A Deep Dive into Illuvium Zero: Everything Uncovered

First and foremost, we would like to thank fuliggine, the Hyperion guild, and Dr.Spoon, who were the primary sources of information for the creation of this guide.

Introduction

The gameplay of Illuvium Zero revolves around constructing a resource extraction facility. To improve your production rate, you must solve efficiency puzzles by experimenting with different building placements.

Managing your plot requires a minimal daily time commitment. The more you comprehend the mechanics, the more resources you can generate. Some of these resources, namely the Fuels, are ERC-20 tokens and in the future, it will be possible to trade them on exchanges.

You can also create a Scanning Facility to scan Illuvials' Biodata. By researching their Biodata, you can generate rare Blueprints (NFTs) that can be used to create exclusive NFT skins for other games in the Illuvium franchise.

Glossary

Elements
Carbon, Hydrogen, and Silicon. They are needed to make progress in Illuvium Zero.

Element sites
They determine the amount and type of resources you can produce. Outcrop allows for Carbon production, Lake produces Hydrogen, and Crystal deposit is required for Silicon. If your land does not have all three sites, you can build a Converter to obtain the Element you need from the ones you do have.

Fuels
Crypton, Hyperion and Solon. They are needed to make progress in the later stages of Illuvium Zero’s gameplay and will also be necessary to play in Illuvium Overworld.

Fuel sites
They determine what type of Fuel you can produce and how much of it. They are Crypton Rift, Hyperion Reservoir and Solon Trench.

Tiers
Illuvium Land is split into 6 tiers, with T0 being the free-to-play version, T1 the tier with the least yield and T5 the Land with the highest production potential.

Landmarks
The higher tier Lands, beginning with Tier 3, possess a distinct landmark of their own. T3's landmark enhances the production and conversion rates of a specific type of Element. The Tier 4 landmark increases these rates for a single type of Fuel. Last but definitely not least, the Tier 5 landmark is unique and has the shape of an Arena: all upcoming e-Sports tournaments will occur in these player-owned Arenas and revenue will be divided between the owner and the Illuvium DAO.

Land

Regions

There are seven regions where different Illuvials can be encountered, each with its own assortment of commonly found creatures. While Illuvials can be found across the planet, they prefer the biome corresponding to their Affinity. For instance, Water Illuvials are commonly found in the Halcyon Sea, whereas Earth Illuvials are more abundant in Shardbluff Labyrinth. In Illuvium Zero, you don’t catch the Illuvials that you find, but you can scan them for Biodata.

Production sites

Fuel and Element sites differ across each plot of Land, but share similarities within their respective Tiers. Tier one Lands have three Element sites and one Fuel site while Tier 4 Lands have twelve Element sites and nine Fuel sites - a significant production gap. Moreover, Tier 4 Lands possess eight additional Fuel sites, a Fuel landmark, and a production boost due to their higher ranking.

Table, examples:
- Tier one has a production of 1 Fuel. It has one site with a Tier boost of 0%, so it has a production of 100% from 1 Fuel site.
- Tier four has a production of 36 fuels. It has 9 sites with a Tier boost of 300%, so it has a production of 400% from 9 Fuel sites.

Tier 0 Land is not displayed in this table, but it has the same production potential as a Tier 2 plot. However, this does not imply that T0 plots are capable of generating revenue. T0 is not integrated with the blockchain, so any progress made on T0 Land is just for fun and has no connection with the Illuvium ecosystem.

Landmarks

Additionally, Tier 4 includes a Fuel Landmark that boosts the production of a single Fuel type by about 10%. On average, given three types of Fuel, this translates to a 3.33% increase, bringing the total production to 37 instead of 36.

Resources

Elements

On your Illuvium Land, you will find a variation of 3 Elements and 3 types of Fuel. The Elements are only used to make progress on your Land. Each of these three is necessary for all operations, but particular areas of development need more of a specific type. Carbon is mainly used for constructing and improving buildings, Silicon is employed for researching new technologies and Hydrogen has a role in building energy-type structures. Elements allow you to upgrade your industrial complex to produce even more resources.

Fuels

However, while increasing Element production would only further increase the development of your site, Fuel production has other, more lucrative use cases. The three ERC-20 Fuel tokens (Crypton, Hyperion, and Solon) have distinct purposes in both Illuvium Zero and Illuvium Overworld. In Illuvium Zero, certain building upgrades require Fuel.

