As a Hiver that is currently beginning my journey on Splinterlands, I feel like this social media challenge came just in time for me to share some tips from my perspective as a beginner.

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After months of procrastinating getting started on Splinterlands, I started playing a few days ago, in what I’d like to describe as a Trial and Error for the most part. That probably puts me in the best position to explain some basic concepts in a way even beginners will understand. I’ll be explaining and giving some tips from what I’ve learned so far.

Introduction to Splinterlands

The game is a card game where you play as a summoner that uses monsters to battle. The game is called Play2earn because as you play, you earn various assets, including SPS which you can trade (buy or sell) or stake to increase your earning potential. So you don’t just play a game, but you earn whiles playing.

And the sweet part, you don't need to invest a fortune to start earning. You can even play absolutely for free, but to earn better and have access to more in-game functionalities, purchasing a spellbook is advised.

Navigating the game

On the splinterlands home page, 3 very important things you might want to explore as a beginner are…

As it sounds, this is where you learn the ropes of the gameplay. Clicking on this gives you access to an array of resources that will help you learn about card types, elements, card basics, battling, abilities and rulesets.

There are two types of cards: Summoners and Monsters. Summoners draw their power from 6 sources: fire, water, earth, life, death and dragon. Based on a summoner’s source of magic they can summon monsters from one of the elements.

Under battling, you learn about things like battle positions and attack order. Here, you get an understanding of the battle terrain. This is important in selecting either Melee attack monsters or Ranged attack monsters for battle.

You also learn how to analyze rulesets and the ruleset hierarchy here. I call it the rule set hierarchy because it explains what rulesets can override others.

This is currently where my challenge lies - understanding rulesets. I’ll talk more on this in another part of this post.

This is where you get to practice the things you learnt in How To Play. Over here, the results of your battles don’t affect your position on the leaderboard. This is where to do most of your Trial and Error in a “safe” way. It is an opportunity to test, practice and hone your strategies for real battles.

After you believe you’ve gotten enough practice, it’s time to put those strategies to action in real battle. As far as I know, all beginner battles have standard rules, so there are no complicated rulesets to worry about. The outcomes of your battles whether Win or Lose affect your position on the leaderboard here, so be sure to bring your A game here.

Some Tips

Maybe I don’t have enough gameplay experience yet to be giving tips, but I’m going to drop somethings I’ve realized this short time I’ve been playing Splinterlands. My tips are going to be more battlw-focused.

Understand the basics

I know that this sounds corny, but seriously it’s a good tip. Know the basics.

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When I started playing 2 days ago, I didn’t even know what the numbers and symbols on cards meant. I had tried to read up on the “How To” of cards, but the links kept taking me in circles. So I read only a little and decided to figure the rest out through trial and error. Lucky for you, I’ll briefly highlight some basics I think you should know.

Summoner	Monster

First of all, know what a summoner is. A summoner is what you use to call on (aka “summon”) the monsters you want to use to battle. The monsters are what actually do the battle. You need to become familiar with what summoners call upon what monsters. You also need to become conversant with the special abilities of monsters. Another important thing is to always watch your Mana Cap and strategize to blend the cards with the right mana costs to win you the battle.

Pick a strategy

Luck aside, your strategy will be responsible for most of your wins. Picking a strategy will require a lot of practice and battles.

You need to figure out what summoner summons the monsters you’re most confident and victorious playing with.

But it doesn’t just end at picking summoners and monsters - you need to figure out the positioning that grants you more wins. All these constitute part of your strategy. You can have the best summoner and monsters and still lose because of your positioning.

For instance, for position 1 you can have a Melee attack monster that also has considerable speed. Then throw in two or magic monsters(since they deal direct damage to health), one of which should have a healing ability for my position 1 monster. Finally, you can throw in a monster like the Endless Ape for his high health and scavenger-like ability. Of course, this is assuming you’re playing a standard game with no extra rulesets applied. You need to have multiple strategies in case a battle has ruleset that prevents your from using some of your favorite standard-use monsters.

I was telling a friend about my first experience playing a battle with a non-standard rule. After several practice sessions and a long going winning streak, just as I thought I mastered the perfect strategy, I played a battle with a rule of only using Ranged Attacks. The problem was that I had focused my entire strategy on blending in a Melee attack monster with 2 monsters and an Endless Ape, and it was only then I understood the valuable lesson of tweaking my strategy into multiple strategies in anticipation for abnormal rulesets. I sadly ended losing that battle: price to pay for a good lesson, I guess.

And for the last tip…

Interact with other players

There is a vast community of experienced Splinterlands players on Hive, Discord, Twitter and other socials that you can engage with and ask questions about all things Splinterlands. For me, I have a few friends already playing, so they’re my primary contact persons if I have questions. But I have also joined (and would encourage other beginners to join) the Splinterlands discord, an even bigger community of seasoned players where you can ask all your Splinterlands-related questions. Some of your connections can even open opportunities to join guilds for you (which is kinda what I'll be looking for in a few months when I hone my battle strategies)

Find the Splinterlands Discord and Twitter Account here. And if you're not on splinterlands yet, you can use my referral link link to join, start playing and earning!

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_{Unless otherwise stated, all images are screenshots taken by me from my battles or splinterlands.com}

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