Ethermon Review And Playing Guide – Pokemon Meets Ethereum

• Ethereum required
• Metamask required
• Currently playable
• Top 5 on State of the DApps (January 2019)

Ethermon (formerly Etheremon) is a new game that incorporates blockchain technology to allow true ownership of in-game items.

It is sort of an Ethereum Pokemon, but with the added twist that you can sell your “mons” for real cash after you have powered them up or transformed them.

This Ethermon review will explain how to get started catching, training, and leveling your mons.

It will also consider the question of whether Ethermon is worth playing.

Ethermon: A Digital Collectible Game

Ethermon is a digital collectible game. Traditional online games run on a centralized server In these types of games, your character and in-game items can be deleted by the developer if you violate the terms of service or for any other reason.

They can also be lowered in power if the developer thinks this would make the game more balanced. In these types of games, players also generally can’t sell their characters or equipment for cash if they decide to quit playing.

By contrast, in paper collectible games such as Magic: The Gathering (MTG) or the Pokemon trading card game, players own the assets the game provides.

If a player buys a pack of MTG cards and pulls a rare card that is very powerful, the developer of the game cannot lower the power of that card or delete the card.

Players can also sell their cards and recoup their “investment” in the game when they quit. They may even be able to turn a profit when doing this.

In a digital collectible game, players retain most of the benefits that come from a paper collectible game. The developer cannot delete their characters or equipment.

And if the company goes bankrupt, players still own their in-game assets. As a result, these assets can be used in a future version of the game created by another developer or in a different game altogether.

In a digital collectible game, players also gain the advantage of playing across a computer network.

They can find opponents 24 hours a day, seven days a week, instead of having to find people face-to-face and coordinate time to play with them.

The Goal of Etheremon

There are two central goals to Ethermon:

1. To own the very biggest and baddest mons (characters) in the game. These mons can be caught, trained, leveled, and transformed
2. To have the most money, called “EMONT,” of anybody around. In other words, to be rich within the game

Getting Started with Ethermon

To get started playing Ethermon, you will need to acquire at least $10-$20 worth of ether, transfer it to a Metamask wallet, and register for an Ethermon account.

If you already have ether in a Metamask wallet, skip down to the section titled “registering for an Ethermon account.” Otherwise, keep reading for some general information on how to obtain ether.

Buying Ether

Ethermon runs on the Ethereum blockchain network. Every action you take in Ethermon must be transmitted to the Ethereum nodes and recorded.

To pay for the computers to record these transactions, you will need to have the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, called “ether.” 

You can get ether by either mining it yourself or purchasing it from an exchange. But mining it can cost almost as much in electricity as purchasing it does.

Mining ether is also a lot more complicated than just buying it. So I would suggest getting it from an exchange.

If you would rather mine it though, here is the official Ethereum Foundation page on how to mine ether.

You can buy ether here.

• Coinbase

Transferring ether to a Metamask wallet

Once you own some ether, you will need to withdraw it into your Metamask wallet so that you can use it to play Etheremon.

Here is the official video on how to download and transfer ether to Metamask:

When your ether is in your Metamask wallet, you have full control over it. Your identity as the owner of Ethereum assets tied to this wallet can be verified using a file on your computer called the private key.

To protect your ether, mons, EMONT, and other assets from being stolen, you should never give the seed words for your Metamask wallet to anyone.

And you should keep multiple backups of these words. If your PC crashes and you do not have backups of these seed words, you will lose all of your Etheremon characters, money, and items.

Registering for an Ethermon Account

Once you’ve got ether in your wallet, registering for an Etheremon account is simple. Just navigate to Ethermon.io and click sign in in the upper-right corner of the screen.

If you are signed in to your Metamask wallet, you’ll get a message saying that the website has detected your account address.

Click sign in again. Metamask will popup and ask you if you want to sign the transaction. Click sign from within the Metamask window. You’ll be brought to the new account signup screen.

Put in your email address in the field provided, and make up a display name that you will be known by as an Ethermon trainer.

Then, click register. You’ll get a message saying that you are ready to start the journey.

Click catch mon to get started in the game.

Catching mons

In order to win battles, you will need to build a team of at least 3 mons, although six is preferred.

You cannot have more than one mon of the same species in the same team. For example, you cannot have two kiyaris or two omnoms on the same team.

There are many mons from the current generation available in the official store. To buy one of these, click the shopping cart icon at the top of the homepage.

Prices currently range from free to 0.1857 ETH ($23.44 at the current exchange rate).

If you just want to try out Etheremon, the three free ones are a good option. You can attack in practice mode and gain experience with just the three free mons.

However, you cannot defend without at least six different mons. So if you want to farm EMONT in practice mode, you’re eventually going to need to pay for at least three more mons.

To catch a free mon, click the mon’s image to be brought to its info screen, then click catch now with 0 ETH.

Even if a mon is free, you will still have to pay the Ethereum nodes to record the transaction on the network. In my experience, each transaction costs around $0.25 worth of ETH to process.

But if the network is especially congested, it may cost more than this. Metamask will prompt you with the price and ask you to confirm. So if the price is too high, you can reject the transaction and wait for an off-peak time.

The free mons do not go up in price when you buy them. However, the other mons available in the official store go up in price each time they are bought.

And they eventually go extinct after a certain number of them are sold. An extinct mon can only be bought from the market.

