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Illuvium

8.5

Introduction

Illuvium is a collectible NFT RPG game and auto-battler rolled into one. An open-world RPG experience in the overworld, where you mine, harvest, capture, and fight Illuvials.

Your mission, as a stranded space explorer after a catastrophic crashland, is to search these lands to capture strong enough Illuvials that you would trust to defend you against the AI and other players seeking their freedom as well.

Regions and Illuvials

Illuvium features seven unique regions; Abyssal Basin, Brightland Steppes, Crimson Waste, Crystal Shores, Halcyon Sea, Shardbluff Labyrinth, and Taiga Boreal. Each region has its own climate, terrain, and distinctive visuals. Each of them is a host to various unique monsters not found in the rest.

The different Affinities and Classes each Illuvial represents keeps the players desiring to catch them all, pushing them to explore different regions and step outside of their comfort zone to capture stronger monsters to climb the ranked ladder and conquer more dungeons.

Each hero has two kinds of levels, one is the main hero level, and the other is the in-game hero level. Each hero will start a match from level 1 and can be levelled to 10. 

Heroes have different rarities, higher ones have more unique abilities and playstyles. Common, Epic and Legendary heroes have different skins, these skins can either be Default, Rare, or Mythical. Trophy classes represent the mastery of a hero, which ranges from Class H to Class SS.

This depth and complexity adds a whole new layer of strategy to the game because once you have all this effort put into Illuvium, you need to translate that into victories on the battlefield. We are yet to witness the Overworld open-world aspect of Illuvium but if the auto-battler's public beta quality is anything to go off of then we are in for a treat.

Gameplay

The gameplay follows a relatively simple path but challenges those who wish to master the game. Its seamless combination of open-world exploration and auto-battling mechanics, while delivering genuinely enjoyable experiences across both leaves players wanting to sink endless hours into their game.

The auto-battler portion of Illuvium currently has its second public beta phase ongoing at the time of writing. The amount of additional features and layers added compared to the first public beta is tremendous. The auto-battler segment of Illuvium is starting to shape up to become a leader in the genre with very little competition that can come close in terms of quality and complexity.

The most significant additions are augments and your hero now being able to wield weapons, armor, and even link itself to one of the Illuvials to gain its primary traits. Augments are the equivalent of items in Teamfight Tactics but with an extra layer of complexity to it that adds a whole new variance to the game.

What that means is when equipping an augment, you are not just benefitting from the buff it gives your Illuvial, it also allows you to improve any of its core stats. This includes anything from faster attack speed and increased health to more Omega Power and better precision which dictates your critical hit chance.

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The two stat boosts scale depending on the level of augment being equipped. For example, if it is a 1-star augment, it can only give your Illuvial an extra 200 health. On the other hand, a 3-star augment can give you an extra 400 health.

For now, players can only play against the AI, with the top 20 leaderboard and the set of Illuvials at players' disposal refreshing every 24 hours. The only issue present at the moment with Illuvium is its limited set of Illuvials.

Currently in the Public Beta 2, there is a sense of limitation on the viable units that can take you far, beyond round 20 for example. This is felt whenever you login after the daily rotation of units and augments occur and the top 20 leaderboard's bottom is round 24 or so.

There is a clear dependency and relatively a lack of viable augments to be assigned on hyper carries at the moment. Outside of Exalted Vampiric Price, there is almost no clear path towards giving your most powerful Illuvial a way to heal from its damage and sustain multiple enemies. This what made Teamfight Tactics enjoyable for as long as it existed so far, as you most of the time build around a single character, powering it up with the items needed, and building the rest of the composition around it.

Review

Each one of these segments could have been their own standalone game, but having both implemented together adds tremendous gameplay value and replayability potential for Illuvium that few can fathom.

Illuvium combines everything you loved during your childhood days playing Pokemon on your Nintendo Gameboy with the modern day auto-battler genre inspired by DOTA Autochess and Riot Games’ Teamfight Tactics.

With every update on the development progress, our confidence in Illuvium spearheading web3 gaming grows tremendously as it showcases the quality of games we need to get accustomed to and use as prominent examples of the direction of our industry.

Mostafa Salem author picture}

Mostafa Salem

Head of Gaming Research

Updated:

06/09/2023

Posted:

22/08/2022

Illuvium Review

Illuvium is building a powerhouse of a game in the web3 gaming space. The signs all point towards the closest thing we might have to a triple-A title in our industry with a visually stunning world, a deep auto-battler title, and an open world you can lose yourself into.

8.5

Pros

Stunning visuals

Over 100 unique illuvials

Vast open world with 7 regions

Mixture of two popular genres

Cons

PC specs barrier of entry

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About Illuvium

Studio

Illuvium Studios

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Illuvium

Illuvium is an open-world RPG experience in the overworld, where you mine, harvest, capture, and fight Illuvials.

Developer


Illuvium Studios

Networks


Immutable X.svg

Status


Beta

Token


ILV

Platforms


Leaderboard

Streaming