Fuel is a crucial element in advancing through Illuvium Overworld. It is required for all activities, such as going on a paid expedition, capturing rare Illuvials, crafting equipment, and curing Shards. In order to initiate a run and teleport to a particular Region, Crypton is needed to power the Alien Obelisk. Once you arrive in the Region and wish to capture an Illuvial, you must first cure a Shard. These collecting devices are embedded in solid rock and require retrieval by a specific machine fueled with Hyperion. The last type of fuel, Solon, is used to create armor and equipment to give you an edge in the dangerous Regions of Illuvium.

Revenue

Fuel

The only way to obtain Fuel for traveling, catching Illuvials, and other Overworld activities is to purchase ERC-20 tokens from the DAO, and thus indirectly from Illuvium Zero players, using Ethereum. The DAO is responsible for the majority of Fuel production, while Landowners produce a small yet significant amount of Fuel. The 100,000 Lands combined will produce 5% of the total Fuel revenue generated by in-game Fuel purchases in Illuvium. All future titles will also revolve around Fuel.

The DAO mins its own Fuel according to the Fuel amount provided by the Landowners. As the plot expands, its production also increases. However, the total Fuel produced by landowners must always represent only 5% of the overall total. Hence, the DAO consistently produces exactly 19 times more Fuel than the combined Fuel produced by all landowners.

Blueprints

Whereas Fuel provides a steady stream of income, Blueprints are an occasional event that gives you the opportunity to obtain a rare NFT. A Blueprint serves as the foundation for creating cosmetic-only skins. In Illuvium Zero, Blueprints will be utilized to design skins for your Ranger and Drone Buddy, Moz4rt.

Example
After purchasing Land in the Halcyon Sea, which is abundant in Water Illuvials, you play the Beta and find Atlas Biodata; you research it and get an Atlas Blueprint for it. Now, envision yourself as the exclusive owner of that Blueprint, with the ability to control the supply for that specific Atlas Skin. If you plan to create just one skin, perhaps you could sell it for a hefty amount, or you could generate more of them, to hike up the supply. In reality, discovering a Blueprint doesn't necessarily mean that it's impossible for anyone else to find the exact same one. Blueprints are essentially duplicative, and while a bonding curve is in effect, there may be several comparable Blueprints for a particular skin. As a result, obtaining a monopoly on a specific skin is unlikely and requires a significant amount of luck.

Gameplay

Blueprints

Illuvium Zero

Building a Singularity Scanner allows you to collect Biodata from Illuvials passing through your Land. Upon obtaining the data, you can analyze it; researching Biodata is expensive, both in terms of resources and time, but you can discover an Illuvial Fact or a Blueprint. Please keep in mind that your research could also be unsuccessful. The Illuvial Fact reveals information about the biology of the scanned Illuvial. Through this, you can gain a greater comprehension of the Illuvials' traits and improve your chances of obtaining its Bblueprints in the future. The Blueprint itself is an ERC-721 token that can be sent to your wallet from Illuvium Zero.

Illuvium Overworld
Travel to the Overworld with the Blueprint to craft a skin at the Zero Point Forge. Here you will need the Illuvial specified on the Blueprint and the necessary crafting materials found in the Overworld. Once you have collected all required materials, you can insert the Illuvial and materials into the forge to create a skin for your ranger. With all the components in place, add some Fuel to this Solon-craving machine to start the forging process. Within seconds, the illuvial will be transformed into the corresponding skin, according to your Blueprint.

Blueprints in Alpha and Closed Beta

To express gratitude towards early Landowners, the Illuvium Team created 15 Blueprints obtainable during the Illuvium Zero Alpha and the ongoing Closed Beta. These Blueprints are obtainable by any player who puts in the minimum amount of effort each day. After the Closed Beta, an economic mechanism called the Bonding Curve will be introduced for Blueprints. This means that whenever a Blueprint is found, the likelihood of obtaining the same one decreases exponentially. Because of this, we can expect that the Alpha/Closed Beta will be the only opportunity to obtain the 15 initial Blueprints (3 for each of the 5 starting Illuvials), as 20,000 lands will be able to collect them. If Alpha and Closed Beta players put forth their best efforts, the number of Blueprints found should be significant, resulting in a very low probability of finding these Blueprints when the Bonding Curve is implemented.

There is no way to generate revenue during the Alpha and Closed Beta of Illuvium zero, except for the 15 Blueprints that each Land can produce.

Paths

An Activity in Illuvium Zero is any process belonging to the three possible categories of Construction, Production, and Science. The time required to complete an Activity will not be reduced if said Activity has already started before you build the Path; it will reduce time requirements from the next Activity onwards.

