What you should know before starting playing Splinterlands

Hi everyone, this guide is a quick start for new players. I hope i can answer all questions and write a usefull guide to help you to go through all splinterlands’ wall (because you’ll hit some wall, trust me 😀). Let’s start explaining briefly the basic stuff!

What is Splinterlands?

Splinterlands is collectible card game that allows users to play and earn. The crypto currency that Splinterlands uses and you can earn is called DEC (Dark Energy Crystal).

Game economy

Splinterlands has 2 currencies:

• Credits
• DEC

Credits are not a crypto currency, you can buy or rent cards with them. 1000 credits = 1 $. You can buy them with paypal.
DEC is a crypto currency, you can buy or rent cards. You can buy DEC in exchanges like coinbase.

Ranking system

The ranking system is nothing new, it is divided by leagues. Starting from Novice to Champion. The major difference between Splinterlands and other games (like LoL or Rocket league) is that the ranking system in not only skill based. To reach a bigger league you should also a certain amount of "collection power".

What is collection power?

Collection Power is the sum of the Burn Rate of all the cards that rented or owned in your account. You can check out the power of a card the card tab. More info here: https://splinterlands.fandom.com/wiki/Collection_Power

How to reach a bigger league?

To reach a bigger league you have to increase your collection. You have 2 way to do it: renting cards or buying them. So for example if you want to go in Bronze II you need 10 Epic cards (100 Collection Power each) or 100 common.

Ok now, you know the basic stuff so we can to the most blocking parts for new players. If you go through these walls you can start to enjoy this game.

First wall: Is Splinterlands free to play?

No, it isn’t. You can start to play without spending money but is a sort of demo. You can’t do so much, just playing with some free cards (that you don’t own). If you want to really play you must buy the spellbook, it costs 10 dollars and give you the possibility to complete daily quest and go through the leagues.

What is the daily quest and season rewards and what reward you can get?

Daily quest: The quests are simple missions. They are for example: “Win 5 ranked battles with the Earth Splinter” or “Win 3 ranked battles without any Neutral cards”. The rewards could be cards, credits, DEC, potions. The possibility to get these reward change from a league to another.

Novice: credits 45%, potions 45%, DEC 0%, cards 10%

Bronze III: credits 45%, potions 45%, DEC 0%, cards 10%

Bronze II: credits 40%, potions 40%, DEC 0%, cards 20%

Bronze I: credits 35%, potions 35%, DEC 0%, cards 30%

Silver, Gold, Diamond, Champion: credits 0%, potions 25%, DEC 25%, cards 50%

For more info check out here: https://support.splinterlands.com/hc/en-us/articles/4413683707668-Daily-Quest-Season-Reward-Chests

Seaoson reward: are pretty much similar to the reward of daily quests. Higher is your league, more reward you get

Second wall: Can I start to earn only with the spellbook?

In theory yes but in practice no. If you buy only the spellbook you can play in Novice and Bronze III and you can get cards (that has a real value) with a probabily of 10%. So for example if you complete 10 daily quests, in 1 you get a card. The Reward cards can only be obtained with daily quest or as season rewards. The real value of these cards start from 0,03 $ to 6 $ depending on their rarity. So if you are really lucky you can get a 3/6 $ legendary cards but what you really get is 0,02 $ card. There is a daily probability of 0.078% for a legendary card.

You can check the probability here: https://splintercards.com/tool-lootchest.html

To earn more you have to reach al least Bronze II. Starting from this league you receive an amount of DEC after every win. With DEC earned every day and a probability of 20% to get card with daily quest you can start to earn some money and buy cards.

Third wall: How to reach bronze II?

As said before, to reach a bigger league you have to increase your collection power. So with only the spellbook is hard to do it because you start the game with 0 credits and 0 DEC. You have to buy some credits to start renting some cards or buying them. To reach bronze II 2 or 5 dollars are enough to do it. After you reach Bronze II you receive an amount of DEC after every win but if you play too much the DEC'll become less and less. That's because Energy Capture Rate.

A player's Energy Capture Rate (ECR) gradually diminishes every time they play a Ranked battle, then regenerates with time.
When ECR is full, it is at 100%. The average battle will cause the ECR to be reduced by about 1%, which can cause ECR to drop significantly when many battles are fought in a single sitting, resulting in reduced DEC earnings per win.

Source: https://docs.splinterlands.com/dark-energy-crystals/earning-dec/energy-capture-rate-ecr

Fourth wall: Resouce Credits

After you start to buy, sell and rent cards you can run out of resource credit. Splinterlands works on Hive blockchain and Resource credits are what determine how many transactions on the Hive Blockchain you are able to do. So if you ran out of Resource Credit you can't sell, buy or rent cards.

How to recharge Resouce Credits.

If you are not a big merchant 3/4 dollars are enough to sleep well. To recharge resource credit you can use your DEC. These are the steps:

• Go to dark energy tab
• Transfert on your hive wallet an amount of dec

1. Go to https://hive-engine.com/?p=tokens -> swap -> DEC to SWAP.HIVE

• On hive engine -> wallet -> withdraw -> write you amount of SWAP.HIVE to withdraw

• Go to your hive wallet -> select your hive -> click on power up

• You have powered up your hive, with this method you can recharge your resource credits

My 2 words on Splinterlands

Splinterlands is a really funny game and you should play it because it's a good game. If you are only interested in making money maybe try something else, this game should be played firstly for the fun and then to make some money. This game is not super "new players" friendly and you have to buy the spellbook and 5 $ credits to start to enjoy this game.

That's it, i wanted to explain to new player the wall i hitted when i started to play this game. I really wanted to read this guide before starting to play :D anyway i really hope this could be usefull for someone. If you have some question don't mind to ask