My Splinterlands Blog #35 - Another Gold Finish, End Of The Season Report

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

Last week I asked for comments on what people would like these articles to focus on, and even though it was liked or tipped on the various platforms I post on, no one actually replied - making me wonder if anyone is reading these, or just being polite. At any rate, given the lack of other feedback, I'll just continue on with what I've been doing. This is mainly a blog for recording my progress in Splinterlands, so on to the weekly updates:

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 248 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion; a Legendary potion; an 11th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare; and a 7th copy of the common Fire monster card, Charlok Minotaur. I also realized that I had enough copies of the epic Water monster, Azmare Harpoonist, to combine to get a level 2 copy.

Daily Quest # 249 - Win 5 with Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I received 11 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC); a Legendary potion; an 11th copy of the rare Earth monster card, Centauri Mage; and a 3rd copy of the rare Life monster card, Temple Priest. The new Untamed airdrop card came out, and I got 1 copy of this new epic Water monster card, Lobstradamus. I felt that they were cheap on the market, so picked up 3 more copies for 1,947 DEC to combine into a level 2 copy.

Daily Quest # 250 - Win 5 with Snipe. For completing this daily quest, I got 6 DEC; a Gold potion; a 13th copy of the common Fire monster card, Flame Monkey; and a 21st copy of the common Fire monster card, Ant Miners.

Daily Quest # 251 - Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received 13 DEC; a Legendary potion, a 7th copy of the rare Water monster card, Captain's Ghost; and a 19th copy of the common Water monster card, Wave Runner.

Daily Quest # 252 - Win 5 with Snipe. For finishing this daily quest, I received 2 Legendary potions and 16 DEC (8 + 8). @MarcusWahl has also picked back up streaming on Twitch, and I got 200 DEC from him for attending early and playing against him in a game.

Daily Quest # 253 - Win 5 with Snipe. For completing this daily quest, I got 17 DEC (12 + 5); a 14th copy of the common Neutral monster card, Sand Wurm; and a 7th copy of the rare Life monster card, Silvershield Sheriff.

Daily Quest # 254 - Win 5 with Dragon. It's been a while since I had this quest. For completing it, I received 16 DEC (10 + 6), a Legendary potion, and a 22nd copy of Ant Miners. Outside of the game, I won an Untamed pack from the Splinterlands trivia on Peakd. Once I had gotten enough potions from quests, I opened it getting:

Daily Quest # 255 - Win 5 with Earth. This being the last day of the season, I moved up to Gold III after completing the daily to get extra rewards. In total, I got 72 DEC (11 + 10 + 39 + 12); a Gold potion; and a 20th copy of the rare Dragon monster card, Gloridax Soldier.

Tournaments:

There were a lot of tournaments this week, so I'll try to keep my summaries brief. There's been a series put on to try to advertise Astral Entities, a planned series of games that is in development. This was a big part of there being extra tournaments of late.

Thursday Astral Entities Open, Untamed and Reward sets only, Novice rules tournament: Legendary cards were allowed, so Scarred Llama and Yodin Zaku owners tended to have an advantage. Day one I went 7-3-1. I had a similar day two, finishing 15-6-1 to come in 43rd place for 30 DEC.

Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: On the first day, I went a mediocre 7-4. That still managed to qualify for day two, and I finished 13-8 to come in 32nd place for 111.111 DEC.

Friday Spring Training #8, Silver League rules tournament: I went 6-3, getting beaten up by actual Silver league level cards, to come in 22nd place. I still got the free WAX NFT packs, which are the prizes for participating in these tournaments.

Saturday Astral Entities, Bronze league rules, Untamed and Reward set only tournament: I feel like the lack of Dice really hurt me, as I went 5-4 on the first day. I finished 11-7 to come in 79th place for 28 DEC.

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets allowed tournament: I had a reliable 8-3 record each day, meaning I ended the tournament 16-6. This put me in 23rd place, for 225 DEC.

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #10, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. Sadly, I only had two matches, in one of which my opponent failed to submit a deck. The one I actually played is linked below.

Vs Fitz1567-6 of Fitz's Pub

The exciting part of this brawl, was that my guild managed to squeak into first place by 1 point from a Draw. I thought I took a screenshot, but apparently I forgot, so you'll just have to take my word on it for now!

Trading & The Rest:

It's been a quite busy week in real life, so I haven't done much trading. I did sell a Diamond Dragon and a Mylor Crowling, but that was about it. I still have a Magnor, Cthulu, and Poseidon on the market, though at this point I'm thinking of just pulling them into my deck. At the time of this writing, WAX has also dipped slightly in price and people seem to want to buy it while it's cheap.

There have been a lot of auctions up at CardAuctionz, coinciding with Marcus resuming his streaming, but I haven't won anything lately. There's more people bidding, and hopefully Marcus is taking less of a loss doing the auctions now. I missed a few of his streams as well, since I wasn't at the computer when they occurred.

For the end of the season, I came in 1,179th place in Gold league. I would have been somewhere in the top 100 if I had stayed in Silver, but wouldn't have gotten as many reward chests. My deck also still isn't really that strong for Silver league play.

If I want to be more competitive in Silver league, the first thing I really need to do is get Summoners leveled up. Getting the legendary Summoners up to level 2 would be quite expensive, so looking at the rest seems more attainable. The epic Daria Dragonscale would probably make sense, since it's not that many cards relatively speaking. The rare Untamed summoners would be the next cheapest to level up, though I personally tend to prefer the Dice summoners.

Either way, it's going to be slow going unless I just throw money at cards. I think I may make more when I spend time trading on the WAX market, rather than playing the actual game. Plus, with Untamed packs selling at a brisk pace, we may get to a point where no packs are left until they release the next expansion. This may drive up the already higher card prices, though I feel like people are buying packs to try to resell them after they sell out, so there may still be a lot available for a while.

That’s about it for this week! If you made it this far, thank you for reading! And, if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below!