If you're going to San Francisco, make sure to get your Upland Visa first! This guide will help you to manage properties and go treasure hunting on Upland — the biggest and the most exciting virtual property trading game on EOS! We will focus on three main playstyles: Traders, Collectors, and Hunters, and cover some basics as well.
Disclaimer: bear in mind that all properties in Upland are virtual representations of the city buildings. Owning property in Upland does not entitle you to make any claims on its their real-life counterpart.
Landing in San Francisco
When you first arrive in Upland — and by the way, you can get a 2x sign-up bonus with Wombat! — you will be taken to a video tutorial that introduces you to the game's main mechanics and activities. Even if you skip it by mistake, don't worry — you can always replay it from Settings.
We don't want to bore you by repeating the same things you will see in that tutorial. After completing it, you will:
- Get your Block Explorer — your trusty agent on Upland, roaming around the city to discover new properties and get some treasures. Think of it as a game piece on Monopoly with a mind of its own.
- Learn how to buy a property and get your first patch of land.
- Learn how Treasures work and play around with a cute pinata!
What the tutorial doesn't explain…
Some things are omitted in the tutorial, though — you would have to explore the menus and the environs yourself if not for this guide. We'll go over each one of them below.
Your status in Upland
You will begin in Upland as a Visitor. Visitors can't buy properties from others and need to renew their visas to keep the land that they purchased. If you don't renew your visa, you will lose everything you have accumulated. Luckily, there is no limit to getting new visas!
You can move on to a higher status after achieving a certain Net Worth threshold. Net Worth is your current UPX holdings combined with the value of your properties. For example, I have 6700 UPX in my account and two properties, one worth 5360 UPX and another valued at 6200 UPX. Thus, my combined Net Worth is 18,260 UPX.
It total, there are four statuses on Upland:
- Visitor. No true ownership of properties, as it is tied to having a visa. Plus, no P2P property trades on Marketplace.
- Uplander. Requires 10,000 UPX net worth and unlocks Marketplace trades and the true ownership of your properties.
- Pro. Requires 100,000 UPX net worth and gives you some extra customizing options for the Block Explorer plus the ability to obtain, trade and lease business licenses. We'll get into that a bit further in the guide.
- Director. Requires 1,000,000 UPX Net Worth and allows you to get an exclusive, fully custom-made Block Explorer design.
Types of properties
Players can navigate through the properties market easier with the color code. There are only five color codes to remember:
- Bright Green. When you see patches of this color, it means they have no current owner yet and are available for purchase 'directly' from Upland, so to say. Same goes for the little green circle on
- Dark Green. These properties are already owned by some users and are on sale.
- Light Blue. You will see a lot of those. These properties typically belong to HODLers who aren't actively selling them. You can still make them an offer if you really want this property though.
- Dark Blue. That color helps you identify your own domains in Upland.
- Grey. Those are unavailable slots that weren't officially put on the market yet. Consider those construction sites.
Different navigation options
You can, of course, explore the virtual San Francisco like you would with a normal map: dragging the screen around, zooming in, etc. Another great way of moving around the city is sending your Explorer between to own properties. But besides that, you can also:
- Tap/click on the pin icon to reveal the areas of interest: schools, museums, hospitals, etc.
- Discover the nearest secondary properties on sale by tapping/clicking on the building icon.
- Find a specific address on Upland. Works best for getting memorabilia properties if you have a favorite spot in the real-life San Francisco.
- Locate your Block Explorer by tapping/clicking on the pawn icon.
Now that those are out of the way, let's see which Upland playstyle suits you best!
Trader
Being a trader is all about flipping properties for maximum profit. This is more of a long-shot playstyle, as it mostly involves investing in properties that will, over time, become more valuable.
On the Upland Marketplace, you can buy and sell your portfolio either for UPX or exchange it for another property. Essentially, if you want to play for profit, you will need to work on two fronts: buying lots in strategic locations and buying 'clusters' of cheaper properties in at least three different areas of the city.
For the former, you would have to do some homework. Consider the main areas of interest in the real San Francisco and don't forget about rare property Collections! Having completed Collections will increase your passive income in UPX, not to mention the Net Worth growth and all the perks that come with it.
Also, try to think ahead of the future developments in the game. Upland will expand to different states, towns and cities — hell, maybe even countries at some point! — so it may make sense to get close to transportation hubs.
The game is also famous for holding various events related to places of cultural and social significance in one way or another. Winners usually obtain these places in Upland as properties — try to keep up with these competitions to increase your chances of owning something that can truly make you a lot of UPX.
To help you better understand what kind of properties are in demand, you can always check Upland's Twitter, Discord and the community-run UplandCentral and The Upland Actions News. There is also Upland Property Explorer where you can look up some addresses, owners, initial vs. current prices and much more! They also have a Shill section, which works as ads for properties on sale.
