What is Illuvium: One of the Best Upcoming NFT RPGs

The alien world of Illuvium allures thousands of RPG and NFT gamers, as well as video game aficionados. 

Not only will players feel the adrenaline thrill of collecting creatures and winning quests—but they’ll also experience the rush of minting an NFT for every 3D monster they capture.

Plus, players get to immerse in the first-ever AAA-rated Ethereum blockchain game. It’s an exciting time as Illuvium promises to usher in a new era—one that merges 3D online gaming and cryptocurrencies.

What Is the Illuvium Game?

Illuvium is an open-world sci-fi role-playing game (RPG) full of adventure. It’s built on the Ethereum blockchain and has a play-to-earn structure. Scheduled for release in 2022, Illuvium is poised to attract adventure game lovers with its monster-collecting, auto-battling features, as well as its immersive 3D gaming experience.

Note: Since Illuvium is still in development, some game details discussed below are subject to change.

Illuvium has an interesting storyline

There’s wreckage. You’re the only survivor.

It sounds like the usual plot in adventure games but wait for it—Illuvium offers more.

You’re actually a member of an intergalactic space fleet, you’re a part of the transport ship, and you’re coming in answer to a call of distress.

The call had come from a mysterious planet, now ruined and almost completely at the mercy of a vast crystal ocean, covering its surface.

As you were nearing the planet, an extreme weather event occurred at the surface. You witnessed a sudden burst of radiation! Unfortunately, it disabled your ship’s engines. You crashland. Wreckage—it’s all you see.

In the land around you, you start to see mythical creatures with elemental powers. They’re the Illuvials—the natives of the strange planet called Illuvium.

As if it’s your date with destiny, your kind of people happens to have mastered the energies these creatures possess. That means you have the ability to capture these Illuvials and eventually control them.

You store each captured Illuvial in shards—in slivers of crystal.

As you begin to uncover the mysteries of the planet, you embrace the role of a hunter. You explore the land to capture more Illuvials.

Each successful venture rewards you with unlocked obelisks. Each unlocked obelisk opens your door to more challenging regions and more epic adventures.

Illuvials possess elemental powers

At least 100 Illuvials are waiting for you to discover. Some of these are a no-brainer to find and capture. Other creatures challenge the hunter in you as they’re incredibly rare.

Illuvials are divided into a few classes, namely, Rogue, Fighter, Psion, Guardian, and Empath. They have corresponding elemental affinities—air, water, earth, fire, and nature. These determine the abilities and superpowers the Illuvials possess.

Capture Illuvials and mint NFTs

Once you capture an Illuvial, you mint a new NFT. The NFT is stored in your player’s wallet.

Illuvials have this interesting ability to synergize and form relationships with each other. Common affinities or classes dictate the nature of the synergy. With each kind of energy, you get a specific bonus.

If you’re keen on gaining more power, you can capture as many Illuvials as you can and then fuse them together. You execute the fusion through a burning mechanism.

This act of “burning” destroys each source NFT that represents each Illuvial. It may be an emotional choice for a sentimental player, but a smart one will choose to do it anyway. The fusion will mint a new NFT that represents a more powerful godlike creature.

Illuvium is an auto-battler game

Winning battles is another reason to fuse captured Illuvials together. You can form a dream team of ultimate fighters with your upgraded Illuvials.

You have two setups for battles: PvE (player versus environment) and PvP (player versus player).

Dream of becoming the best hunter on the planet and accomplish just that by maintaining your winning streak.

As you involve your team in more battles, you’re also training them, making them stronger, and developing their superpowers.

Win in-game rewards with Illuvium

Illuvium gives you rewards in the form of ILV tokens. You get them when you participate in competitions and complete quests.

The world of Illuvium not only entices you to interact with Illuvials—but you also you get to play around with interesting items. These in-game items are fascinating, particularly because they exist as NFTs. You also store them in your player wallet.

In-game assets include skins, emotes, collectibles, and more.

Once you have a nice roster of ILV tokens and in-game assets, you can trade them in-game or in IlluviDex. IlluviDex is Illuvium’s in-game marketplace. You can also trade the Illuvium NFTs in third-party platforms such as OpenSea.

