The MVP is fun, but boy I got my butt kicked multiple times.. but ended up getting lucky winning with a 1 tank 3 ranged DPS team. Anyone got different combos to win their first matchup?

Griseus is one of the designers responsible for bringing the Solarbots world to life on our screens. The self-taught artist explained to imimoqui how to make artwork stand out by going beyond the obvious when designing visuals. Can you tell us a little bit about your background – how did you get your start as an artist? Hmm. I can't tell you exactly how it all started. It wasn't that I saw the Mona Lisa and it shocked me into starting to draw. It all just came by itself. When I was a kid, I liked to draw and I was never a very talkative person. So I just observed a lot, and I think the practice of observing gives me an eye for details. If, for example, I had to draw a bunny for homework, I didn't draw an 8-shape with pointy ears – I tried to draw an actual bunny. I don’t know if that was any good – my drawing was the most accurate, but the 8-bunnies were definitely cuter. (laughs) After the bunny phase, I started drawing cars, that was my passion for years (Who knew that Chip Foose from Overhaulin’ would have such an impact! Man, that's really weird that this show got me here.) I did that until highschool, when I started watching Anime frequently and began to draw anime characters. And the rest just snowballed from there. In general, it was all just taking simple and slow steps across the years. My parents didn’t really want me to become an illustrator or artist so they never actively pushed that part of me, so that’s why I'm self taught. It’s not always the best way of learning but it was my only option to do what I like. And then how and when did you join the Solarbots team? When I do commissions, I always do sort of a “market analysis” first. I look at what people bought, what people want. Which kinds of things have the biggest demand and the smallest supply. That's why I learned pixel art years ago, for example. I didn’t usually like using Twitter in the past, so I used to get commissions in forums and stuff like that, but NFT was popping off on Twitter and there were many contests. So I decided to join twitter and compete in contests in order to get more followers. The idea was to the start posting my drawings to promote myself. The first contest I entered was a contest held by x912. I realised that there were no pixel art entries (after doing the “analysis” previously explained). So I figured that that would be a good way to make my work stand out, plus I put animations on it so that it could catch even more attention. My hope was that even if I didn't win the contest, I might still get a commission. Which is kind of what happened, x912 and I began to talk, he recommended me to the big bois on the Solarbots team, and that was the beginning of everything. So yeah, big thanks to x912, love u man, also big thanks to Miso and Voidling for giving me a chance and trusting me with the work. What are you working on this week? Can you explain some of the details/challenges that you’re facing? I'm working on a new menu background image. It is not charged with deep visual messages like the previous one, but it's a bigger piece so it's hard to make because I'm such a perfectionist. For this one I want to render more textures, so that's the challenge: Perfecting a bunch of details that no one will notice and no one will care, and achieve a clear rendering with no misplaced pixels. And all of this on such a big canvas, especially for pixel art, and mostly using just a single pixel brush. What are some of the differences in working for Solarbots and other projects you’ve worked on in the past? I don't work for Solarbots, that's the difference! This is something we are making together as a team! Of course there is a little bit of a hierarchy, but Miso and Void don’t enforce strict rules or act all bossy. So it doesn't feel like work when you are just a part of the project amongst equals and you’re being treated as such instead of like a wage-slave. Can you explain to someone who has absolutely no artistic knowledge: How do you go about designing for a completely new game? What are some of the first steps or decisions you have to make? When you are designing something, you have to think further than just the figurative image. For example: If you have to design something about love, you might think in figurative images, like a heart on a canvas. But those are the basic and most repeated kinds of ideas, they can be unoriginal. So if you want your artwork to be remarkable, you should try to push yourself further than that. Or reduce, which is just a different way of pushing. Maybe you would experiment with using a black canvas and putting one red pixel in the center: An abstract way of representing love in a sea of bad emotions. Of course you can’t forget to include hints of the main idea in the designs so people can understand it with no extra explanation, though. And that’s basically a miniature version of what’s happening when you design a game: You can tell stories through just a background image, but only if you can look further than the scene itself, and that's the hardest part of it. But for doing that you absolutely have to have a clear image of the main ideas of the game, so loremasters are extremely important. Luckily, we have some of the greatest. Do you have favorite game aesthetics? Which ones and why? I don't know if I could pick just one. I really love Portal aesthetics in general – that game looks good in any aspect. Obviously Cuphead is a newer nice looking game, no need to explain. Minecraft is great, especially with shaders or RTX. Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, … there are so many good looking games, it would be a crime to just pick one. I'm not a big gamer so I'm probably missing some good games! What is the biggest mistake people make when designing for games? That's pretty hard to answer because every game has its own different artistic approaches and ideas. But I think one might say that the biggest mistake is when there is miscommunication between parts that are involved. For example when the gameplay or the story don’t fit the visuals – it all just looks like a collage of random things, heavily glued together. What’s important for designing characters in particular? Make them legible and easily recognizable. Avoid excess stuff if you can, like horns, extra eyes, wings, and other things like that. Usually, there is no need for it. Learn color theory and make good use of your colors, this is very important for creating and pushing the visual image of the character. Lacrean Empire, Illskagaard or Arboria? Why? Lacrean Empire. Why? Because it's the Lacrean Empire, that's it, that's the answer.

