Developer Proof of Play has announced the launch of a 1 million $PIRATE PvE event called Deadman’s Heart, for their Arbitrum-powered fully on-chain RPG, Pirate Nation.

What Is Pirate Nation’s Deadman’s Heart Event?

Deadman’s Heart is a new 14-day event in Pirate Nation which features a prize pool of 1 million $PIRATE tokens (around $63,510) up for grabs for the best PvE players.

The story behind this event is that Pirate Queen Laura Highmark had a forbidden love with a naval officer. This love ended up being fatal for the officer, as someone ended up murdering him. This came as a surprise to the Pirate Queen, causing her to lose faith in piracy, with her crew presenting to her the lover’s heart carved from his chest before throwing him in the sea. Laura was devastated and as a result of this betrayal, has decided to roam the Infinite Isles as the ghastly Banshee, on a never-ending quest for vengeance on all Pirates. While destroying everyone in her path, she wears the lover’s heart as a pendant for all to witness before their doom.

Now, it’s up to you to stand up and prevent Laura from raiding everyone in her wake. To do this, you will be completing a variety of World Quests. These revolve around finding and fighting Sea Spectres to earn Black Roses, which are said to represent a token of the Pirate Queen’s former love. You need to collect this event currency as much as you can if you want to fight the Banshee and her powerful Marauder.

Spending Black Roses and Energy is necessary to challenging the Banshee. You can challenge her across 3 different difficulties: Normal, Expert, and Extreme. The harder the difficulty, the more rewards you could possibly earn. Successfully defeating the Banshee is rewarded with Heart Pendants, which you need to climb this event’s leaderboard that is said to introduce a new kind of Building Upgrade Plan.

All players who rank in the top 1000 on the leaderboard by the end of this event will receive a variety of rare rewards that may include $PIRATE tokens, Gems, PGLD, upgrade plans and shards.

According to the official announcement thread on X, the developers are preparing to launch the next tier of Crafting at some point later this summer, which is why they’re releasing Complex Building Upgrade Plans now. If you rank in the top 25 players with the most amount of Heart Pendants collected, you will be able to choose whether you’d like to receive a Complex Building or Ship Upgrade Plan/Shard.

If this sounds interesting, read on to find out how you can participate from May 13th to May 27th.

How to Participate in Pirate Nation’s Deadman’s Heart Event

While Pirate Nation’s Deadman’s Heart event itself is free to participate in, there is a requirement for those who would like to be eligible for leaderboard rewards.

Reaching the top 1000 as a free to play player is not enough to receive prizes. In order to be eligible for rewards, you will need to hold either a Founder’s Pirate NFT or have an active VIP Pass at the end of the event. If you have one or the other before the event is over, and you’re in the top 1000, you should be able to receive your well-deserved winnings. You can buy the Founder’s Pirate NFT through the Proof of Play Marketplace, which lists NFTs from OpenSea on Ethereum. The floor price for a Founder’s Pirate NFT is 0.29 ETH at the time of writing. As for the VIP Pass, you can pay for it through the game's shop in the form of a 1-month, 3-month, and 12-month subscription for the price of 220 $PIRATE (~$14), 600 $PIRATE (~$39), or 2160 $PIRATE (~$138) tokens respectively.

Pirate Nation itself is available as a browser-based free to play title that you can start playing by using a social sign in option such as Google or Discord, or by connecting your crypto wallet.

Arbitrum has recently invested $10 million in blockchain gaming projects, among which is the game's studio, Proof of Play.