How Does Illuvium Stand Against Other NFT Games?

One of the most popular standards among play-to-earn NFT games is Axie Infinity (AXS). Illuvium offers a similar but vastly different and upgraded experience.

Instead of pets, mythical creatures are there for you to capture. But more than an upgrade from cute pets to godlike monsters, it’s also one dimension higher. Yes, Illuvium will be in 3D. AXS is only in 2D.

Illuvium’s massive landscape is open for players to explore. Its high-production NFTs attract gamers and investors alike. Its storytelling reveals parts of the plot in stages. You make sure to want to progress because you want to dive deeper into the story. 

In short, Illuvium could be the NFT game for you if you enjoy high-class AAA-rated games. If your relationship with video games leans toward obsession, you could get addicted to Illuvium.

Professional digital artists made Illuvium possible

The rich graphic features you’ll see in Illuvium’s game world have been crafted by no less than professional digital artists.

Creators of the game use proprietary technology to render the assets seamlessly. As a result, you’ll experience a cinematic feel while gaming. With swift graphics load time, it’s easy to get plugged right into the world of Illuvium.

Realistic experience with Unreal Engine 4.26

Unreal Engine 4.26 makes Illuvium’s stunning visuals possible. This “engine” is a high-level real-time 3D creation tool.

Developers have created the game’s simulation code in C++ and hooked it up to Unreal Engine to produce immersive battles. The technology allows the execution of each instant in the game in milliseconds.

Players with not-so-powerful phones and gaming devices may still experience renders in high quality—thanks to the cinematic mode Illuvium devs have also created.

Currently, there are yet no immersive, open-world RPG NFT games that offer quality 3D special effects.

Illuvium is poised to open a new era of convergence between cryptocurrencies and 3D online video games, hence the buzz surrounding its soon release.

What Are Illuvium’s Plans for Launch?

According to Illuvium’s official game roadmap, the devs will launch the game’s beta version in 2022. There are no exact dates yet, but expectations are already brewing. RPG and NFT game enthusiasts are looking forward to Q1 of 2022 to test Illuvium out.

The roadmap reveals that Illuvium’s first title is bound for release on PC and mobile in 2022. Meanwhile, 2023 is the tentative schedule for the second title’s release.

What Makes Illuvial NFTs Attractive?

Among the biggest selling factors for Illuvium is its integration with Immutable X. This technology makes transactions with Illuvial NFTs instant and with zero gas fees.

In short, Immutable X gives Illuvium Layer 2 scaling capabilities. The project allows Illuvium to increase transaction throughput and scale the network to as many as 9,000 transactions per second and even more.

What this means for players is a distraction-free exploration of the Illuvium world—no more constant gas fees and delays in transactions.

“Scalable” in the perspective of the player simply means being free to explore Illuvium, collect Illuvials, fight battles, and earn.

What Are the Benefits of Owning ILV Tokens?

Owning ILV tokens gives you the power to propose improvements to the Illuvium ecosystem.

Creators of the Illuvium project wanted to give the power of governance to the people, hence the Illuvium Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).

Through the “Illuvinati Council,” holders of Illuvium tokens will be the ones to govern and maintain the protocol. Meanwhile, the community of ILV token holders will be the ones to vote for Council members.

Another benefit ILV token holders will enjoy is liquidity mining. You can stake tokens and earn more ILVs as distribution yield. You will then receive a share of vault distributions.

This liquidity mining benefit is a form of reward to early adopters. It also attracts new adopters to participate more actively in the ILV community.

There’s another form of ILV called the sILV or Synthetic ILV. You can use it as an in-game currency but not in transactions between players. If you stake ILV, you can earn sILV.

Illuvium and the New Era

As ambitious as it sounds, Illuvium has successfully created hype about its soon release. Its never-before-seen offer of AAA-rated 3D immersive gaming within the blockchain space drew the attention of gaming enthusiasts and NFT collectors alike.

Illuvial NFTs are promising to usher in a new era of gameplay and cryptocurrency.

Whether you’re coming from a purely video gamer’s perspective or from an NFT investor’s mindset, you’ll find this ambitious project worth the attention and the wait.