Mike Osso is an audio engineer and musician based in New York. He is currently the head composer for Solarbots. For our series of team interviews, he explained the intricacies of victory fanfares and told us about some of his pet peeves when it comes to video game music. How did you get into music? When I was young, my older brother found a guitar in a basement. He started playing it and immediately I thought: That’s what I want to do. I guess I was the jealous younger brother. So I bugged my parents and eventually, they got me this crappy little digital piano and signed me up for piano lessons. Usually, when you start playing an instrument, the first thing you do is practice scale, the standard stuff. I remember thinking “That’s boring. I’m writing my own stuff.” Looking back at it, I was definitely an annoying child. (laughs) The first thing I wanted to learn on the piano was the Legend of Zelda theme song. Riveting. Then later, a lot of my career mirrored what my older brother did. He went to audio engineering school, so I went to audio engineering school. Then we started a band together. I shouldered him mixing our music for years. I’d watch and emulate it on my own. A lot of audio engineers go on to become great producers and musical masterminds – the people who pull the strings in the background to make great things happen. Like Jimmy Iovene and Dr. Dre to some extent, I was thinking about this documentary I saw on them recently. Thank you for calling me Dr Dre. I am Dr. Dre. (laughs) The priority for me was always live music. Making sure it wasn’t boring for people to watch or listen to. I’ve been in a lot of bands and played live, and you can’t just stand there looking at your shoes. So the audio engineering had to be like that too. I loved nerdy, stupid little things, tweaking sounds to make them like a good type of “bad” sound, hyperfocusing on details. Composing is a hyped up word. Like, when I think of composers, I picture a man named Mr. Maestro with his fancy cufflinks. I’m just a dumb idiot making riffs like puzzle pieces and pretending I’m “professional”. I get all my fuels in different flavours from the Solarbots team. Yes, last time we talked to Jess and she also noted that her process is a lot like collaging. I hear that she also has to do with you joining Solarbots? Yes! I owe it all to her, 100 percent. I’ve known Jess for a few years, we’ve been online goons together. One day I was talking to her, and she told me about Solarbots and these incredibly wicked human tales of the story behind the game. I was actually overwhelmed and had to hit the studio. Later that day I sent her a file called SolarBots.mp3. I didn’t expect anything in return. But then, boom, right away I was talking to the bossman himself, Misotsune. He asked me to write another piece of music, like a tryout or an audition. He was inviting and kind. He wanted to see if I could paint a clearer picture of the world he was creating. It was very natural. I feel like this is a theme in the interviews: The working environment is very relaxed, oriented towards fostering creativity and appreciation. There’s something specific about being an American on the Solarbots team, working in a relaxed work environment. The American work ethic has a dysfunctional attitude, “Go! Now! You have to get this done fast or you’re in trouble!“ Everything in here feels like gentle guidance. I was honestly sceptical at first, it was unusual not having a boss bark orders and throw coffee cups across the room. (laughs) It was and still is a process of deprogramming. Misotsune has done a good job making me feel welcome. That in turn makes it easier to write better music. Speaking of work and pressure, please don’t mind me asking: What are you working on at the moment? Can you share some details with us? I've been creating victory fanfares. A victory fanfare is what you hear when you beat your opponent, a sort of completion jingle. I studied up on many victory fanfares to understand what these other composers were going for. I want to understand it so I can turn it on its head and make it a little different. I want each faction of Solarbots to have a completely different musical experience. Everything. Down to the victory theme. I