How I doubled my wealth in Upland

It was during Publish0x's last Upland writing contest that I discovered this game, and seeing as it was actually free to start playing, I dived right in. But it wasn't until I harnessed the power of Discord that I managed to grow my wealth significantly. This is my Upland journey so far.

Upland is a relatively simple game.

• Sign up with a referral link. If you use Publish0x's link here, it will give you 6000 UPX, which is double your starting amount. Very useful if you want to keep the game 'free'. The standard referral link here will reward you and me by splitting the value of your first purchase once you reach Uplander status.

• Buy some FSA properties, aim for 3 or more if you can. (FSA properties are designated 'Fair Start Act' and are reserved for players with Visitor or Uplander status. Detroit is a good place to start at the moment as there are plenty of cheap FSA properties still available. Bright green is an FSA property for Sale, Blue is one you own.

• Keep some properties to earn UPX from rental income (around 14%) and visits to your properties by other players (sends).

• Sell some to make a profit.

• Complete collections to boost your rental earnings. Collections come with a once-off completion bonus that can be very useful for growing your Upland wealth and expanding your property empire.

• Buy more properties with your earnings. Sell and hold as desired to build your property portfolio and watch your wealth grow.

And that's it. The basic gameplay of Upland: Buy properties, sell for a profit, earn rent, then buy more. At least for now, Upland is continuously expanding.

So, that's what I've been doing.

I grinded through my visitor status, logging in every day (or close to it) to ensure I didn't lose my UPX and properties. There were definitely a few days where I missed the 7-day login bonus when I shouldn't (glitch or shadiness? - I can't decide), but I persevered and made it to Uplander status. Now, I don't have to login in every week to claim my earnings, but I want to. Why? Because Upland has recently introduced a new daily login bonus; sign in for 7 consecutive days and you can win a Spark reward. This is a great change to the game as Spark is essential for building on your properties and previously wasn't easy to earn.

I started playing in Chicago and bought 3 properties with my initial 10,000 UPX. I completed the newbie collection (very easy as you only need to own one property to complete this one). The UPX bonus from this was 800 UPX. Very welcome on my journey towards 10,000 UPX and Uplander status. The collection also boosts my earnings on that property 1.1 times. I had a look through the other collections and saw that the Chicagoan collection only required 3 properties to complete and boosts earnings 1.28x with another one-off bonus. Currently, this collection rewards with 500 UPX (the rewards and holding periods have changed this year), and at the time had no holding period so I pulled my property out of the Newbie collection and put all three into the Chicagoan collection. Thanks to these bonuses and my rental income, it wouldn't be too long before I reached Uplander status.

Then, I was just logging in and regularly claiming my rental earnings. Not very exciting, so I put a property up for sale and was happy to find it sold quickly, for 15 000 UPX. Nice, that property only cost me around 3000 UPX. Now I could buy some more properties, I decided to aim for the 'King of the Street' collection; three properties on one street. I found a street that had FSA properties available that were cheap enough to allow me to buy three and immediately bought them. Another bonus and my net worth and monthly income jumped. I was very happy with how things were going. But I still wasn't making much daily, my properties were cheap and the income reflected that.

And that's how it stayed for a while. I didn't have enough to buy anything new and wasn't interested in selling what I already had. I also didn't want to add any fiat, I want to see if I can make something out of nothing but my time with this game. Then in September 2021, I harvested my income and finally, I made it to Uplander status. Woot woot. The messages announcing my eligibility were a welcome sight. No more essential daily logging in anymore. I upgraded immediately, which I shouldn't have, because a week or so later an event started that would have rewarded me with some Spark for leveling up during it. Alas, no Spark for me, but the shiny new Uplander certificate was nice to have all the same.

I kept logging in and claiming my earnings, keeping an eye on the email updates and any new events. I wanted to branch out to another city but knew the current options weren't affordable to me. Then Los Angelos was released and I thought, new city, new FSA properties - why not give it a go? Well, I'll tell you why; LA is expensive in the metaverse too! After spending around 1700 to travel to LA I was sorely disappointed to find that I couldn't afford anything. And then news come out that nearly all the FSA properties were sold out anyway, a major bummer.

Thankfully not long after that, news arrived that a new city, Detroit, was being released to cater to new players, one that is cheap and has loads of FSA properties to start your Upland journey with. This was good news for me (and many others), so I started saving my UPX for the day of release. It was going to be tight, my UPX balance and rental earnings were not growing as fast as I had hoped.

