Update: The API of Gods Unchained is not working properly at the moment, and the IMX solution is not out yet so gucollection.com is currently offline. I may evaluate the situation after IMX is out.
It has added up to quite a bit of functionality at gucollection.com now, and instead of filling the site with a lot of text I’ll use this article as a user guide for the site.
guCollection is a community site for Gods Unchained (GU), an online collectible card game with tradable cards and ownership guaranteed by blockchain technology.
I’ve added functionality to guCollection that I myself want to use, and hopefully others as well.
Table of Contents
- Requirements
1.1. Browser
1.2. Metamask
1.3. New Account
1.4. Mobile Use - All Cards
2.1. Table
2.2. Basic Search
2.3. Advanced Search - Collection
3.1. Cards in Collection
3.2. Missing Cards
3.3. Card Details - Buy Packs
4.1. One-click buy
4.2. Standard Purchase - Overflow
5.1. Purchases
5.2. Pack Scores
5.3. Smart Open
5.4. Rankings
1. Requirements
You should be able to view the site in most browsers, but the may be some limitations, and for full functionality it needs to be Web3js compatible. If you are familiar with Web3js and have an account you can skip this and jump to the second chapter.
1.1. Browser
While the site should be compatible with most browser, it is only extensively tested with Brave and Chrome.
Of those two browser I would recommend Brave (ref-link). It’s a chrominium browser that blocks ads or give rewards for watching ads. It has excellent privacy and tracking protection.
guCollection accepts tips in the form of BAT tokens, issued by the company behind Brave, and is grateful for any contributions.
1.2. Metamask
Metamask is a plugin used to access the main Ethereum blockchain. As such it is needed for viewing blockchain information and performing transactions.
It is possible to use the site without logging into Metamask. Instead of logging in simply paste an ethereum address in the bottom bar in order to view any cards connected to that account.
Buying packs however requires Metamask or another Web3js injector.
1.3. New Account
If you have Metamask and own an Ethereum address with Ether on you can skip this.
If you are new and don’t have an Ethereum account it’s easy to create a new with Metamask. Simple download the plugin and create a new account. If you own an Ethereum address you can either use the ‘seed words’ from another wallet (as long as they use the same seed word generation) or import it.
If you create a new account, note that you need to write down and keep the seed words safe. If you log out of Metamask or need to re-install you’ll need to enter the seed words. Metamask or any others can’t help you if this is lost. This means that while your funds are safe from anyone, it’s also your responsibility to keep it safe.
The account you create is without any Ether (currency used on the Ethereum blockchain). In order to get Ether you need to buy it somewhere. My recommended way is to use Coinbase (if you use this link you’ll get 8$ worth of Bitcoin). Coinbase a large crypto-exchange that has even invested in Gods Unchained. At Coinbase it’s also possible to get a bit of crypto for free while learning about it (use this link to earn $10 worth of Stellar, or up to 50$ if you get others to also learn — at the time of writing there are 3 slots left). Bitcoin and other types of crypto can be converted to Ethereum at Coinbase, or bought by card transactions or bank transfer. You’ll have to do an KYC to unlock most of the crypto-trading functionality, but they are pretty quick about it these days.
If you have Ether you can transfer it to your new Ethereum Account on Metamask. Be sure to copy and paste the correct address. Double checking and sending a small amount first is a good advice for new users.
1.4. Mobile Use
I’ve made the site mobile friendly, but again, I’ve mostly used Chrome and Brave when testing, so those are the ones I’ll recommend. Metamask is a bit tricky with mobile use, but it’s doable. But really, any plugin that uses Web3js should work.
I use Cipher on my mobile if I need to buy cards, and think it’s pretty user friendly and I’ve tested the site with it. You can import your account using the ‘seed phrase’ so it’s quite easy.
2. All Cards
The first and most useful functionality is the ‘All Cards’ table. Select ‘All Cards’ in the menu to see all GU cards that exists, presented in a searchable and sortable table.
- # — Number of cards in the collection you are looking at. Core cards currently does not have a number, but they will on release be collactable and should also be represented with a number eventually.
- Rarity — A classification of scarcity of the card, explained in this article
- Mana, Attack, Health — Pretty self explanatory
- God — You choose a God when you create a deck of cards and can use cards from that god as well as cards with ‘Neutral’ as God
- Tribe — Some cards belong to a tribe that adds some flavor, and there are usually synergy between those cards
- Type — Basic card types: creature, spell, artifact, weapon
- Set (card set):
Core — Free to earn, non-tradable cards
Genesis — The first set you can purchase by buying packs, tradable
Etherbots — A promo set where you could buy cards if you had Etherbots parts (another crypto game by Fuel Games — creator of GU)
Promo —Various cards that were distributed as part of promotions
[spawned] — Adding this as a suffix to distinguish between cards you can add to a deck and cards that are ‘spawned’ as part of card abilities. These are naturally not tradable and not collectable.
