Are you looking for another Play-to-Airdrop campaign to try out? Say no more, Wanderers is currently running a series of P2A campaigns for their upcoming token, $WANDER. Ready to dive in? Let’s briefly discuss what Wanderers is all about.

Wanderers is a sci-fi rogue-lite with card-collecting and deck-building elements. Each run is unique, and each season presents new stories, abilities, and challenges. In simple terms, it’s a top-down shooter with a twist: roguelike and card-building mechanics (via RAMs) that you develop throughout every run.

Getting Started

To get started, install the game through the Epic Games Store (currently in beta and available for Windows and Mac). It's a good idea to create a Wanderers account to keep track of your progress and join the P2A campaign. Once in the game, you’ll start at your home base. The home base in Wanderers is your launching point for all in-game activities, and it's packed with useful features. Move your character with the WASD keys and interact with the E key.  

One of the key areas is the Warpsquad, where you can choose your character for the journey and equip skins to customize your appearance. During the beta phase, Vesna is the hero available for players to use

Next, you have the Arsenal, which serves as your Armory. Here, you can unlock and equip a wide variety of weapons that are essential for surviving the harsh environments you'll face. Weapons in Wanderers are categorized into ranged and melee types, with further subcategories like rifles, shotguns, pistols, etc. This enables you to customize your loadout to match your preferred playstyle or the specific challenges you expect to encounter.

Another important feature of the home base is the Starchart. This is where you select the planet, or map, that you want to challenge. Each map in Wanderers is distinct, offering different enemies, traps, and bosses that require varied strategies to overcome. As you make progress in the game, you'll unlock increasingly difficult maps that provide greater challenges and rewards.

Finally, there's the System Inventory, which is where you manage your NFT assets, like RAM packs. These assets can be slotted into your character’s build to give you specific advantages during your runs. RAM packs play a crucial role in the game's mechanics, as they allow you to influence and enhance the unpredictable nature of the rewards you encounter, making each run not only a test of skill but also of strategy and deck building.

Gameplay Guide

With the home base features covered, you’re ready to take on your first Wanderers run. After equipping your preferred weapons and selecting a map, head to the portal outside the home base to be transported to the specified location. An arrow will usually guide you to the objective (enemy spawns), where your goal is to clear the map of all enemies.

Your character's HP is shown on the right of your character's icon at the bottom left of the screen. As you eliminate enemies, they may drop useful resources (shown and different colored orbs) like HP, weapon ammo, and dash chargers. This is crucial because your weapon doesn't have infinite ammo, so you might need to rely on your melee weapon at times.

The controls are simple and easy to grasp: WASD for movement, the mouse pointer for aiming, LMB for ranged weapon shots, RMB for melee attacks, R for reload, and space for dashes (indicated by the blue bars just above the RAMs).

RAM stands for “Random Access Memories.” It’s a game mechanic that lets players influence the unpredictable nature of rewards in Wanderers. Before a run, you build a Cache of RAM upgrades you’d like to encounter. These upgrades can range from character skills to weapon mods. However, creating the Cache doesn’t instantly activate those abilities. Instead, you must reach Terminal checkpoints to activate them. Activated RAMs load into your Drive and can be used for the duration of the run. When you eventually die, the Drive is deleted, RAMs return to Storage, and you respawn at the home base.

RAMs are divided into several types that dictate the kind of buffs they provide. Some are "active" RAMs, giving the player powerful active skills (press C to activate). These are skills you can trigger with cooldowns. Others modify your dashes, provide Ultimate skills (press F to activate), or grant passives and MODs that enhance your damage and defenses.

Throughout your run, eliminating enemies and clearing map sections will reward you with in-game currency called "BYTES," which you can spend at terminals to purchase RAMs. Aside from purchasing RAMs, you can "fuse" them—consuming RAMs you don’t intend to use to upgrade your current RAM. If you’re looking to find specific RAM combinations, you can also spend BYTES to reroll the Terminal’s offered RAMs. You can also "rent" weapons at the terminals, which can be useful, especially if it’s a powerful weapon you haven’t unlocked in your Arsenal yet.

As you progress further in your run, you’ll eventually face the map's boss, which poses a significant challenge with high-damage abilities, fast movement, and crowd control. Even after defeating the boss, your run will continue with even tougher challenges. When you eventually die and your run ends, the game grades your performance and rewards you with "DATA" based on your score. DATA is another in-game currency used to permanently unlock weapons in the Arsenal.

And that’s basically it for the beginner’s guide to Wanderers. As you can see, the core gameplay loop revolves around continuously unlocking weapons and building a strong RAM deck to achieve deeper runs and better scores. But before we conclude this guide, let’s go over some tips and tricks to boost your Wanderers progress and a guide on how to join the Play-to-Airdrop campaign!

TIPS AND TRICKS

• Your weapon follows your mouse cursor and shoots where it’s pointing, not where your character is facing.
• Get familiar with your favorite weapon choices. Progress through the game to unlock weapons that suit your preferred playstyle. Some weapons deal massive damage but have long reload times, while others have faster shooting speeds but deal less damage. Some weapons offer AOE damage or can pierce through multiple enemies. Find the weapons that fit your style and build your RAM deck to complement them.
• Certain enemies will display an exclamation mark when about to attack. Learn their timings and patterns to avoid getting hit. High-damage enemies usually have low HP, so prioritize taking them out when they spawn.
• Use the map’s terrain to your advantage. Certain areas have walls that bullets can’t penetrate; use these spots for efficient kiting or take cover while reloading. Another tip is that right after you press reload (R key), you can seamlessly use your melee attack, and it won't reset your reload. Pressure traps (traps that proc upon stepping on them) can be used against enemies. You can kite them to these traps and proc it yourself once they are near enough.
• Experiment with different RAM combinations, focusing on active and Ultimate class RAMs, which often matter most. Build RAMs that complement your weapons. If your weapons already deal significant damage, consider defensive RAMs like taunts or dash upgrades.
• Early map stages are often easy to clear, so use your melee weapon more often and conserve your ranged weapon ammo for boss fights. Each map has resources like pots or stones that you can break for health or ammo. It’s smart to kite enemies towards these resources, gaining HP while kiting. Avoid quickly picking up HP orbs if you're already at full health so you can use them later when needed.

The Airdrop Campaign

The Wanderers airdrop campaign is detailed in this Medium article. But to explain simply, the campaign is conducted in phases and involves completing simple social tasks and in-game challenges through the Wanderers Codex. These include simple tasks such as following social media pages and in-game tasks such as clearing certain maps in an allotted time.

Some tasks also require holding Wanderers NFT assets. if you wish to know more about these NFT assets, this infographic summarize them well

And there you have it, a crash course in everything you need to know to get started with Wanderers! Whether you're blasting through enemy hordes, perfecting your RAM loadout, or participating in the P2A campaign, there’s plenty to keep you wandering. So gear up, dive into the action, and may your runs be epic and your rewards plentiful. See you out there in the stars, Wanderer!