My Crypto Heroes (MCH) is a turn-based RPG strategy game that runs in a web-browser. It has recently gained notoriety in the blockchain community because of its use of “heroes” that are ERC-721 tokens.
It has also become popular because of its association with the EMONT alliance, a group of PC game developers that are attempting to push EMONT as a universal, cross-game currency.
If you’ve read any news about My Crypto Heroes, you may be wondering if it is actually a fun game to play or if its Crypto Heroes are worth collecting.
To answer these questions, we decided to sit down and learn how to play it.
This article is the result of that investigation. We will explain everything you need to know about My Crypto Heroes, including how to sign up for an account, how to buy a hero, how to quest, and more.
Most importantly, we will consider the question of whether MCH is an entertaining game and whether its heroes and extensions are worth collecting.
Getting Started With My Crypto Heroes
To get started with My Crypto Heroes, first navigate to the game’s official website. Once there, you have two ways to create an account. You can either sign up with a Google account or with an Ethereum wallet.
If you sign in with a Google account, you will have access to three free heroes, but will not be able to purchase additional ones.
If you sign in with an Ethereum wallet, you will be able to access the full game features, including collecting heroes.
Whatever you accomplish on the Google account can’t be transferred to the Ethereum wallet version. So if you choose to use a Google sign in, keep in mind that you will have to start over if you later decide to switch.
Signing in with a Google account
To sign in with a Google account, take the following steps:
Click the big, yellow play game button.
Select sign in with Google.
Choose a name for your identity within the game. If you have an invite code, you can also enter it here. When you are finished, click OK.
If you are not currently logged into your Google account, you will be redirected to Google to sign in. Otherwise, you will be logged in and sent straight to the MCH main menu.
That’s all there is to signing up with a Google account.
Singing in with an Ethereum wallet
Signing in with an Ethereum wallet is a little more complicated, but still fairly simple. First, you’ll need to have a compatible wallet installed on your browser, such as Metamask.
If you don’t yet have it, here is a complete guide to Metamask, including installation instructions.
If you’ve already got Metamask installed, take the following steps to sign up for My Crypto Heroes:
Click the play game button on the home page.
Click on the captcha and answer the questions to prove that you’re not a robot.
Choose sign in with wallet.
Metamask will pop up an alert telling you that My Crypto Heroes wants you to sign a transaction. Click sign.
At this point, the MCH website will load a form for you to fill out. Use this form to choose a name for yourself within the game. If you have an invite code, enter it here as well. Once you are done, click OK. You will be immediately redirected to the MCH main menu.
Purchasing a hero
Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be given a team of three crypto heroes for free. The heroes are named MCH Warrior, MCH Tactician, and MCH Artist.
You may want to purchase additional heroes with cool names and artwork. However, we found that all of the on-chain, ERC-721 heroes cost at least 5,000 GUM, which is 0.5 ETH or around US$88. If you are still willing to pay that much for a hero, here is how to buy one.
Buying GUM
In order to purchase a hero, you’ll need the native currency of My Crypto Heroes, which is called GUM. To buy GUM, first click the market tab from the main menu.
It should automatically take you to the GUM store. If not, click the GUM tab.
Scroll down the page until you find the amount of GUM you want to buy. 500 is the smallest amount available, and can be purchased for 0.05 ETH (around US$9). But as we stated earlier, you will need at least 5,000 GUM to buy a hero that can be transferred to your wallet and possibly sold later.
Once you’ve found the amount of GUM you would like to buy, click the purchase price on the right side of the screen. For example, if you want to buy 10,000 GUM for 1 ETH, click 1 ETH. Metamask will pop up a window asking you to confirm the transaction.
Click confirm to finish the transaction. You should get an alert within a minute or two stating that the transaction has been confirmed.
A warning about those “Novice” heroes
Unless you really like the way they look, we want to warn you: do not buy the Novice heroes for 500 GUM. These heroes are off-chain. They cannot be transferred to an Ethereum wallet or sold to others.
If you buy one of these heroes, your money will be gone forever, and all you will have to show for it is a character that is ultimately not yours to own.
The developer is not clear about this issue at all, and we hope that some kind of warning will be implemented in the future to prevent collectors from accidently buying these off-chain heroes. In the meantime, this is your warning.
We have asked on the MCH Discord channel which heroes are ERC-721 tokens that can be transferred to a wallet.