The table is responsibe so on a smaller screen (such as a mobile) the columns will collapse from the right to the left. The hidden columns, and other info can be view by clicking the on the first column on a row (the # column).
Hovering over the name will show you the card image. If you have a different ‘shine’ (as explained in this article) the card will be shown in the rarest shine you have.
2.1. Basic Search
Use the text field to search for cards. It will search in any columns, included hidden ones as shown below.
It’s also possible to share this with others in the form of a link. If you press the ‘Share’ button at the bottom-bar it will copy the link to the ‘all cards’ table, the collection address and the basic search input.
In the example above the copied the copied link would be this:
https://gucollection.com/?account=0xf784cd41fd0cd48133edfb7d468f214a9ea338fd&allCardsSearch=roar destroy amazon#all_cards_link
It’s possible to use the basic text search in combination with the advanced search.
2.2. Advanced Search
Above the table it’s also possible to filter/search using more advanced options as shown below.
Min/max mana, attack and health is self-explanatory, but the other options might not be:
- ‘Include spawned’ — By default spawned cards are included, but exclude them if you only want to look at cards you can add to a deck
- ‘Only in collection’ — Use this if you only want to display cards you have access to in your collection. By default all core cards are shown, but since they will be collectable upon release they also be affected eventually (i.e. only shown if you own them in game)
- ‘Categories’ — Categories can be grouped by God, Tribe and Rarity (common, rare, epic, legendary and mythic). If no God are selected, all will be shown, and it’s the same for the other category groups. If one God is selected, only cards for that God is shown.
Using the advanced search in combination with the basic search should cover most of the necessary filtering.
3. Collection
If you go to ‘Collection’ you’ll be able to see statistics about your Collection. Only the Genesis cards are supported to far, but when more sets are released this functionality will be expanded.
3.1. Cards in Collection
By default the number of cards in your collection is shown in a table. The cards are grouped by rarity and shine, and you are able to see the difference between expected distribution and actual.
The expected distribution is based on the probabilities built into the smart contract, and explained in depth in this article.
You can the distribution after you ‘forge’ all surplus cards. I’ll explain ‘forging’ next together with ‘Missing Cards’.
It’s also possible to click on a cell to see the cards in that category. See 3.3. Card Details for more information about what is displayed.
3.2. Missing Cards
In the drop down you can choose between different table views. ‘Cards in Collection’ is the default choice, the others are about missing cards:
- Missing by Rarity
- Missing by God
- Missing by Tribe
Below ‘Missing by Rarity’ is shown for Genesis cards along with a table for after forging. Forging is a process where you ‘burn’ (destroy) 5 identical copies of the same shine, and receive 1 card of a higher shine. For example 5 plain ‘Ambush’ card gives you 1 shadow ‘Ambush’ card.
Having a complete category (rarity/shine) means having 2 of each, since you can have 2 in a deck you’ll want 2 of each cards to get a complete playset. If you have 1 of each, but not 2 of each, the number will be shown in blue. Legendary cards are only 1 each since you can only have 1 of each legendary card in a deck.
Forging assumes that you’ll keep 2 of each card and forge the rest (except legendary which again are 1 of each). This means that you need 7 plain common cards of one copy to have 2 plain cards and 1 shadow (5 are plain cards are burned to create 1 shadow). Surplus shadow cards are burned to create gold cards, and so on.
It’s also possible to click on a cell to see the cards in that category. See 3.3. Card Details for more information about what is displayed.
3.3. Card Details
When a cell in a collection table is clicked a list with those cards are shown as you can see in the example below:
As with other tables, hover over the card name cause the card image to appear along with the statistics about how many copies there are of each shine in the collection and how many copies exists in total.
4. Buy Packs
It’s possible to buy cards using guCollection and you do so with a refund. By using a smart contract 9% of the amount is returned to the buyer compared to the full price. This is done by using the referral mechanism and refunding 90% of the reference bonus instead of keeping the it (the referral bonus is 10% of the amount).
If you want to verify the transaction look at the internal transactions for your Ethereum account at Etherscan.
4.1. One-Click Buy
An easy buy option is available at the front page. Click the button and confirm the transaction in Metamask to buy 5 rare packs. The rest of the process is the same as the normal purchase process.
4.2. Standard Purchase
guCollection offers a lot of flexibility in the purchase process. Any pack type can be chosen, any number of packs, and it’s possible to send the packs to another account (the purchaser keeps the refund).
In the table above the probabilities for the various pack types are used to show what the expected result is. Since this is random the actual result will not match this of course, but over time it should, and you can view the different pack types to see which is the best for you (rare packs are recommended).
5. Overflow
In overflow you’ll find minor functionality that I’ve added to the site.
5.1. Purchases
The purchase table shows all purchases made to the account your are looking at (your logged in account if you haven’t entered any address manually). The purchases are sorted on time (latest first), but note that packs bought in 2018 does not contain a timestamp.