arrange Lacrean music as traditionally classical gothic and operatic in motif. For Illskagaard, flipping historically Nordic folk into Americana and Western music. Arborian is just artificial world music. Synthetically produced naturalistic sounds. It’s good to work with small parameters. Can you explain to us, from a musicians point of view, what makes good or bad video game music? A video game is doing at least a decent job when it doesn't make me immediately open the settings and turn the music slider all the way down. If I can do that well then that’s a damn good first step! A menu theme can even be a 5 second loop, but it has to be good, otherwise the ears get tired, and the player will mute the music. I’m definitely guilty of doing that, of turning the video game music down first thing. I also think that today, with Spotify and all that, we are very used to the fact that we can just skip something if it doesn’t vibe with us. The patience for bad music might be lower today. You shouldn’t have patience for bad music! I don’t blame anyone. In games, you cannot pause the music without muting it. So the arrangements are under strict scrutiny of the player. If you cross one line that slider is hitting zero. What is some of your favorite video game music? I think mine is the OG Prince of Persia. But I might also just be nostalgic because it’s one of the first games I played in general. I also like the Papers, Please soundtrack. I guess I enjoy ominous old-school sounds. I could name a billion games, but I’ll try to keep it short. I was 6-7 years old – Mega Man X for SNES had these incredible metal riffs from Yuki Iwai. She’s a damn wizard genius. She started that fire for me. Similarly, F-Zero’s fun midi guitars, Super Metroid’s sound design. RARE’s Perfect Dark and Jet Force Gemini. David Wise from Donkey Kong Country. More recently anything from Metal Gear to Katamari Damacy, Cuphead, and the Fire Emblem series. Also anything Mick Gordon does is gold. DOOM Eternal OST is insane! Oh man and Disasterpeace. I’d advise anyone out there to listen to Disasterpeace’s music right now. And your pet peeves when it comes to video game music? When the music is completely mistreated and second hand. People don't have to be musicians to react badly to throw-away music. They’ll react subconsciously. If it's just a sobbing violin for hours, who cares? I've never had a friend pass me a youtube link of game music that was bland trombones droning along. It has to communicate symbiotically with gameplay somehow or it might as well be elevator music. While the Hollywood film pulls from slow broods, classical music, and overtures, the video game pulls from prog rock. Riffy things! Fast arpeggios! Slightly off the cuff. That’s a videogame. The film tries to get you situated in the story you have to watch, but the video game has to get you motivated, amped to keep playing, into a state of directed disarray. It’s almost a bit like jazz, it’s gotta be all over the place. I’m going to ask all team members this question: Which faction is your favourite? Well Lacreans are blood thirsty cultists and Arborians lay acid traps that kill travellers. Ilskagaardians are hard workin’ folk who just wanna get a modest job done. They stick to one pace and master their craft possibly to the point of insanity. So I take to 'em. So you’re in the market for some Illskagaardian Solarbots? The first NFTs I invested in were 5 teams of Solarbots. I came from that very countercultural place, the NFT seemed stupid, what are they? But when I moved away from the noise of public opinion of economic politics and did my own research, NFTs seemed like a cool way to empower some digital artists. Artists usually make no fucking money from their work. In Solarbots, the sprites have to be made with the consumer and player at highest priority. People are investing decent coin. It’s a pretty good eco system of quality. What 2022 Solarbots development are you most looking forward to? I like looking at the way the team is developing, everything keeps getting better and more well defined. Right now we’re fixating on the process and making it grow into a crypto game that’s for real. Wait, I do look forward to ******** an ******* ***** in the head, man.

