My Splinterlands Blog #93 - Too Much to Cover!

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Welcome to another entry where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! Quite a lot of things have happened over the last week, so I may forget to write about some of them. Probably the oldest change was a revamp of the fairly new Focus system for daily/seasonal rewards. This happened right when I was writing my previous article on the Modern and Wild split.

The main change was that you now get Focus Points for any win, not just wins with your Focus. Instead, you now get bonus points for each card you play that meets your specific Focus for the day. About sixteen additional Focuses were also added, with requirements such as play monsters with Flying or play monsters with Healing abilities.

These are the new Focuses.

This has made the game a lot more fun to play, in my opinion anyhow. There is far less call to spam a specific Splinter over and over again to try to earn daily rewards. The other big change was to Energy Collection Rate (ECR). It now drops by 5% per game when it is under 50%, instead of the 1% it normally decreases by per game. This, combined with rentals now being a minimum of 2 days, has really hurt the bot networks that were spamming large numbers of games.

Robot workers grinding away for Focus points (image from https://www.information-age.com).

Some other big changes were that potions can now drop in multiples and you can now find Merits in chests. Merits are the reward from Guild Brawls that you can use to buy Gladius (Gladiator) packs. The extended season also gave me a lot more time to rank up, so I reached the highest ranking ever this time around. Heck, I even did some trading this week!

The developers have also stated that they intend to remove Dark Energy Crystal (DEC) rewards for a time, and replace them with Splintershard tokens (SPS) for ranked play rewards. There has also been discussion about adding a way to burn SPS for DEC after that change. I'll get into things a bit more at the end, but for now let's take a look at the rewards from this past week or so of ranked play:

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 676. Got Fire Focus… re-rolled to Death Focus. This was the first day of the new ranked rewards, and I was getting Diamond league chests. I got 432 (272 + 160) DEC, 57 Merits, 24 Gold potions, 24 (8 + 16) Legendary potions, and a Pelacor Conjurer (common monster).

The new Merit reward icon.

InvestYGator, my alt account playing in Silver, got Dragon Focus. I received 60 (16 + 18 + 10 + 16) DEC, 4 (3 + 1) Legendary potions, a Venari Heatsmith (common monster), a Vampire Bat (common monster), an Ever-Hungry Skull (common monster), a Pelacor Bandit (common monster), and a gold foil Venari Crystalsmith (rare monster)!

Daily Quest # 677. Got Defend Focus (play monsters with shield/repair)… re-rolled to Dragon Focus. I got 896 (192 + 240 + 464) DEC, a Vampire Bat, an Ever-Hungry Skull, and a Djinn Renova (epic monster)!

InvestyGator got Flying. I received 14 DEC, 4 (1 + 3) Legendary potions, 4 (1 + 3) Gold potions, and a Pelacor Bandit.

Daily Quest # 678. Got Life Focus. I received 96 DEC, 49 (13 + 17 + 19) Legendary potions, 3 Vampire Bats, and a Djinn Chwala (epic monster)!

InvestyGator got Flying. I got 108 (16 + 16 + 52 + 24) DEC, 4 (2 + 2) Legendary potions, a Gold potion, 2 Pelacor Conjurers, and a Venari Seedsmith (rare monster).

Daily Quest # 679. Got Disable Focus. I received 944 (48 + 48 + 480 + 192 + 176) DEC, 19 Legendary potions, 15 Gold potions, a Merdhampir (common monster), and a Pelacor Mercenary (common monster).

InvestYGator got Life Focus… re-rolled to Death focus. I received 290 DEC, 3 Gold potions, 11 Merits, 3 Pelacor Deceivers, a Merdhampir, a Venari Heatsmith, and a Venari Bonesmith (rare monster).

Daily Quest # 680. Got Ailments Focus (poison, affliction, or weaken). I got 960 (144 + 336 + 96 + 384) DEC, 22 (8 + 14) Gold potions, a Gargoya Devil (rare monster), and a gold foil Blood Maker (common monster).

InvestYGator got Fire Focus. I received 36 (20 + 4 + 6 + 4 + 2) DEC, 3 Gold potions, 2 Legendary potions, a Pelacor Deceiver, a Pelacor Mercenary, a Blood Maker, and a Venari Crystalsmith.

Daily Quest # 681. Got Healing Focus. I received 528 (144 + 368 + 16) DEC, 16 Legendary potions, a Pelacor Bandit, a Pelacor Deceiver, a Pelacor Mercenary, and a Merdhampir.

InvestyGator also got Healing Focus. I got 36 Meris, 2 (1 + 1) Legendary potions, 6 (3 + 3) Gold potions, a Pelacor Bandit, a Blood Maker, a Venari Heatsmith, a Vampire Bat, and a Venari Crystalsmith.

Daily Quest # 682. Got Buffs Focus. I received 240 (32 + 112 + 80 + 16) DEC, a Pelacor Conjurer, an Ever-Hungry Skull, and a Blood Maker.

InvestyGator got Impair Focus. I got 466 (8 + 18 + 400 + 18 + 18 + 4) DEC, 18 (2 + 2 + 14) Merits, 4 (2 + 2) Legendary potions, and a Pelacor Conjurer.

