If you have participated in Cathena waitinglist, and have been among top300 during first snapshot, top500 during second snapshot, top5000 during third, top10000 during fourth, or simply among the waitinglist participants during fifth snapshot you get an Access code (Or in better terms a one time use only activation code for one game account) to Closed Alpha and access to Knights of Cathena game client download (Only Android, Win32, Win64 currently available, iOS and MacOS clients will be made available later).

 

The access code you receive on the given date (The start date of your respective closed alpha access) will let you download an alpha version game client. With the game client you get access to the game servers, where your game account will be created (along with algorithmic creation of an Elrond wallet address). Then you can play the closed alpha. 

The Closed Alpha will be situated on the Elrond dev-net. All dev-net closed alpha items, gold, etc will be destroyed after The closed Alpha has ended, the real Cathena NFT’s will be minted only after Alpha release. 

First Steps after getting in the game:

1. You play ten times and likely lose them pretty much all due to missing matchmaking of closed alpha, but you win some gold from a loss also during closed alpha. 

Keep on working on a working formation. Without NFT’s the only way to win is likely with ranged units (hunters, mages). Continue playing in order to be able to mint your first NFT’s by buying a chest from shop (check out marketplace for cheap items before). 

2. Go to the formations to equip the NFT’s (as long as you don’t get limited by their Ancient Power or by item level restrictions for player ranks, see below). Your formation ancient Power is limited according to your rank. Currently you start with Max 1.5k ancient power for a formation. 

3. Try to work your way towards your first win to make it faster to buy chests and get the wins rolling. Remember, Ancient Power is kind of a negative. Of two otherwise similar items the lesser Ancient Power item is more valuable as you can equip more of them.

Game mechanics affecting formation strategies:

1. Unit properties (that get modified by equipped NFT’s)

1. CRT -> this is the chance for critical hits. A critical hit will deal double the damage

2. DATK -> Double Attack Instead of attack only once you will attack 2 times. It will also give a slight boost for each attack the higher the datk value is (Each hit will go through the whole damage calculation/evasion/miss logic)

3. ACC -> Defines your hit chance. Values above 100 will be used to negate a part of the evasion. So 130% accuracy means that you ignore 30% of the evasions of your enemy. 70% means you miss 30% of your attacks and your enemy has a chance to also evade.

4. LST -> heal based on damage you dealt, percentage of dealt damage

5. EVA -> Your chance to evade an attack. See ACC for more details.

6. SHL -> Selfheal. Passive healing after each round

7. KDMG, HDMG, MDMG, PDMG -> Type bonuses for the various soldier types, for example KDMG=Knight Damage 

8. ATK -> Attack, Attack affects the amount of dealt damage, along with defending unit Defence

9. DEF -> Defence, affects the inflicted damage of attacking unit

10. HP -> Hitpoints, affects the amount of damage that unit can take before death

2. Item level limits for different player ranks (Peasant, Squire, Knight, Lord, King, Grandmaster) during current alpha:

Peasant = Level 1 Items

Squire = Level 2 Items

Knight = Level 3 Items

Lord = Level 4 Items

King + Grandmaster = Level 5 Items

3. Formation Ancient Power limits for different player ranks during current alpha

Peasant = 1500 AP

Squire = 1800 AP

Knight = 2100 AP

Lord = 2400 AP

King + Grandmaster = 2700 AP