Join in on the revival of the YCB podcast, starting with an interview with Misotsune! https://anchor.fm/ycb/episodes/Episode-4---Misotsune-on-the-Inspiration-and-Development-of-Solarbots-e1f0snl

Jess Loren, who goes by RamonaAStone on Discord, is the Solarbots Lore Master – creative, communicative, and highly productive. (More on the most recent Captured Record here.) She also released music under the name The Juke Bottle Casino. imimoqui talked to her about her artistic influences, the notion of “new equals good” and why she actually disapproves of common notions of “lore”. Can you tell us a little bit about your background – how did you get your start as a writer? And what are some of your most important influences? My video game influences scream from every pore, but I love Hideo Kojima as much as I love William S. Burroughs or Loretta Lynn. My technique is almost cheating. I've written songs since about fifteen. All music is narrative, from repetitive dance music to murder ballads. The Solarbots Captured Records are canonical narratives based on the “lore” of Solarbots. These stories are all musical in technique and have enough lyrical quotes to suggest something about what Earthly music itself has to do with Solarbots mythology. And this is actually my first longform writing project! No matter how much I've done in other fields, I've always wanted this exact job. It's the baby dream job. We do pretty things and pretty things happen. So how and when did you join the Solarbots team? Around fall of 2021, a mutual friend had asked if I wanted to work on this. I looked over what they had already started and thought it could use a lot of work – sounds insane to just say it like that – but co-founder Misotsune also had said that they aren't a writer. Nobody who ever starts a creative project has the courage to admit that they aren’t writers! W-we also... b-both like Yoko Taro a lot... This stuff made me fall in love with Solarbots very quickly. Literally first meeting, I'm drunkenly shouting about the worldview the game should have. Miso's putting up with my shouts and trusting our shared vision as well as our dissonance. I knew this was something that I’d be great at – something full of honest people with humility and grace. I rewarded the open-minded graciousness with the best work I could summon up. People liked the story about a man's view of how a girl becomes a “princess”, learning how horrific that title is outside of pillow talk. I noticed that you put the word lore in quotes in your first answer. Why is that? I don't approve of what the word represents. Conversations with the team showed me that we were doing story, meaning, emotion, immersion. “Lore” seems like a cheap concept compared to what we’ve ended up with. What I get from other games I appreciate is not a series of details to remember. Not just: “Cool lore to add to the pile of random facts people know about Eld.” But entire life philosophies and personal tales. Story and meaning are what matter, and “lore” is a trick. Watch this: It’s now canon that one of the Caretakers is watching over this interview. Now what? Doesn’t seem as cozy, huh? {I’m very proud of you, Miss Loren. - Ruin} While we’re on the subject of immersion, transgression and meta-ness, I want to bring this up: One of the most striking developments in gaming is the new principle of maximum player involvement or stakeholding. Is this because the gaming community is disappointed by traditional game release structures? We’re a response to the treatment of video games as an artform. Many game projects get slobbered and chewed on until they resemble just that much mock-eaten mush. The fork scrapes the teeth and some of us hear it. Some of us FEEL it. The increase in NFT popularity is promising for various avenues, but admittedly a bit of a “new thing = good thing” situation. That's the cynical take. Though, some truly believe in the medium itself. My belief in it is positive but ignorant. Still working on learning more than just writing and telling people cool things to draw. Exceptions to the “new = good” system, along with holding a gigantic defiance to the medium is definitely where we operate. I see this situation as an escape hatch from the typical industry of forks holding the food, ready for the chewing, knowing the meal is not worth eating. In your opinion, why are games which include NFT economics increasingly popular in recent times? Do you think it speaks to a general development or trend in gaming or even society? Everyone is so disconnected, even before the Big Sickness and the resulting isolation. Everyone craves a new beginning – the internet has fallen and we want our magic. Immersion of players in any group activity defines the quality of that activity. People enjoy blurring lines of entertainment because we get bored of art that doesn't leave its footprints in our souls. The future of video games rests in the careful hands of those willing to immerse the audience. I can’t not ask you: Lacrean Empire, Illskagaard or Arboria? Why? I love all of these factions deeply and all of their leaders have a very personal significance to me. I’ll say I often lean towards Arboria because their creation, from Anemone downward was the most accepting I’ve ever been of some of my own complicated personality traits. Lacrea is an extremely deep and complicated metaphor made flesh with a sense of community I occasionally envy. Illskagaard is literally me creating a faction leader as “what if” scenario. “what if” lead to me writing a merciful second chance to a man who isn't a good man and growing a whole philosophy from it. Here’s my true cop-out answer: My favorite is whichever one I'm writing at the time or else the writing would suck. What are you working on this week? Can you explain some of the details or challenges that you’re facing? This week, I’m working on some art design (we have the best art team, holy God they're insanely good), a few Captured Records (my co-writer Adam Bridwell is a literal genius and he keeps me creative), a promotional piece (our voice team is incredible as well) – and some other alterations to the story are happening. The team has had many sickness and loss experiences in the short while we've been burning it up, so that hasn’t been easy. What’s also challenging when it happens – which is extremely rare since we trust each other – is when I irritatingly attempt to get away with really silly, personal, and deranged concepts. I have to explain them to get away with them, and I’m not great at explaining myself outside of writing. See, look. This is me doing it. What 2022 Solarbots do you most look forward to? This whole thing is a ritual for me, and discussing too much might interfere with my process. I’m also astoundingly superstitious. I’ll just say: An incredibly ambitious trilogy of stories is near a horrific introduction. I'm looking forward to that and am simultaneously so terrified I could eat my own teeth out.