Daily Quest # 683. Got Flying Focus. I received 640 (144 + 432 + 64) DEC, 31 (16 + 15) Legendary potions, 2 Gargoya Lions, a Dhampir Infiltrator (rare monster), and a Uraeus (epic monster)!

InvestyGator once again got Impair Focus. I got 40 (8 + 10 + 4 + 18) DEC, 14 Merits, 7 (2 + 2 + 1 + 2) Legendary potions, 4 (2 + 2) Gold potions, an Exploding Rats (rare monster), and a Gargoya Devil (rare monster).

Daily Quest # 684. Got Dragon Focus. I received 624 (160 + 64 + 96 + 304) DEC, 5068 Merits, 13 Gold potions, a Pelacor Conjurer, a Pelacor Deceiver, a Blood Maker, a Vampiric Blossom (rare monster), and a Lava Launcher (epic monster)!

InvetYGator got Defend Focus. I got 136 (26 + 30 + 58 + 6 + 16) DEC, 5 Merits, 5 (2 + 3) Legendary potions, a Vampire Bat, a Pelacor Deceiver, and an Ever-Hungry Skull.

Daily Quest # 685. Got Anti Melee (Champion chests!). I received 144 DEC, a Pelacor Mercenary, a Blood Maker, and 2 Chaos Legion packs!

InvestyGator got Death… re-rolled to Water. I got 1176 Merits, 2 Legendary potions, 5 (3 + 1 + 1) Gold potions, a Pelacor Mercenary, a Blood Maker, a Pelacor Deceiver, a Pelacor Conjurer, and a Venari Wavesmith (rare monster).

Daily Quest # 686. Got Water Focus (back to Diamond chests). I received 2,800 (160 + 32 + 112 + 128 + 2368) DEC, 1785 Merits, an Exploding Rats, and a Chaos Legion pack!

InvestyGator got Flying Focus. I got 50 (2 + 20 + 20 + 8) DEC, 7 (2 + 3 + 1 + 1) Gold potions, a Venari Heatsmith, and a Chaos Legion pack!

I went ahead and opened 4 Chaos Legion packs together at the end of the season:

One epic card and no summoners. At least I got one more rare card than the minimum!

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #93, playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. I actually was good about remembering to record the brawl matches this week! The guild came in 4th place this brawl. Speaking of brawls, another upcoming change they announced is that Brawls will start rewarding SPS tokens relatively soon.

Vs. OCEANBEE of ACOLYTES OF HELIO

Vs. ZEESHANNAQVI3RD OF GLADIATORS III

Vs. KAELUXDEUZ of IMMORTAL BEAVERS

Vs. OHSOJUICY of EDO TENSEI NO JUTSU

Guild Brawl #94, playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. A step back this week, as we came in 5th place. Hopefully the merits dropping in chests will start helping out!

Vs. KEVANKO70 of IMMORTAL GODS 3

Vs. CASHHEAVENSILVER of YUILD GUILD CHICKENS

Vs. TIGHTMUT of JIN

Vs. DOBIZZ of ALLIANCE PH - opponent fled

With all of the merits dropping from chests, I opened 5 Gladiator packs all told in this long second half of the season. I opened one early in the week, then 3 at the same time, and one last pack later in the week. Here is what I opened:

A really good pack with two epics, unfortunately no gold foil cards for my brawl slot.

I did manage to hit a gold foil common in the 3 pack opening! One that I may actually play as well, since I have so few gold foil gladiator cards.

A decent pack with two rare cards, but as usual no gold foil cards.

The Rest:

I did finally manage to make the trade I was talking about last article. I traded 18 gold foil common and rare monsters for a level 3 Jared Scar (legendary reward monster), a level 6 Flying Squid (common Chaos Legion monster), a max level Tide Biter (epic reward monster), a max level Dhamphir Infiltrator (rare reward monster), a max level Ever-Hungry Skull (common reward monster), 10 copies of Time Mage (rare Chaos Legion monster), a level 3 Reveler (epic reward monster), and level 5 Stitch Leech (common Chaos Legion monster). The cards I traded away were ones I had more than two copies of, and am unlikely to get enough to play at max level considering their cost.

Having more max level cards has made it easier to play at higher leagues. That, combined with the length of the season let me briefly hit Champion league for the first time! Granted, I got beat back down into Diamond at the end of the season, but still means I'll be getting Champion chests at the end of this new season!

The league symbols also got an art update recently!

Speaking of end of season, we should probably get on to what I opened in my chests. As I said, it's been a busy week, and this has been an especially long article with the lengthy extended season. So, here's a bunch of screen shots of what I got out of my end of season rewards:

Part 1 of my InvestYGator Silver League rewards. One pack is it for notable items here.

Nothing too notable in part two.

Overall, a lot of potions, small DEC amounts, and common & rare cards.

My main account opening Diamond league chests. One big DEC hit and an epic monster in this first section!

A gold foil epic! Plus a Chaos Legion pack and a 2,000 DEC chest!

And one more pack and large DEC hit. The number of potions here is also pretty crazy with the new multiplier. Overall, playing in Diamond is feeling a lot more rewarding this time!

And that's the end to my longest season! August should be back to a more normal split of about 2 weeks per ranked season. I'm not sure I'll make it back up to Champion league, but I may try if time permits. Thank you for reading! And, if you have any questions or comments, please let me know below!



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