The Six Dragons Alpha Is Open – Should You Play It? Our Review

The Six Dragons is an open-world, single-player RPG that rewards players with blockchain loot. It has recently been released as an open alpha build.

We first mentioned The Six Dragons in June, 2019. At the time, there was no playable demo of it. But even then, we were impressed with the graphics and gameplay mechanics shown off in the developer’s video demo.

When we heard that the alpha demo was finally out, we were eager to playtest it and tell you what it is like. So we downloaded the game and played it for a few hours. This article will report on what we discovered.

The Six Dragons Concept

The Six Dragons is a single-player RPG. It runs on the player’s PC, just like The Witcher 3, Skyrim, or any other game of this type.

And like these other games, it offers character classes, unique spells and skills, experience leveling, gear, dungeons, and other features expected in this genre.

But unlike with these other games, The Six Dragons gameworld contains monsters that sometimes drop blockchain items. These items can be used to craft new gear and increase the character’s stats. Or they can be traded to other players for cryptocurrency.

This means that there is a uniquely social experience to The Six Dragons, despite the fact that players cannot inhabit the same instance of its gameworld.

Installing The Six Dragons Alpha

Players can install The Six Dragons by navigating to the official website for the game and clicking Play Now.

This will begin a download of a .RAR file called TheSixDragonsLauncher. This file can be extracted using WinZip, WinRAR, or other .RAR readers.

The launcher application is inside The Six Dragons folder. It’s called TSD Launcher.

When the launcher opens, the game begins downloading.

Blockchain Login

When the game first loads, the player needs to perform a “blockchain login.” This process can be started by clicking Blockchain Login from the main menu.

This brings up two buttons, one of which says “register new user” and the other which says “log me in.” Above these buttons reads the question, “do you have an Enjin account?”

In the current build, regardless of whether the player has an Enjin account or not, he must click register new user the first time he launches the game.

The next screen allows the player to enter a public nickname, email address, and new password.

After entering this info, the player can press register to complete registration.

Once registration is completed, the player can log in to receive a QR code. This code will allow him to link his Enjin wallet to his copy of the game.

For more information on how to use an Enjin wallet, read the section titled “How to Use an ENJ Wallet” in our full review of the EnjinCoin gaming system.

Note: If the player exits out of the game, he will need to log in again each time he plays. However, this can be done every subsequent time by clicking “log me in” and entering a username and password. Registration only needs to be completed once.

Controls

Most of the controls for The Six Dragons are standard. WASD moves the character. And left-click does a basic slashing attack. 

The hot bar at the bottom of the screen is bound to the numbers at the top of the keyboard. This bar is used to trigger skills. Players of Elder Scrolls Online will find this interface to be very intuitive.

However, there are a few controls that may take some getting used to. The left “Alt” key is used to disengage the mouse from camera movement so that the mouse can be used to point at things on the screen. T toggles the minimap, J brings up the quest journal, and “L” opens the skill tree.

A full list of controls can be found by pressing “M” and selecting settings → controls.

Equipping items

Player characters begin the game wearing no gear. So the first thing a new player will want to do is to equip some items. 

Pressing “I” brings up the inventory screen, and left-clicking each item equips it.

Some equipment slots will not be filled until additional items are bought from the town vendor.

Saving and loading games

Inside the starting town is a save/load NPC. He is wearing dark clothing and has a dagger in his hand.

Interacting with him produces a save/load menu. 

In the current build, there is only one save file allowed. And the game automatically saves to this file every few minutes. 

If the player character dies, he loses all experience and all non-blockchain items. However, it appears that the game does not auto-save after death. So immediately reloading after death should be a viable strategy to prevent losing levels/gold.

Buying gear

Behind the save/load NPC is a non-blockchain item vendor. New player characters can purchase additional items from this vendor to fill out their remaining EQ slots. 

A light is also sold here. This is useful for nighttime exploration and combat.

Experience, levels, and skills

Once a player is equipped with gear, he can go out into the nearby forest and start killing skeletons, spiders, and other monsters. Each monster killed awards exp and gold.

The Six Dragons is currently a grinding game. There are few quests in it as of yet.

