The Village is About to Get Bloody: An Overview of Fighting
With only weeks until Tournaments begin, the Blood Queen begins to stir
She from darkness comes & darkness brings,
Hark! When sounds of church bells ring,
An eerie silence, then on the wind
The beating drums of war and strings.
And when the chanting doth begin,
Champions know naught but rage within.
The Arena calls and draws them in;
It’s either death or glory for the win.
The Violence Begins
In the frozen depths of the darkest forest, the long dormant fires that power the massive iron forges underneath the village spark to life. The sound of steel clanging rings out through the snow covered branches of the tall fir trees surrounding the village walls. Hidden from prying eyes, deep at the foot of the Endless Ranges, the Blood Queen has lay in wait here for an age. Soon, she shall have her violence.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock. The village clock is counting down to the launch of one of the most highly anticipated projects in blockchain gaming; The Red Village (Tournament Mode). So let’s take a deeper dive into all things bloody, and learn a bit more about what makes a Champion tick; their fighting traits, fighting styles, and how Tournaments work. Because after all, the most powerful and successful players (known in-game as Battlemasters) will be those that know their Champions like the back of their hand.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles — Sun Tzu
Cosmetic and Rarity Traits
As a quick refresher, there are five brutal classes of Champion in The Red Village Ecosystem: the Barbarian, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, and Wizard. Each class in the Genesis collection consists of seven breeds: Orc, Half-Dwarf, Elf, Nordic, High Born, Origin, and The Undead. Every single Pureblood Champion in The Red Village is completely unique; along with having a unique name, they also have rarity traits drawn from a huge selection of hair colours, hair styles, war paints, and armour colours.
While these differentiations in the rarity and cosmetic features of Champions have been highly prized by collectors and Battlemasters alike, and trading has been hugely popular on Opensea, it is important to remember that these traits do not impact fighting ability. So let’s dive a little deeper into what drives a Champion to stab, slice, shoot, smash, bash, and dismember their opponents — and what makes them good at it.
Fighting Traits
Fighting for honour, glory, and riches in the Blood Theatre isn’t an easy business, and in the village, just as in life, some are better at battle than others. The most important traits that your Champion has are three in number: Strength, Attack, and Defence.
Strength represents the damage your Champion can deal.
Attack is the consistency and variance of your Champion’s strike.
Defence is your Champion’s ability to absorb and deflect damage.
These fighting traits are hidden from Battlemasters (and will always remain that way), and are randomly assigned — in no way can you judge them from just looking at a Champion. In fact, the only way to discover these is trial and error; your Champion must know the pain of the blade, the sting of the arrow, and the crushing blow of the Greathammer over and over again, for you to begin to gain an understanding of what they are good at, great at…and not-so great at.
In other words; to begin to understand your Champion’s Strength, Attack, and Defence you must fight them often — appeasing the Blood Queen’s thirst for violence. Later, we may introduce a Fatigue factor for added complexity — but Battlemasters needn’t worry about this for a while. (We will be working with some great third party providers who will help collect, collate, and analyse Champion data to make understanding their abilities even easier. More on that in the coming weeks.)
Genotypes and Bloodlines
There are, however, two elements which are observable and which do impact fighting ability: your Champion’s Genotype and Bloodline.
Every Champion in The Red Village universe has a Genotype, which uses an Rnumber to represent how far the generational gap is between it and the first (and rarest) Champions to exist, the R1 Genotype. Genotypes range from R1 all the way through to R99. Purebloods range from the R1-R12 Genotype, and Halfbloods range from R13-R99.
The earlier Rnumber will always strike first in a Tournament fight. If both Champions have the same Genotype, the Champion to attack first will be randomly selected. Importantly, to reduce the effect that going first has on the outcome of the fight, the impact of the first strike will be slightly reduced.
There are also five major Bloodlines in The Red Village, listed here in order; Genesis, Mystic, Warlord, Lionheart (collectively known as the Purebloods), and Halfbloods. Earlier Bloodlines will have a marginally higher likelihood of performing a special move in a fight. Special move likelihood is heritable — that is, it can be passed down through Summoning — however a Halfblood will not have quite as high a likelihood of performing special moves as a Pureblood. For example, Summoning with a Genesis Champion will therefore improve the likelihood of performing a special move compared to Summoning with a Lionheart.
Fighting Style
Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing — Sun Tzu
The Red Village is a game of skill, and learning, and, of course, brutality— and the most successful Battlemasters may well be those who learn their Champion’s preferred fighting style. Every Champion has a preferred fighting style, unknown to the Battlemaster. While these preferences are invisible as a stat (and will always be hidden), they will become more evident to the Battlemaster over time as your Champion competes in more Tournaments.
At the beginning of every Tournament, Battlemasters will choose a fighting style from the following options:
- Aggressive — Boost to your Champion’s Strength
- Defensive — Boost to your Champion’s Defence
- Accurate — Boost to your Champion’s Attack
- Balanced — A small boost across all three traits
Picking your Champion’s preferred fighting style will provide a small but effective extra boost to their stats in any given Tournament. This is the first element in learning about your Champion, and Battlemasters are strongly encouraged to enter many Tournaments with different fighting styles to see which is most effective for their Champion. This is not something that can be ascertained from just one or two fights, but may require many Tournaments to fully discover and understand.
But when that blood starts flying, it’ll all be worth it.
Future Variables
In future, to add complexity and entertainment for Battlemasters, we are considering adding elements such as preferred arenas (there will be many different arenas in which to fight, including ‘home ground’ arenas for certain Factions), the impact of weather conditions, crowd size, and more. The reason for the decision to leave these variables dormant (‘switched-off’) in the beginning is to allow Battlemasters ample opportunity to truly get to ‘know’ their Champions. The addition of any extra elements will always be done with plenty of notice, and only when necessary to keep Tournaments engaging, exciting, and downright ferocious.
The Takeaway
Learning your Champion’s preferred fighting styles, skills, and attributes is an important part of becoming a successful Battlemaster. You may have many Champions in your Barracks — and each will have its own unique skillsets and be successful in different circumstances. Of course, Summoning for more effective and brutal Champions is certainly possible, but how these traits will pass down across generations is a matter for another article — on Summoning — which will be published in the coming weeks.
In the end, though, the only way to learn and truly know your Champions is to study them, fight them often, and watch them bleed. Which is exactly what the Blood Queen wants.
It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood — Macbeth
