Axie Infinity is a digital pet universe where players battle, raise, and trade fantasy creatures called Axies.

Axie is the first blockchain game to introduce:

A mobile application.
The ability to earn money by simply playing the game.

This guide will help you learn the basics surrounding gameplay & earning through the Axie Community Alpha application.

If you still need to setup an account and acquire Axies, start with this on-boarding guide.

What’s an Axie?

Axies are fantasy creatures that players can battle, collect, and raise.

Each Axie has different traits which determine their role in battle.

Stats

Each Axie has 4 stats, Health, Morale, Skill, and Speed.

Here’s what they do:

Health: The amount of damage your Axie can take before being knocked out.

Morale: Morale increases critical strike chance. It also makes entering last stand more likely and adds more last stand “ticks”.

Skill: Skill adds damage when an Axie plays multiple cards at once (combo).

Speed: Speed determines turn order. Faster Axies attack first. Speed also decreases an Axie’s chance of being the victim of a critical strike.

Body Parts

Each Axie has 6 body parts: eyes, ears, horn, mouth, back, and tail.

Horns, Mouths, Backs, and Tails determine which cards an Axie can use in battle.

Each body part also adds stats depending on the class of the part:

Plant: 3 HP + 1 Morale

Aqua: 3 Speed + 1 HP

Reptile: 3 HP + 1 Speed

Beast: 3 Morale+1 Speed

Bug: 3 Morale + 1 HP

Bird: 3 Speed + 1 Morale

Classes

Each Axie has a class which is similar to the “types” from Pokemon. Each class is weak and strong against other classes. When calculating damage, the card class of the attacking move is compared to the Axie class of the defender. This means that a Bird card used to an attack a Beast Axie will deal 20% additional damage. A Beast card used to attack an Aquatic Axie will deal 20% less damage.

Battle System Mechanics

The Axie battle system is turn-based card game where the goal is to eliminate all enemies your team of 3 Axies is facing. Each turn, a player must strategically play cards that maximize their chance of victory.

Due to the mechanics of the game, most new players field teams that consist of 1 tank and 2 attack/support Axies.

The tank should be placed in the front of your team so that it draws incoming attacks like you can see in this example.

Each Axie can draw from a pool of 4 potential cards in battle. Each card comes from a body part — Mouth, Back, Tail, and Horn.

A “Tank” can be defined as:

Adept at absorbing damage.
High HP stat (50+).
Having at least 2 high shield cards (70+). More is preferable but can also increase the price quickly.

You can find a full list of cards here: https://dappsuniverse.com/axie/cards-explorer

Tips

Almost all plant class cards are good tank cards.
Reptile and aquatic cards can also be tank cards.
Self healing cards such as Shiitake and Rosebud can make a tank more resilient.

These are examples of tanks:

Next, we can search for some damage dealing Axies.

In general, damage dealing Axies:

Have at least 2 cards with 100+ damage.
Sacrifice survivability (HP & shield) for damage output.

Here are some examples of good damage-dealing Axies:

Tips

Speed can be useful on damage dealing Axies, allowing them to incapacitate an Axie before it can attack.
The skill stat adds damage on comboes.
Bird & Beast cards are almost always good damage dealing cards.
Morale increases chance to critical strike, dealing 100% more damage on an attack. This makes high morale Axies (generally beast and bug Axies) good fits for the damage dealer role.

Breeding & Earning in Axie Infinity

Likes real-world pets, Axies can be bred to create new offspring. These offspring can be used in battle, breed new offspring, or sold on our marketplace.

In order to manage the Axie population, breeding has certain resource requirements.

Each Axie can be bred a maximum of 7 times.

Breeds cost .002 ETH as well as Small Love Potions.

Small Love potions can be earned by playing the game in PvE Adventure mode as well as the PvP Arena.

In the graphic 1 potion= 100 Small Love Potions.

The cost to breed two Axies will be based on the breed count of both parents. For example, two Axies that have 6 breeds each will require 2,600 Small Love Potions to breed.

As of January 8th, the cheapest Virgin Axie (0 breeds) costs around .01 ETH which is 5x the breeding cost. This means that with some time and effort, there is a clear path to earning in Axie Infinity.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

Small Love Potions are also tokens which can be traded on the decentralized exchange, Uniswap.

You can buy/sell SLP on the Decentralized Exchange, Uniswap, here.

If you don’t want to use your potions to breed, you can instantly sell them.

Advanced users can also try acting as liquidity provider/market maker. You can learn about how to do this here.