Preparing to find a blueprint

As the Illuvium team continues to put the finishing touches on Illuvium Zero, we find ourselves with some time to get ready for the big launch. In this article I want to help land owners see what Day 1 of Illuvium Zero may look like and how best to prepare for finding a blueprint.

Nexus

Let’s imagine the day has come and you finally get to login and jump onto your newly purchased Land plots. Not surprisingly, I staked my claim in Crimson Waste and will be scouring my plots for bio data and possibly a blueprint from the Rhamphyre line. So what do I do first? Each land owner will start their land development by building a Nexus.

This is the main building on your plot of land. It will take 5 seconds to build and require 100 Hydrogen, 200 Carbon and 200 Silicon. (It’s worth noting that the time and resource amounts needed to build were gathered from leaks months ago and subject to change. They are hypothetical and nothing has been finalized at the time this article was written.) This structure will airdrop a small amount of each base element daily as described by Johnny from the Illuvium team here:

This will ensure that you can never get stuck on your land by not having elements needed to complete tasks. It may take longer, but with a Nexus you are always able to complete a build eventually.

Engineering Workshop

The next building to construct will most likely be the Engineering Workshop.

This building will play an integral role as it enables the construction and upgrades of new buildings. The Engineering Workshop will take 60 seconds to build and costs 100 Hydrogen and 100 Carbon.

Once completed the game really opens up. Depending on strategy there are a number of different buildings you can construct. For the purpose of this article we will focus on efficiently building out the best set up for blueprints.

Differing strategies

Let’s stop for a minute and think about the ideal land plot for blueprint retrieval. Research requires Silicon so the best land for our purposes would have at least one of each element and fuel type, while also being heavily weighted in Silicon. Moreover, in a perfect scenario you would have a Halogenic Geode landmark, which increases Silicon production and reduces Silicon conversion losses. More Silicon means more frequent research attempts.

Building a mine

Alright, so at this point we have our two base structures up and running on our Silicon rich land. The logical next step is to build a Mine on top of your Crystal Deposits so you can ramp up your Silicon production.

The time needed to build a mine is currently unknown, but we do know that it will cost 100 Hydrogen and 50 Carbon to construct.

Building costs can add up

At this stage, land owners will have to start thinking about building costs and how they want to proceed. Will they wait days to accumulate the elements needed to build or will they purchase the resources on the secondary market? Let the game theory begin!

Singularity Scanner

Once the mines are built and we have Silicon flowing into our wallet we either need somewhere to store the excess or build a facility to spend it. I would choose the latter and get research started as quickly as possible by building a Singularity Scanner.

You’ll want this structure to be built on open land, isolated from everything else to maximize its scanning capabilities. It is unknown how long it will take to construct, but we do know the cost: 500 Hydrogen, 250 Carbon and 250 Silicon. This is our biggest purchase so far and will require either money or a lot of patience to complete. This is the crux of a city builder.

Material Lab

So now we have our mines humming and Silicon regularly feeding into our scanner to find Illuvial bio data! We’re off and running, but what is next? We need to build a Material Lab to research that bio data!

Once again the construction time is unknown, but we do know the cost: 500 Hydrogen, 250 Carbon and 750 Silicon. Sheesh good thing we have those Silicon mines up and running! Once we have the Material Lab built we are officially in the Blueprint business! Here are a few other key takeaways from Illuvium’s land expert Johnny:

My initial thoughts on this are:

1. You get more efficient at research as you do it so the earlier you start the better.

2. Finding a balance between Material Labs, fuel output and land space is key to efficiency optimization. Your set up will determine everything and thinking through the build and placement of each structure will be of the utmost importance.

At this point we have the foundation of our city complete. From here, we will continue to upgrade buildings, add additional buildings and constantly tinker to increase efficiency. This is what city builder games are all about and for the first time ever we will make real money from our efforts. Web 3 is a beautiful thing.

Thank You

As always, thank you for reading my article! Follow me on Twitter (@Rhamphy) to keep up with the latest Illuvium news, leaks and more.