Welcome this post is where we are going to see a beginner guide to splinterlands so that you know some info that is necessary before you start playing.
Warning this post was made for a few friends and was not a post for everyone

We will focus on the aspects that will help make learning much faster and hopefully increase interest in the game. Splinterlands is a game with an economy unlike any other, being on a blockchain and being able to exchange any aspect of the game for real money.

It is important to know that it is a slow game, in the sense that unlike other games it may seem that you are not winning much or that it gives little money. Since it is a progressive game, and that it does not focus on giving benefits to new players. In this way they control only having players create new accounts for the bonuses for starting.

The game is run on the Hive blockchain, and it is recomended that you visit an office site like peakd.com. The safest way to use your account is going to be with an extension called Keychain for hive. It was made by one of the founders of splinterlands. It has a number of uses with many of the projects on the Hive Blockchain and getting it will be one of the best ways to access, and give authorization of your blockchain assets.

When you go to this site click on Keychain and it should take you to the app store where you can get the official app.

Splinterlands Currencies

Above you see an image that you will see on the top right hand side of your screen. This is the Currencies that are used in splinterlands.

The first one you will see is called Credits, This is a currency tied directly to USD. Credits have a fixed ratio of $1.00 = 1000 Credits. Credits are something that can be gotten Via Paypal or Cryto payments. It is also the only currency that is rewarded to Bronze level players in reward chest.

The middle icon/purple area is a Currency called Dark energy Crystals DEC for short( from this point on I will be calling it DEC). DEC is the primary currency in the game and is currently the reward you get from battling. It is also the currency that is used for Buying/Selling cards and renting.

The right Yellow Crystal is Splintershards as with the last most just called this SPS and from this point on I will also be referring to it as such. SPS is the governance token for splinterland. and currently something that is payed out in tournament play, and from airdrops

HOW TO EARN PLAYING

Their great popularity of crypto gaming comes in large part from the fact that you can earn money by playing. And now that we know what the currencies that can be earned let's get into how.

First you Must have a spellbook to start earning. This is your first investment into the splinterlands community. A spellbook cost $10. I will be giving more info in Cost of entry into the game later but keep in mind this is not a free to play game it is a pay2earn game.

The First way is by fighting and winning you will make a small amount of DEC. in lower leagues when starting this amount is quite small. The higher your rating the more that you will be able to earn per win.

The second way of earning is doing the daily quest and getting loot chest. As you can see this is a daily quest for using monsters with the snipe skill. Though this one has zero of 5 fights won so far.

The quest resets once every 24 hours. The timer starts once you get your first win on the quest. You also have the ability of being able to stack/ save up to two quests see the chart below for the drop rates from the chest for each league. And why the goal should be Silver III

Revised loot chest rewards. (Source)

The Third is getting loot chest at the end of each season. The info for this is just above the battle button.

Now just because you might have a rating above what your current Power level supports doesn't always mean that you should go rent cards to progress to the next rank for more chest. You should always check what the current reward value average is from the chest. A good place to go and see the numbers on this form would be Splintercards. This shows both the DEC value and USD average return on chest.

The season ends every 15 days so you get the extra reward each 15 days.

GETTING STARTED

When you start you will receive a lot of Starter cards to start playing. You will be able to see your cards when you go to your card tab. You will be able to win fights with the cards you start with but you will have zero Collection power(from now on will be calling the CP). you will also have less monster options then someone that has rented or bough cards To know if you own a card vs a ghost card or starter card you can look at the cards as seen below. The card on the left is a starter card wail the card on the right is a card that is owned. You can tell the difference because all the starter cards have the large S on them and look slightly faded compared to cards that you own.

You can rent cards for less than buying them and not spending a lot of money to get daily gets done or a small boost in the area you need it. Though do not use the in game market unless you are buying cards via credits. You will want to use a 3rd party site as the development team has left this quite basic and encouraged 3rd party development. PeakMonsters would be the one I recommend as they have a bidding system for when buying with DEC or renting cards. You can log in via keychain that you set up earlier.

Above all else though, do you own market research on what you are earning vs the cost of what you're renting and when you are renting as prices on rentals change a lot depending on what part of the season it is.

I am not going to tell you what to rent as with the ever changing meta it will be different in a week.

