My Splinterlands Blog #56 – More Novice Nerfs and A Contest No One Entered

Welcome to another weekly update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues! Initially it was a self challenge, to see how far I could get with the initial set of cards plus whatever I could win. But, that kind of fell apart around week 30 (with the game integrating with the WAX network and users being able to buy and sell cards on Atomic Hub).

The first big news for the week is the removal of DEC rewards from ranked play for Novice and Bronze III accounts, in attempt to continue to deter massive low-level bot farms. This has led to the usual complaints about it hurting new players, which to be fair it does. But, with the mass number of bot accounts that were added as the game exploded in popularity, the developers are trying to make changes to minimize their impact without explicitly banning bots or multiple accounts.

The other big update is the start of the Chaos Legion pre-sale. Vouchers, needed to buy a pack in the pre-sale, have been selling for around the $20 mark. The packs themselves only cost $4 from the store. But, with the need to buy a lot of packs to get the promotional card, there is still a big demand for them.

While my last article was very short and rushed, I did put in an offer of free delegations for the month in celebration of my making Diamond, if people replied to my last post. Which no one did. So, either the only people that read it were not new players, or just no one reads these articles (other than @aussieninja ).

@unitqm is holding another new boost event, to give out cards to new players. I believe it is already full, but at least it has gotten a lot of sign-ups. I may be able to pop in for some of it, and may try to toss in some extra delegations during that event. It is during a work day, so we'll see how that goes.

Other than that, it has been a pretty quiet week. Just grinding rewards this season, as usual. Here's the breakdown of the past week:

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 408 - Win 5 with Snipe. For finishing this daily quest, I received a Pelacor Mercenary (common monster), 2 Venari Heatsmiths (common monsters), 4 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), a Gold potion, and a Legendary potion.

Daily Quest # 409 - I ended up doing this on my phone while away for the weekend and didn't write down the quest. For completing it, I received 3 Pelacor Bandits (common monsters), 2 Venari Heatsmiths, and a Pelacor Conjurer (common monster).

Daily Quest # 410 - Win 5 with Earth. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Pelacor Conjurer, a Gargoya Devil (rare monster), a Pelacor Mercenary, 4 (3 + 1) DEC, and a Legendary potion.

Daily Quest # 411 - Win 5 with Snipe. I finally managed to grind up to Gold II. For completing this daily quest, I received 2 Gold Potions, 2 Pelacor Conjurers, 1 Venari Wavesmith (rare monster), 1 Pelacor Deceiver (common monster), and 1 Pelacor Bandit.

Daily Quest # 412 - Win 5 with Fire.. re-rolled to Water. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Legendary potion, 30 DEC (24 + 6), a Venari Crystalsmith (rare monster), a Pelacor Conjurer, a Venari Seedsmith (rare monster), and a Pelacor Bandit.

Daily Quest # 413 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I got 2 Pelacor Mercanaries, 2 Pelacor Conjurers, 26 DEC, and 2 Gold potions.

Daily Quest # 414 - Win 5 with Earth. For finishing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion, a Legendary potion, a Naga Assassin (rare monster), a Gargoya Lion (common monster), a Pelacor Deceiver, 8 DEC, and Harklaw (legendary monster)!

An okay tank, though he's more useful in certain rules sets at higher levels.

Daily Quest # 415 - Win 5 with Water. I finally made it back up to Gold I again. For completing this last daily quest of the week, I got 2 Gold Potions, a Legendary potion, 3 Pelacor Bandits, a Venari Crystal Smith, and 10 DEC.

In my continuing saga of Untamed pack opening, I cracked packs 29 and 30 out of 50. Both packs were well above average in their contents, which was nice considering how expensive these packs are getting to be.

Two rares, one of them being a summoner card, plus an epic!

While this one didn't have any summoners, the epic card is arguably a much better one, plus one of the common cards was Gold foil!

Tournaments:

I didn't play in too many tournaments of late. Some Halloween ones are coming up, but my deck is still in a state where it's not really highly competitive outside of Bronze league. Even there, I still need to rent a Scarred Llama and Yodin Zaku.

Monday Silvershield Knights, Silver League tournament: I did a mediocre 5-6 on day one, not making day two. I came in 101st place, which still came with a 15 Splintershard Token (SPS) reward (for a 6.25 SPS entry fee).

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #40, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. As usual, I only had one opponent. I believe the guild managed to come in first this brawl, unless I just copied and pasted it from a prior week and didn't update it!

Vs WACKOJACKO21 of The Mosh Pit

Guild Brawl #41, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. Again, I only had one opponent. Since this just ended, I know the guild came in 2nd place this round.

Vs TRADERGL3N of Never Alone Origins

I did also buy one more Gladiator pack. Unfortunately, since I'm playing in Gold Foil only brawls, my odds of getting anything useful are pretty slim.

The Rest:

Since I've been staking most of my SPS, I'm on track to get about 5 Chaos Legion vouchers a day for the duration of the pre-sale air drop. I sold my initial 5 when the prices spiked, and bought 2 more copies of legendary reward card Robo-Dragon Knight. I combined them with my existing copy, to get a level 2 version with much better stats.

The biggest rewards and discounts are when you buy 1,000 packs. But, that's a bit outside my budget considering I'm liable to get about 150 Vouchers all told. I will probably pick up 100 packs with SPS and sell or trade the other vouchers to get individual cards. At least that's the plan. I've also just sold high and bought low on the voucher market, turning my next 10 vouchers into 14 currently.

Though, as people who are getting more SPS than most continue to stake it, my vouchers per day is slowly dropping down. So, it's probably best that I keep a few extra to make sure I can actually get those 100 Chaos Legion packs! It was also confirmed that packs will start dropping from reward chests again, though perhaps at a reduced percentage rate.

Not much of note on the InvestYGator account this past week. I didn't rush for Silver I, so got a few days with less reward chests. The only card of real interest was a Gold Foil Pelacor Bandit, though he is helping to collect up common and rare reward cards to try to level them up for my main account. It's still time consuming to play both accounts.

That's about it for this mid-season update. Thank you for reading! And, if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below and I’ll be back in a week with another season wrap up!