Metal War Game: Ultimate Starter Guide

Written by Regi Stubbs

June 8, 2021

metal war game

Last updated: 16th of July 

Metal War Game is one of the newest NFT games and it’s still in alpha. It is created by a small team from Eastern Europe. 

Metal War Game has risen dramatically in price. And not without reason, because out of all the NFT games, Metal War Game has the highest return of investment (ROI). Most of the games make you around 20% per month, which is a lot, but at Metal War you can easily double that. 

Compared to other NFT games, this game is a bit more complex. Therefore, we have created this comprehensive Metal War Game guide so you can get started easily.

The main currency in Metal War is Metal (MWM) which is consumed by all units through necessary repairs. 

The Hamster is the only unit that can mine MWM. The Wolf, Ant, Skunk, Raccoon and Elephantor are combat units. Unlike the Hamster, combat units can be used during Raids to obtain valuable Shards. Shards are small pieces of a unit. And with enough Shards, you can assemble a new unit, basically minting your very own NFT. 

The Hamster is the only unit that cannot make NTFs. Its role is to mine Metal and provide combat units with this precious resource, so to speak. You don’t necessarily need a Hamster because Metal is just a token that you can also buy on exchanges.

Gameplay Metal War

Metal War has 2 play options: Automatic and Manual. At this point in time, only the automatic modes are activated while the developers are still working on the manual modes. 

We’ll explain everything about the automatic gameplay mode and what we know about the coming manual mode.

Automatic mode

Right now, it is only possible to play the automatic mode. Automatic mode does not offer much to make exciting gameplay, but it is already possible to obtain Metal and Shards, thus to earn money.

Obtaining Metal and Shards can be done by selecting a unit and then clicking on the “Mine” or “Raid” button next to it. You’ll immediately receive the reward. The unit is then given a 12-hour cooldown during which time you can neither deploy nor unstake the unit.

In automatic mode, units lose 100% of their health with each deployment. At any time, units can be repaired by clicking the repair button on the left. This consumes Metal according to the amount of health that must be restored. Stronger units have more health, resulting in higher repair costs.

Once the HP is 0, the unit is “broken” and can no longer be deployed or unstaked. But not to worry, by spending metal and fully repairing the unit, the unit is ready for use again.

Manual mode

The developers are currently developing a manual mode. In the future, you can choose to continue playing the automatic mode or switch to manual.

In manual mode, you can work with a team to defeat bosses (PVE) or take on other players (PVP). 

The developers aim to release the PVP mode first by the end of August. Manual PVE is expected to be released by the end of 2021.

PVP

The PVP map is divided into tiles. Units can freely move on the map, but every tile they move, gives them a few seconds cooldown. The length of the cooldown depends on the unit. Wolfs are fast while Elephantors are slow.

Orbs will randomly spawn on the map which hold precious MWM. Players can visit these orbs with a unit and mine MWM. The MWM is then stored in the unit. Unfortunately, units cannot store unlimited MWM from orbs. Especially a unit like a Wolf has a very small capacity. The capacity is displayed on the NFT’s meta data.

To release the MWM mined from the orb to the player’s wallet, the player has to safely make it to a garage. If a player gets PK’d on their way, he not only loses the mined MWM, but the unit’s HP will also deplete.

A destroyed unit only requires some MWM for repairs to be fully functional again.

The garage is a player-owned building which can be obtained by owning a garage NFT, soon to be dropped. A garage will initially cost 450$ to purchase and will act as safehouses in PVP.

Thanks to the manual gameplay mode you can influence the outcome of a fight which will increase the fun enormously. But it will also allow you to earn even more money.

A ton of information about PVP in Metal War can be found on this Twitch stream with Sammysnake and Kang which was held on the 28th of June.

Shining

With the coming Shining feature, players are able to sacrifice 3 normal units to get a single, more powerful unit. There are 4 types of Shine:

  1. Common.
  2. Rare. Requires 3 common units.
  3. Epic. Requires 3 rare units.
  4. Legendary. Requires 3 epic units.

So to get a Legendary unit, you’ll need to burn a total of 27 common units. 

Only rare units or higher are eligible for PVP. The higher the rarity, the better the stats will be. Specifics are not yet released.

How much do you earn with Metal War?

Most blockchain games are played because you can make money with them, and that is also an important component with Metal War. The question, of course, is “approximately how much do you make with Metal War?”.

Metal war currently has the highest ROI in the blockchain gaming industry with 1-3% ROI per day if you’re a hamster owner. This is due to the relatively high Metal prices.

In-game you can make money by mining MWM with Hamsters and then selling the token for WAX. Or you can use combat units to produce valuable NFTs, however, producing units has come less profitable over time because of falling unit prices and the increase of Metal. 