BUY Cards instead of packs

Buying packs can be a lot of fun, but it’s not the smartest thing to do when you start, since you don’t know what cards you're going to get. It is gambleing, and it can be quite entertaining to open packs and pray you get lucky with a good or high value card. The Reality is that it is a shotgun approach. You will have a lot of cards for different splinters but not be strong in any one splinter. It is a much stronger approach to focus on being strong in two or three splinters.

Where to Focus

A large part of the game revolves around the summoners you can have to play with. Having a good summoner can help you much more than cards to start. You will need to level up your summoners to be able to level up your monsters. Without a levels summoner you monsters will not be able to be used monsters at higher levels. Though each league and summoner have a cap on what level can be used lets use bronze as a way to show level Caps.

Above you can see the League information for Bronze league. Now let's take a closer look at this information and see what it is telling us.

The first thing that you will see is that Bronze is broken down to three divisions that have different rating and power requirements. You must meet both requirements to move up so to move from Bronze III up to Bronze II you need to both have a rating over 400 and 1,000+ CP.

The next information that this shows is Season Rewards. This would be the number of reward chest that you will receive at the end of the season being in said league.
Below the season reward number in much smaller print it will show you what your rating will be lowered to at the end of the season when they give out the reward chest and where you will start your climb in the next season.

Wait there is one more bit of information here that is VERY VERY Important Summoner Level limits. What is this? Why did I just spend $16,000 on a level 4 Yodin but he is only level 1? Because of summoner level limits on bronze. A summoner can not be used above the levels listed in this league. Lets use Bortus as an example here. As this is a much more affordable card then Yodin.

So here we see that bortus is a rare level water summoner. Now from the league info we know that in bronze league rare level summoners can be used at level Two.

Knowing that rare level summoners in bronze league have a level two limit we can now see what level monsters are going to be limited to in bronze league. The collared dots at the top of the chart show monster rarity. At level one all monsters can only be used at level one. Though at level two common monsters are now able to be played at level three, rare and epic are available at level two or below, and leagandy are limited to level one.

Why did i just explain this to you so that you don’t make the common mistake of buying a level 5 or max monster and then wonder why it only level one when you go to fight with it. This also shows why summoners are the cornerstone of any team. And as you advance leagues you need to look at leveling a summoner to let you use leveled monsters.

Always use potions

New players are going to ignore me when it comes to opening packs because it's fun and what if I get lucky. So on that note at the very least help yourself out as much as you can when you open a pack and make sure you use the potions. They are very useful.

Potions increase your ratio for gold and legendary cards. With a dollar cost average are very worth using. So make sure you have them when you open that pack. Also positions work on a per card basis meaning that when opening a pack that has 5 cards in it you are going to need 5 or each potion.

Now one final part as you want to know some math and numbers on how much does it cost to get into splinterlands

Splinterlands is a pay2earn game let get that 100% clear

Minimum requirements to earn as already stated the account activation fee is $10 for a spellbook and unlocking the ability to earn, though you do not really get to earn anything until there is an investment into cards. As shown in the loot from chest up top you will get very little from your time until you reach Silver three. As in you do not unlock DEC drops from fight until bronze II and you do not unlock DEC from loot chest until Silver III. So let us look at what it will take to get to Silver III.

You will need to get to a rating of 1000+ this can be done with the starting cards though it can be quite a challenge without a few extra cards in your deck.

The next Thing that you will need to get into Silver is going to be getting to 15,000 CP

This is going to be where you will need to make a fiscal commitment on what road you are going to go down. Renting cards or buying cards.

Road one Renting cards. This is a valid way of doing it but takes a lot more time, skill and strategy to get earnings from the game compared to the cost to rent. Also remember that the cost of rent is eating your profits. This is also where stacking daily quests and playing only every other day so that you are only renting cards one time for two daily quests. And capitalizing on your energy capture rate ECR for short. Your ECR can been see when you click on your DEC

Buying cards. Each card has a DEC value and this value is the Collection power of the card. Buying cards increases your CP and you can do so on the market in a targeted way to improve your deck or go for the cheapest power you can find.

If you are not going to improve your deck you can get 15,000 power currently for around $500USD Harklaw at $17 X2 = 1000 CP X 15 =$510 for 15,000CP.

I am not going to redo the math or redo there post but when it comes to earning, check out Costanza post as it covers it quite well on earning from silver III
Costaza Silver III