What's up ONEUP fam, I hope you are all doing well! I've seen a lot of fantastic posts recently from this community and would like to share my own experience in a "Play2Earn" game that doesn't seem to be discussed nor mentioned much.

This game is called Neon District, I will give a quick run down of what the game is about, and how to go about playing before I explain my "method" of profiting.

Before I start I will put out a disclaimer; Earning potential from this game has gone down drastically since I joined early into its lifespan, as to be expected with many games. But the good news is, or bad news depending on how you look at it, the game is heavily botted.

What do I mean when I say heavily botted? I will explain more into the game-mechanic side later. But for the marketable side, it is good.. I think.

Due to items being minted on Polygon's MATIC it allows assets to be created and transferred extremely cheaply for the Neon District team, coupled with an infinite supply of assets this is a bots heaven. Asset prices are a shadow of what they once were, but as to be expected. The good news is for whatever reason unknown to me OpenSea buying bots have been purchasing Neon District assets endlessly for the past few months.

Now throw in the change OpenSea made to Polygon held assets only list-able now for upwards of $2.00 or more, it leaves a much higher chance of earning potential for us. See image below~

(Assets selling for under $2.00 were listed as $2 previously before a market decrease in the price of ETH)

As you can see, items of all rarity are selling every minute or so for at least $2 (when the market corrects).

Again, the game is heavily botted. So I see this now as just an earning opportunity via bots buying my useless items that are infinite in their supply due to how the game currently is.

Now, they do have new investments and are planning a big overhaul for the game with plans to include a full Cyberpunk Metaverse, with that being said currently the game is worthless as well as the assets. Only until they change the games mechanics, items, loot system and much more would I feel its an investment to hold "NFTs". Neon on the other hand, is a different story.

Neon is used to purchase loot boxes, more in-depth explanation soon I promise. But with their new $5 Million dollar investment and plans of the future, I personally am going to hold onto my Neon in the hopes of packing opening new, limited NFTS when the time arises. You can read about the investment in the tweet below~

We're excited to share the news that we've raised $5M from kindred entrepreneurs to build an accessible, immersive, and open NFT metaverse within Neon District. 🚀https://t.co/VVSASqMsVO

— Neon District (@neondistrictRPG) November 24, 2021

WHAT IS NEON DISTRICT?

What is Neon District? here is an excerpt from their website~

Neon District is a free-to-play cyberpunk role-playing game featuring collectible NFTs on Matic and Ethereum. Players collect characters and gear, craft and level up fully-equipped teams, and battle their teams against other players through the Neon Pizza competitive multiplayer missions or in real-time turn-based combat.

I have been playing the game for close to 1 whole year now and have yet to play any real-time turn-based combat mechanics, which was one of their big selling points. But I guess its still in the works. Let's hope the $5 Million can help speed that along some.

What is Neon Pizza?

In Neon Pizza, players send their pizza delivery teams out to earn more Neon, Juice, and Parts to buy gear crates and level up characters, armor and weapons. You can choose between being law-abiding members of Neon District and deliver pizzas to hungry citizens, or you can exploit the system and ambush other players to steal their earnings. Or do both! No matter which you choose, you earn plenty of Neon and badges, while climbing the ranks of notoriety in Neon District.

Now they make this part sound interesting, which at the start I will admit was kind of fun, now its more lack-luster than anything with the sheer amount of overpowered bots competing for Neon.

Now time to get into the explanation of how the game works, finally! if you are still with me, congrats.

This is Neon District, when you first join you will be gifted a free character as well as 300 Neon to purchase 3 more characters to form a team. Each character will be unique in their base stats leading more technical players to spend Neon acquiring the perfect stats they require, as we are just starting I would recommend saving the Neon to use towards a Loot crate later on.

There are six different classes you can see below, each having their own stat preferences and abilities with a basic description of each on the character selection menu. Once you have selected your free character, you can go back to the menu.

Now that we have our first character, lets put him into a team. Under "Battle" hit "Team Setup" Then proceed to click the "+" button, add your character to a team and hit save.

With your new team, you can now send them out on deliveries to start earning Neon, the in-game currency of Neon District. Neon is used to buy loot crates or for buying juice and parts which are used for upgrading characters, armour and weapons.