When we began playing, there were no quests in the game at all. But as we were getting this article ready for publication, the developer added a single daily quest in each town. So more quests may be added in the near future, and this may make the less game less focused on grinding.

As the player gains experience levels, he acquires AP. AP is required to learn new skills and spells.

Skills/spells are grouped into four categories: wizard, warrior, cleric, and blacksmith. Each group has its own set of specialized skill trees. For example, the wizard group has one skill tree each for fire, electric, and frost magic.

As players spend AP on skills at the left side of the tree, they gain access to more powerful skills further to the right. 

Players can still buy skills from the left side of other trees if they want. So they can decide to completely specialize in one type of magic, for example, or dabble in several.

Gaining more powerful spells and skills allows the player to fight higher level monsters. For this reason, spending AP wisely is key to progressing in The Six Dragons

The skill trees can be accessed by pressing the “L” key. Once a skill is selected, it can be found by pressing “K.” From there, a player can drag it onto his hot bar so that it can be used in a fight.

Selling loot and buying consumables

Monsters drop all kinds of non-blockchain loot in The Six Dragons, including patterns, materials, and other items.

Many non-blockchain materials can also be gathered while exploring. For example, trees can often be chopped for wood and stones can sometimes be mined for metal.

Over the long-run, players will acquire rare recipes that will allow them to turn these non-blockchain materials into blockchain items they can sell for crypto. But in the beginning, they’ll want to get a more immediate benefit from this loot.

This is where the non-blockchain item vendor in the starting town becomes useful. All of the loot acquired from trips into the forest can be sold to this vendor for gold.

The gold can be used to buy useful items such as flags to mark places on the map, potions, or even a Scroll of Escape to teleport back to town when the player inevitably gets lost in the forest.

The Six Dragons Blockchain Loot and Crafting

In addition to non-blockchain item loot, players also sometimes acquire blockchain items as random drops from mob-kills. These items include celestial tokens, recipes, and blockchain materials.

These items, along with non-blockchain materials, can be used to craft unique blockchain items.

Celestial tokens

Celestial tokens (CTs) are a currency that can be used to buy materials in the Celestial Shop. This shop is accessed by pressing the “M” key and selecting it from the menu. 

CTs come in different “tiers” or levels. Higher tier CTs can be used to purchase materials needed to make higher-level gear.

CTs can be obtained from loot drops or purchased in-game with Enjin Coin.

Recipes

A recipe gives the player character “knowledge” of how to produce an item. A recipe is not consumed when an item is created. But if the player moves the recipe out of his wallet, his character will lose the knowledge of how to make future units of the item.

Recipes are awarded as random drops from mob kills. They are some of the most valuable The Six Dragons items in the marketplace.

Recipes are not available in The Celestial Store.

Blockchain materials

Blockchain materials include essences, gems, and matter. When a player crafts an item, he sends his blockchain materials to a special smart contract called a loot pool. This contract then mints the new item and burns (destroys) the material.

Essences are needed to craft weapons, gems for jewels, and matter for armor. These materials come in four rarities: uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary.

Blockchain materials can be obtained from loot drops or purchased from The Celestial Store using CTs.

Non-blockchain items

In addition to recipes and essences, matter, or gems, crafting an item also requires some non-blockchain materials such as wood, metal, leather, purple ore, or gold. In addition, each item requires a pattern.

These non-blockchain items can be obtained from loot drops or purchased in The Celestial Store. They cannot be sold to other players, but they can be sold to a vendor for gold.

Blacksmith’s Market

The Blacksmith’s Market is a marketplace that allows players to hire other players to craft items for them.

For example, let’s say that a player wants to craft a Tyrannical Mace, but he doesn’t have the recipe for it. He can gather the materials and use the Blacksmith’s Market to find another player that has the recipe. He can then pay that player a small blacksmithing fee to craft the item for him.

The blacksmith does not need to be currently logged into the game for this to occur. However, the blacksmith does need to have enough blacksmith stamina to craft the item. Blacksmith stamina is an attribute obtained by spending AP in the Blacksmith’s Resilience skill tree.

The Blacksmith’s Market can be accessed from any Workbench (crafting station).

