My Splinterlands Blog #32 - Paying To Win or Wax for Gold

Welcome to another 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 to 31 with the game integrating with the WAX network, and users being able to buy and sell cards on Atomic Hub.

To start off this mid-season update, I will say that I did end up spending some of my WAX profits to pick up a set of rare and common Untamed gold foil cards. The epic and legendary ones were too pricey for me! The main goal of this purchase was to help out my guild, by being able to fill in one of the guild Brawl spots for gold foil only decks.

My purchase just about doubled my card power, letting me move up to Silver I. Technically, I now have enough card power to get into Gold III. However, since my cards are still effectively Bronze league level, albeit more gold tinted, moving up into the Gold league before the end of the season seems like a really bad idea. I expect that I would struggle to finish my daily quests in Gold league matches. Speaking of daily quests, here's the usual breakdown of the past week:

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 227 - Win 5 With Earth. After some initial internal debate about trying to compete on the Bronze leader board, I decided to skip it again, and played about 30 games to get back into Silver II. For completing this first daily quest of the season, I got 2 Gold potions and a Legendary potion.

Outside of the game, I also won auctions for the rare Neutral cards Elven Mystic and Tower Griffon. I paid a very cheap 15 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) each for them, and normally I would suggest watching cardauctionz.com to try to get some great deals. However, at the time of this writing their site is currently having issues following a Splinterlands update. Hopefully their auctions will be up and running again soon!

Daily Quest # 228 - Win 5 With Death. After 7 games of losing, or having bots surrender for no quest credit, I re-rolled to Win 5 With Life and things went better. For completing the daily quest I got 512 DEC (450 + 13 + 49) from my reward chests.

I also remembered that I had never opened the pack I got in my season rewards at the end of last season. Since I already had enough potions, I went ahead and cracked it open. A short time after opening it, I got a notice that I had won a pack from the bi-weekly Splinterlands trivia on Peakd!

Daily Quest # 229 - Win 5 With Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Legendary potion; a 20th copy of the common Fire monster card, Ant Miners; and a 10th copy of the rare Earth monster card, Centauri Mage. Sometime after completing the daily quest, I picked up the aforementioned set of Gold foil Untamed set cards. I also opened packs #7 and #8 out of the 50 that I had gotten a few weeks back.

Daily Quest # 230 - Win 5 With Snipe. For finishing my first daily quest in Silver I, I got 5 DEC, a Gold potion, a Legendary potion, and a 12th copy of the common Life monster card Warrior of Peace. Outside of the game, I won an auction for the rare Dragon monster card, Dragonling Bowman, for 14 DEC. But, it has yet to arrive due to issues with that site.

Daily Quest # 231 - Win 5 With Snipe. For completing this daily quest, I got 13 DEC; a Gold potion; a 12th copy of the common Death monster card, Phantasm; and an 11th copy of the common Fire monster card, Fire Monkey.

Daily Quest # 232 - Win 3 With No Neutral. For finishing this daily quest, I received 17 DEC (12 + 5); a 6th copy of the rare Death monster card, Grim Reaper; and a 3rd copy of the common Earth monster card, Harvester.

Daily Quest # 233 - Win 5 with Death. After losing one game, I re-rolled to Win 5 with Dragon. After completing that quest, I got 35 DEC; a Legendary potion; and an 8th and 9th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare. Outside the game, I may have won a copy of the common Earth monster card, Rexxie, and a copy of the rare Fire card, Flame Imp, in test auctions for 13 DEC each. They didn't come through yet, so we'll see if I get them once they fix the site!

Tournaments:

Thursday Untamed Bronze Blunderbuss, all sets allowed tournament: On the first day I went 10-1, starting off quite well. I finished up 15-7, to come in 34th place to win 202.5 DEC.

Friday Spring Training #5, Silver League rules tournament: The next event in the continuing series put on by Dave Mccoy (in the Splinterlands Discord). While my deck isn't quite competitive for Silver league play, I still managed to go 6-3 and pick up some more WAX NFTs.

Thursday Untamed Bronze Blunderbuss, Untamed set only tournament: I started off with an okay 8-3 record on the first day. I finished up 14-7 to come in 36th place to win 100 DEC.

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #4, playing in Bronze league rules with the Untamed set only. I lost a lot of matches against people playing with legendary summoners and went 3-8 in this brawl. I didn't record where the guild placed overall, and the Splinterlands developers have yet to add a display of historical brawl results into the game, but we placed somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Versus PEEHOLDER of Shield of Glory

Versus Mavrik of Bone Crushers

Versus JoseMar or SL - Spanish Elite

Versus Chuxter of Gladiators

Versus Palikari123 of Peakmonsters [Premiere]

Versus Barbra12 of NFT Italia

Versus Deniskj of DEC Hunters

I also had a match against SLENDR15 of S.I.C., who failed to submit a deck.