From the Neon Pizza tab, select your team you've just created with your one character.

Now there are two tiers of delivering pizza, Tier 1 is passive, and you will earn around 80 some Neon per shift, which last for around 8 hours. 1 "Pizza delivery" generally, an hour.

Tier 2 is higher stakes as your character can get "ambushed" by another team, i.e the bots mostly. And you will lose out on majority of your Neon, good news is Tier 2 generally does give a higher payout per mission, even after being ambushed. Downside is you need to "BANK" your earnings in-between every "delivery" you make or you risk earning nothing at all.

If you want a easy, passive game to join where you can potentially earn some free cash every few days, Tier 1 is perfect for you. Queue up your mission, let it run for 8 hours. Come back, bank your earnings, queue a new mission. Loot creates are 500 Neon, average you are earning is 80 on-top of the 300 you did not spend earlier, perhaps only 1 full day until you can open your first create and unload them items into OpenSeas for the bots to snag up.

If you are curious about Tier 2 or would prefer to earn more Neon, I will go about explaining that now!

This, is Tier 2. I am currently delivering Pizza and have been ambushed. The team is quite geared and overpowered compared to my own, I know just from looking at this guys team that I will not win.

Opening up the delivery overview we can see I've lost 17 Neon, that I was supposed to earn from delivering my pizza. Now Tier 2 generally pay higher per job, so on average I should be earning 30, due to an ambush I've lost well over half my earnings and if I don't bank my 13 Neon left over once this delivery is complete, the next ambusher has the potential to steal the 13 I did not bank and another 17 from my current job.

Highlighted in the red box is "open a hit contract" what that allows is for us to get revenge ourselves, or put a contract out in the open for anybody to act upon.

Now, generally if you are a new player and have just joined, but jumped into Tier 2 for the higher earnings, I recommend opening hit contracts as fast as possible after you've been jumped.

(Jobs give a timer per how long each delivery should take out of your 8 hour shift, so you can time when to check back in.)

As ambushers who have not banked their own Neon also have the ability to lose their holdings to another player, at a split of 50/50 between me and the hitman, which I will show you now~

So instead of opening a hit contract on this guy, I decided to inspect his characters myself to determine if I could beat him for a higher reward as ambushing myself, I keep all of my earnings. But of course I'm no match for this guy, but another bot is!

I proceeded to open the hit contract and almost instantly it is fulfilled. Earning me 87 Neon and the Hitman 87.

Comparing only one successful ambush hits profit to a whole 8 hour shift in Tier 1, makes you want to grind Tier 2 forever, but it is not always profitable, majority of the time the bots would have banked any earnings they have and you and the hitman will both be left with 0 Neon even after successful victories.

This part is mostly all about luck. I have had some big big hits where people don't bank their neon as there is a 40 Neon fee to fence your earnings if you are an ambusher! more on that shortly.

I apologise for the little discrepancy in the Neon in both photos, in-between taking images another hitman completed his job and earned me 9 Neon more.

Now fencing is not important unless YOU are ambushing. If you are ambushing with your own team, you are at risk of counter-ambushes, or hit contracts being opened upon you. If you are the one merely being ambushed and opening hit contracts on your ambushers, you face no issues on fencing your goods when you see fit.

You will not be at RISK until you attack another team yourself, then hit contracts can be opened upon your successful or unsuccessful ambush. So I highly recommend leaving any fighting up to the bots now.. and pocket as much Neon yourself as you can!

Here you can see the estimated time left until your delivery is complete, upon which you'd start a new delivery up until your last job of your shift (8th/9th job) so it's highly recommended to keep an eye on the timer to bank your earnings before you are ambushed due to another job starting.

Of course, per ambush you receive, instantly open a hit contract upon said team to maximise your potential returns. The longer you leave the contract un-opened the less time a team have to complete the hit, and the higher chance they've already banked any earnings they may hold. (possibly, there is always an off chance they are still ambushing actively when you open a hit on them at any given time.)