Make sure you set fair prices so that your offers are both competitive and still make you decent returns. Always hold at least part of your portfolio and include some high-value properties, as you will be able to trade those for fiat money soon.
Buying clusters of properties has a different purpose. You want to own as many slots near each other to eliminate the competition and collect more visitor fees in that block and second, to be able to trade some of these for properties in different areas.
This is important, as spreading around the city can help you with a number of things:
- Sending the Block Explorer to your properties is free, so you'll be able to cover more ground during Treasure Hunts. And winning treasure hunts means UPX and, sometimes, exclusive property!
- You can differentiate your portfolio and get a foothold in promising areas.
- If you set your margins right, you can buy up very close to points of interest.
Keep in mind that exchanging properties without talking to the prospective buyer first is always a gamble but it does help a great deal if you want to cover more ground.
Collector
Being a collector is all about holding properties of the same group. You can array houses and apartments that belonged to rock stars in the real San Francisco, supermarkets, tattoo parlors — anything that your heart desires. Besides that, there are Collections compiled by Upland that we mentioned above. In total, there are 21 of those and they are also color-coded, depending on the rarity:
Blue/Standard Tier
- Newbie — Own 1 property
- San Franciscan — Own 3 properties
- Sunset — Own 3 properties in the Sunset Neighborhood in San Francisco (SF)
- King Of The Street — Own 3 properties on the same street
Purple/Limited Tier
- City Pro — Own 5 properties in the same city
- Mission District — Own 3 properties in the Mission District in SF
- Mission St. — Own 3 properties on Mission St. in SF
- Pacific Heights — Own 4 properties in the Pacific Heights Neighborhood in SF
- Russian Hill — Own 3 properties in the Russian Hill Neighborhood in SF
- Haight-Ashbury — Own 4 properties in the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood in SF
Orange/Exclusive Tier
- Nob Hill — Own 5 properties in the Nob Hill Neighborhood in SF
- Sea Cliff — Own 3 properties in the Sea Cliff Neighborhood in SF
- Haight St. — Own 3 properties on Haight St. in SF
- Lombard St. — Own 3 properties on Lombard St. in SF
- Market St. — Own 3 properties on Market St. in SF
Red/Rare Tier
- EST. 2019 — Own 4 inaugural [i.e., those that were put up at launch] properties in Upland
- Financial District — Own 4 properties in the Financial District of SF
- Iconic — Own 3 Iconic SF places
Yellow/Ultra Rare Tier
- Crooked Lombard — Own 2 properties on the Iconic Crooked part of Lombard St. in SF
- Painted Ladies — Own 2 of the Iconic Painted Ladies in SF
- The Curator — Own 3 museums in SF
Now, there's one tricky detail — you cannot have the same building in several Collections. So when looking for a property to complete one, it's worth checking if you can shift some of your holdings around to minimize the loss. How you build Collections of your own is entirely up to you. Unfortunately, you won't be able to organize them in the same way as the default ones just yet.
Your own collections won't give you an earnings boost either. So in the beginning, try to complete the default Collections first to get more UPX for buying further.
Hunters
Being a hunter is, perhaps, the most exciting thing you can do on Upland — roaming around the city, looking for the treasure galore or pinatas... Both can land you some UPX, but they have slightly different mechanics.
The first type is your regular treasure chests. They come in Standard, Limited and Exclusive tiers and contain loot of predetermined value. It could be UPX, property, etc. The Limited and Exclusive treasures only spawn every so often. The Standard ones easily pop at your leisure, for a price of 100 UPX.
Then, there are pinatas that you can poke for UPX drops. The more you tap or click on those colorful cuties, the more UPX you get! You have to be fast though, as you will only get a few seconds for that!
In general, being a Hunter means actively engaging with Upland way more. You need to keep an eye out for when the higher-tier treasures are charged and spawned and be super quick when locating them. Even when you're not on your neverending loot quest, you need to stay logged in to collect Sends — your 'allowance' for visiting other people's properties. These will come in handy when looking for a treasure around the city. It should be noted though, that as of the time of writing, we were unable to confirm if extra Sends have already been deployed in San Francisco.
Because of that reason, you would also want to spread your properties across the city, like Traders. But instead of clusters, you would rather buy 1-3 properties in as many neighborhoods and blocks as possible. That way, you will be able to navigate through San Francisco with minimum Sends spent.
Before you venture off to Upland...
No matter which playstyle you choose, remember — the more property you buy, the most you will make out of the game. Your approach to it, however, is what makes the difference. Still, don't let it overshadow many other things that the game has to offer. Besides being a gateway to the city that might be thousands of kilometers away from you, it's full of challenging but rewarding events, promising business opportunities and even special rewards for community members.
Now, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and get your first Upland property with our 2x sign-up bonus!
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