How to Play Axie Infinity: Ultimate Beginner's Guide

Axie Infinity is a cryptocurrency game that’s recently gaining popularity, thanks to its tagline “play to earn.”

That’s right—players can actually make money just by playing the game! (Related: How to Earn By Playing Axie Infinity)

In this ultimate beginner guide, we will teach you the basic gameplay of Axie Infinity and how you can get started.

Contents

Overview of Axie Infinity Gameplay

In Axie Infinity, players raise and battle virtual pets called Axies. It is very similar to strategy games like Pokemon, as well as turn-based card games such as Hearthstone.

Axie Infinity is a game that runs on the blockchain, and each Axie is a non-fungible token or NFT. If you are not familiar with these terminologies, we recommend you to do a little research on blockchains and NFTs first!

To start playing Axie Infinity, you first need to buy 3 Axies. You can then choose to battle against enemy monsters in Adventure Mode to level up your Axies, or battle with other player’s teams in the Arena and compete in the leaderboards.

Either way, both game modes will give you Smooth Love Potions or “SLPs” as rewards. This is the main resource that players will want to farm and later sell for real-life money.

We will talk more about how to earn below, for now let’s take a look at what an “Axie” is!

What are Axie base classes?

Axies are your virtual pets in the game. Axies have different attributes, one of which is the Axie’s base class. There are 9 different Axie classes:

Plant
Reptile
Dusk
Beast
Bug
Mech
Aqua
Bird
Dawn

Each Axie class has different strengths and weaknesses, and usually determines the Axie’s role in the team.

(Related Guide: Best Axie Infinity Starter Teams)

To make sure all classes are balanced, there is a rock-paper-scissors system in the game where a certain class can be strong or weak against another class:

What are Axie Stats?

Aside from their base class, Axies also have four stat attributes:

Health — the Axie’s HP, or the amount of damage it can take before getting knocked out
Speed — determines turn order, Axies with higher Speeds attack first
Skill — increases damage dealt when the Axie performs multiple cards/moves (a.k.a. combo)
Morale — increases chance to land a critical hit, as well as entering “last stand” which allows them to attack a few more times before getting knocked out

Axies get a total of 140 stat points which are distributed across the four attributes depending on their base class.

For example, Plants usually start with high HP, perfect for a defensive tank role. Meanwhile, Beasts have high Morale and low HP, making them a great attacker from the team backlines.

What are Axie Body Parts?

Aside from their base class, Axies also have 6 different body parts:

Eyes
Ears
Horns
Mouth
Back
Tail

Here is an example: this Axie has a Mavis eye part, an Ear Breathing ears, a Garish Worm horn, a Goda mouth, a Little Branch mouth, and a Rice tail.

Each body part belongs to a specific Axie class, and depending on the its class, the part gives additional stat bonuses:

Plant — 3 HP + 1 Morale
Aqua — 3 Speed + 1 HP
Reptile — 3 HP + 1 Speed
Beast — 3 Morale + 1 Speed
Bug — 3 Morale + 1 HP
Bird — 3 Speed + 1 Morale

An Axie can have a different combination of parts from different classes. This is what makes each Axie unique.

What are Axie Abilities/Cards?

Lastly, Axies have 4 different abilities or moves that they can use during battle. These are represented by Cards.

There are a total of 132 abilities/cards in the game. You can check out the full list on tools such as Axie World.

The Axie’s abilities depend on which horn, mouth, back and tail body parts it has. Again, this is what makes each Axie unique.

Abilities can either be offensive, such as dealing damage to opponents. They can also be defensive, such as recovering your Axie’s health points, or stealing energy from the enemy team.

A good Axie should have a well-balanced set of abilities that make him perform his role efficiently.

For example, Attacker Axies should have cards that deal lots of damage, while Defensive Axies should have cards that allow them to survive longer and defend their team.

How to Start Playing Axie Infinity

(Full Guide: Step-by-Step Guide: How to Create an Axie Infinity Account)

To start playing Axie Infinity, you will first need to buy a starter team of three (3) Axies using Ether. Here’s how you can do it:

Tip: You can save up on some Ethereum transaction fees by purchasing WETH (wrapped Ether) directly into your Ronin wallet. Here’s a video guide made by the Axie Infinity team!

The cost of each Axie depends on the current price of ETH as well as a lot of different factors.

