Land when?

This question has been asked way too many times and for good reason. Land is one of the key pivotal things in Splinterlands that players have all been eagerly waiting for. Finally, we have something to dig our teeth into!

Introducting Land 1.5. According to @yabapmatt, this is but a small taste of what is expected for land but this is definitely enough to get people excited.

He mentioned:

"Please keep in mind that this phase (v1.5) encompasses only a very small subset of the full vision for buildings and resource production on land which will all be included in phase 2 expected later this year."

What to expect

Land will have a variety of options for you to explore which include:

• Claiming
• Surveying
• Terrain Type (14 Different Types)
• Rarity (Common, Epic, or Legendary)
• Resource Type (Natural, Magical, or Occupied)

There is still a lot of RNG involved when you look further into these features so the #PrayToEarn mantra still applies as the higher the rarity or the more impactful the resource type, the better the potential yields would be.

What operations have cost implications?

We already know operations would have cost implications but what they specifically? Let's break them down below.

Starter Packages

According to the whitepaper, we have the option for 3 starter packages which will have more features unlocked in the future. The first 2 are below and the third one, called "Unstable Totem", isn't available for this version so we'll leave it out for now.

Key things to take note of:

• You have to decide on purchasing these upfront as you can't go back and purchase these once your land has been surveyed
• Packages will only be available for purchase for 60 days after the date that land surveying is released.

Plan wisely!

Building in a Box

This package allows the the player to begin construction of a level 1 building on a single land plot without having to pay any DEC or other resources which would normally be required to begin construction of a building. This seems to be quite important but we aren't sure yet what sort of resources would be needed to actually construct a building. It's important to note though that this is only applicable for Phase 2.

This package, however, comes with a Power Source which is needed to power up your land plot. An individual Power Source will cost 5 000 DEC.

Cost: 10 000 DEC

Time Vault

The Time Vault package offers buyers 150 Time Crystal tokens as well as 15,000 Grain tokens. Time Crystals are mainly speed up boosts to save time in construction or clearing your land plot. For this version, only clearing the land plot is available as we won't be able to construct buildings just yet. Grain tokens, on the other hand, are useful to keep production up by your cards.

Cost: 10 000 DEC

Card Staking

It was mentioned previously that we would be able to stake a total of 5 cards per plot. To be able to stake the card, it will need to first be locked prior to being available to be staked. Once staked, these cards can no longer be used for anything else like battles or renting until they are unstaked. We'll be putting up card prices in summary below for estimations so that it can be included in our cost estimates.

All hail the mighty Heatsmith!

DEC Staking

Since there will be card staking, those cards will need DEC for it them to be powered up, DEC in this case will not be burned but instead staked. Card rarities will not affect DEC price for staking but rewards will vary based on them instead.

The whitepaper summarizes it well:

For example, a 200 BCX Chaos Legion Common card will require 5k DEC to be staked since it has half of the max BCX for that type of card (400). Similarly, a 3 BCX Gold Foil Beta Legendary card will require 7.5k DEC to be staked since it has 3/4 of the max BCX for that type of card (4). Please note that overcombined cards (cards with more BCX than the max) will not require extra DEC to be staked nor will they provide extra production.

Cost: 10 000 DEC per max level card but only staked, not burned.

Production Power

Cards will generate PP or Production Power. Rarity, Foil and Edition will have effects on how much PP can be accumulated.

As always, GFL will take top honors if you are able to stake them.

Editions matter, too as you'll get significant boosts if you are able to use Alpha/Beta cards.

Terrain Preferences

Once you find out what type of land you have, you'll have to still adjust your strategy accordingly because there are terrain preferences you have to look into so that your cards are getting bonuses rather than penalties.

Other Production Boosters

Aside from these, there are still others that provide utility to boost production.

Runi

Photo taken from https://opensea.io/en-US/collection/runi

A Runi is considered a regular foil max legendary card and will provide a 100% PP boost to your plot. Plots with both a runi and a Power Source will have the option for 1 more card bringing total card count to 6.

Titles

Finally, Titles will have utility! Titles have always been a cosmetic or "bragging rights" kind of thing but now, they'll be providing bonuses, too. It is important to note though that when a Title is assigned to a land plot it cannot be transferred or sold, and it can be assigned or unassigned instantly with no cooldown time. See below for percentages.

Totems

Totems also add more boosters for your land plots. Only 1 totem can be put per plot.

How much do you actually need?

A lot to take in, right? The biggest question on everyone's mind is: How much do I need to get the most value of my plot? We'll be tackling this on a per plot basis as it's easier and you can scale it up as necessary if you have multiple plots, tracts, or even regions.

With all these items lined out, let's start with a base computation as well as put in a side by side with all features. Essentially we'll have an ideal or affordable version versus the complete package with all the bells and whistles.

This doesn't take into consideration Sets/Editions for now as that'll skyrocket prices too much as well as terrain types.

As you can see, the full package is definitely not feasible unless you have a lot of whale-like resources so take it as a reference instead. Also, this is PER Plot so this will give you a rough idea if you have multiples of them. 70 000 DEC and $54 per plot or even without a Totem would be 70 000 and roughly $30 dollars worth of cards which is more doable especially if you have some max cards you can use already.

These costs will be out of range for your average player but there's a lot of benefits with owning your own plot. In line with that, @mangomayhem of TeamPH has a post on a rent to own feature for having land that you can find here. Please note that this is subject to availability so check in with us via discord on it.

As of this writing, DEC has pumped by 5% and is almost hitting the $.0008 barrier. Push and Shove might be happening so be warned!

Overall, we have a lot of good info from Land 1.5 so there's a lot to be excited about. What's your land plot strategy and how many do you plan on having? Let me know in the comments!

Images and game related content taken from in game and the whitepaper: https://splinterlands.gitbook.io/the-secret-of-praetoria/