Earning money by mining MWM

As of the 8th of July, a Hamster costs 5000 WAX, which is around 650$. It mines 1000 MWM at a time and consumes 400 MWM in the process. Thus, a Hamster effectively earns 600 MWM per mine. Given that the price of MWM is currently 0.06 WAX ($0.007), you would make 36 WAX ($4.32) every time you mine. 

So if you mined 2 times per day, you would earn 72 WAX ($8.64) with 1 Hamster or 1.5% ROI per day.

That’s good, in blockchain terms, but quite a high entry barrier since most people are not willing to invest this amount of money. However, there is a possibility that MWM will become much higher in the future. So this could definitely increase. 

If you’re curious about the current earnings, check out our Metal War Calculator

Making money by raiding shards

As mentioned earlier, a combat unit can produce NFTs through Shards. Currently, this is a lot less profitable than it used to be. Lower tier units (Wolfs and Ants) are running at a loss while higher tier units (Skunks and up) are still making profit.

What are shards?

Shards are small pieces of a unit. For each unit, there is a corresponding Shard and at 500 pieces of the same Shard, you can create a brand new NFT with a click of a button.

Shards are an in-game currency. It is actually a fungible token that players can trade with each other. You can buy and sell them on Alcor exchange.

How you obtain Shards is as follows: a wolf receives  Wolf Shards and Shards from a higher-level unit, an Ant Shard in this case. This applies to every unit. Remarkably, the Elephantor is the only unit that can produce Hamster Shards.

Every time you mine, you receive 5 Shards of the same unit type and 5 Shards from a higher-level unit.

Making a new unit (minting your own NFT) consumes 500 shards. You obtain 500 shards of the same unit in 1000 raids, which at 2x mines per day, and using only 1 unit takes you about 50 days. After this period, you will have created 1 of the same NFT and 1 of a higher level. So it’s safe to say that a unit reproduces itself in almost 2 month’s time.

Unfortunately, raiding or mining is not entirely free. Every unit breaks down when it’s being sent out. At any time a unit can be repaired in exchange for Metal (MWM). 

Stronger units require more Metal to be healed. Here’s a list of the repair costs at 0 HP per unit in ascending order.

  1. Wolf: 125 MWM
  2. Ant: 200 MWM
  3. Skunk: 200 MWM
  4. Raccoon: 350 MWM
  5. Hamster: 400 MWM
  6. Elephantor: 450 MWM

Profit calculation example: 

As of the 16th of July, a Raccoon costs 1000 WAX to buy off the market and consumes 300 MWM (18 WAX) in 1 raid. 

1 raid delivers 5 Raccoon Shards (worth 8 WAX) and 5 Elephantor Shards (worth 19 WAX). So in total, 27 WAX per raid. 

After repair costs, you are left with 9 WAX per raid. 

Some time ago everyone was making a lot of money raiding, but because of recent price changes most of the units are not very profitable anymore.

The ROI varies enormously per unit and is also something that constantly shifts due to the extreme volatility. In fact, ROI depends on unit prices and the price of MWM.

The expectation is that units will become profitable again soon as a consequence of natural market cycles.

If you’re curious about the current earnings, check out our Metal War Calculator.

What are collectibles?

When Metal War launched they issued 3 types of collectibles that give a special passive bonus to whoever holds it. They are the Pioneer, the Early Miner and the Early Commander.

These tokens are also all tradable on Alcor Exchange under the names PDT, MDT, and CDT.

Using a token for a repair consumes it. So 1 token only gets you 1 repair at a discount. In 24 hours a collectible will give you 48 tokens in total. 

Collectibles are never issued again and are very scarce. In fact, only 100 Early Commanders exist.

How to obtain Metal War Units

Atomic Hub or NFT Hive is the marketplace for Metal War Game. If you want to start playing the game you will first need to buy a unit through one of these marketplaces. 

On Atomic Hub you will quickly see the metalwargame collection under markets. Make sure you turn on whitelisted NFTs because there are also fake collections in circulation! Check very carefully that the collection name is exactly the following: metalwargame

Then click on units to see all units. 

Promo items cannot be used in the game. You can of course always buy them if you like the design.

Tip! Sometimes it can help to negotiate with other traders on Metal War Game’s Discord channel first.

Metal War Packs 

If you don’t want to buy units and would rather take a gamble, you can also buy packs. Again, make sure it’s not a promo pack because it doesn’t contain any units you can use in game.

You can buy three types of unit packs:

Packs are only available through the marketplace now. The developers of Metal War Game said they are not going to introduce new (unit) pack sales in the future and want to put unit production entirely in the hands of the players.

Promo packs

promo pack metal war gameThere’s also a promo pack on the market. Collections often release promos to give people some teasers on the design.

