Observations on the New Reward System from a Silver League Player

I've seen a lot of posts come across my feed discussing the new rewards system in Splinterlands. I've enjoyed reading the different perspectives on the game and learning different strategies people are using. Most of the posts I've seen are from higher level players, so I figured I'd give a perspective as someone who has been playing in Silver over the past few months.

Observations

A few major observations:

• Competition seems much harder - I compete in silver/gold 3 and have seen more gold foil/legendary cards than I am used to. It will be interesting to see if this is the norm or if players who haven't played much recently are working their way through the lower levels back to where they belong.
• Legendary summoners everywhere! Legendary summoners were previously very rare in lower leagues. I see them fairly often now. I believe the strategy is to rent a legendary summoner for your daily splinter to try and increase daily reward chests. I haven't tried it yet - but I am definitely going to do it. Especially if I can stay in gold cheaply and earn back the DEC to rent the summoner within the day.
• Rental prices are much lower - I've seen some saying this update will get limit bots. My guess is this change will actually encourage botting because there is so much emphasis on playing all of your matches to earn chests. The positive is those who are botting will now have to purchase/rent cards, which will be good for the economy. I think in a few weeks the rental prices will increase as botters update their software and start renting cards for their bot accounts. In the meantime, I'm taking advantage of the discounts. I also love not having to worry about paying a huge amount of DEC for rentals at the end of season; however, I'm sure there will be a small bump of people trying to increase their chest level for the next season.

My Rewards

My daily rewards so far have been 2 chests, 6 chests, 4 chests, 5 chests, and I'm on pace for 8+ on this daily set of chests. The number of daily chests has slowly increased as I move up leagues. I was previously sitting in Silver 2, which was 3 chests per day. I'm pretty sure I'll beat that average easily. I will lose a couple of claims due to timing since the new splinter doesn't start until you claim the old one whereas it would previously start as soon as the timer ended. I'm also having to spend a lot more time playing the game, which is a positive to me because I enjoy the game and had lost motivation to play matches when the rewards were only a few DEC. The new rewards give me the incentive to keep playing until my ECR limits me.

My last league finish was Silver 2 which included 15 chests. I will probably end this season in Gold 3 which would have been 22 chests in the old system. As you can see from the screenshot below, I'm already at 36 silver league chests with 9 days to go. This will be a significant increase in rewards from my previous seasons. I love the change as a lower level player, but I could see where it would be frustrating for those who were already in diamond/champion and earning those level of chests without the significant effort needed to build them up.

Future Strategy

I think for now I'm going to rent into Gold 3 and try to earn gold chests. I'll be watching the rental market. If rental prices stay low, I may try to go up another league or two. I have all of the Chaos Legion cards I need right now. I will likely buy some individual Untamed cards that I need as I earn some Hive/DEC. I'm currently renting about 7-8 Untamed cards to keep from losing earnings. There are a few Chaos Legion summoners I'd like to level up as well. I'm hoping the end of season payoff will be as exciting as the number of chests I'm on pace to earn. I've never earned over 20ish.

Conclusions

Overall, I'm bullish on the new update. It has made things more exciting for me and I'm playing the game a lot more than I was before. Previously, I was just getting my 5 wins and calling it a night. Now I'm playing until my ECR gets in the 75-80% range. Let me know in the comments if you agree/disagree with any of my points. I'm also open to any strategy recommendations. It will take some time to figure out the new system.

Happy Battling!

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