New Mines of Dalarnia Economy Design

9 min readJul 20, 2023

Hello, Dalarnians!

Today, we are thrilled to present the New Mines of Dalarnia Economy Design. With the help of our Game Economy Designer, David Otero, we have prepared this article to explain everything to you as clearly as possible.

Since the launch of Mines of Dalarnia we have been observing and adjusting the game economy with the objective to set it up as a sustainable and engaging blockchain game. The upcoming changes are the next step in Mines of Dalarnia’s evolution and will allow us to grow the community with a lasting effect

As Crypto Games are still in their infancy, and as a result, every project is still discovering best practices and new learnings everyday. This is a normal process for any new technology, and “Mines of Dalarnia” is no exception.

However, the most critical aspect is that we continue to identify our weaknesses, rectify what we can, stay current, and remain at the forefront of what web3 has to offer. But without any further ado, let’s dive in.

New Player Progression

The current player progression system offers a limited number of levels that are excessively spread out, each requiring a significant amount of time to level-up. The system lacks granularity and a more engaging level-up experience.

With this in mind, we’ve developed a new player progression curve with many more levels and a smoother slope. This enables players to level up more quickly and frequently than before, and allows us to unlock more game content along the player’s progression curve. In the future, we also plan to distribute some loot in all level-ups as well. All things considered,we hope this will result in a more enjoyable and improved player experience for all miners.

An entirely new Mining System

Current land system contains lands that are significantly imbalanced. At present, the profitability of a land is primarily dictated by luck, rather than management skill: you may strike it lucky with a good land, or you might not. This circumstance presents several issues. Let’s delve into the most significant ones:

90% of our lands are not competitive

In a well-balanced economy, rent prices should reach a point where both landowners and miners can profit from their actions. Unfortunately, when we calculate total replenish costs, including gas fees and in-resources value, we can see that for 90% of all land, a point that could satisfy both parties simply doesn’t exist, no matter how much MoD would scale. Either the landowner profits, or the player does. Consequently, the entire Mines of Dalarnia game economy depends on a maximum of 10% of the lands.

2. Landowners are permanently tied to their land configuration

Having only 10% of lands supporting the entire game is problematic, but manageable. Regrettably, those 10% lands lack diversity. There are insufficient high-quality lands for new miners, and not enough lands for intermediate ones which significantly detract new players’ gaming experience affecting their interest in our game. This issue affects our senior players only indirectly, but what’s similarly damaging is the fact that relying only on a small portion of total lands puts us into the risk of losing land. As no matter if the landowner ceased playing and didn’t sell their land, lost access to their wallet, or just stopped refilling his land for any reason, we lose even more diversity. If we lose too many of the top lands, MoD could become unplayable, as low-tier landowners cannot simply replace the ones we lose.

We and players as well could clearly see this issue especially after inventing gilded lands, when sometimes only few of them were active at time being.

3. Landowners lack control over individual depth replenishment and rent price

When you replenish your land, you have to do it for all depths at once, which inflates the replenishment cost. Furthermore, without the ability to set a different rent for each depth, the rent price will always be unfair for those wanting to mine on Depths 1 and 2. This is an even more significant issue for new players, as there are no lands specifically targeted to them. It also leaves landowners in a difficult position, without the room to make management decisions.

4. Lack of competition among landowners

Due to all the factors mentioned above, competition among land owners is virtually non-existent. This allows owners of top lands to arbitrarily raise or lower prices, leaving no room for other landowners. This situation is not only detrimental to landowners, but also to players.

5. Players lack control over what they extract from the mines

Lastly, if a player desperately needs Silver, they can’t simply go and mine for it. During a mining run, they will always bring back all the resources in the exact ratio for that depth. And if the land is scarce in resources, they will retrieve even less of the only resource they need.

With all of the above in mind, we have designed a new Mining System incorporating the following major components:

Introducing Resource Mining

With the new economy design, the old mining system will be supplanted with a completely revamped mining mode where you can directly choose during gameplay what you want to mine, collect and extract from the mines. While lands will still contain different resources in varying quantities, you will now find resources right in the mine instead of score gems. You will have a backpack with 50 slots, with each resource occupying a different number of slots, and you will receive a time bonus if you exit the mine quickly enough. We don’t want to spoil too much, so please await the full preview, but this will result in a more strategic approach to mining, always within what is healthy for our game economy.

Equal Lands

To ensure that MoD is future proof, we had to make the difficult, but essential decision, of making all lands equal, not attached to any metadata, any depths, and any resource distribution. This way, Mines of Dalarnia will not be dependent on only a few users, but any community member will be able to step in and fill any space needed. That way, from the new economy design onwards, all landowners will have at their disposal the same replenishment capsules to choose from, with the exception of the Deeper Depths capsules. There will be multiple different replenishment capsules, each will replenish the land with a different set and amount of resources, and will require a specific Power Level (PL) to be mined. This means each land will have a single depth deployed at a time with only a single mine configuration.