Make sure to do a lot of research first on what traits to look out for when buying Axies.

(Related Guide: Best Axie Infinity Starter Teams)

Once you have a starter team ready, you can then download the game client and sync your Axies to the game. It’s now time to start playing and earning!

How to Earn Money by Playing Axie Infinity

(Full Guide: How to Earn Money in Axie Infinity)

There are two ways to earn money with Axie Infinity:

Farming Smooth Love Potions (SLP)
Breeding and selling Axies

Let’s talk about these methods in detail.

How to Earn Money in Axie Infinity with Smooth Love Potions (SLP)

Farming Smooth Love Potions or SLPs is the easiest and most common method to earn money in Axie Infinity.

SLPs are in-game item rewards that you can earn just by simply playing the game.

You can then sell SLP for real-world money to other players.

But why would other player want SLP? Well, these Smooth Love Potions are used to breed new Axies! (More on breeding below).

At the time of writing, SLP is priced at around $0.19.

On average, players are able to get 100-200 SLP per day. That means if you gained 100 SLP today by playing the game, you will have essentially earned $19!

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, there is still some risk involved.

Just like any other cryptocurrency, SLP price is very volatile.

It can go as low as $0.03 like in April 2021, or as high as $0.36 last May 2021. This is all basic economics 101—the price is dictated by supply and demand.

Finally, note that SLPs can only be withdrawn after 14 days. This is to prevent bots and abusers and to keep the economy balanced.

3 Ways to Earn Smooth Love Potions (SLP)

There are three ways to earn Smooth Love Potions in Axie Infinity:

1. Earn SLP in Adventure Mode

You can earn SLP by playing on the single-player Adventure Mode where you battle monsters.

Level	SLP
Level 1 – 4	1 SLP per win
Level 5 – 9	2 SLP per win
Level 10 – 14	4 SLP per win
Level 15 – 16	6 SLP per win
Level 17 – 20	5-10 SLP per win
Level 21 – 36	10-20 SLP per win

You can only get a maximum of 50 SLP on Adventure Mode.

This is also a great way to improve your team’s power, as playing in Adventure Mode gives experience points (EXP) to your Axies which allows them to level up.

2. Earn SLP in Arena (PVP)

You also earn SLP from winning in the Arena PvP mode. The higher your matchmaking ranking (MMR), the more SLP you get per win.

There is no limit to how much SLP you can gain with Arena mode, for as long as you have the Energy to spend.

To know how much SLP you can earn per MMR bracket, you can check out our full guide here: SLP Arena Rewards per Bracket.

3. Earn SLP by clearing Daily Quests

Finally, you can alsos earn SLP by doing the daily quests:

Opening the game once a day
Winning 10 times in Adventure Mode (single-player mode)
Winning 5 times in the Arena (PvP mode)

This incentivizes players to keep coming back and play the game every day—which you should do if you want to maximize on your earnings!

How to Earn Money in Axie Infinity by Breeding

(Full Guide: How to Breed Axies (Breeding Guide))

As mentioned, players can breed Axies to give birth to a new Axie with a brand new set of stats and abilities.

Breeding new Axies will cost Smooth Love Potions (SLP), and Axies can only be bred up to 7 times.

The amount of SLPs consumed depends on how many times the parent Axies have bred in the past:

Breed Count	Breed Number	SLP Cost
0/7	1	150
1/7	2	300
2/7	3	450
3/7	4	750
4/7	5	1200
5/7	6	1950
6/7	7	3150

As you can see, the higher the breed count/number, the higher the SLP cost. This is what keeps the SLP economy at bay and prevent a possible hyperinflation of supply which will lead to lower SLP prices.

You can then sell these new baby Axies to the market, use them on your own team, or use them to breed more Axies.

This method of earning money is mostly recommended for experienced players.

Conclusion

We hope this guide has helped you get an idea of how the Axie Infinity gameplay works, how to get started, and what the opportunities for earning money are.

As a kid, almost all of us have dreamt of the ability to earn money while playing video games.

Today this is now possible, thanks to blockchain technology: crypto games and NFTs will revolutionize gaming as we know it.

Remember, Axie Infinity is just getting started—it is still in Alpha mode.

Who knows what else will happen a few years down the line once developers add even more features to the game?

Here are a couple more guides we’ve prepared for your Axie Infinity journey. Good luck!