Death by Fire

I can't remember the last time I have not only attempted, but completed a FIRE quest. Tonight though I did it and it only cost me four hundred points!!! In order to get it completed, I got smashed from mid-Champion 3 to perilously close to falling into Diamond 2.

That is tenacity!

And stupidity.

@azircon will be disappointed at my impatience.

I didn't get anything much for for completing the quest and definitely not enough to make up for the 400 points, but there is still some sense of misguided satisfaction.

Honestly though, I am didn't have the best "mindset" to play tonight, but just like when I write, it is all a bit of a test. For those that don't know, I haven't missed a day posting in 4.5 years and what this has meant is that I have posted through some pretty terrible moments in my life. I have posted from the hospital when my daughter was taken in for seizures, and from there again when I had a stroke. I have posted after I have lost a large client, and when my father passed away. I have posted ill and in the worst moods, after fights, angry, drunk, after not sleeping for three days, with a 41C fever... Life happens, my writing is somewhat a record of mine.

Playing is the same. Some days I am on point and see the matrix of it, but most days I am lost in the fog of my own mind, struggling due to being tired or distracted, thinking about family, work or the bills to pay - whatever it might be, I am affected by the external conditions I face and the internal conditions of my mind and body too.

I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab of the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?
Jason Bourne

After so many years of testing myself under all different kinds of conditions, I had a pretty good understanding of who I was, but after the stroke, I have had to retest to see who I am now. Part of that has been through observing and reflecting upon my thoughts and feelings as I play Splinterlands.

This might sound strange to some, but by paying attention to my conditions and noticing the ups and downs and especially the times I tune out into a poorly developed routine that isn't conducive to the results I am after, I am able to identify weaknesses and have become better at catching myself in these moments in other areas, like at work.

If you have been reading me for long enough, you will know that I am not a big fan of gaming, as I see that a lot of people use the entertainment as a way to avoid aspects of their life that they should really be looking into. Also, there is the sense of having skills and getting the reward for them, while not actually possessing those skills, nor getting rewarded. However, at least the latter part of that is changing as play to earn models start to emerge to evolve the gaming industry into its next phase.

However, there are benefits to gaming too, if the person playing is actually paying attention to what they are doing and actively using it as an improvement process. In this regard, Splinterlands is great in many ways for me, and I am learning a lot about the investment side of the economy.

In this regard, I have learned that I am willing to sink a crapload of value into this game in the hope that other people see the value in it too. Just tonight I bought my first ever Beta Summoner, a Legendary MAX Crypt Mancer, from the DEATH Splinter.

I have never played with this card before but it was going "cheap" so I bought it and funded someone's drug habit for a bit longer. There are only 718 regulars of these floating about and since I am playing DEATH again more, it might work out okay. From an investment standpoint, I don't know, but I paid 35% less than the next MAX on the list, so score? What this does indicate however, if you are dumping all your cards like this dude is, you aren't going to get close to the full market rate. He doesn't care I am sure though, as he didn't pay for them himself anyway.

I also bought a MAX Flame Monkey for 125 (current next max is 180)

And a Max Gold Flamesmith for 200

The reasoning for each is a bit different, but the Flame Monkey might be decent with GRUM as it has REPAIR and SWIFTNESS, so this could keep that slowass sucker alive long enough to get a bit of Bloodthirst action happening for once. And the Flamesmith is a bit the same, but I don't have a MAX (I have an L9) and this one being gold carries 22,000 CP with it. I have 14 Gold singles in this already (I bought DICE as my entry), but it would have cost me 33 dollars more to buy enough to get a max. The next current MAX available is at a $379 price-point. This also has REPAIR and a +4 Range attack, so is useful for some of the higher Mana rounds.

The main reason I "splurged" a bit on these tonight is that firstly, I am very "summoner light" but also, that these cards are no longer available. While they have dropped in value over the last few months, I think we are approaching an average floor on the older cards, especially the golds and the summoners. As LAND information is released and especially if it is timed with a run on the wider markets, these types of cards will be worth significantly more, especially if the "quality of card" is going to affect the yield efficiency on LAND.

If that happens and people start staking all of their cards to LAND to create new assets, that is going to create all kinds of supply issues for the game and rental markets. Plus, SPS will be brought into play and DEC very well could be too, meaning that owned assets of all kinds have the potential for gain.

A lot of people look at Splinterlands as a game, many others also look at it as an investment vehicle too - but what is interesting with it is that while it can be many things, it does have usecase that make the economy of it more complex than a simple buy and sell market place like most tokens. DeFi pooling brought in staking for yield to add some more complexity to tokens, but they are nearly exclusively yielding unusable tokens that are only good for selling.

Splinterlands will have much the same idea through LAND, except the yield is going to create usable assets of various kinds that will have a demand on them for what they are not what they can be sold into. This is a fundamental change and one we are going to see more of in the future, when people stop with the image NFT hype and start seeing them for what they are, ownable real estate that can be used to generate various types of income streams. In a world where many people can no longer afford to own real land, digital land is going to become popular, especially when people are living much of their lives behind a screen anyway.

I and all the other people who are bullish on Splinterlands could be very long and lament the value sunk into the bottomless digital pit, but then again, it might just reshape the way we all live our lives.

Perhaps somewhere in there, I will work out who I am again.

What I do know is about myself is ... I have to make it back into Champion League and I was hoping for C2 for the first time. Can't buy everything.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]