Greetings, fellow Pilot! After we’ve posted an update regarding the Guild Hall & Player Housing sale, I’ve noticed that there are a few people who don’t yet fully understand the immense impact guilds have on the Solarbots ecosystem and I put the blame for this on myself. Whenever people don’t understand a message you try to convey, it’s easy to shift the blame on your audience, but not only does it not help your case, it’s also wrong most of the time. You want people to understand something so it is your job to make sure they do. In this case, replace “you” with “me”. While we at Solarbots see the quality of the game as our chief priority, we have to put a lot of thought into the economy side of the ecosystem. This will be another free-form entry meant for you to absorb while leaning back, getting comfy and preparing another cup of hot chocolate! Understanding Guilds In order to tackle the implementation in Solarbots, we first have to understand Guilds in general. While “Guilds” in Solarbots aren’t necessarily what people in the blockchain-gaming space think of when they hear the word, they very much can be. Many people paint blockchain-gaming guilds as extractors who damage the sustainability of the ecosystem, and while that is true in some cases, we have to understand that current blockchain games (also most that are currently in development) give them no other option. These games have a singular and very simplistic yield methodology which makes this the only approach for any and all players. In order to remedy this, one has to first understand what these guilds are, what potential values they have and how you can marry that with a mutually beneficial partnership in contemporary and future games. You will have most likely heard of our partnership with Yield Guild Games (YGG), which is why we will use YGG as an example for this thought exercise: YGG is one of the first and largest blockchain-gaming guild and has taken great care in their onboarding process to bolster their ranks with people of many disciplines, all of whom have a great deal of expertise and understanding of their respective fields. It should come to no surprise that precisely this is an incredible and invaluable asset that no current game is factoring into their implementations of greater economies. Especially YGG is a proven gaming DAO with a deep understanding of economies, leadership as well as the capacity to kickstart community on launch. We didn’t want to just copy systems that have proven to be unsustainable at scale but rather take advantage of the benefits we are offered by partners. While others might only make use of the community kickstart, we wanted to find ways to make use of the leadership and economic understanding that a partnership with people like YGG affords us. Keep in mind: Blockchain-gaming guilds like YGG do not want to extract. Their goal is to participate in, and help grow a sustainable project for many years to come. It is our job to offer this opportunity, not theirs. At the same time, we also have to keep in mind that these blockchain-gaming guilds are have an obligation to themselves to find revenue structures. Here as well, it is our job to find a solution from which we can all benefit. Creating mutually beneficial opportunities Taking into account what we’ve learned from the previous section, the question now becomes: “How can we utilise this information and implement it in a game?” and it would be a lie to claim this was a simple process. However, since the process is kinda boring, we will skip ahead to our solution and the implications. Instead of blockchain-gaming guilds being just extractors and leveraging the burden of sustaining the economy on the entire community, Solarbots-guilds can be seen as the supply to fuel the entire game. Their potential profit don’t come from extracting yield tokens, but directly incentivise their burn and purchase from guilds by passing marketplace fees and asset production to them. This massively shifts the dynamic as they no longer compete with the community for the same assets which are created infinitely by a smart contract. Instead, it creates a symbiotic relationship in which the community supplies guilds with the resources required to then supply the community with goods they require in their journey. Resources that aren’t created infinitely, but with a monthly limit. This adjustable monthly limit makes runaway-inflation essentially impossible. Instead of praying for growth to sustain the ecosystem, this model also works on smaller scale. How does that work? Money has to come from somewhere. I think we’re all familiar with this concept but it’s worth exploring a little because the implications are fundamentally important. In most current games, we’ve seen that high marketplace activity happened during growth phases while being minimal before and after said phase. This is caused by the ecosystem being skewed in a direction where it is required by only the community to add funds to the ecosystem which were then extracted by others. With the changed dynamic explained in the previous section, it places supplier and consumer on a more similar playing field and requires the guild to also inject into the economy. Since the supply of the resources is adjustable, limited and based on “Proof of Skill” (explained here), this means that guilds cannot simply produce all they need (and more) by themselves and live in excess. In essence: Players supply guilds with resources → guilds use these to create various assets required by players → players acquire assets to help them in generating resources. To learn more about these assets, see my earlier crafting-blogpost. Economic Understanding At the same time, this