What's New in CU? (4.0 Update)

Check out the changes coming your way with the reopening of Crypto Unicorns, now on the Xai Blockchain! This update will feature changes such as new CU token support, social login (thanks ThirdWeb!),

Jun 25, 2024

The wait for cart jackpots, quest grinds, and joust weekends is almost over, Unifam—we’re close to completing our EPIC migration to Xai!

This was no small feat. With over 250 smart contracts migrated from Polygon, this is one of the largest gaming migrations in blockchain history. With the game relaunch comes a bunch of exciting new updates, and we can’t wait for you to try them out!

Get ready for an elevated CU experience with these new features paired up with ultra-fast and free transactions thanks to our partnership with Xai Blockchain.

The next era of Crypto Unicorns begins now!

Some in-game screenshots in this article come from the test version of the game and details may be inaccurate.
Check out the article below for more details on the maintenance period.

Daily Rewards & New Claims Page

To kick off this epic migration, we have exciting new rewards for players who join us on Xai- with a revamped claims page to match! In addition to all of the great in-game rewards you’re already used to, players will now experience daily rewards just by tending their farms!

Daily rewards are expected to be claimable starting 2:30AM UTC, but please expect a 1-2 hour delay. Don’t forget to check and claim yours!

Claim Dashboard: https://www.cryptounicorns.fun/claim

These new daily rewards are part of a set of initiatives that will provide players with even more ways to earn $XAI tokens. Daily rewards will be available as soon as the game opens on Xai and will run in parallel with the Play-to-Airdrop campaign!

New daily rewards will be distributed to players based on four distinct categories: Questing, Jousting, Daily Login, and Shadowcorn Supremacy.

Through these activities, players will be able to earn XAI Points each day for each category. Each player’s share of the daily rewards will be based on how many XAI Points they accumulated relative to how many total XAI Points were accumulated by all players in each category for the day.

The total amount of $XAI tokens distributed every day is fixed, ensuring we don’t have runaway rewards as new players enter the ecosystem.

Below is a breakdown of the $XAI token allocations for each category:

Daily Login

The Daily Login bonus is quite simple. Craft 1 of any item in the workshop and you’re all set!

This can only be done once per day. Players will get credit regardless of which item they choose to craft.

Questing

In Crypto Unicorns there are several different types of quests, provided from Questboards that are placed on Land and the Events tab accessible to players.

Beginner Quests

We have a Beginner Quest chain that is accessible through the Events tab and provides new players with the opportunity to jumpstart their farms.

The Beginner Quest chain requires players to complete each quest in order. As you go deeper into the chain, the difficulty of quests will increase but so will the amount of XAI Points earned for completing them!

The Beginner Quest chain can only be completed once and is only accessible to new players.

Daily Quests

Daily Quests are available through Questboard buildings that players can place on Land plots within their kingdom.

Every 24 hours, Questboards roll a new Daily Quest that will be one of the four tiers. Tier 1 quests are the easiest, with modest rewards, and Tier 4 are the hardest, with bigger rewards.

Leveling up Questboards will increase the chances of rolling higher-tier Daily Quests. Similarly, completing Daily Quests on Questboards that are located on Rare or Mythic Land will yield more XAI Points than Common Land.

Weekly Quests

Weekly Quests are also available through Questboard buildings. Unlike Daily Quests, which reset daily, Weekly Quests are a chain of 10 quests that increase in difficulty and rewards provided.

For Weekly Quests, land rarity and Questboard level are both taken into account when calculating XAI Points earned for completing any given quest.

Players with level 10 Questboards on Mythic Land will yield the most points!

Jousting

Jousting is an exciting part of the Crypto Unicorns core game, where players send their best Unicorns into the Jousting Arena to compete against other Unicorns.

Joust tournaments are available from Fridays 00:00 UTC to Sundays 00:00 UTC.

Unicorns earn Elo ratings based on their performance and can work their way up to higher-tier tournaments with better rewards. Tournaments are broken down into three tiers: Bronze, Silver, and Gold.

Shadowcorn Supremacy Scoring

The final category for XAI Points is reserved for Shadowcorn holders.

Shadowcorns are the evil counterparts to the happy-go-lucky Unicorns. Unlike the Unicorns, which can be bred to increase the population, Shadowcorns have a fixed supply of 3,000. They cannot be bred; there will never be more than 3,000 Shadowcorns in existence.

