My Splinterlands Blog #44 – DEC To The Moon, Mid-season Update

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).

With Untamed set packs and land having sold out a few weeks ago and the upcoming air drop of a governance token based on owning assets in Splinterlands, the prices of everything in the game have continued to climb. Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), the game's currency, have been getting dragged up in price as well. DEC is theoretically supposed to have a soft peg to about 1,000 DEC is $1, but the factors I mentioned earlier have seen that drop to 300-500 DEC going for $1.

There have been a couple of good opportunities for buying cards cheaply, but I missed out on most of them. As they are sold for DEC, based on a U.S. dollar price listing, the fluctuations in DEC have occasionally made some cards be up for sale for less than the amount of DEC you could get for burning them. Some people did actually burn the cards to make a DEC profit, decreasing the limited supply of cards out there.

To combat DEC price inflation, the game itself prints more DEC for winning ranked games. This has led to the game being fairly profitable, with wins in Silver/Gold resulting in about 30-40 DEC. A lot of factors are involved, but playing a lot of games has led to my stash of DEC building up even more.

I've been staying in Silver I league and just playing the cards I own with my main account. I do have my second account now, that is just rentals and delegations. That one is currently in the Gold III league, though I won't get too much into the details on the second account. There's already enough to cover in the weekly breakdown for my main one:

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 316 - Win 5 with Life. I spent a while grinding back up from Bronze I to Silver III before finishing this quest. Silver league has gotten a bit more competitive with the influx of rental cards. When I did finally finish this quest, I received 13 DEC; a Gold potion; a Legendary potion; and a 15th copy of the rare Earth monster card, Centari Mage.

Daily Quest # 317 - Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this daily quest, I got 3 Legendary potions and a Gold potion.

Daily Quest # 318 - Win 5 with Snipe. For completing this daily quest, I got 38 DEC; a Gold potion; a Legendary potion; and a first copy of the epic Dragon summoner, Kretch Tallevor.

Once one of the cheapest summoners, due to his lack of abilities, he is currently selling for almost $2.

Daily Quest # 319 - Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion, a Legendary potion, and 73 DEC (49 + 24).

Daily Quest # 320 - Win 5 with Snipe. For finishing this daily quest, I received 2 Gold potions; an 18th copy of the common Life monster card, Warrior of Peace; and a 21st copy of the common Death monster card, Undead Rexx.

Daily Quest # 321 - Win 3 with No Neutral. For completing this daily quest, I got 14 DEC; a Gold potion; a 21st copy of the common Neutral monster card, Sand Wurm; and a 4th copy of the rare Fire monster card, Efreet Elder.

Daily Quest # 322 - Win 5 with Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I got 13 DEC; a 23rd copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare; and 2 more copies of the common Death monster card, Phantasm.

Daily Quest # 323 - Win 5 with Life. For completing this daily quest, I received a Legendary potion; a Charlok Minotaur; a 24th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare; and a Gold foil copy of the common Life monster card, Chain Spinner.

Daily Quest # 324 - Win 5 with Dragon. For finishing this daily quest, I received 14 DEC (6 + 8), a Gold potion, and a 20th copy of Phantasm.

Tournaments:

Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets tournament: I had a good tournament, going 11-0 on the first day. I finished 18-2-1 to come in 4th place for 1,600 DEC.

Sunday Live Bronze Rules Tournament: This is part of a series of tournaments @MarcusWahl is running. I'll just put a link to the article he wrote about them here. Long story short, I made it to the finals, but lost to @Amaari who has more Legendary summoners than I do. He's also a good player, having won the first of these tournaments as well. I got 300 DEC for coming in 2nd place.

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: I went 10-1 the first day, starting off well. I finished 16-4-1 to come in a decent 13th place for 300 DEC.

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #23, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I only had one opponent this brawl. I didn't write down how the guild finished overall, but probably around 3rd place.

Vs YOLO13 of FUTUREDECBAGHOLDERS

Guild Brawl #24, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I had two opponents this time and the guild definitely finished in 3rd place. One person missed submitting teams, so we could have possibly done better if they had.

Vs MCHURCHM of YGG LVLUPLIFE

Vs PACH4 of SL - Spanish Elite

The Rest:

I did a bit of trading this week, some of it accidentally! I forgot I had left a few Alpha set cards for sale on the Splinterlands market, at what were once relatively high prices. Well, those prices are now normal, as people bought them up!

I flipped a few Untamed packs on WAX and accidentally bought one Dice pack with a misclick. I was initially upset, but it turned out to be a cheap price as the rising cost of DEC now means that Dice packs are selling for over $6. Unfortunately, it didn't have any really big cards in it.

My second rental account has had a lot of luck with daily quest rewards. I've gotten two 2,000 DEC chests, a few chests with over 100 DEC, and a handful of rare reward cards. Right now I'm paying a bit under 120 DEC a day for 11 cards and loaning myself 7 more.

A few of those rentals are really good deals, and there's not a lot of those left on the market. To get out of Gold, I'll need to really up the amount of DEC a day that account is paying out. I may try to pick up a few more cards from the rental market to improve my win rate, and I'm also short on collection power to move up through the Gold league.

I rented out the Kron the Undying that I opened last week and am earning 19 DEC a day from him. I also picked up a couple of cheap summoners on WAX, after which the prices doubled on them (I should have bought more!). I also spent my leftover referral credits to pick up one more copy of Evangelist.

One more copy and I can level her up!

Aside from skyrocketing card prices, there's a lot going on with the game. The Arena update has been put on the test server, and I've gotten in with my "Maverick" status from the pack pool I ran before Untamed sold out. They are adding new buildings and new, Arena only, Gladiator cards. The first test brawl isn't until tomorrow, so that will need to be in another article!

The SPS governance token airdrop is also starting next week on the 27th! All of the functionality is coming later, but I'll be able to start accumulating it from holding onto all of these Dark Energy Crystals. The land claims have been pushed back a bit, with everything else going on.

We'll see what happens over the next week! Lots of big things in the works, and maybe I'll do a separate article on the Guild Brawls update. Thank you for reading and if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below! I’ll be back next week with the season wrap up!