Please be advised, this pack doesn’t reward you with usable units. Although, the promo pack does contain beautiful artworks. A promo pack looks like this:

Metal Boxes

metal box metal warStrolling around at the marketplaces, you might have come across the metal boxes NFTs. There are 2 types of metal boxes: one that contains 50 metal and one that contains 500 metal.

These NFTs can be exchanged in-game for the metal token, but that’s it. If you are looking for metal, you’re probably better off just buying it on Alcor.

Since boxes usually are similar to packs in the NFT world, people sometimes mistake metal boxes for the unit packs. To be clear, boxes have no other utility than providing you with a small amount of metal token.

Best way to get started

To play the game you need 1 NFT because, unlike Alien Worlds, you’re not getting anything for free. Each unit in the game is an NFT so you need to go to one of the marketplaces first. 

To start, we recommend buying a Hamster with the method explained above. Get your feet wet and see if the game is something for you. 

Once you’ve bought at least 1 unit, navigate to https://game2.metal-war.com.

Log in with your WAX wallet and Press “push units into game”. 

Check out the “INFO” tab. Here you can stake and unstake your units by pressing the  “use in-game” slider. Sign the transaction and you’re good to go!

The only thing you have to do is click the button “MINE” or “RAID” and repeat this 12 hours later.

You can basically play on two different interfaces. In the main menu or in the information menu where everything is a bit more simplified. Or if you’re tech-savy, you can also send a raw transaction to their blockchain contract ;).  See what you like best.

After a mine or raid, you need to repair your unit(s). The best choice is to buy some MWM off Alcor exchange. 

In case you love Metal War Game (like me), you can consider selling your house and kids and buying more units.

Tip! Set an alarm clock every 12 hours to raid and mine as much as possible. The trick is to create a new unit as quickly as possible so you can fully use the compound effect to earn money even faster.

Exchanging MWM to other currencies

On Alcor exchange you can buy and sell both Shards and Metal. If you want to buy Shards, type ”sh” in the upper right corner to see all Shards.

All Metal War Game tokens on Alcor exchange: 

  • SHW = shards wolf
  • SHE = shards elephantor
  • SHS = shards skunk 
  • SHH = shards hamster
  • SHR = shards raccoon
  • SHA = shards ant
  • MWM = metal
  • PDT = Pioneer discount token
  • MDT = Miner discount token
  • CDT = Commander discount token

Metal War Tokens are traded against WAX and some also against R-Planet Aether. 

Solving Common Errors and Frequently Asked Questions

Common errors

Metal War War is currently in alpha which means it isn’t as stable as preferred. After all, it is still a new game where bugs need to be fixed. In practice, the developers act quickly and the bugs are fixed within a foreseeable time! Our compliments.

Because we have experienced a number of Metal War Errors ourselves we know exactly what you can do. Because we know how frustrating it can be, we would like to share this knowledge with you.

Can’t see your units after staking. At first you may be a little shocked when you can’t see your units, but don’t worry if you can’t see your metal units right away, this is often a user interface problem. Fortunately, your units have not disappeared, all your NFTs are neatly stored in the blockchain. 

First, check if the units have arrived at metalwargame. You can check this on a block explorer like https://wax.bloks.io. Enter the name of metalwargame in the search field and you will see all account activity if you scroll down. Then search for your transaction. Here’s the direct link: https://wax.bloks.io/account/metalwargame

If the NFTs have been transferred to metalwargame, you need to do the following steps to solve the problem.

  1. Clear cache (Control + Shift + R on windows, and Command + Shift + R on Mac) and try logging in again.
  2. Log in using a different browser such as Chrome or Firefox. In some cases, people can log in if they are using browser Brave. Be sure to hit the “shields off” button before logging into Metal War. Also, you can try logging in from your mobile phone.
  3. Finally, if steps 1 and 2 don’t work, you can try logging in with a VPN. Usually the problem is solved when connecting to a Canadian server. 
  4. If nothing works, you can wait for a new Metal War update. For most people, waiting for a while is usually effective.

In case it’s still not working and you want your units back you can always unstake manually by directly communicating with the blockchain contract of Metal War.

