving forward?
Am I currently buying sILV2, ILV or ETH?
How to get the most out of the Illuvium survival mode and what things should you consider as you’re struggling to beat some of the harder waves each day
We will cover all of that here and more so please keep reading. I am excited to share this journey with you.
Illuvitars, has everything been revealed?
The utility of the Illuvitars has been revealed in the most recent Illuvium proposal! Is that everything we can expect or is there more?
The latest Illuvitars proposal can be found here:
https://gov.illuvium.io/#/proposal/0xda962ed027e21d2b29a1d0db1f50f9da36071e7ab91eb91649749e39f62a3bb4
Firstly we must address the elephant in the room? What is this coveted utility that Scoriox keeps talking about! Well in this proposal there are three major pieces of information, pricing, packaging and (p)utility. Sorry I just had to. Firstly the prices have been determined and voted in, sitting at 0.015 and 0.075 ETH for the basic and ultra D1sks respectively. Why does the word D1sk have a number in it, that’s a lore question we will find out another day. Anyways as subscribers of mine will know this is a huge change from the initial pricing structure where 0.05 ETH was basically the smallest option for a single Illuvitar. Whereas these D1sks actually contain 3 accessories and 2 base portraits, including a T0 for the basic D1sk. For those wondering about the prices in USD I cover it all really well and do the math’s for you in one of my recent videos.
Now what about the packaging? These D1sks are confirmed to have the ability to be opened at any time. This is a big deal for those of you who wish to keep their ‘sealed’ boxes in the future and especially people like myself who want to give away as many as possible. Giving away a portrait and giving away a loot-box have very different appeal. Lastly D1sks are confirmed to be used in other systems within the Illuvium metaverse as well in the future. Why is this a big deal? Simply put have you seen the cost of a first edition Pokémon booster pack? I don’t expect D1sks to be worth over $300-$400 but no one can deny the amount of demand that can exist for a valuable IP several years into the future. This simply allows the possibility of scarcity in unopened packs.
The third thing we have to discuss is utility. First, some bad news, the community voted and Illuvitars should not be launched without their intended utility. Ultimately this is the right decision given it will improve sales, increase demand, improve player-base and help maintain reputation for Illuvium as a whole (more revdis yay). However this also means the community is left with another unknown release date for another branch of the Illuvium metaverse which is unfortunate even if necessary.
The utility entails an album/collecting adventure whereas you can complete sets of Illuvitars based on their many traits. Maybe you want every Scoriox variation or you want every Illuvitar wearing some neat shades. All of this can be achieved in your own album, which will also have a ladder and leaderboards system to enable the highly competitive to earn. As a utility this is fantastic and helps drive home the collectability of Illuvium as a whole. However Andrew Wall and many others have continuously made it sound like the utility isn’t finished. Whether that’s an extension to these albums or something entirely different is anyone’s guess. But what’s my guess?
I have heard every interview and discussion that the Illuvium team has had in the public domain and discussions about future games are forever popular. A repeating one (especially lately) has been for a card game not unlike Hearthstone. Really the only reason not to do such a low budget game is that Gods unchained already exists and on IMX no less, so in the short term this feels like a waste of time. However I see Illuvitars fitting extremely well into a unique card game that anyone can engage with. Hearthstone has declined in popularity over the years but its rise to fame was largely derived from the Warcraft IP, not unlike legends of Runeterra deriving from League of Legends. Given this pattern we can only assume that if Illuvium becomes a recognisable metaverse then it is only a matter of time until they create their own card game.
How are the markets looking right now?
Firstly I think it goes without saying that I am no expert analyst and this is my personal opinion but I have been watching the markets for quite some time and watch people much smarter than me on YouTube multiple times a day. Notably Benjamin Cowen and Market Makers.
There are 4 charts I want to break down today, Ethereum, the S&P 500, ILV and most importantly the DXY. First lets look at the stock market, I like to use this major index to help inform my decisions especially considering the crypto market correlates to it quite heavily. Below is the S&P 500 on the daily timeframe.
The most notable piece here is the white moving average. This is the 200 daily moving average and the major indicator for a bear market. When a market drops below this moving average it indicates the beginning of a bear market and the inverse if it rises above. As you can see from this chart the stock market was very swiftly rejected from this last stand and volume has steadily declined as it rallied. There are many macro factors that could change the tides but at the moment there is a heavy overall bias to the downside.
The next two charts we will look at are Ethereum and ILV both on the 4hr chart.
Firstly with Ethereum we can see that it has fallen below its moving averages on the 4hr chart. This looks similar on the daily but not as dire (not shown here). What is interesting is that Ethereum looks to be in no mans land, especially in comparison to many other tokens in the space. Bitcoin and many others are resting and accumulating on clear trend lines or previous lows much like ILV here but Ethereum still appears to be the strongest token in the space. The question really becomes, is the merge strong enough to offset the overall downwards pressure of the macro economic factors at play. Such as the war in Russia, inflation in the USA or the economic issues currently facing China.
ILV seems to be one of the weakest tokens in all of crypto at the moment since any downturn in the markets hit it particularly hard. Many would blame the unlocks and obviously the FUD surrounding it will have an impact. But a majority of unlocked tokens have actually been kept staking and barely any is being added to pure circulation. Either way I still believe in the bear market thesis.
Now the most important chart of all right now is the DXY. This is essentially a representation of the strength of the US Dollar. As the Euro and Pound fall to levels never before seen in this pairing the Dollar continues to steamroll everything. This chart is on the Daily timeframe.
