Splinterlands | Still Worth The Investment ? (4 Months Later...)

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About 4 months have passed since I wrote the article asking if Splinterlands was still worth the investment (See Link). In this article I'm taking a look how this would have turned out once again asking the question if it's worth it for new players.


So basically the initial article (Link) explained that 15k collection power was pretty much needed to get in the Silver League where the real rewards start.

This could be done by renting cards (which would have been the better option) or Buying the needed cards to have enough collection power which at that time when just buying the cheapest cards could be done for around 400$. Right now the minimum cost has come down to 75$ which is an -81% decrease! The reason it decreased pretty much comes down to supply & Demand. The market really did get overheated with all the new players coming in and no cards packs available and from the looks of it, the devs overestimated the demand being too optimistic on both the printed reward cards and the Chaos Legion Packs. The Crypto market also went down quite a bit which doesn't leave SPS and Splinterlands unaffected.

I did create an example set of cards to buy that for a total cost of 677$ (800$ for 15k collection power) with a mix of cheaper Reward cards and Rare useful Untamed cards.

1 December 2021

18 March 2022

Looking at these cards now, the Current Reward cards totally tanked in prices while the others relatively held up with the total current value of the cards being 314$ compared to the 677$ they used to be worth. That's a -53.6% drop in value not counting what playing the game would have earned, the SPS Airdrop, potential blogging rewards and so on. The Price of Bitcoin since that day is down -27% and most altcoins are down over 60%, so overall I guess it's not that bad knowing these swings are part of crypto.


Still Worth The Investment ?

The way crypto generally works is that everyone lining up to get in when prices are at all-time highs while nobody is interested to get in when there are major discounts. I guess for Splinterlands this is no different. The way I look at things, Splinterlands remains a game that many enjoy, it has a really solid Development team that is funded for a long time to come and many new things on the horizon. The SPS tokens are still airdropped to players based on the assets they own in the game and they are giving passive returns each day already with future use cases to be implemented.

So pretty much all the arguments from 4 months ago (Link are still valid and they are even amplified given how much cheaper everything is (even though rewards also are lower these days). However a lesson that can be learned from the past 4 months is that renting is a much safer and cheaper option and that older cards managed to hold up in value a lot better. This is no guarantee as the reward cards now even got more cheaper looking how much collection power you get for them.

If I were to make a starter deck of 15k Power today, I would most likely focus again on Golden cards buying a combination of useful cards and those that are cheap in collection power. Legendary Chaos Legion Cards also feel quite cheap. I like the Chaos Legion Water Splinter the most and again stick to cards that can be used in the modern format. These cards I would take as a base to build upon

Once you have 15k collection power you should be able to reach Silver 3 League given enough games and Build your account getting more cards or packs from there on out with the earnings you get especially if you tap into all of them one way or another (Especially blogging can help you a long way).


Conclusion

Splinterlands isn't going anywhere and even though there is always a risk that prices and rewards go down more. At some point a new bull market feels inevitable and at the current discount prices where you can get 15k collection power for 100$-200$ by buying cards on the market I still see it as worth the investment only for those that are interested in playing a collectible card game. For those who are just in it for the money there are probably ways to get more returns for your time playing the game.

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9 comments
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Totally agree with you! If you also think about the SPS airdrop aspect and how SPS soon will hav emuch more utility this game should be on everybodies watchlist! :)

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(Edited)

It seems like the devs didn't over estimate demand but try to perfectly meet it. That's a mistake when it comes to assets that are supposed to have some scarcity but CL packs lasting 6 months to a year I think was well in the plans. Also they were asked recently if they'd consider cutting the rewards card run and they said no because they'd just have to make new ones if they did.

I wish their goals were different in these releases but I think they nailed them as far as what they wanted to happen.

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Yes, the market really got overheated with the supply being so low which wasn't that healthy. It remains a difficult task to manage the supply of cards in the game. I do think they are a bit too trigger-happy on the printer button. We'll see how long the CL Packs last and I guess there might be a new hype cycle the moment they sell out.

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I have a different perspective. I don't think its a difficult task to manage supply in the game. I only think it's difficult if they release in bulk the way they do while running on a system that seeks to incentivize massive buys by a few individuals and for those individuals then to be the new suppliers of the cards at their own whim.

It becomes very difficult to gauge demand then because some accounts are sitting on more cards than the market could ever handle if they ever liquidated and meanwhile there are not enough cards in the actual market. That was the situation before CL. There was a huge abundance of cards from past releases but they were all sitting in accounts that were once incentivized to buy thousands of packs and hold. If they changed the printing and distribution paradigm to smaller prints more often while incentivizing scarcity rather than kickstarter like rewards for buying too much it would become very easy.

Thinking small scattered releases. Like just release the water cards and do a whole lore thing with it. Then 3 or 4 months later they release the new dark cards with more lore. They could get years of releases out of the same number of characters this way.

Cards should be high enough prints that it's fairly easy for most people to grab a lvl 1 common card but trying to max a card to lvl 10 is going to be a challenge and if several people try, prices are going to move. $10 packs, 4 cards per pack. 1 million packs maximum per splinter. If you get 100 wins the month prior to release and have 200 SPS staked you automatically get one voucher for the pack release.

There's no way there should be thousands of cards maxing out on release day. No one should be able to have a live event where they open 250k packs like they did a few days ago.

As it is, any new hype cycle would just be met with yet another card dump by the devs. If they don't change their ideas there will never be scarcity in this game because they are always there to meet demand. That's a huge mistake in a game that promotes the idea of scarcity.

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Your post should be more valuated, very good information. I'm really really bad at splinterlands, that's why I sold all my cards😅 but indeed is the perfect moment to invest in a good deck of cards, hopefully someone takes the advice!

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