As the big day approached I started thinking about the travel costs. I tried to find information on how to travel from Chicago to LA but couldn't find anything easily. There are no direct flights or trains between these two cities. I was a little frustrated with how difficult it was to find such simple information but eventually made it to a Youtube video that had a travel map for all the cities. But it didn't have the costs. The video mentioned that the discord community was strong and helpful so I decided to join to ask the question.

Discord is an amazing resource and many crypto and blockchain projects have active communities here. It can be a little tricky to sign in (it made me feel tbh), join and verify yourself for each group as they are all different - but it was definitely worth it.

I asked my question on costs for traveling from Chicago to Detroit and was quickly answered by a helpful Discordian who I'll call Chad. The cost - 1,850 UPX. This would leave me with around 600 UPX when I arrived. Not a great amount. I said as much in the chat but Chad reassured me that there were properties available in that price range. With this news, I said I was on my way. I thought that would be it. I came for information and received my answer.

But then Chad offered to help me to get some more properties when I landed. I was intrigued.

Obviously, my first thought was - How am I being scammed here. So I asked how they could help me. Turns out, the person I was talking to was an Upland Executive status player, which means they have a net worth of between 10,000,000 – 100,000,000 UPX net worth, and can no longer buy FSA properties. As I am only a lowly Uplander, I can - and this is the money shot. New players can buy very desirable properties that wealthier players cannot until they are resold.

Chad checked in with me as I was traveling between cities, it takes around 30 minutes to make the journey. This made me think that their offer was genuine as they weren't being pushy or making wild claims or anything. When I landed, I let them know and found out what the deal was.

My UPX balance was too low to buy anything useful, so they offered to sell me one of their properties for 600 UPX and then buy it back off me for 30,000 UPX. All I had to do was buy one FSA property of their choosing and sell it to them. This sounded ok. All the risk (and UPX) was on Chad, the worst-case scenario was that I would be stuck with whatever property I bought off them. But, I was getting it at a super discount so I agreed. Chad sent me a screenshot of the property I should put in an offer for, I searched for and found it in Upland and sent an offer. Not long after, the offer was accepted. Shortly after that, Chad sent me an offer for 30,000 UPX. I accepted and a few minutes later, the deal was done and I had UPX to spend. Yay.

Chad then sent me the details of the property they were interested in, saying that this looked like a good street to buy on for me too. I went and immediately purchased it and then waited for Chad to make an offer on it. They did, and the deal was finished. Chad now had their new FSA property, and I was a lot wealthier. Seeing as Chad was willing to risk 30,000 UPX on getting a property on this street, I felt like it would be a shrewd move to buy some too. I bought three. It was a wonderful feeling seeing the confirmations that the properties were minted on the blockchain and now belonged to me. It also allowed me to complete the 'King of the Street' collection. I still had some UPX left but stopped shopping to make sure that I would have enough to travel to the next new city that is released.

The best part? The street I purchased on was Grand Boulevard which was revealed as a Limited Collection street a week or so later. I couldn't believe it. Not only did Discord Chad help me to purchase more properties, doubling my net worth and turning my rental income into something nice to see, but their hunch that it was a good street was spot on. I never expected to fill a limited collection like this on Upland. Goodbye 'King of the Street' and hello to the more exclusive 'West Boulevard' collection. The earnings boost on these three properties is 1.87, plus the one-off collection bonus of 3,400 UPX. Score. Of course, I bought more property with this bonus UPX which allowed me to fill the 'five properties in one city' collection. Now all but one of my properties is in an active collection.

Now, when I log in to Upland I am happy with my rental income. My Grand Boulevard properties also are doing surprisingly well with visits. While the send fee in Detroit is low at 15 UPX (and I have all my properties set to the lowest), the extra income is appreciated. I can also see my balance growing at a reasonable rate too, it won't be long before I can buy more properties and this has made the game fun. I was questioning the point of it before now, but after discovering the community on Discord and growing my Upland portfolio to 10 properties with 3 active collections, I get it. Now, I can rest assured knowing that if I ever need help, there is a Discord community that I can turn to. And I still need to fill that 'King of the Street" collection again.

And this is just the early days of the Upland metaverse. Buying and selling property has been the main focus, but now that buildings can be built on your properties and shops are being opened for Block Explorers, things are getting interesting. I can't wait to see what's going on in the Upland metaverse in another year's time.

So, to cut a long story short - the best way I found to grow your wealth in Upland is to get involved in the Discord community. You never know, maybe you will come across a friendly Uplander that will help you to grow your wealth too.

*Originally published on Publish0x for the Upland Wealth Building Competition