We were told in response that all of the heroes except the novice ones are blockchain assets.
So if you want to purchase any of the uncommon, rare, epic, or Legendary heroes as collectibles or investments, you should be able to trade them to other collectors in the future (assuming that you find a buyer).
Viewing your collection
To see the heroes you’ve purchased, click the menu icon in the upper-right corner of the page. This icon looks like three horizontal bars.
From there, click inventory.
Your entire collection of heroes will be displayed.
Questing with your Crypto Heroes
Once you’re happy with your collection of crypto heroes, it’s time to send them on quests. Click quest at the top of the page to begin.
There are several areas, called Nodes, that your heroes can quest in. These nodes have names like Atanasoff ver 1.3 and Antikythera ver 1.3. Each one has different monsters and loot.
Clicking on a node will produce an information page for it. There, you will be told what monsters exist in the area and what pieces of equipment, called extensions, you can win from it.
Click departure to begin the quest. In MCH, a quest consists of three battles with monsters. And each battle consists of a series of rounds.
Teams
Before the quest, you’ll be offered the option to choose your team.
Each team consists of the three default heroes arranged in different orders. Unfortunately, we could not determine any way to swap out one hero for another.
For example, we could not find a way to build a team with Sun Shangxiang, MCH Tactician, and Raiden Tameemon instead of MCH Tactician, MCH Artist, and MCH Warrior.
But we did find it very easy to make MCH Tactician go first instead of MCH Artist, for example.
Given the importance of collecting heroes in these type of games, we assume that the ability to swap out heroes will be added in a future patch.
Once you’ve chosen your team, you can rearrange the order of each team member’s attacks. To do so, first click teams in the lower-right corner of the screen. Next, click the individual team member’s profile.
Finally, click the hand icon below the character’s portrait to enter the attack-order screen.
On the right side of each attack, you’ll see a menu icon that looks like three horizontal bars. Click these icons and drag them to rearrange attacks.
Fighting the battle
Once you’re satisfied with your team and order of attacks, go back to the quest screen and click go, then click ready.
Some fast-paced, adventure-y sounding music will play, and you’ll see your team members on the screen.
Scroll down the screen or click to see each round of the battle.
At the end, you will be told whether you won or lost. We found that fighting battles at normal difficulty was extremely easy.
And so far, we have not lost a single match. But some players claim there is a way to increase difficulty and get greater rewards. The game may be more interesting at these higher levels.
Once you are done with the battle, you will be told what your reward is.
My Crypto Heroes and EMONT
Before we go into the actual review of My Crypto Heroes, we should say something about the relationship between MCH and the EMONT Alliance.
Many players first hear about MCH through discussions about EMONT, and they may expect to find that heroes can be purchased using EMONT or that EMONT is somehow given out in rewards.
However, we found no use for EMONT within My Crypto Heroes. The heroes are sold in exchange for GUM, a centralized currency entirely native to MCH, and the rewards given out are pieces of equipment worn by the heroes.
Some of these pieces of equipment are “replicas,” which are centralized assets. Others are “originals” that are ERC-721 tokens. Regardless, there don’t appear to be any EMONT rewards in MCH.
Despite this appearance, there must be some relationship between MCH and EMONT.
There are plenty of media reports that suggest MCH has given out EMONT as a reward from time to time, and MCH is listed on the EMONT Alliance’s official website.
But since we didn’t see any use for EMONT during the time that we played, we have to conclude that it probably plays a very minor role in the game.
My Crypto Heroes Review: Is it Worth Playing?
Overall, we found playing My Crypto Heroes to be a very frustrating experience. The lack of any way to switch out heroes in a team meant that we were stuck with the boring default heroes.
There were also no inexpensive options for new heroes to add to our collection. We did get a free hero named Sung Shangxiang that was modeled after the main character from Romance of The Three Kingdoms.
She had a bow and arrow and looked quite fierce. But because there didn’t seem to be any way to put her into a team and actually use her to battle, this didn’t do us much good.
As far as the questing experience is concerned, we found the combat to have entertaining music and visuals…at least as entertaining as can be expected from a low-budget, browser-based game. But the enemies were no challenge at all.
Despite this frustration, it should be kept in mind that MCH may be in an early stage of development. Future patches could make the game much better than it is today.
But for now, there are certainly better blockchain games available than My Crypto Heroes.