This way, Landowners will pay less than before to replenish, and will set the rent price for just one mine configuration. All capsules of the same depth have been balanced against each other (the in-game need for these capsules will be similar) but with different configurations. The reward bonus will no longer exist and cooldown times between replenishes will increase.

Alongside new game modes such as competitions and the Mining Corporation, there will be a higher demand for resources. This will lead to players mining more than before and needing to mine a much wider variety of Mine Configurations to collect all the required resources. As a result, many more lands will need to be active at any given time. When we start onboarding a significantly larger number of players, most of our active landowners will be able to successfully replenish their lands and see them fully rented every week.

This change also introduces a strategic layer of decision-making for both players and landowners. Players will need to choose the best Mine Configuration to achieve their next goal, and inside they need to choose what resources and in what ratio to extract from the mine. Landowners will need to manage their lands considering which Mine Configurations are most needed at the moment or could be required in the coming days. Resource management will also be more important with several capsule configurations allowing for a more specific approach to replenishment. This strategy will foster healthier competition between landowners, benefiting not only players but the entire MoD ecosystem.

Mining Corporation

To heighten the demand for resources within the MoD ecosystem and initiate a regular distribution of our Play-to-Earn allocation, we’ve designed a new game mode — the Mining Corporation. In this mode, you can manage a Mining Corporation of autonomous robot-minions that mine on your behalf. It’s a strategic idle game where you’ll need to decide daily what minions to craft and deploy in the new mine of Luna Praxis. However, exercise caution, as some different Catastrophic Events can occur during each season, and if your mining-minions aren’t properly protected, all your achievements could be lost. Each minion will cost you resources and will add velocity, defense, or efficiency to your Mining Corporation. At the start of each season, The Metagalactic Collective will announce the total DAR allocation for that monthly batch. At the season’s end, they will purchase all resources mined from all Mining Corporations, allocating each one its cut based on the total mined resources. As it’s impossible to retrieve minions from Luna Praxis, at the end of each season and before the Metagalactic Collective deploys a new planetary replenishment capsule, Mining Corporations can save their remaining minions in a Legacy Mine, where they will continue to mine a small amount of resources indefinitely.

Please note that this is an independent and separate game mode, where mined resources are restricted to this game mode and cannot be traded.

We are incredibly excited about this new feature and will bring you more news about the Mining Corporation very soon.

Significantly lower player fees

The final stage of our new economy design implementation involves reducing the fees paid by the players during regular gameplay by at least 50%. We will roll this out in two phases:

The first phase, already underway, involves the implementation of off-chain crafting and a comprehensive review of all our smart contracts to boost gas efficiency.
The second phase will commence when we transition to a blockchain more geared towards web3 gaming, and consequently, offers significantly lower gas fees.

The introduction of the new economy design will be carried out in incremental steps over the next few months to ensure a seamless transition. We are thrilled to embark on this new phase of MoD with you all and we are committed to keeping you abreast of all developments as they happen.

New Economy Roadmap

Ongoing Phase 0: Reducing fees

Refactoring new contracts (Mostly done)
Migration to new network (To be done whenever possible)

Phase I: Equal Lands + Resource Mining

All lands made equal, not attached to any metadata, depths, or resource distribution.
Multiple different replenishment capsules for each land with specific resources and amounts.
Each land will have a single depth deployed at a time with only one mine configuration.
Resources are found in the mine instead of score gems.
Players have a backpack with 50 slots, each resource occupying a different number of slots.
Time bonus rewards for quick mine exits, promoting a strategic approach to mining and a healthier game economy.

Phase II: New Player Progression:

A new player progression curve with more levels and a smoother slope.
Players can level up more quickly and frequently, unlocking more game content along the way.

Phase III: Mining Corporation:

Completely new P2E Feature
You’ll be rewarded with DAR
The acquired resources will not be tradable and will not consist of existing resources

AMA Invitation

We understand the impact and importance of the in-game economy for everyone, and we are committed to maintaining maximum transparency. Therefore, as one article cannot address all your topics and concerns, we have decided to organize an AMA dedicated specifically to the economy.

To prepare, we would like to invite everyone to leave their questions on a dedicated thread that has been opened on the General Discord channel.

We’ll be collecting your questions until Monday July 24th 2PM UTC.

Your questions will then be answered through a video that comprehensively addresses these topics which will be released on Thursday, July 27th. However, if some questions require more time to answer thoroughly, the release may be postponed. Our goal is to make this video as informative as possible for you.

Visit our Website: https://www.minesofdalarnia.com/