I am sure you have heard about the blockchain-based game, CryptoKitties, about how addictive it is. The hype is real, and yes, you can actually earn money while you’re busy adoring these kitties.

In short, CryptoKitties are digital collectibles. Just like in the non-digital world, the rarer an object, the higher its price. Similarly, in CryptoKitties, the rarer a cat, higher its value. The fun about the game is that you can breed two kitties to get a new one. If you played it right, the new kitty will have rare traits and would be worth a lot of money.

If you’re new, here’s how you can get started with the game:

1. Buy a CryptoKitty

To be in the game, you need to get a kitty. The most basic way to get a kitty is to buy it. CryptoKitties carries out all of its transactions in ether, meaning you need a bit of that ether in your wallet before you can get started.

To start playing the game, you’ll need to purchase some ether, and if you already have it, you are good to go. Don’t worry if you don’t have any ether on you. You can buy it.

To carry out transactions in CryptoKitties, you will need a digital wallet. Meta Mask is used the most widely in the CryptoKitties community. It is a platform that will enable you to get a wallet and thereby allows you to carry out transactions in any of ethereum network’s dApp. It has a chrome extension, which makes it very user-friendly.

Transfer your ether to the Meta Mask wallet. If you are new to cryptocurrency, be careful with the transfer. You might not want to transfer a huge amount of ether in the wallet at once. Go for a test run, with a smaller value, to see if everything is working fine.

Once you have the Meta Mask wallet, next you will need to create an account on the CryptoKitties website. Remember, you will only be able to buy or sell on CryptoKitties if you have a digital wallet.

To buy a cryptokitty, explore the Market Place, whichever kitty you like, go ahead buy it. The ether in your digital wallet will be used to pay for your desired kitty.

You will be using ether for four kinds of procedures in CryptoKitties: buying or selling kitties, renting or siring and paying for the transaction to occur.

2. How do you play?

Remember, in CryptoKitties, you are playing for rarer traits. In the most simple way, you breed your kitties to have the chances of getting a new kitty with a rare trait(s).

Every cryptokitty has certain traits or attributes. Many of these are common while some are rare. If a cryptokitty has a rare trait, it is likely to be worth a lot of cash. Before you go ahead and start playing, you also need to know about the generations of kitties and the cooldown.

Now, for breeding, you will need two kitties. Every time a kitty is bred, it will go under a cooldown before it is bred again, meaning there will be a time period for which it cannot be bred again. The cooldown time of different kitties is variable. Some quick – catatonic, others like to stay a little lazy – sluggish, while some are average. You should probably go for kitties with a better cooldown time, but here is a catch, each time you breed a kitty, it’s cooldown time reduces.

Generation, as the word suggests, is the generation a kitty belongs to. Generation 0 kitties are the kitties that have no parents and were made by the CryptoKitties team. You breed two gen 0 kitties, their offspring is gen 1 kitty. Breed a gen 8 kitty with gen 5 kitty, you get a gen 9 kitty.

There are a total of 50,000 gen 0 kitties, each of these is released every 15 minutes till the last one is released. These kitties are auctioned and are often very very expensive. Also, it is the gen 0 kitties that have the rarest traits. As you go down generations, you’d see that kitties start getting traits that are more common, hence, they are also of low value.

Back to breeding; you can either buy two kitties and breed them, or maybe you just happened to find some other kitty owned by another user with really good traits and wished you could breed your kitty with that one. Well, you can. You can rent kitties of other owners to use them for the breeding process. Of course, nothing comes for free. The amount of the rent is set by the owner of the kitty. This also means that you can put your kitty on rent too. If your kitty has very good traits, you can charge more; charge more for a kitty with common traits, and no one will likely rent your kitty.

3. A few tips

Again, the goal of the game is to breed kitties for rare traits, but which traits are rare, and which are not? And how do you know which kitty to hire to breed?

One figures that out as they get more familiar with the game.

However, know that no player exactly knows how the traits are inherited. An offspring can obtain a trait found in any of its parents, but that is not entirely true. It can also get an entirely new trait. At times two traits combine to form a new trait, green eye and blue eyes may give brown eyes.

The CryptoKittyIndex helps in determining whether a certain trait is rare or not. So if you are buying a kitty, this will help you loads in making a good decision.

Generally, the lower the generation, the worse the traits of the kitties are. If you are just starting, it is better not invest a lot in a kitty. Start with a cheaper kitty; kitties between gen 15-20 will do you good. You are looking for a kitty that not only has rare or better off trait, but also the one that has a good cooldown time so that you can keep on breeding it. The game, of course, depends on how you play your kitties and for sure, luck counts in too. If you are new, its best to start small and get to know the game first before you go big.

Get to know more about CryptoKitties here.