TSDT

To avoid excessive gas fees, the Blacksmith’s Market uses TSDT (The Six Dragons Token) as a currency instead of Enjin Coin. TSDT can be purchased by pressing the “M” key and selecting Celestial Shop→ Buy/Sell TSDT.

The purpose of TSDT is to reduce Ethereum gas fees for players. For more information about it, see our news article on The Six Dragons Token.

Crafting a blockchain item

To craft a blockchain item, all a player needs to do is to go to a workbench and select Use My Recipe or Blacksmith’s Market. 

When the time comes to send blockchain materials to the loot pool, an alert displays on the player’s mobile Enjin Wallet. This alert asks the player to confirm the transaction and send materials to the loot pool address.

When the player confirms the transaction, the new item is minted and sent to the player’s wallet.

This developer video shows an early version of the blockchain crafting system in action. The current version looks different, but works in essentially the same way.

The Six Dragons Exploration

In order to gain blockchain materials and recipes, players need to thoroughly explore the gameworld of The Six Dragons. Here are some of the features of the game’s open world.

Two Hour Playthrough – Secret Agent Stache

Areas and villages

Players begin the game in the starter village of Aligren. Surrounding this village is a forest with low level enemies. As players advance, they can find other areas. Each area contains its own village.

Here is a list of every village in the game available so far.

• Aligren
• Zargat
• Mooria
• Reigfrez
• Agrazael
• Tilisen

Each village has its own save/load NPC, vendor NPC, and workbenches. 

Each village also has a portal that can be used to travel to other villages. However, these portals work like World of Warcraft “flight paths.” You can only travel to a destination by portal if you have already traveled there on foot at some point in the past.

Outside of each village is a dangerous forest or other landscape filled with monsters. Players explore these areas to kill monsters and gain loot, as well as to discover arenas and portals.

Arenas (boss fights)

When exploring, players sometimes run across magical gates that lead to Arenas. These gates can be unlocked using arena crystals. These crystals are random drops from mobs and can also be purchased in the game store.

If a player unlocks an arena gate and goes through it, he comes across a powerful boss that he needs to fight one-on-one. The loot drop rate from this kind of fight is much better than the drop rate from a normal mob fight.

Portals (dungeons)

Players can also run across portals that lead to random underground dungeons. These dungeons are filled with trash mobs that a player must fight his way through to get to the end. These mobs have better than normal loot drop rates.

Portals require portal keys to unlock them. These keys can be found as drops in the open world or purchased from the game store.

The Six Dragons Alpha Review

We played The Six Dragons Alpha for a few hours on two different characters. 

We started our first character as a frost wizard who slowed his opponents with icy magic. We got to level 3, but then realized that we were completely lost. There is no overhead map in The Six Dragons Alpha aside from a small minimap that only extends to a hundred feet or so. So we found navigating to be difficult.

Later on, another player on Discord lets us know about the Scroll of Escape that can be purchased from the vendor and used to teleport back to town. By the time we found this out though, we had already accidentally overwritten the save file and lost our character.

For the second attempt, we decided to play a fire wizard who specialized in AOE attacks. We made it to level 2 and used our AP to buy a nice fire storm spell with cool-looking animation and good damage.

This time, we made it back to the town by paying close attention to our surroundings, using the ocean as a point of reference. After returning, we sold our loot and made over 5,000 gold. This was enough to buy that Scroll of Escape we wanted.

Unfortunately, we once again lost our character. This time, we loaded a new game and left it running. This caused the automatic save to overwrite the previous save, deleting our character. 

But we still had enough fun that we’ll probably try again soon.

The Six Dragons is still in open alpha. It is not by any means a polished, finished product. It has the usual quirks any experienced alpha tester is used to seeing. 

But what we have seen so far indicates that this may be a very fun game once it is finished. If you’re a fan of RPGs and have been waiting for a blockchain version of one, you may want to check out The Six Dragons.

Still, some players may dislike the current build. The save/load system can be frustrating and the lack of an overhead map can be confusing. But these issues will probably be fixed in future builds. Some players may want to just wait until a little more development occurs before they start playing The Six Dragons.

Overall, we found The Six Dragons to be an excellent addition to the blockchain gaming niche. We’re looking forward to playing future builds when they are released. 

We’ll let you know more about this game as its development continues.