DeRace is a horse racing game on the Polygon blockchain that brings the excitement of real-world horse racing to the digital realm. To get started, you'll need an NFT horse and the game's native currency, $DERC.

1. NFT Horse: These virtual racehorses are essential to participating in races, breeding NFT foals, and trading on marketplaces like OpenSea. Each horse has unique traits that influence its rarity, performance, breeding ability, and value. Currently, only Gen0 horses can breed.
2. $DERC: This ERC-20 token can be traded on Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain networks. In-game use of $DERC is limited to the Polygon network for race entry fees and breeding. More use cases will be introduced as the platform evolves.

Racing

After acquiring an NFT Horse and $DERC, deposit them into the platform via the wallet tab on DeRace.com. You can find races in the 'Race' section, where details such as surface type, distance, entry fee, prize pool, race start time, and number of horses entered are available.

To enter a race, click on the race number, register your horse, and confirm the registration. Your horse will appear as a competitor in that race. To watch the race, click the 'Watch in 3D' button available shortly before the race starts. Just like in real horse racing, the first horse to cross the finish line wins. DeRace automatically pays out prize money to the top three finishers. Currently, there are three types of tracks available: Greenfield (Dirt), Paradise Hills (Synthetic), and Emerald Gardens (Turf), with distances ranging from 2 to 15 furlongs.

To determine the best track and distance for your horse, run it on various surfaces and distances to gauge its performance. Test at least 10 races per track/distance for accurate insights. Hidden parameters within each NFT horse, such as speed, stamina, reaction time, and other potential abilities, influence its performance. All races use Random Number Generation (RNG) technology to ensure fairness, randomness, and transparency, so even the best natural ability doesn't guarantee a win.

Breeding

Breeding in DeRace involves pairing a male horse (stallion) with a female horse (mare). Currently, only Gen0 horses can breed. The resulting NFT horse will be one generation below the parents, e.g., breeding two Gen0 horses produces a Gen1 foal.

1. Choose the first horse for breeding from your inventory and click on the heart icon.
2. Select a breeding partner, confirm, and approve the smart contract transactions.

The new horse's attributes will be a combination of both parents, determined by a genetic algorithm with a +/- 5% deviation using randomness from Chainlink's VRF integration. These attributes include breed, appearance, and hidden stamina and speed. Each horse has a random cooldown period after breeding. Both horses must have a cooldown of zero to enable breeding.

If you want to breed your horse with one you don't own, DeRace has a built-in function that allows you to rent a horse from another owner specifically for breeding purposes.

Breeding costs consist of two elements: a $50 DERC fee and a Liquid Love NFT. You can obtain the Liquid Love NFT through single-sided staking on the DeRace platform or by purchasing it on marketplaces like OpenSea. Ensure both the DERC fee and Liquid Love NFT are in your in-game wallet before proceeding with breeding. After selecting the horses to breed, follow the prompts to complete the required transactions. Upon delivery of the bred NFT horse to the owner's wallet, it is immediately ready for racing.

We have arrived at the end of our DeRace guide. We hope you have enjoyed it and took enough valuable information from it to get you confident to pick up your first horse and jump on the tracks.

What is your favorite DeRace horse tier? What other tips do you have for a beginner?

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