My Splinterlands Blog #38 - Belated Beefy Death Drops, FOMO Pricing

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.

One thing I forgot in my last update was that another air drop happened! Another 100,000 Untamed packs had already flown off the shelf since the Lobstradamus card was released only a few weeks ago. This 2nd to last Untamed air drop card is an epic Death monster card, The Gorlodon. I received one copy due to the number of packs I had previously purchased.

Good for reverse speed matches!

Packs continue to sell at a fast clip, with it being almost half way to the final air drop at the time of this writing. I had noted that I wanted to try to put together a group pack purchase of 500 packs, to get the biggest discount on price. But, I didn't get any real interest over the past week and am doubtful that I will get enough before packs sell out.

Card prices also continue to climb higher. This is a cause for celebration for some, namely those who've already got large collections. I am personally concerned that it's going to price new players out of the game. It is already a tough sell to get new players to stick around as it is.

The big selling point of Splinterlands is that it's a play-to-earn game, where you own your digital assets. One of the most common questions I see asked on the mobile app is, "How do I make money?" A lot of the negative reviews on the Android app store are about how the game is pay-to-win, and that even when upgrading to a paid account you are essentially making next to nothing while being a punching bag for players with higher level cards.

People either love it or hate it, and a lot of the ones that love it I recognize as browser based players that are already heavily invested in the game.

This goes back to my earlier articles, where I suggested that Novice really needs to be a real league instead of just a speed-bump before Bronze. To be fair, they have made it easier on new players since I started, with the addition of "ghost" beta common and rare cards. Renting is really the only cost effective way for a new player to get into the game, and that has yet to be implemented inside the game itself - though it is a planned addition this year.

Trying to get back to my main point, if there's no influx of players, I'm not sure who is going to be paying for these cards. It feels a bit like a lot of them are being bought on speculation that the prices will continue to rise. Well, maybe the people running bots will pick them up to expand their armies, which is another topic that tends to get some heated among the player base.

Now that I've said my piece at the start of this article, I'll get on with the breakdown of the past week! I'll note here, that prior to starting the daily quests I played about 30 games to get back up from Silver III to Silver I, in order to get the additional daily quest rewards the first day.

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 272 - Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to Win 5 with Water. For completing this first quest of the new season, I got 22 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), a Legendary potion, and a Gold potion.

Outside of the game, @MarcusWahl is back on a daily Twitch streaming schedule. Since this was a weekend, I played a match against him and lost, getting 100 DEC as a consolation prize. I missed a lot of his streams during the week, since I'm working at my day job when he does them.

Daily Quest # 273 - Win 5 with Sneak. For completing this daily quest, I got 42 DEC (33 + 9); a 2nd copy of the rare Fire monster card, Efreet Elder; and a 22nd copy of the rare Dragon monster card, Gloridax Soldier.

Daily Quest # 274 - Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to Win 5 with Snipe. For completing this daily quest, I received 9 DEC; a 9th copy of the rare Water monster card, Captain's Ghost; a 14th copy of the common Death monster card, Phantasm; and a 22nd copy of the common Water monster card, Wave Runner.

Daily Quest # 275 - Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to Win 3 with no Neutral Monsters. It really wants to give me a Death daily quest. Anyhow, for completing this short daily quest, I got 28 DEC (11 + 12 + 5) and a 16th copy of the common Earth monster card, Barking Spider.

Outside of the daily, I was able to attend @clove71 streaming on Twitch. I won a 6th copy of the common Dragon summoner card, Delwyn Dragonscale, as a prize for dying the most in the streaming Marbles game. I also picked up one Gold potion for 49 DEC and opened packs 11 and 12 of the 50 that I had received a few months ago.

Two rare monsters in this one!

Nothing too exciting in the other.

Daily Quest # 276 - Win 5 with Earth. For finishing this daily quest, I received a Legendary potion; two additional copies of the common Fire monster card, Ant Miners; and a 2nd copy of the epic Life monster card, Evangelist!

2 more copies and I can level her up!

Daily Quest # 277 - Win 5 with Earth. For finishing this daily quest, I got 19 DEC (15 + 4), a Legendary potion, and a 14th copy of the common Life monster card, Warrior of Peace. I also decided to buy 3 additional copies of The Gorlodon, for 2,173 DEC, to level him up and increase his attack damage to 4!

Daily Quest # 278 - Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received 13 DEC; a Legendary potion; a 19th copy of the common Water monster card, Demented Shark; and a 10th copy of the rare Life monster card, Silvershield Sheriff.

Daily Quest # 279 - Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I got 29 DEC (14 + 15), a Gold potion, and a 17th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare.

Tournaments:

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets allowed tournament: Another strong start with an undefeated 11-0 on the first day. I lost two games on day two, to come in 2nd place for 800 DEC with a 20-2 record.

I do feel kind of bad that the top 3 Bronze tournament players are in Silver league, but in my own defense I really only have Bronze level cards!

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: I went 10-1 on the first day, easily making day two. I ended up with an 18-4 record, coming in 10th place for 340 DEC.

Friday Spring Training #12, Silver League rules tournament: Even though my rented Llama and Yodin had expired, I still managed to go 6-3 with my Bronze set of cards. This was still only 30th place, but I still got the free WAX NFT packs, which are the prizes for participating in these tournaments.

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #14, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I had a whole two matches this time around, but only one opponent showed up. Crypt0Clever of Egamers.io never submitted a team, so here's my one actual match:

Vs JACKISHERE of Team Possible Power

Unfortunately, two people forgot to submit teams so we ended up doing rather poorly in the overall guild standings for this brawl.

Guild Brawl #14, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I only had one opponent this brawl.

Vs LOVINGTHEMOO of SAMMYSNAKESSPLINTERLANDS

However, this time people submitted their teams and we managed to come in 1st place in our bracket!

I even remembered to grab a screenshot this time!

Trading & The Rest:

With the prices rising on cards, a number of WAX listings ended up being far cheaper than any other market. I managed to pick up a cheap Poseidon and resell it for a bit of profit. WAX prices seem to have mostly stabilized for the moment (I hope!), and I've flipped some more Untamed packs at cost to try to chip away at my Maverick status on Discord goal (500 packs purchased). Clove71 also bought almost all of the Alpha Rexxie's off the market. I pulled the couple I had left off of WAX and put them back up in the main Splinterlands market at the new current crazy prices.

There are only 18 copies left on either market at the time of this writing.

I also picked up a few more Legendary cards and put them up on the WAX market. They're slightly more expensive there than in Splinterlands, but currently far cheaper than anyone else has them listed on Atomic Hub. We'll see how that works out, or if I'll end up dumping even more Legendary cards into my own collection again.

To wrap things up, with prices on the rise I'm rethinking my attempt to build up to a Silver league level of cards. I'm seriously considering just filling out my Bronze set a bit more, and dropping back down to do the terrible leader board grind next season. There's a lot going on with the game, with lands expected to be revealed next month and the upcoming governance token being released. So, exciting times all around!

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you have any thoughts on how I should approach improving my deck, or any general comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below!