Press the ‘View’ button to see all cards in that purchase (as shown later in ‘Pack Scores’).
If you have bought packs, they will be shown under ‘Active Purchases’ until the purchase is complete and ready to open. Packs that can be opened are shown in green under ‘Completed Purchases’.
Note that there is a timeout in the purchase process, so the ‘Active Purchases’ might fail to complete if the Gods Unchained back end services are down or the randomness generation is slow (randomness can be done manually on the smart contract is that case — contact me for help if necessary). This is no different from how it will on the official site in case of back end issues.
In any case, once the purchase is ready to open, it will show up in the table.
Press the ‘open’ button to open any unopened packs. It will redirect you to ‘Smart Open’. If you prefer, you can also use the official opening mechanism.
Another clever feature in the Purchases section is the ability to view your cards on the blockchain. This shows what is actually stored on the blockchain, and can be very useful if for example the offical API is down. Just enter the purchase ID (you’ll find that in the transaction details at etherscan.io — press decode on ‘topic’ 1 on the ‘PacksPurchased’ event). Note that only rare packs are supported.
If randomness has been generated, you’ll be able to see all cards as in the table below. It’s sorted based on rare pack probabilities, so the ‘best’ cards will appear at the top.
Hover over the name to see the card image along with the numbers you have of each card type, and in existence. You can also click on the ID number to see any hidden columns, including card text and probability (3.7% that a common card is a shadow).
There is a notable exception to what cards you’ll see, and that is Mythic cards. Because there is a limit on Mythics you can find through packs (2 in the case of Genesis), and the way the smart contract function, it will not show Mythic cards correctly, as seen below from the purchase that found Atlas (purchase ID 30571). Instead of seeing the card they got (Atlast), you’ll see which card they would have ended up with if there was no mythic cards available (a plain legendary card):
There was a bit of controversy on that find, as it took a long time between the pack was opened and the card was activated (secured on your account as a token on your Ethereum address), and it was possible for another to claim Atlas in that time period. The lession there is to activate a Mythic immediately if it is found (probably the smart contract should have been designed so that you were guaranteed the card when you bought the packs— but with the low probability of a conflict happening it is a minor issue).
5.2. Pack Scores
In order to view your ‘best packs’ you can look at ‘pack scores’. guCollection uses a algorithm for calculating a pack score based on rare pack probabilities and displays a score between 0 (4 plain commons and 1 plain rare) and 100 (several ultra-rare cards in the same packs). If you click on the score you’ll see the details, including all cards in that pack. You can also sort the table by rarest card, as the ‘best pack’ is not necessarily the one where you got that legendary diamond, in terms of probability.
Note that the promo set ‘Etherbots’ contains a high degree of rare and shiny cards compared to the other packs, so they’ll usually show up at the top with a very high score. You can search by ‘rare’ to see what your best rare pack is.
A useful feature, which is used by “Purchases” when viewing cards from a purchase, is to search the table by Purchase ID.
It’s also possible to share pack scores with others. Just enter a search value (for example a purchase ID) and press the ‘Share’ button at the bottom.
5.3. Smart Open
This is a feature that allows the user to open the ‘best packs’ manually, and the rest automatically. This gives you the excitements of opening guaranteed good packs, without browsing through all those packs with only 4 plain commons and 1 plain rare, or the packs that only contain one plain shadow.
It works by selecting a threshold for a purchase. This threshold is the pack score that was explain above. Some examples are listed to make it easier to select a good threshold.
The categories are examples of thresholds (pack scores) and do not guarantee content. This is especially true for the higher thresholds. If you select “At least one gold card”, packs above threshold might not hold any gold cards at all, but the cards it do contain would be of equal or better probability than what ‘at least one gold card’ have.
Among the packs above threshold you can click on ‘open’ to open the packs at the Gods Unchained temple the normal way (it will say ‘replaying’, but that’s just a limitation on the temple opening, and is of no consequence).
The packs below threshold are listed according to their score and rarest card. These packs are marked as ‘opened’, but it’s also possible to replay these. If you press on the score the table is expanded and all cards in the pack are displayed.
If you want to view all cards you got, just press on the ‘view summary’ button below the tables. It will show you all cards in a pop-up table:
5.4. Rankings
This table shows all addresses that contain cards, sorted by amount of cards.
Note that the list is a bit slow to load, and that particular API is sometimes down, so it might not always load successfully.
It’s possible to view the cards of another by pressing the ‘view’ button, but I would stay a way from the accounts with the highest amounts of cards, at least the first one, as the API does not handle those volumes well.
This table also shows the amount of addresses in total that exists (6578 at the time of writing).
You could try and search for your own address:
That will show you the amount of cards you have and which rank you have.
Feel free to contact me at gu.packs.contact@gmail.com for feature requests, shortcomings in the user guide or any errors you find. If you liked the article I’m always happy for a clap or more for those with Medium accounts, and if you use the Brave browser guCollection does accept BAT tokens.