It is also important to note that the more sides of a building are surrounded, the less efficient Paths get. Building Paths only on one side of a structure reduces the time required to complete any Activity by 17%. Two sides covered in Paths decrease Activity time requirements by 23%, which increases to 26% and 27% respectively when Paths are built on three or four sides of a structure. Please note that when you build Paths around a structure, you need to also cover the angles of that side in order for the time reduction to be effective. Below is a table showing how each tile of space in your Land occupied by Paths gets increasingly less efficient for a 3 by 3 building.

Given that space is the most important resource in the long run, during the end-game reducing some paths is probably optimal, depending on your play schedule. If you only have time to log in once a day, there’s probably no need to build paths on more than one side of your buildings, since most Activities require at most one day, even at high levels (see Illuvitect for more specific information).

Getting started efficiently

• Use paths from the beginning: create pre-built, empty path squares of different sizes, like the ones shown in the picture below) and place your buildings in them for the first time, in order to reduce construction time.

• Until very late in the game, lack of space won’t be an issue, so keep your buildings surrounded by paths at all times, in order to have faster upgrades and reduce production times. Power Stations are an exception to this rule since they don’t produce resources and can’t be upgraded.
• Upgrade your Nexus and Engineering Workshop whenever you can, since they represent the ceiling for upgrading all your other structures. This is especially important until your Nexus is at least level 4.
• As a rule of thumb, don’t ask for a resources Airdrop from your Nexus until you are at least at level 7. The amount of resources you get is minimal and it prevents your Nexus from being upgraded for a whole day.
• Build 3 storages for each element: 3 Carbon Matter Silo, 3 Hydrogen Matter Silo, and 3 Silicon Matter Silo. Always keep them at or close to the level you have reached at every stage of your gameplay since this will ensure you won’t have to waste resources because you produced more than you can store. This is also very useful in the later stages of gameplay because 3 level 7 storages allow you to have enough resources to build the more expensive structures from the Science pathway. Also, in order to level up single storage from level 7 to level 8, you will need 1.8 million units of another of the two elements; having one level 6 and two level 7 storage for each element allows you to accumulate up to 1.9 million units of a specific element. So, building 3 storages for each element from the start and keeping them updated with levels will pay dividends in the long run.
• Prioritize Element production over Fuels at the beginning.
• Balance your production using Converters.
• Harvest plants whenever you can to get Credits. Paying Credits allows you to speed up any Activity that does not generate revenue (for example, you can’t speed up Fuel production). Optimize Credit usage. The amount of Credits needed to speed up an Activity depends solely on the hours remaining for its completion, while the number of minutes and seconds left is ignored. This means that the optimal moment to speed up an Activity with Credits is when the time left for its competition is X hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
  

• Bring converters to 150% in order to get free resources. A level 4 Fuel Converter with 100% efficiency generates 4 units of its Fuel from 4 units of any of the other 2 Fuels. If you bring it to 150% Efficiency, you can generate 6 units of Fuel from  4 units of another Fuel, effectively getting 2 units of Fuel for free.

Q&A

1) What are the optimal locations for resource Sites?

When comparing two Lands, if all the other parameters are equal, it’s better if resource sites are close to each other. Having sites clumped means you most likely need fewer Power Stations to push your Fuel production efficiency (it’s easier to increase the efficiency of Element production structures, see Illuvitect for more details). Having sites at the edge of your plot is good for scanning, but on a T1 land you already have enough space for Singularity Scanners, so this is a factor to be considered only for higher Tier Lands. Also, depending on your play schedule, you might want to surround the extraction buildings with paths to get a speed boost, so the resource Sites shouldn't be directly touching each other. Furthermore, your Fuel sites shouldn't be placed directly at the edge of your plot, since they can boost the Converters in range for that Fuel type. If a Fuel Site is on the edge, you can build 2 Converters in its range, but they will also be at the edge, so you won’t have enough space for Power Stations to further boost these Converters. This is being written during Closed Beta, so gameplay balance could change a lot, but space will probably remain a bottleneck. Space is very limited, especially in higher-tier lands, so you want to build as little Power Stations as possible.

2) Is it OK if Elements are on the edge instead?

Yes, because it’s easier to increase the efficiency of Element Converters.

3) What does it mean for a Land to have balanced resources?

It means having 1 Lake, 1 Outcrop, and 1 Crystal deposit. Your land is easier to develop if you have totally balanced Elements since the Sites push your Converters in efficiency. The same reasoning can be applied to Fuels.