system gives Solarbots-guilds (and keep in mind, these are not just blockchain-gaming guilds, but can be any group of players or individuals) an opportunity that was never seen before: A share of the marketplace fees generated by all transactions using the guild’s marketplace NPC. These NPCs will be Solarbots market units which can be crafted and placed in a guild’s Guild Hall, as well as on the out-of-city-land owned by the guild. They are required to access the global marketplace within the game. This makes immediate use of the economic understanding of guild leaders and allows them to test their prowess against other guilds. Leadership Dealing with bots is a massive challenge for any game developer and studio and depending on the complexity of the bots it may become close to impossible to guarantee prevention of botting. For crafting and gathering, this is how we make use of the leadership skills of guild leaders as we place the burden of bot prevention on them (on top of implementing various preventive measures ourselves). Guilds have a direct and vested interest in making sure their members play fair, as bot detection will result in penalising the guild in charge of botting members. Great opportunity comes with great responsibility. However, we of course won’t be leaving guilds to fend for themselves here and will be closely working with them to help. After all, guilds are a close and important partnership. Community Kickstart Last but not least, community kickstart is an obvious and valuable benefit guild leaders offer. This is usually the first thing people think about when talking about guilds and other games already make great use of this, therefore it requires very little explanation and can be summed up with: many members → many potential players Phew, that was a large one wasn’t it! Thank you all so much for giving me the time to elaborate a little on the implications of guilds, the partnership with blockchain-gaming guilds and the mutually beneficial relationship we’re striving to establish through a complex ecosystem in which we greatly care about every participant. As always, you can always approach me on discord or twitter if you have any questions! Live the Word.

Great overview of how the tokens work. Looking forward to my 10 years of FOA distribution

Great explanation of the tokens. Thought I would throw in that simplifying the math leads to an understanding that MK1 Solarbots are yielding 6.85 FOA per day for 10 years.

A new overview of the Solarbots Tokenomics has been added by baronar, you can view it here: I hope you enjoy it!

Greetings, Pilots! The time has come to talk about Guild Halls! As you know, guilds are the center and backbone of the entire economy within the Solarbots universe and as such form an invaluable asset for adding value to the community and the game. Guilds have vast opportunities and responsibilities and it is vital that these very limited assets do not fall into disuse or are purely used for speculation. In light of this, we have decided to open up the guild application e-mail account. If you wish to acquire a guild within Solarbots, reach out: tell us who you are, why you want to lead a guild, as well as which guild size and faction you are interested in! Guild Halls Please use the following information to determine which guild you wish to apply for: - Small Guild Supply: 30 (15 through applications, 14 through public sale, 1 auctioned) Price: 10 Ether Capacity: 20 Members (+20 on each upgrade), 1 Profession (+1 on each upgrade) Upkeep cost: TBD* - Medium Guild Supply: 15 (14 through applications, 1 auctioned) Price: 20 Ether Capacity: 40 Members (+40 on each upgrade), 2 Professions (+1 on each upgrade) Upkeep cost: TBD* - Large Guild Supply: 9 (8 through applications, 1 auctioned) Price: 66.6 Ether Capacity: 100 Members (+100 on each upgrade), 4 Professions (+1 on each upgrade) Upkeep cost: TBD* If you would like to refresh your memory on what exactly guilds are used for and the benefits/responsibilities of leading a guild, please refer to our whitepaper. *Upkeep: Guild Halls require power to be able to operate their machines and tools (comparable to utility bills). As Solstones are the driving force behind the new technologies in Eld, Solstones will be required to power your Guild Hall. Not paying the upkeep costs will render your asset inactive until it is powered up again. The application process starts right now and will last until April 15th 1:00PM GMT+1. Send your applications to guilds@solarbots.io Due to the limited supply, please make sure to let us know whether a smaller guild would also be interesting to you, in case your desired guild size is no longer available. Player Housing Player housing comes in one size with a total supply of 18,000 houses across the three factions. This means: - Arboria Supply: 6,000 Price: 0.1 Ether Floors: 1 - Illskagaard Supply: 6,000 Price: 0.1 Ether Floors: 1 - Lacrean Empire Supply: 6,000 Price: 0.1 Ether Floors: 1 Much like Guild Halls, Player Housing will be upgradeable which will manifest in building extra floors for your house. Player Housing will be on a separate instanced map within each of the capital cities, with multiple channels. Each channel is currently planned to accommodate for 100 houses. These will be one of the corner stones in what makes Solarbots a social metaverse. Player houses serve as a hub for players to invite their friends, hang out, chat, play minigames and have a good time! Please note that there currently is no date for this sale as we want to first show you more of the MVP. The internal plans for the sale will be a few weeks after the release of the MVP, this includes the Player Housing as the sale will be for both.

