My Splinterlands Blog #158 - Happy Holidays 2023

Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! It is the last season of the year, and the team is mostly on holiday it seems. There haven't been any big updates since my last article, though a few items were hot fixed out to correct some very specific issues with using the Transak service through the site to buy Splintershards (SPS) or Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), and fixing a bug with Apple devices not loading up the new Tactics button properly.

Rebellion Conflicts, the new mechanism for getting the legendary card airdrops for the new set, should be out sometime next month. It seems like it was essentially done, but they wanted to wait until people were back from the holidays to release a new feature. On the last Town Hall of the year, the CEO spoke about wanting to focus on Land and New Player Experience in 2024.

He also noted that they were going to try to get a third party studio to finish the tower defense game. I'm not sure if that means Double Coconut, who they originally hired to make it, or if a new studio will be picking up that work. It seems a bit of an odd choice to hire another group to work on it, but it doesn't seem like the current CEO is that excited about the tower defense project he inherited.

Since there's not a lot of new items to discuss, I thought I'd take a little closer look at land. I'm getting about 30 SPS a day from two Shard Mines, a big one set up on my single Occupied plot and another that I set up on a regular common plot. Most of that amount comes from the Occupied plot.

My common plot set up with max level Chaos Legion era reward cards earns about 0.12 SPS an hour.

My Occupied plot has some of my highest production cards, my title, and my Runi on it - generating about 1.2 SPS an hour.

Outside of SPS production, I have one Magical plot doing research that generates about 1.9 Research an hour utilizing some of my other higher production cards. I have 7 plots production Grain farming, which, after feeding the workers on my other plots, leaves me with about 5,000 grain a day that I am accumulating, after taxes.

Brawls

Guild Brawl #186, playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. Continuing to vacillate wildly between the top and bottom of the standings, the guild came in 1st place this week!

Vs. NAZDAR of BLOODLUST GLADIATORS

Vs. MACNAPAT34 of PEAKMONSTERS - FEEDER 7

Vs. GINSUPIG2 of VINDICTA

Vs. WACHAN of CABAL COFFERS

Vs. WARLOCKS of BABY MERCENARIES

Vs. DK240SR of SLOTH CONFEDERATION

I opened up one Gladiator pack as well:

A gold foil rare in this pack, making it quite a nice one for my brawl deck!

The Rest

The first half of the season has been a bit of a grind. I made it up to where I can advance to Gold in Wild on my alternate account in pretty short order, but I've been stuck in mid-tier Gold in Wild on my main. I'm hoping I can make it up into Diamond before the end of the season!

I played a bit of Modern Silver on my alternate account, but I struggle to get out of the mid-tier Silver league there. Pulling a few of the Wild cards for land also didn't help that account, but it can still make do. The same can be said for my main account, as a few key cards being on Land have certainly made things harder.

I'm looking forward to the focus on new player experience next year, and I hope that they finally get around to improving the gameplay experience. Well, Rebellion Tactics seems like a nice improvement, but I haven't gotten any Rebellion cards since I staked my DEC to get Land workers set up. But, it seems like there should be a lot more focus on the core game, instead of side projects, this upcoming year.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, or a generally Happy Holiday season! If you have any questions or comments, please let me know below. Thank you for reading, and I'll be back around New Years with a final article for 2023!