4) Which is the best Fuel?

It doesn't matter too much which Fuel you have in the greater scheme of things. The first Fuel you need is Crypton for your Nexus upgrade from level 4 to level 5. Right after that, you need Solon for your Engineering Workshop from levels 4 to 5. Having the option to build an extractor makes you build these structures a bit earlier than having to go the Converter route for Crypton and Solon, but in the long run, it doesn’t matter.

5) Should I call the airdrop from the Nexus?

No, not until very high levels when you won’t be upgrading the Nexus for many days. The resources the airdrop gives are too little to justify not being able to upgrade it for 24 hours.

6) Is there ever a point when it makes sense to spend Credits to instantly complete a construction?

Yes, but only when building crucial structures. Up to 1h 59m 59s you need 1 credit to instantly finish. More than 2h you need 1 credit / 1 h. So, for best usage always click finish with Credits when you are at 1h 59m 59s remaining building time.

7) Best land Tier for starting out?

Probably T1 because the most critical aspect is that in Alpha and Closed Beta, it allows you to play the game, versus having no Land. Anything more I guess it's just optimization. The requirement to download Illuvium Zero from the official site is to link an account that owns Land. if you spend nothing, you can't play. If you spend 0.15 ETH, at the time of writing, for a floor T1 Land you can play, and this is the biggest improvement by far. At the moment, adding another 0.7 ETH allows you to extract more from your play-time by buying a T2 land, but I don't think you should spend that much money before having a level of knowledge about the game that is close to being complete. T2 Lands offers the best convenience in terms of the ratio of resource sites to market price. It’s probably better to wait for gameplay balance to be closer to production, like Open Beta at least, in order to make a more expensive and educated buy of Land.

8) Is there a way to increase the number of available Builders beyond 1?

Currently no, but this is a feature that was teased by the Illuvium Team.

9) Having Elements and Fuel sites clumped is good because I can put a bunch of Power Stations in the middle of them and increase the Efficiency of all the surrounding buildings, right?

Yes.

10) What is the Zero Point Transducer used for?

It is needed to mint blueprint NFTs.

11) If two buildings share a Path, does it optimally reduce Activity time for both? For example: my Nexus and Engineering are adjacent. Is it enough to have one line of Path separating them, or does putting a double line of Paths between their shared side gives greater time reduction?

One line of Path shared between almost adjacent buildings is enough to give the maximum Activity time reduction for that one side to both.

12) Is there a way to rotate buildings?

No.

13) Maximum number of Blueprints per Land in the Closed Beta?

15.

14) Is passive generation time also reduced by Paths?

No, only Activity time.

15) Does increasing Efficiency increase passive generation too?

Yes.

16) Do Converters have their Efficiency reduced even when in range of Converters of a different Element/Fuel?

Yes, but less (see Illuvitect again for more details). For example, placing 2 Solon Converters close to each other will affect their Efficiency way more than having 1 Solon and 1 Hyperion (still reduced, but less). Elements don't affect Fuels and Fuels don't affect Elements. The key is to place the Converter near its resource-mining Site, which boosts the corresponding Converter. Then, in the remaining space, you should alternate the Converters. If I place a Condenser Plant (Hydrogen Converter) near a Hydrogen Pump and in that same area I put an L-Crypton Collider (Crypton Converter), the latter won't lose Efficiency since there are no Fuel Converters in the area, only an Element Converter.

17) Is it possible to use Credits to speed up Fuel extraction?

No. This is also true for any other revenue-generating activity, such as Blueprint research.

18) Is there any data on how Power Stations improve efficiency, to calculate how many are required to maximize Efficiency based on distance and structures served?

It's different for every kind of building. It's actually not the Power Station itself having an area of effect, it's all the other buildings. For a Fuel converter surrounded with paths for example you need 8 Power Stations directly next to its surrounding Paths to bring it to 150% Efficiency; an Element extractor needs half of that. You can see all the percentages at Illuvitect.

19) How much is the maximum efficiency?

It’s 150% for every building that does an Activity, except for Singularity Scanners which has 100%. Minimum Efficiency is always 50%.

Example: a Solon Dredge produces 1 Solon up to 149% Efficiency, but if you reach exactly 150% Efficiency it shows a predicted dredging of 2 Solon. Also, if I have a L-Crypton Collider with 150% efficiency, even if it still shows a passive production of 2 Crypton in 2 days, I will get 3 Crypton in 2 days instead.

Credits

Author: Fuliggine

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Dr.Spoon on Discord @dr.spoon