Splinterlands Season Recap: Going for the Top 100
As the @splinterlands season draws to a close, I'm celebrating my most successful season of battle yet. In total 500 battles were fought, with a wining percentage of 55.6%, a rating of 2839 (new personal best) and my first top 100 finish in the Silver League. This is a full season recap, sharing my experience of the number 1 blockchain game in the world.
About Splinterlands
If you are not familiar with Splinterlands, it is about time. Splinterlands is a play-to-earn blockchain game which allows you to collect NFT playing cards, which can be used in battle. With a one time purchase of a Spellbook, it allows you to earn by winning battles, both ranked and in tournaments, as well as getting in-game rewards for gameplay. With over 1 million registered users and over 330.000 active users, it has been the most populair blockchain game for quite some time. Just recently, Splinterlands won the #Noonies2021 Award for Blockchain Game Developer of the Year.
The Noonies winner announcement on the Hackernoon website.
Strategy: Higher League or Higher Ranking?
Over the past year I've experimented with different strategies on Splinterlands. One is getting to as high as a league as possible. The higher the league, the better the rewards. Just the daily quest rewards get better is you are in a Gold or Diamond league. Not even talking about the Champion League.
Daily Rewards go up as you advance to higher leagues, from 1 reward in Bronze, to 2-4 rewards in Silver, 5+ in Gold and so on.
Last season, I played a couple of days in the Gold League III, and really enjoyed the rewards. However, it was quite difficult to reach the collection power needed to be in the league. So, I decided to try something else, to get ranked as high as possible in the Silver League.
Woohoo! Spot 100 it is, would I be able to hold that spot or not?
Chaos Legion
Currently, the newest Splinterlands pack 'Chaos Legion' is up for sale. You can purchase them for $4 and it features 5 cards with at least 1 rare card. There are also alchemy and legendary potions to improve your chances to get legendary or gold foil cards, with the best possible outcome a Golden Legendary. Because there currently is a SPS Airdrop going and we also get Legendary cards airdropped, I decided to maximize my chances of getting those as well. I've been lucky 3 out of 7 times with the legendary cards airdrop so far, but now upped my purchases because I want as big a chance as possible to get each one from now on.
Sometimes you get 1 rare, sometime a gold or a legendary, sometime you get 4 rares in a Chaos Legion pack.
As for the current ROI for investing in packs, I think it is close to break even at the moment, but due to the current DEC price, most packs have a negative EV, as the rare cards currently go for much less than $4. The only rares that come close to the value are actually the summoners. Indirectly however, there is a lot of benefit, as your pack purchases improve your legendary card airdrop challenges and your collection power helps both with your SPS airdrop and in ranked leagues. In short, if I didn't purchase the packs, I'd still be playing in the Bronze league.
For me, the gameplay with Chaos Legion is different. Especially in lower ranked games, the focus has shifted from magic to melee when it comes to your water squad, and the earth team has become a little more deadline with magic. This is because of the available summoners in Chaos Legion. Of course, once you get to higher ranked games, the Chaos Legion summoners aren't the easiest to win with. For me the life squad remains the hardest to complete my quest with. But when you start renting cards, you can make any squad invincible. I must say, the airdropped legendary Chaos Legion cards are awesome. They really bring another dimension to the game. Having a bloodlust ability on a level 1 card is a different dynamic.
Grum Flameblade is a scary monster. One that you do want to have on your side.
Learning Points
Personally, this season I do feel like I have identified a couple of things I have to get better at.
Playing against 3000+ rated players
I really had a hard time beating players rated 3k and above. In my opinion, the top 50 players of the Silver League are in a league of their own. They play with level 5 summoners and cards that have abilities I'm not familiar with, whereas I more often than not still play with a level 1 or 2 summoners. This was the first season that I really learned to play with level 3 and 4 summoners and I have keep learning if I want a serious shot at making the top 25 in the future.
Planning low mana games
You would think that by now, I should have a good feel for what works and what doesn't. I've fought well over 5000 battles and 500 last week alone. But in low mana battles I'm lost way too often. As I rent a lot of cards, I still have to find a balance on what works and what doesn't. More often than not I find myself misreading the ruleset, choosing the wrong squad, having way too little defense or not enough attack.
Rental cancellations
I remember this being a discussion on Twitter awhile back. A lot of players that rent out cards end the rental towards the end of the season as prices go up the last couple of days of the season. Too often in the last 2 days, I found out my squad had changed due to rentals that were cancelled. Since lost battles mean lower ranking, this is something I will have to actively monitor.
Guild
After being an independent player since forever, I finally joined a guild. Thanks to @the-bitcoin-dood, who founded Anarchy 99. You can read his Guild Announcement post here. We've jumped 400 spots in our first season, so we are pretty excited. There are still some spots left, so feel free to contact @the-bitcoin-dood if you are an active player and have been waiting to join a fun guild.
Favorite Battle
Out of the 500 battles fought in the past season, there were some favorites. Unfortunately, I don't have the battle link for my favorite fight, but it was a fun one. You can see the match up below and the two rulesets were:
1. Equaliser - The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
2. Super Sneak - All monsters have the Sneak ability. Targets the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster.
Can you guess how this one ended?
Funniest match
Luckily, I learned from my mistake with my favorite match and do have a link to this one: View the battle by clicking here
Final ranking & Season Rewards
As mentioned earlier, based on my profile stats, I ended the season at spot 89 in the Silver League. I achieved that position about 5 minutes before the season ended and decided I was not gonna risk losing another fight and being kicked out of the top 100. The top 50 was pretty much out of reach. As I mentioned, it will take some more experience with rule sets and experimenting with different line ups before I can consistently put up a fight.
As for the season rewards:
12 cards (3 rares, 1 gold), 2 potions and 4 DEC rewards. I guess it is time to bring the Pelacor Conjurer to level 4 where it will have magic reflect.
Season Score
For me this season was a solid 8. I learned a lot and still have a lot to learn, but I'm still proud that I made the top 100 in the Silver League.
This was my Splinterlands season recap. If you enjoyed this read and have yet to join Splinterlands, feel free to give it a try:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=jeanlucsr
See you next season!
https://twitter.com/The_Crypto_Dood/status/1493737559050137601
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Great post and thanks for the mention! Anyone looking to join a guild, we'd love to have you!
This one of the best review posts I have ever read. It could be due to the fact that I started playing recently and can, finally, understand how tough it is to get up in the league. I would like to read more insights on battles and strategies.