How to Play Upland, the Blockchain Game of Property Trading

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In this guide, we’ll show you how to play Upland and cover some basics to help you get started in the popular blockchain game. Whether you want to make money with the game’s play to earn model or simply wish to own the virtual properties of your dreams, allow us to help you dive into the Upland metaverse with ease.

How to Play Upland: Getting Started

Upland is available as a mobile app and on desktop via upland.me. It is free to sign up and even free to play if you don’t mind growing your net worth at a more relaxed pace. Those who wish to dive in will likely want to spend some money to get the ball rolling. However, it is perfectly possible to play the game without spending a dime.

If you haven’t yet registered an account with Upland, use this referral link to gain a 50% bonus of UPX on your first UPX purchase. You will also receive a 4,500 UPX bonus that you can use towards your first property purchases in the metaverse.

What is UPX?

UPX is the official currency of Upland. It is used to buy and trade property with other players, and can be earned as interest on properties you own. For reference, 1000 UPX is roughly equal to 1 USD.

Unlike the game’s virtual properties (which are NFTs), UPX is a crypto token that players will soon be able to withdraw for fiat currency (like USD). Some players already have access to the beta version of this feature. However, it won’t be available to everyone until later in 2021.

All UPX transactions are logged on the EOS blockchain once you hit Uplander status, which happens after you accrue a net worth of 10,000+ UPX. Prior to this point, players are considered Visitors and must become Uplanders to truly own their UPX and property NFTs.

How to Get UPX

UPX can be purchased with fiat currency, certain cryptos, or earned through property sales. You can also earn UPX from treasure hunts and successfully completed collections, which we will discuss later. According to the Upland roadmap for 2021, there will be many other ways to obtain UPX as the game evolves.

Every three hours, you will be able to collect UPX interest on each property. The standard percentage comes out to 17% of a property’s mint price annually, though higher gains are made on properties belonging to active collections.

Interest gains are based on property size and location. Your UPX earnings will continue to stack even if you don’t collect them right away, so there’s no need to rush to collect on interest every time the game allows you to do so.

How to Navigate the Upland Metaverse

No matter what city you’re in, all properties will show up as one of five colors on the map:

• Gray: Unminted. These properties are not yet owned, and some may be locked until a later date.
• Light Green: Unminted, unlocked, and discovered. These properties are available to players with a net worth of less than 100,000 UPX as part of the Fair Start Act (FSA).
• Dark Green: Minted and for sale. You may buy these for the listed price or make the owner an offer.
• Light Blue: Minted and owned by another player. While these properties are not listed for sale, you can still make offers for the owner to consider.
• Dark Blue: You own this property.

You may also toggle the pin icon at the lower right of your screen to view neighborhood borders or use the search function to locate a specific address.

Moving Around the Map

Every player gets their own block explorer, which is an avatar that wanders randomly around whatever city you’re in. As you advance through the game, you will gain more options to customize your block explorer.

Collecting and Using Sends

While each block explorer moves at random, players can somewhat control their movement by using Sends. Sends are represented on the map as paper airplanes that can be collected when the block explorer is in range.

Each player automatically gets 3 Sends every 24 hours. You can also collect up to 40 of these each day, though you can only hold 11 Sends at a time.

Every time you want to send your block explorer to a specific minted location, you will use one of your Sends. You will also need to pay the property owner’s UPX visitor fee, which can be found by selecting the property and reading its info.

Traveling from City to City

At the time of this writing, there are four cities you can visit in the Upland metaverse. They are: San Francisco, Fresno, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. Traveling from one city to another will cost you UPX and time, both of which vary based on origin and end destination.

San Francisco and Manhattan both have airports to allow players to travel from one coast to the other for a fee and a flight that takes less than an hour.

Fresno and Brooklyn each have their own train station, which can be used to travel back and forth between their respective parent cities for a smaller fee and duration than flying.

Both the airports and train stations are located on player-owned property and therefore require extra UPX, determined by the owner. Take the fees and travel times into account before you decide to relocate your explorer.

How to Buy, Sell, and Trade Property

Property trading is the backbone of Upland. All properties in game correspond with a real-life location that can be viewed by toggling the Google Street View function.

If you’re just starting out, it’s recommended you focus on trading in Fresno or Brooklyn before moving to their more expensive counterparts.

Buying Property

Select any minted property on the map (light blue or dark green) to see more information. You can make the owner an offer or just pay the listed price if the property is for sale.

If you make an offer of UPX on a property, that amount will be deducted from your UPX balance and put into escrow. If the owner rejects your offer, the UPX will return to your balance.

While most properties can be bought with UPX, some of the more seasoned players accept other methods of currency (including fiat for those using the beta version of “Fiat Out“).

FSA Properties

For Visitors and Uplanders (net worth of <100,000 UPX), a wandering block explorer will unlock previously unminted properties and display them in light green when in range. Standing for “Fair Start Act,” FSA properties periodically unlock to give newer players premier access to the lowest market prices.

Once a player reaches a net worth of 100,000 UPX, they will no longer be able to buy FSA properties and will face higher markups from resells. Keep this in mind when starting out and developing your trading strategy.

Selling and Trading Property

Selling property works in reverse of buying–other players can submit offers on your owned properties or buy them outright if listed for sale. For every sale you make, a small percentage is cut from your profit and goes back into the blockchain pool.

When players make offers on your properties, you will receive a notification in your mailbox. This can be accessed from the menu at the bottom of your screen. From here, you can choose to accept or reject each offer individually.

Complete Collections to Earn More UPX

As mentioned earlier, each property you own stakes UPX interest that you can collect every few hours. Some of the most lucrative UPX yields come from complete and active collections.

Each city comes with its own set of collections, each with its own requirements and payouts. The higher the difficulty of completing a collection, the higher the percentage yield. However, you will likely have to invest a lot more to complete these more limited collections.

You will earn a fixed amount of UPX and a percentage boost on earnings for each property within a completed collection. If you sell or trade any of these properties, you will lose the earnings boost but will still keep the collection’s achievement and initial UPX bonus.

Each property can only belong to one collection at a time, and collections only reward UXP bonuses when the full criteria is met. Players can freely move their properties between collections at any time.

Hunting for Treasure and Upland Community Events

You can also earn UPX through treasure hunts and periodic community events. We have decided to write a separate guide on these as the information is simply too much to include here. Stay tuned!

And in the meantime, check out the Upland Contributor Network for more resources such as Discord, Telegram, Reddit and more.