Above is a prime example of why its not worth ambushing yourself, nor investing the time and Neon into levelling up characters and gear at the current stage of the game. Again with bots running rampant it leaves little room for this to be beneficial, I successfully won my ambush, earned 0 Neon then proceeded to be ambushed back almost instantly due to a contract being opened on my head. If I held any Neon I would've lost it before I could fence it.

Under the Criminal Activity tab we can preform ambushes on others delivering in a Tier 2 zone, you will need to pay a fee upon attacking whether you win or lose the fight, the fee varies depending on the amount held in pocket and earned via that current mission. You can gather "intel" for free, which is basically viewing your opponents team/stats.

Example: If I know my team to be undebatable, I could hold all my earned Neon in my pocket, prompting my base ambush fee to go higher. And If I defeat an ambusher while delivering my pizzas, I am awarded with the fee they paid to ambush me.

Again, concepts are all fine and dandy, until the bots populate and take over. This method was once viable for me, winning a good 90% of my battles through levelling up my characters and gear into specific trees or stats. Now I leave all the fighting to the bots and sit on the sidelines selling my items. 😁

Loot crates come at 500 Neon per and contain a total of 4 items of random rarities. Now since I have recommended you guys to buy and sell your items ASAP, doesn't mean I am. I have been invested into this game for close to a year, with new investments flowing through the company hopefully in the near future we get an actual playable game, with the vision of a "metaverse" I can see myself profiting more when new loot is introduced into the game and hype around a playable metaverse.

Touch wood.

But at my current holdings, I can purchase upwards of 50+ crates. This number is probably nothing compared to the bots out there, but perhaps it will be worth it one day. Or it could not, which is why I recommend profiting now if you have just joined or will join because of this post.

Here are the current assets I hold. Mostly they are equipped to my characters, hence why I haven't sold them yet. But if you did choose to withdraw and sell your items I will show you how to~

To withdraw an item some conditions need to be met first;

1. The item must be minted first, which can take some time depending on how busy the Neon District queue system is, as well as how congested the Polygon MATIC network is. Both play a big factor in the time it could potentially take for your item to be withdrawable.

2. The item is NOT equipped to any character.

As you can see the two highlighted boxes in the image above. One is displaying the MATIC symbol which displays if your item is withdrawable currently or not. If there is no symbol your item is still a virtual one, yet to be minted. And the other is displaying which character our item is equipped to.

Excuse the yellow highlighting in the second image! the red contrasted a little too much 😈

Anyway, as you can see its pretty simple to withdraw your assets, all you do is hit the transfer button then proceed to copy your wallet address from MetaMask.

I have highlighted my item stating it is already held in my wallet, thus withdrawn already! Due to how active the game is with botters + how busy the Polygon network has became recently, you could see yourself waiting upwards of a WEEK for withdrawals. Possibly longer, so I advice you to withdraw your items as soon as they are minted and withdrawable.

How will you know if they are withdrawable? without checking nonstop? Good question! due to the items minting, you have a "holding" wallet, this wallet basically acts as a cold wallet for your minted items that have nowhere to go yet!

Here is an example, once you've withdrawn your first asset you can track your cold wallets address via OpenSea and see which other assets you have not withdrawn yet, as it gets a little confusing with everything mashed together and no filters via NeonDistrict.

As you can see I've mostly withdrawn everything I own (and sold.) minus characters and a couple other assets.

I've mostly AFK'd Neon District the past 6 months seeing as bots make it unenjoyable to me anymore, but writing this post has inspired me to ambush more in the hopes of future earnings..

worst comes to worst I can open 50 crates, pocket myself 200 items and try list them all for $2 per on OpenSea 😂

Earning potential has dropped drastically from the days I was selling 1 Legendary item for $40 per. Now a Legendary and every other rarity seem to all be a base $2 or less via other platforms.

I would recommend selling via OpenSea, it may be a tad slow but eventually they will sell. Especially if the price of ETH drops! If you are willing to sell lower than the minimum OS require, I would recommend Lootex.io you can list for MATIC tokens but the platform is not the best nor user-friendly at all.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

This is the longest post I've written since joining Hive, I hope I haven't rambled too much and can provide a good review/opportunity for you guys even if it is a few dollars every so often.

Thank you so much and take it easy ONEUP family 😎