Buying mons from the market

If you want to get some powerful mons to play right away, another option is to buy mons from the market. These are mons that players have already spent time leveling.

Some of them are also extinct. Mons in the market are usually more expensive, and more powerful, than the ones offered in the official store.

To find mons from the market to buy, click the third icon from the left at the top of the page (the one that looks like a building).

Prices in the market range from 0.007 ETH ($0.88) for a level 4 Kyari to a whopping 100 ETH ($12,625) for a level 27 Mawverize.

Training mons (gym mode)

Once you’ve got your team of six mons, you can train them in the gym to gain experience. Click the VS icon at the top of the screen to go to battle mode.

Then scroll down to the bottom and click gym mode. On the left, select which of your mons you want to train. On the right, select three sparring partners.

To maximize xp gains, you want to pick the highest level sparring partners available. If your mon gets 100 exp, he will reach level 2 and become more powerful.

If his level gets high enough, he will eventually be able to transform into a different form.

Questing with your mons (adventure mode)

You can send a mon off on a quest. Go to battle mode by clicking on the VS icon, then scroll down and select adventure mode. Choose a mon and a location.

An overhead map will open. Move around and explore the map until you find the mystery gate.

At this point, you can send your mon through the gate. He will go on a trip for 30-60 minutes. When he comes back, he will have a photo of himself in the place he visited and one or more valuable items.

The valuable items could include EMONT, booster shards, exp, Mystery Monsters, or level-up pills.

Practice battles (practice mode)

Once you’ve got all of the booster items and exp you want, it’s time to build a team and start battling. Before entering a battle, you will need to claim energy.

To do this, click the VS icon and look at the statistics on the left side of your screen. Beside “energy,” you should see a plus sign. Click this plus sign. This will bring up the option to claim 10 free energy.

You can claim free energy once per day. If you need more, it is available for purchase at a rate of around 0.012 ETH ($1.43) per 10 energy.

You can claim free energy once per day. If you need more, it is available for purchase at a rate of around 0.012 ETH ($1.43) per 10 energy.

Once you’ve got your energy, scroll down from within the battle page and select practice mode. Choose the mons that will make up your team and choose your opponent.

You need at least three attackers to form a team. If your team has six members, you can both attack and defend. Click battle when you are done selecting a team and opponent.

The website will display animation showing your team battling the other team.

When the battle is finished, a results page will display.

Both the loser’s and winner’s mons gain experience when they battle. But the winner gains more.

Defenders are also rewarded with EMONT each time they are attacked.

Only mons that are below level 20 can be used for practice mode. If your mons are higher level than this, you will need to participate in ranked battles instead of practice.

Ranked battles (ranked mode)

If you have played in practice battles and feel like you know what you are doing, you may want to try ranked battles.

From the battle page, scroll down to the bottom and select ranked mode. Choose your team and opponent. Click battle. The process for ranked mode is very similar to that of practice mode.

In ranked mode,you will only be matched up against teams that have the around the same Elo rating as yours.

However, the minimum rating contains teams that have mons of around level 20. So if your mons are not at least level 20, you will probably get demolished even by the weakest teams.

Each time you win a battle in ranked mode, you earn some EMONT.

The reward was 0.5 EMONT per win in April, 2018, when ranked mode was first released. But the reward declines as time goes by, increasing the scarcity of EMONT and making it harder to farm.

In addition to this reward for number of wins, players ranked 1st to 5th in the overall standings can swap their energy each day for EMONT.

This allows them to sit out matches and farm EMONT passively, although this may lead them to lose their ranking if they do it too often. Still, it’s a nice reward for players who end up being the best in the game.

Selling your mons and EMONT

If you get tired of playing the same mons over and over again, you may reach a point where you want to sell them and buy new ones.

To sell a mon, click the my mons icon at the top (the first icon from the left). Click the mon you want to sell. When the info screen appears, click sell.

Enter the price you will charge for your mon, plus a 3% transaction fee. Click place order. Your mon will appear for sale on the market page.

If you want to quit the game altogether, or if you just want to “cash out” your winnings to buy off-game items, you will also need to sell your EMONT.

To do this, you will have to set up an account with an alt-coin exchange. As of today, RadarRelay is the only exchange that will buy EMONT.

The developer of Etheremon hopes to get more exchanges on board in the future.

Is Ethermon worth playing?

If you are considering playing Etheremon, the first thing you should be aware of is that the game can get expensive very quickly.

Every transaction costs around $0.23 worth of ETH to write into the Ethereum blockchain.

Although this isn’t much money, it adds up over time. If you play Ethermon continuously, you can easily burn through $10 in an hour or two just from gas fees.

The second thing you should be aware of is that the game is slow. Most transactions take at least fifteen seconds to process.

And after they process, you have to click force sync on the Ethermon website to get the page to update. This can be very tiresome and irritating.

On the other hand, if you are willing to be patient, playing Ethermon can be a lot of fun.

You can buy a few mons, train them up, form a team, and battle once a day for a minute or two. Over time, you can see your mons growing in experience levels, transforming, and becoming more powerful.

This isn’t a game that you can play for eight hours on your day off. That would be too expensive and too frustrating.

But for a few minutes a day, it can be a satisfying addition to the other games you play on a regular basis.

So don’t give up your World of Warcraft subscription to play Ethermon. But if you want an extra game to play and don’t mind your team developing slowly, Ethermon is worth checking out. If you are looking for the “Ethereum Pokemon” game, this might be the game for you.