Buying Your First Axies

You'll need at least 3 Axies to start playing. This article will show you how to purchase them.

Summary

  1. 1.
    Deposit ETH to Ronin Wallet
  2. 2.
    Browsing the Marketplace
  3. 3.
    Buying Axies from the Marketplace

1. Deposit ETH to Ronin Wallet

There are 2 ways to get your ETH into your Ronin Wallet:
  1. 1.
    Depositing from Ethereum wallet to Ronin wallet via Ronin Bridge
  2. 2.
    Buying ETH with Fiat on Ronin using Ramp Network

1.1. Depositing ETH to Ronin Bridge

Depending on you country, you may load ETH into your Ethereum wallet by buying ETH from exchanges like *Binance, Coinbase or Luno (if you're in Malaysia). And then transfer the ETH from the exchange wallet to your MetaMask wallet.
* Full disclosure: these are referral links, both of us will get something if you use it. I will be grateful if you do so.

1.2 Buying ETH via Ramp Network

Sky Mavis team have made even easier to start buying Axies, they have set up possible My step-by-step tutorial will come soon. Meanwhile, you can read the official article by Axie Infinity team and talk to me on twitter @putraisyraq.
To access the the Ronin Ramp Network's purchase page, go here.

2. Browsing the Marketplace

So you're ready to buy your first Axie? Here's how to navigate the Axie Infinity Marketplace.
First, go to the Marketplace. You'll see 3 major parts:
  • Top right (below menu bar) = The asset category, you can choose to browse Axies, Lands, Items or Bundles of assets.
  • Left = the filter panel. You can filter listing to show only what relevant for your current purchase.
  • Middle (and biggest) = the listings, this is where you'll see all listed asset for sale by other players.

2.1 Filter Panel

Filter panel is where you can filter the listing to only show the axies you have in mind. This could be where you spend most of your time on. The filter system are split into 3 categories: General, Parts and Stats.
General
  • Class: One of the most important factor to look at while buying, not only classes will determine how Axies look, it also determines the bonuses you'll get while battling other trainers. The bonus follows Rock-Paper-Scissor logic.
  • Stage: There are 2 stages for Axies, eggs and adults. Adults are battle-ready Axies - you want to be looking for these for your first Axies. While eggs are just eggs. They will look different depending on the class they will born into, but we'll never know what are the parts the will be born with.
  • Breed Count: This tells how many times an Axie have bred. All Axies can breed a maximum of 7 times and if you're looking at breeding on a later date, choose the ones with 0 breed. Otherwise, choose the ones have higher breed count, as higher count generally are cheaper.
  • Mystic: Ah, the elusive mystic part! Mystics body parts are some of the rarest traits an Axie can have. The higher number of mystic parts within an Axie, the rarer it becomes. In fact, the current highest mystic part on an Axie is none other than Galadriel, owned by OhhShiny.
  • Pureness: The number of body parts class that is the same as the Axie's class. If an Axie have 1 body part class that is the same as it's class, that Axie is 1/6 pure. If an Axie have all body parts that is the same as it's class, that Axie is 6/6 pure.
  • Other: From what I understand, these are Axies that were minted within specific time period. I'll write more once I find out more about it.
Even by just using above filters you can already filter out a lot of Axies that would not be ideal as your first Axies.
Parts
This is where you can filter Axies by it's body parts specifically. There are 6 body parts:
  • Eyes
  • Ears
  • Mouths
  • Horns
  • Backs
  • Tails
Mouths, Horns, Backs and Tails determines an Axie's ability cards. eg: Goldfish back will always allow Axies to use Swift Escape card and Oranda horns will allow Axies to use Hero's Bane. You can explore more about the cards and body part using tools build by community members at AxieZone and Axie World. Understanding the abilities is the key to unlocking PVP Arena prowess.
Stats
You can also filter by Axies' stats:
  • Health = the amount of HP
  • Speed = Dictates the turn order in a battle. Faster Axies strikes first. If two Axies have the same speed, the attack order will follow this: High Speed > Low HP > High Skill > High Morale > Low Fighter ID
  • Skill = Adds damage when an Axie does a combo (playing 2 or more cards in a turn). The damage calculation: (card attack * skill)/500
  • Morale = increases the critical hit chance. Makes last stand more likely when HP falls below 0 and adds to last stand "ticks".

3. Buying Axies from the Marketplace

Buying Axies costs actual money in the form of cryptocurrency. Therefore I highly suggest you do your own research before buying your first Axies. You'll want Axies that can win you battles, and usually, floor-priced Axies are not very good for that purpose. You can refer How to choose Your First Axies article, where I've compiled select videos on how to to choose your first team. Apart from that, you may also join scholarships, where other players lends you a team of Axies so you can start playing for free.
If you're done with your research and are ready to buy, you may follow the next steps.
For this section of the guide, I'll be buying an Axie to show you the steps. For the Axie, I've decided on few things, I wanted to have an virgin Plant Axie so I can later breed it with my other plant Axies. I also need it to be okay-ish in battles, and cost less than 0.1ETH. So the filters will be:
  • General
    • Class = Plant
    • Breed Count = 0
    • Pureness = 3 (This is to keep the cost below 0.1ETH and also that I don't need a pure 6/6 for my purpose)
  • Parts
    • Hot Butt (Really wanted an Axie with this card)
So first let's go to the Marketplace and set all the filters.
Now we can click on the listed Axies to see what the details of the Axies listed. After some searches, I've come to like Axie #370562 (5th Axie on first row). Click on the Axie.
On the Axie page, we can see the Axie on the left portion of the screen. On the right side, there are a lot of information about the Axie:
  • Pricing: On top is the pricing info and the "Buy Now" button
  • About: Shows the Axie Class, Breed Count as well as the current owner
  • Stat: Shows the battle stats of an Axie
  • Body parts: Shows the Axie's body parts and the class of the body parts (classes are colour coded)
  • Abilities: The cards the Axie can use in battles
  • Parent: The Axie's mom and dad! You can click on the parents to see the their details
  • Sale history: Sales record for this Axie
I'm happy with the details, now let's click the "Buy Now" button.
There will be a Ronin wallet pop-up, check all details and if all is good, click Confirm.
There will another pop-up saying Transaction submitted successfully. From here you can click on close to exit the popup or you can click on "Go to my Activity". Let's click that and go the the Activities page.
On the activity page, we should see the our latest purchasing activity recorded. You can also check the transaction on Ronin Blockchain Explorer.
To check whether the the transaction was successful, go back to the Axie page and check whether the Owner name reflects our name.
Apart from that we can also check by going to the Inventory page and check whether the Axie is there. Mine's already in the inventory - you can see it, the first Axie on the first row. Your Axie might appear as the first one, as the default sorting of this is based on the Axie ID.

Congrats!

If you have been following the steps, CONGRATULATIONS! You are now an Axie owner! Remember that you'll need 3 Axies to start playing. You can repeat the buying process until you have enough Axies in your account. Tweet me (@putraisyraq) your Axies if you followed the guide, I'd love to see your them :)
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