Developers Faraway and Novel Labs have kicked off Season 2 of Web3 city builder Serum City, now available to Pass NFT owners and select NFT holders who claim a free pass.
Starting from July 8th, players can enjoy new gameplay mechanics while meeting new characters and competing for a whopping $100k prize pool paid out in ApeCoin. If you took part in the previous season, you should have received some prizes for this new one in the in-game inbox to give you a head start against anyone joining just now. Specifically, your past Season Leaderboard Tier and Blessings have awarded you with bonus Season Points, while each level gained in the Season 1 pass will give you bonus rewards when progressing through the new pass. This means that if you got to level 25 last season, each time you level up now up to level 25 is rewarded with Energy, Soul Gems and Doubloons.
Players begin this new competitive period by gathering a new power source, Energy, while collecting Crystals across a new map or generating them by staking Season 1 Crates to harvest Energy. Filling orders at Ape Railways and the Pirate Radio Station is also rewarded with Energy. You can then spend the new resource at the Washing Room, a new mechanic where you power the slots to gamble away for a variety of different rewards, including 2 new currencies called Cigs and Cartel Chips.
You’ll need the Cigs for Turf Wars, a PvP mode taking place in a prisoner-run penitentiary called the Clink and led by Franken Bombay. This early version of PvP gameplay is based on ELO Pairings and has you spend Cigs to launch attacks on the bases of other players while hiring security to protect your turf. Winning a fight gives you trophy points called Teeth, alongside other prizes that may include crafting ingredients, Action Points or Doubloons.
As for Cartel Chips, you can give them to the Pawnbroker to get crafting ingredients and a rotating selection of limited rare items.
With this feature-packed update, HVs and Kodamara NFTs gain more interoperable utility, as you can now stake them in Serum City at the HV-MTL Hub and Kodamara Embassy to earn Pawnbroker items and Cigs. Last but not least, the way Capsule of Kaos recipes work has been adjusted so that each player now has different recipes.
The Season 2 prize pool comes with $100k worth of APE tokens that will be distributed to the top 99 players. While exact reward distribution details haven’t been revealed, whoever ends up getting 1st place will receive $25k, Car Parts and a Fusing Augment, while 2nd place gets $12.5k and 3rd place $7.5k worth of tokens.
Players climb the leaderboard in a variety of different ways, such as by ranking in various other leaderboards and by increasing their Holdings Power Score, which is based on your HQ traits and Car collection. Unique HQ trait modifiers called Blessings are earned by completing in-game achievements, while getting NFT car parts was part of last season’s leaderboard rewards for players who crafted and burned Gear.
There are 3 event leaderboards that can help you get more Season Points: Action Points, Collection Burn and Item Burn leaderboards. Getting Action Points is done by simply playing the game and doing tasks such as constructing buildings. Burning any item in the inventory helps you rank in the Collection Burn leaderboard, while the Item Burn leaderboard is about burning Weapons, Armor and Jewelry items discovered through the Capsule of Kaos, a feature used to mint Gear by figuring out an item’s transmutation recipe.
There are multiple different ways to jump into this narrative-driven play-and-earn title. One of them is to own at least one NFT from various different collections, as they will let you claim a free pass on a dedicated claiming page.
For this season, new collections have become eligible for the free pass, meaning holders of Kodamara, HV-MTL and Otherside Koda can now get a free pass. Other collections from before continue to be supported, including BAYC, MAYC, Mutant Hound, Mutant Cartel Oath, Meebits, BAKC and 10KTF G TAG. Be warned though: if you happen to buy an NFT that has already claimed a pass, then you as the new owner won’t be able to claim your free pass. Thankfully, the claiming page lets you check the eligibility of NFTs from each supported collection by inputting the token ID of the NFT in the corresponding field, so that should hopefully save any potential headaches when deciding on your purchase.
You don’t need to own any of these NFTs to start playing though. Instead, you can opt to purchase a Serum City Pass NFT on the Faraway Shop. You’ll notice that there are two Pass collections: one on Polygon and another on Ethereum. Aside from using different chains, there doesn’t seem to be any significant utility difference between the two collections, as both Polygon and Ethereum Passes let you access the game. This makes Polygon Passes the cheapest point of entry, as their floor price is currently 12 MATIC (~$6) while the floor price on Ethereum is 0.04 ETH (~$105).
Currently playable on web browsers, players can look forward to a mobile version launching likely in the next season.