(article first posted by Misotsune at https://misotsune.substack.com/p/production-setbacks-perseverance?s=r) “Greetings Pilots! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? A lot has happened in the past month; some good, some bad, some neutral and while I wish I’d only ever have great news to share, I feel it’s necessary to be fully transparent with our community on what’s happening behind the scenes. Let’s start with the bad to end things on a bright note. Setbacks In the original planning for the MVP, we’ve allowed ourselves a buffer of around 2 weeks, meaning that we’ve planned it in a way where the MVP should be shippable 2 weeks prior to launch. This is a fairly common practice to allow for development snags and blockers along the way, which are almost always unavoidable. It’s impossible to plan every eventuality, after all. However, we didn’t anticipate 5 key team members getting infected with Covid-19 and suffering fairly strong symptoms for almost a month (including a hospitalisation at one point) from January to now. Luckily nearly everyone has recovered fairly well, except for one still ongoing case. For those of you who know our team size, you will know that this is a massive blow to productivity as we most certainly don’t want anyone with a high fever to continue working, potentially exacerbating the issue. Health always comes first. This of course means that the delivery of the MVP will be delayed due to the missed weeks and increased scope, the extent of the delay is currently being planned around. Though I do not anticipate a longer delay than ~6 weeks, we will keep an open communications channel for this and most certainly will be showing you the current status and what has been done so far over the course of the next weeks. Production Building a project that is Game-First differentiates from the workload and scope of other crypto games that mostly focus on getting basic gameplay (or lack thereof) shipped as early as possible to kickstart the economy posthaste. We’re not interested in being just another “click map to enter level, fight, go back to map, repeat” type of mobile game and as such the MVP features a story introduction, cutscenes, 5 different musical pieces, as well as combat. With 4-directional movement, extra story content and dialogues following in an update a few weeks later. At the same time, we’re working on an animated trailer for which we have finished recording the voice-over together with the amazingly skilled Robyn Addison (you may know her as Y’Shtola in Final Fantasy 14) who will be lending her voice to Princess Yani Sarh. Let me tease this a little bit with the first part of the Storyboard for the trailer: Since we’re building more than just combat, there is a ton of detail work required for the capital cities, such as buildings, background elements, flora and fauna, background layers, movement scripts, interaction scripts, etc. (example of background element in capital cities) It also means a rethinking of scaling. If it were just combat, the size of Solarbots and enemies would be much more lenient, but once you add buildings and humans, we have to make sure that the scale remains both sensible and consistent: We’re also putting a lot of thought into the various different animation styles for combat itself. The animations we’ve shown you so far are all very fluent and very human-like in movement, which is something we specifically chose for certain Solarbots and abilities, however we also want to have more rigid, robot-like movement such as: Perseverance During all the production and the setbacks, we’ve continued onboarding people at a steady pace. Since the last update on this, we’ve grown by two artists (with one additional artist currently being talked to), an infrastructure engineer as well as a game developer. The onboarding phase will likely continue until May or June which is the projected time frame for us reaching the team-size we initially planned for in the first growth phase. Upcoming Sales I know you’re looking forward to the Player Housing and Guild Hall sale, but considering the fact that we have to delay the MVP launch a bit, we do not want to ship a sale before as it simply doesn’t feel right so please bear with us a bit. While we don’t want to hold the sales yet, there is some information around the Guild Halls especially that I would like to share in order to dispel some of the confusion. Guild Halls will, for the most part, not be a simple public sale. Instead, we have opened an E-Mail account for Guild Hall applications. We won’t ask you to write us a dissertation on why you deserve to be greenlit for the Guild Hall sale, but we don’t want the majority of Guild Halls to fall into hands that use them for nothing but speculation and profit extraction prior to the game launching. The details of this will be announced in a future blogpost and announcement very soon. Thank you so much for your understanding and we’re looking forward to continue working as hard as we can for an exciting, fun and deep future for all of us. At the end of the day, we want to navigate Eld as Pilots with you ourselves!”