Shadowcorns cannot afford to lower their numbers any further, so they craft minions to fight their battles for them. For players, this means that Shadowcorns emit resources that are used to craft minions of different tiers.

Shadowcorn holders benefit from an ongoing Supremacy Score that is based on how many Shadowcorns and Minions one owns, as well as the rarity of those Shadowcorns and Minions.

Shadowcorn holders will receive XAI Points based on their share of Supremacy Score relative to all other Shadowcorn holders.

Simply put—the more Shadowcorns you own and the more Minions you craft, the higher your Supremacy Score will be.

Players will be able to track and claim their daily rewards at our new claim dashboard, accessible at: https://www.cryptounicorns.fun/claim

New Social Login & Transaction Flow

Several of the features for this update are dedicated to improving the new player experience further. To make logging into the game easier, especially for non-web3 natives, we’re introducing Third Web, an in-app wallet for seamless account creation and login experiences. Users can log in to CU using their Google, Facebook, or Apple accounts or entering their email addresses, and thirdweb will create a wallet on their behalf.

View our in-depth tutorial on Zendesk.

The primary benefit of the Third Web wallet login is an improved user experience when doing transactions within the game. Actions like breeding, hatching, and evolving Unicorns can be done without a new window popup, as usually required by metamask! Blockchain transactions can parse much more “naturally” without interruption to gameplay.

Players who choose to secure their NFTs on traditional hardware wallets can delegate access to a newly created Third Web wallet and receive the benefits of the new user experience without transaction confirmations!

Contextual Tutorial

Our new Unifam from Xai will have a helping hand to guide them in their first steps into the Unicorn Metaverse! Another feature targeted toward first-time players is the improved contextual tutorial. It covers buying and locking in assets, farming, questing, crafting, and gathering.

Already know your way around CU? Experienced players can exit this tutorial at any point by choosing the Opt Out button.

Gas Reimbursement

Aside from the fast transactions we all looked forward to, gas is also reimbursed in XAI! This applies to core game transactions such as syncing stash, locking and unlocking assets, breeding, and minting and equipping Gems. For Shadowforge players, this applies to claiming Shadowcorn rewards, staking and unstaking, upgrading Hatchery, Rituals, the Glue Factory, and Twilight Tactics.

Take note that there will be a cap on the amount of XAI we will reimburse to prevent abuse during periods of high gas costs. Any user found abusing this feature will have their wallet blacklisted from reimbursement.

All wallet addresses that were holding a CU asset at the time of migration have already been airdropped 0.1 $XAI to facilitate an easy start and cover gas for some transactions to get started!

Auto Energy Refill

We’re happy to hear that the community has positively received the Improved Building Interaction in the 3.3 update. We’ve also heard your feedback on the Unicorn energy refill when it comes to planting seeds and seedbags and for this update, we’re adding the Auto Energy Refill option in Settings. Your Last Used Unicorn will now auto-refill its energy when it lacks the energy to proceed with planting seeds or seedbags.

New Quest Chains

Grand Reopening Quest

We’re starting the core game’s relaunch on Xai with an event quest chain to challenge old and new players. Like other quests, players need to meet the requirements to initiate the quest. The stats of the Unicorns you select for the quest will also need to meet the stat requirements to reduce the risk of quest failure. UNIM rewards and XAI points are up for grabs in this quest chain!

Stat Quest Chain

A new stat quest chain will be unlocked after the 13th quest, Beginner Quest: Plain Berries. The Unicorn stat requirements get more demanding as you progress through the quest chain but the UNIM rewards, as well as the XAI points, also get bigger. High-stat Unicorns will shine in the later stages of this quest chain.

RBW to CU Cost/Reward Refactor

In light of our token conversion from RBW to CU, we’ve adjusted the in-game costs and rewards for items to reflect CU prices. For CU rewards, lootboxes, Jousting and Class Giftboxes, Jousting rewards, Daily Quests, and Collections have been adjusted with the 10 RBW:1 CU refactor. For CU costs, crafting recipes have also been refactored.

For Jousting and Class Giftboxes specifically, the CU values were adjusted for the 10:1 ratio and then further lowered to compensate for the new daily $XAI rewards connected to Jousting and Questing. Total rewards for these game loops have increased, despite less $CU being issued as rewards.