  1. Go to https://wax.bloks.io/contract?tab=Actions&account=metalwargame&action=unstake
  2. Enter your WAX address as the name.
  3. Then enter assets ID like this:
    [“99999999999”]
  4. If you don’t know your assets ID, you can find them in your account activities on wax.bloks.io. Log in and hover over your wallet’s name in the top right corner. Then click “View account”. Once you scroll down, you should see an activity of you sending assets to metalwargame with the memo “stake”. Copy the ID of the assets.

manually-unstake-metal-war-game

Metal war error you are out of cpu. One of the most common errors on blockchain games on WAX is the dreaded ‘billed CPU error’. This error usually occurs for beginners because they still have to get used to the WAX blockchain. For all transactions in WAX and thus in Metal War Game, you use the CPU power of other computers. For someone who does infrequent transactions, this is free, but once you start doing more transactions in a short period of time, you need to stake a small bit of WAX to be entitled to more CPU resources. Staking WAX is like lending. It’s redeemable in 72 hours and even earns you some more WAX. If you have a lot of units, you need to stake approximately 50 – 100 WAX, but this depends on how crowded the WAX blockchain is.

Cooldown error. This happens when you try to send out a unit twice. In some cases the blockchain or UI could lag behind a little bit, making you do the same transaction twice without realising. Just wait a few seconds and see if a countdown timer appears. If not, try sending out again.

Frequently asked questions

How many times a day should I mine?

You can only mine 1 time per 12 hours. So 2 times per day if you’re highly efficient.

How can I add the Metal War tokens to my wallet?

To add a custom token in your Anchor or WCW, go to wallet.wax.io or your Anchor wallet and click “Add custom token” at the bottom of the page. The contact address is metalwarmint, you can then add tokens symbols you would like to add (MWM, SHW, SHP, etc).

For token images, use these links:

MWM https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/mwm_metalwarmint.fc1798f.png

SHW https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/shw_metalwarmint.4666cb1.png

SHA https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/sha_metalwarmint.1ac8447.png

SHS https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/shs_metalwarmint.f47ba40.png

SHR https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/shr_metalwarmint.fc15a29.png

SHE https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/she_metalwarmint.1997aff.png

SHH https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/shh_metalwarmint.f686393.png

PDT https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/pdt_metalwarmint.11a2529.png

MDT https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/mdt_metalwarmint.c35a5f2.png

CDT https://wax.alcor.exchange/_nuxt/img/cdt_metalwarmint.da80335.png

Can Metal War Game be automated?

Most likely, but please do not use a bot. This is because the developers of Metal War Game have bot detection that will only improve. 

In order to keep the NFT game metal war game as fair as possible, the developers are doing everything they can to keep bots out. Bots ruin the game for everyone and can eventually shut down a game.

Can I mine with multiple accounts in Metal War Game?

Moderators have frequently said that using multiple accounts can result in a ban. Whether this will lead to losing all your units is unknown, but the risks are high.

Where can I see the player ranking?

The amount of units players have and how many points they have acquired can be seen at prospectors.online. The points acquired reflect the amount of shards and MWM a player has generated. See: https://prospectors.online/metal/metal-players.html

5 Strategies to maximize profits in Metal War Game 

With a few simple tactics, you can effectively increase your profits. Here are some ways to make money. 

1. Prevent running out of Metal

Without metal, you cannot repair your units. You could buy hamsters to maintain a steady flow of MWM production. Or if the price of Metal is low, it can really pay off to just buy it straight from the market. Calculate in advance how much MWM you will need for all your units. This way you can make sure that you’re not overpaying on Metal and can keep on raiding continuously.

2. Only keep the most profitable units

Profitability fluctuates often. As soon as a unit becomes way more profitable in comparison to others, you’ll see that the price of that specific unit will increase a lot. You could speculate on buying and selling units and benefit from price swings.

3. Buy and sell shards

Some people sell their shards every day because they need the money. Other people need a few more shards to complete their unit and are willing to pay a little extra for the last Shards. You can exploit this opportunity by setting buy orders at relatively low prices on Alcor exchange. And when some of your orders get filled, you can set a sell order at a higher price. You need some patience, but with a huge spread, it’s an easy money maker. 

4. Get more of the same unit

Creating NFTs yourself will always result in the highest profitability as Shard buyers want to make a profit as well. Having more of the same unit, allows you to create your own NFTs faster by leveraging a concept called compounding. If you choose to add newly created NFTs to your army you will scale up and create units even faster.

5. Raid and sell

Some people prefer to raid for a full day and then sell all their shards in the evening. This is nice because it provides you with a continuous stream of income which you can use to do whatever you like. However, it’s slightly more profitable to save up shards until you can craft your own unit.

Take home message

In the NFT game metal war game you can raid or mine. The currency in the game is MWM, or metal. Metal is obtained by mining with your hamsters.

By raiding the other units you get shards, which are parts of the same unit. When you have 500 shards you can create a new NFT.

By keeping up with the latest news you will know when packs are released, get the best deals and know exactly when to buy or sell metal war NFTs.

You won’t miss anything if you follow their twitter, website, Discord, and Telegram. For best-practices you can always keep an eye out on our website!

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> See Metal War collection on Atomic Hub

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