Greetings Pilots! We're happy to announce the last reveal of the Solarbots Mk.I combat units! The reveal of the Support class! On February 20, 2022 11:00 AM all Solarbots Mk.I Support unit art will be uploaded and ready for manual update on Opensea! Taken from discord

Solarbots is a social RPG that promises players an immersive gaming experience, offering an ecosystem for players to pick up a vast variety of roles in different factions and use their skills in a fully player-controlled and resource-oriented game economy. As a blockchain-powered Metaverse experience, Solarbots opens opportunities to economic ownership and value creation in a universe for like-minded individuals to meet, team up and experience a captivating story together. YGG has purchased 400 Solarbots Mk.I combat units for US$80,000 at the time of mint for the YGG community to explore the land of Eld where the Solarbots Metaverse is set. According to Sarutobi Sasuke, head of partnerships at YGG, ”Solarbots will introduce an ecosystem that rewards guilds like YGG by offering them control over significant shares of the game economy and redistribute rewards to all guild participants.” “The team behind Solarbots has done a great job at incorporating robust tokenomics, and hopes to share a deeper story through their lore-driven game,” he added. According to Solarbots co-founder Misotsune, “YGG is the first and largest guild to spawn from blockchain gaming. Their prowess and strong morals have allowed them to give a new opportunity and empower many, which aligns with our way of thinking perfectly.” The Solarbots team hopes to craft a beautiful experience around a compelling and immersive story that depicts the human condition while incorporating a strong social component and multiple ways to earn rewards. Solarbots body parts Solarbots are the robots crafted by each faction: Arboria, Illskagaard, and the Lacrean Empire. In terms of Solarbots customization, the factions offer only visual differences, allowing players to freely choose based on whichever style they like best. Players will need a team of four Solarbots from one of the three factions to participate in the PVE and PVP game modes. There are several ways to play Solarbots and participate in its game economy, namely through PVE, PVP, Gathering, Crafting, Guilds, and Landlordship. The main idea behind creating such an ecosystem comes from a token economy that sustains the community, combined with visually appealing customizable assets and engaging gameplay. Players can expect rewards in SOLS (Solstones) and other tokens or NFTs such as crafting recipes or uncut gems when playing these modes. SOLS are required and burned for engaging in most activities in the game such as upgrading, crafting, rerolling stats, creating sockets in body parts, and maintaining the player housing units of the Solarbots. In addition to those utilities, SOLS are also used to power homes, cities and while also constituting an integral part of various magic rituals, including but not limited to crafting. The SOLS token can also be used in its native marketplace within the game. The PVE combat component of Solarbots will focus on strategic gameplay with utility combos offering more than one action within the game. This constitutes the main part of the game’s pre-alpha and will be the only way to experience the game story through the interactions of each faction with the Monsters of the Abyss, which players must defeat in order to gain SOLS. The Solarbots pre-alpha (without crafting or token economies) is scheduled to be released at the end of Q1 2022. After this launch, Solarbots will introduce a competitive PVP and an open-world mode with a focus on player-owned land. Its Alpha version, with crafting and token elements, is set to go live in Q4 2022, while its Beta and the eventual version 1 will be shipped in 2023 and onward. For more information on Solarbots, check out their website, whitepaper, Discord, and Twitter. Also check out YGG’s Discord or follow us on Twitter for future updates.