Quest Scroll Requirements

We adjusted the materials required to make quest scrolls. Instead of $CU, you will now need to submit 15 Raw Wood, Cheap Nails, Frayed Ropes, and Plain Berries for smaller batches of Tier 1 Quest Scrolls. You can also opt to craft them in bulk, requiring 10x the materials. You can also use these Tier 1 Quest Scrolls to craft even higher tier quest scrolls in the workshop!

Jousting Potions Requirements

With Jousting back online, Jousting ‘corns will need all the potions they can get! We’ve tuned the requirements for crafting potions, changing the required materials, and reducing energy costs.

Beginner Quest Chain

The costs to start the Beginner Quest Chain have been adjusted in this patch, requiring fewer berries for some quests.

Jousting Rewards

Jousting rewards were updated in 4.0 to reduce CU emissions. However, it’s important to note that XAI emissions are going to be added into the game as well. The idea to slow down CU emissions began around March, though based on community feedback at the time, the team has decided to revert the change. Post migration deemed to be the best time to update Jousting rewards, hence the tuning change.

The team will evaluate the results of the second Jousting weekend after migration and plan the potential adjustments moving forward. For a detailed explanation, please watch this section of our Town Hall #57 recording.

For the P2A Jousting Daily Rewards, any rewards claimed after the Jousting window ends will get the XAI rewards pushed forward to following week of Jousting day 1 (the next Friday UTC.)

Note: This Jousting Rewards section was added on July 7, 2024 2:43AM UTC. We apologize to the community for accidentally omitting this tuning change before the game went back online. There was some miscommunication on this while migration was ongoing and we aim to communicate changes better in the next patches.

CU Decimal Support

We’ve adjusted all text boxes where CU is relevant to support decimal places for the token. Quests, Lootboxes, Gathering, Workshop, Jousting, RMP, Gemworks, Collections, Mailbox, Tribe Creation, and the HUD were all updated for this.

Removed Progress Bar from Nursery

No more long waiting periods when you breed thanks to XAI’s fast transaction times! We removed the progress bar to decrease the clutter in the game’s UI.

Removed “Are you sure?” Modals

We’re continuing our initiative on reducing clicks by removing the “Are you sure?” confirmation modal for Sync Stash (In and Out), Inventory Stash In, Abandon Delegation, and Nursery blockchain transactions (e.g. hatching and evolution).

Updated Quest UI

We made checking your quests’ statuses easier by adding the following UI indicators:

“Ready to Claim” for finished quests.
“Time Left” with a remaining timer countdown for ongoing quests.
“Ends In” for limited-time quests/quests that expire after the specified time.

Before

After

Server Performance

We’ve implemented the first round of server updates that will help improve performance. We are targeting to release another round of server improvements in the next release.

Decrease Confirmations from 30 to 1

Since reorganizations are not a concern on Xai, the number of required confirmations is decreased from 30 to 1.

Last Planted Settings

We fixed the bug wherein if Last Planted is selected and a player runs out of seeds/seedbags, they will be allowed to plant the same seed/seedbag even if they don’t have it in their inventory. Seeds and seedbags should now be removed from being selected if they don’t have these available.

Last Crafted Settings

We fixed the bug wherein when Last Crafted was selected in Settings, after crafting an item in the workshop, the subsequent slots did not update the recipes and were not carried over to the next Workshop.

Unicorn Auto Assign

We fixed an issue wherein when Unicorn Auto-Assign was on in Settings, the auto-selected unicorns did not reflect the land type (ex. moving from a building in Star land to a building in Moon land with no filters on will put Star Unicorns on the slots meant for Moon Unicorns.)

Changelog

July 7, 2024 2:43AM UTC: A Jousting Rewards section under Tuning Changes has been added to explain the new Joust rewards in 4.0, as well as a reminder for players to claim the P2A Daily Jousting rewards.

July 1, 2024 9:11 AM UTC: The information on the “Stat Quest Chain” section has been updated from “Beginner Quest: Flower Berries” to “13th quest, Beginner Quest: Plain Berries”.

June 27, 2024 2:19 AM UTC: We included the expected time of the Daily XAI rewards to be claimable on the claims dashboard.

June 27, 2024 11:01 PM UTC: The values for the Shadow Scoring Supremacy have been updated to reflect the correct values.

Crypto Unicorns Blog