This week in Splinterlands...

Even though it's only Tuesday we've had plenty of exciting stuff so far this week, starting with the Town Hall yesterday which basically was one big Land Whitepaper discussion with the land guru Yabapmatt himself, but before getting to that, let's check out the most exciting thing (at least for me) so far this week - the launch of Vruz.

Vruz is a great new addition to the Dragon Splinter, and anyone who had at least 1,000 SPS staked qualified to buy 1 BCX of him. I had 35,000 SPS staked on my main account and 3,000 SPS staked on my alt, so I was eligible to receive 38 copies of Vruz for the price of 38 vouchers. Every 25 BCX purchased guaranteed 1 Gold Foil card, so I got exactly 1 GF out of the 38 BCX. That's normal, of course, judging by my usual luck with airdrops and stuff. So the currently price of Vruz on the market is $0.52, and even though I need to buy another 183 BCX of him, I am hoping for the price to drop in $0.30 cause I feel he is currently a bit overpriced. So while we're on the topic of Vruz, let's also have a look at his stats:

While he could be useful at the Bronze level in some instances, the level which he really becomes useful at is in the Silver league range - level 5, where he gets his Martyr ability (When this Monster dies, adjacent Monsters get +1 to all stats). The 2nd point I would consider after having him at level 5, would be level 8, where he gains his 2nd point in Melee Attack for a total of 2. Level 8 is also max for Gold league which also means that you can use him in Diamond league with no penalty. And, of course, maxed at level 10, he also gets True Strike. I feel True Strike is not that vital for his performance since he already has 6 Speed at level 8 so he is more unlikely to miss, having said that, we still need to keep in mind that if you want to be 100% sure he won't miss and if you play in Diamond, then True Strike will definitely give you the sense of security you are looking for.

Overall he is a very cool little card and hopefully his price will be affordable at least in the short term. I still maintain that he should have been a rare card but it is what it is.

As you can see from the screenshot above we now have an energy bar which goes to 50. Every battle you play now costs 1 energy and 1 energy is replenished every hour for a total of 24 per day. This means that if you have 100% ECR at the time of transition, you will have 50 energy but if you use up all your energy by playing 50 battles in the first day then you will be able to play no more than 24 battles per day unless... you burn some of your DEC for additional energy points up to 50 per day. Here is how much DEC that costs:

So for Bronze the price seems fairly affordable but the higher the ladder you go, the more prohibitive it gets, and it should be that way, of course. This is meant to be something optional so if it was not borderline prohibitively expensive everyone would feel obliged to buy 50 additional energy every single day.

Generally this new system results in less battles played per day but it actually results in probably the same amount if not higher (depending on the number of wins) of RP earned. Here's an example.

While Card Bonuses/Reductions still apply to the RP calculation, there is no reduction to the rewards based on the amount of energy you currently have as there was with ECR. So you can see that both my RP and SPS rewards have doubled because on the 1st screenshot I am playing at about 50% ECR, so I am getting rewards cut in half. We will see how this change affects the game in the long run. It is too early to tell.