Guild Brawl #5, playing Novice leagues rules with Untamed set Gold Foil cards only. I left the Bronze Untamed spot open for someone else to fill, but unfortunately no one did. Even though I went undefeated in my three matches, we might have done better if I had filled that Bronze spot. Again, I didn't record how we did, but overall it was also in the middle of the guilds in our group.

Versus Stimp-Bank of DEC Hunters

Versus RoyalEagle of Team Possible Power

Versus Pachu4 of SL - Spanish Elite

Guild Brawl #6, playing Bronze league rules. I tried to leave this normal card spot open again, but switched to it before the brawl started when it went unfilled by anyone else. Even though we filled fewer slots, we actually managed to come in first place in our brawl. I helped by putting in a 5-1 record.

Versus IBU1987 of ZZ9PZA

Versus DartNK of Blue Pill Society

Versus Caaio of Splinterlands Brasil

Versus Gatticus of White Lotus

Versus XANTIS32 of Mandalorians

Versus Maxer27 of Splinterlands.RU

The Splinterlands team has announced that they are going to extend the time to signup for brawls and to submit teams, changing the overall brawl cycle from every 3 days to every 5 days. My guild currently has 46 crowns, which is more than the amount that the developers have stated will be the new, reduced, cost of upgrading to a level 2 Arena. The developers have also said that they will be reducing the number of gold foil only brawls in the lower level arenas, which I feel is a good move.

Trading & The Rest:

Outside my crazy buying spree of gold foil cards, I did manage to sell the Alpha set Animated Corpse on the in-game market, as well as a Kraken, a Diamon Dragon, a Lensmaster, a Gloridax Guardian, and various rare summoners on Atomic Hub. Untamed packs were also briefly selling at higher prices on Atomic Hub than they sell for in the game, so I put 4 up for sale and sold 2.

However, I also accumulated a fair amount of new inventory. I'm up to a dozen Alpha set Rexxie's, plus I picked up some relatively cheap Alpha set Life and Earth summoners. I was toying with the idea of trying to get a base set of Alpha common and rare cards, but it's gotten quite pricey to do that and instead I have the cards that I've picked up listed for sale currently. I also added a pair of Krons and a pair of Oaken Behemoths to my legendary card inventory.

With the fluctuating prices of crypto and trading across several markets, it's hard to tell if I'm ahead on trading. It feels like I'm picking up some deals and making the equivalent of a buck or two when I can sell bigger cards, but not having cashed out for real money I'm really just getting more cards and NFTs. Maybe I should just focus more on playing the game, instead of trading.

I did talk to UnitQM, who ran the New Boost giveaway events for new players. He noted that he is quitting the game, mainly over some of the more vocal right wing conspiracy theorists that hang out in the game's Discord channel. Several other players also seem to be trying to sell off their collections. Some may be trying to raise funds for other projects that they are starting, as two Splinterlands players have announced their own future games, while others may just be trying to take advantage of the recent high card prices.

I'm tempted to try to take over the New Boost program, since I feel like it was a good idea for helping new players that were just coming into the game. I don't have a YouTube channel, or do streaming, so it might not be a great fit for me. I could certainly collect DEC and use it to get cards for new players, but I feel like all the additional pomp around it helped to get people involved.

The main reason auctions at cardauctionz.com seem to be broken is new security features added to the game. As I was writing my last update, a number of people were coming to the Discord channel to complain that their cards were gone. It seems that someone had used a list of stolen e-mails and passwords to try to access Splinterlands accounts, which worked in several cases. The team has said that they are working on recovering the assets or compensating those impacted and implemented new safety features making it hard to transfer cards without a Hive network key.

To start to wrap up this lengthy update, I'm currently close to Gold III after doubling my collection power with gold foil cards. It may have made more sense to get regular cards to improve my decks actual strength, but I wanted to try to help the guild out with brawls. I am getting a nice 15-25 DEC per win now, as gold foil cards provide a DEC bonus, which starts to add up fast.

I feel that I'm unlikely to place high enough on the Silver league leaderboard to win packs, so I'm going to shoot for moving into Gold III right before the season ends. This will put me back into Silver III at the start of next season, preventing me from competing for the Bronze top spot. Granted, it's less stressful in Silver and the bonus daily rewards are pretty nice, so it feels like a good plan.

One last item of note, is that someone bought a spell book using my referral link! I don't know who they are, as they didn't reach out to me, but it's the first time that has happened. I did send them a few cards, which they appear to have burnt for DEC. It doesn't seem like they are going to keep playing, as the number of matches that they have played hasn't broken single digits.

While I expect most people reading this are doing so because they are already Splinterlands players, if there is anyone out there who isn't - use someone's referral link if you decide to start playing the game! It doesn't have to be mine, but here it is if you want to use it. You get an extra free card and it doesn't cost you anything. Many players will also send you some additional cards if you use their referral link as well.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I'm thinking about restructuring these articles, so let me know if there's anything that you like and think I should keep, or if anything was too boring and should get cut. If you have any suggestions, comments, or feedback please leave a comment below!