My Splinterlands Self Challenge #17 - Midseason Update: How To Do Well In Ranked

Welcome to another update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues with only the initial set of cards!… Plus, whatever I can earn or win. During the previous season, I had sat around in the Silver III league farming the extra daily rewards and DEC instead of trying to place in the top spots of the Bronze League. However, with this new season kicking, and my being shunted back to the Bronze League as part of the season reset, I decided to make another attempt at finishing in a pack winning spot.

Before I get into how that is going, I'll do a quick breakdown of my daily quests, rewards, and winnings from this past week. There were a lot of tournaments, as some players made some interesting lower level ones this past week. Here's how the week went:

Daily Quest # 109 - Win 5 with Water (back to Bronze II after the reset). This took 6 games to complete, and I got 12 Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) for finishing the daily quest. I also won an Untamed pack from @Clove71 doing a giveaway on Peakd. As people had been opening a lot of legendary and gold cards from her giveaways, I spent 196 DEC on 5 Legendary potions and 147 on 3 Gold potions to open it.

No gold or legendary cards, but the two rare cards are both good!

Daily Quest # 110 - Win 5 with Earth. This took 5 games to complete and I, once again, got 12 DEC for completing the daily quest.

Daily Quest # 111 - Win 5 with Life. This took 5 games to complete, and for finishing the daily I got an 8th copy of the common Fire monster card Ant Miners.

Outside of the daily quests, I played a lot of games in pursuit of ranking this week. This led to me building up my DEC a bit, so I spent some of it to pick up more cards! I spent 441 DEC on getting 3 copies of the rare Neutral monster card Prismatic Energy, combining then for a level 2 version; 248 DEC for 9 more copies of the common Earth monster card Goblin Thief, combining them with what I already had to make a level 3 version; and 474 DEC to get 3 more copies of the rare Life monster card Shieldbearer, combining them to make a level 2 version.

In the order: Shieldbearer, Prismatic Energy, and Goblin Thief - since I covered over the names with their abilities.

Daily Quest # 112 - Win 5 with Earth. This took 5 games to complete, and for finishing the daily quest I got a 3rd copy of the rare Life monster card Silvershield Sheriff. Only two more copies to combine them for a level 2 version!

He is actually fairly inexpensive, so I may buy those 2 more cards. But, I also don't play him very often due to his high summoning cost. I also won a contest on Peakd and got a 7th copy of the common Earth monster card, Screeching Vulture, and a loan of a gold rare Death monster card, Boogeyman.

Not sure how long I have it for, but I've used it a few times in my matches!

Daily Quest # 113 - Win 3 without Neutral monsters. This took 6 games to complete, mainly because I kept tossing in a Furious Chicken or Creeping Ooze (both Neutral monsters) and failing to get quest credit. When I did complete the daily, I got a 4th copy of the common Fire monster card Ettin Spearman.

Daily Quest # 114 - Win 5 with Earth. This took 5 games to complete, and I received a Gold potion for completing the quest.

Daily Quest # 115 - Win 3 without Neutral monsters. This took 7 games to complete, as I did forget a few times and used those Neutral monsters. I did also lose a couple of games, probably because I wasn't using those Neutral monsters! Anyhow, for completing the daily quest I received a Legendary potion.

Daily Quest # 116 - Win 5 with Fire. Seasons last 15 days, so there's always an extra day to account for. This time, I'm putting it here, as the last tournament I am currently in is also wrapping up on this day as well! This only took 5 games, and for completing the daily quest I got a 5th copy of the common Neutral monster card Sand Wurm.

Halfway through doing this Fire quest, I noticed that I had a bit over 2,000 DEC accumulated again! I decided to spend about half of it, 1194 DEC, to get 4 more copies of the rare Fire monster card Living Lava, in order to combine them all to make a level 2 copy.

Some pretty beefy monsters this week!

For tournaments this week, I played in 3 Untamed Kobold Mining Expedition, a Bronze Rules with no Legendary Summoners tournament, and a Bronze Rules Bullseye tournament created by a player. The Bullseye tournament had the best prizes in the middle, so winning all your matches didn't give you the best prize, as it would in other tournaments.

I did the worst in the Bullseye tournament, which I expected since it was Bronze rules with any cards. I still managed to go 7-6, coming in 71st place in the single round of tournament play. Unfortunately, the prizes only extended out to 31st place, so I didn't win anything. It was only 10 DEC to enter, so not a big loss.

I did slightly better in the Bronze tournament with no Legendary summoner cards. I went 8-3 the first day, which was good enough to make round two. I did a little worse in the second round, ending up 15-7 and coming in 41st place, winning 200 DEC for my 20 DEC entry fee.

For the first Kobold Mining Novice tournament, I went 7-2-2 the first day and qualified for the second round. I ended up 13-7-2, coming in 22nd place and winning 600 DEC. In the second Kobold Mining Novice tournament, I went a mediocre 7-4 the first day. It was still good enough to make round 2, and I ended up 9-11-2, coming in 44st place and winning 100 DEC.

The final Kobold Mining Novice tournament started off about the same, with me going 7-3-1 to make round 2. I had a slightly better round 2 this time, ending up 14-6-2 coming in 11th place and winning 1,600 DEC. The Splinterlands team has also dropped the upcoming Novice tournament entry fees back down to 10 DEC, from the 30 that they had raised them to.

I just felt like it had been a while since I had added in an image!

Phew, that seems like a long week already, and I haven't even gotten to the ranked part! As I mentioned, I decided to try to shoot for winning packs in Bronze League this season. To do that, I've been playing a lot of games of Splinterlands.

A lot of games!

Which, thanks to my now having a relatively decent set of cards, is working. I mostly play against people, or bots, with level 1 summoners and cards. If I win, I get 3 points and if I lose, I lose 36 points. Though, I do occasionally get games against accounts that have higher level cards, and there do seem to be legendary cards on a decent number of accounts.

Almost all of the top 20 player have more than 200 matches played halfway through the season. About a quarter have more than 400 played, myself included. Doing well in ranked seems to be about getting an early lead, then continuing to grind out more points to stay ahead. To do okay, you need to have at least a decent deck, some knowledge of how to play, and:

The ability to sit and play tons of matches without screwing up too many of them.

The point difference between the top 3 spots and the rest of the top 10 is about 200-300 points, or 65-100 wins. In my 400+ games this season, I have only played one match against someone else on the top 20 leader board, outside of tournaments at least. Personally, I don't think I'm going to push that hard, and I'll be happy to end the season in the top 10 and get the 3 packs.

There are a bunch of tournaments coming up, a few of which I actually think I can compete in! There seems to be a push for more player-created tournaments, from a few of the players, which is nice to see. I wasn't able to attend a bunch that were run, or attempted to run, this past week. I'll write about any I do attend in my season wrap up next week!

Right now, I'm strongly leaning towards spending next season just farming more rewards in the Silver League. Playing this much is really only viable for me since I'm on Christmas vacation from work, with no travel plans thanks to COVID-19. My goal for the rest of this season is to maintain the 6-7th place slot that I've been bouncing around, and continue to slowly build up my collection to qualify for Silver II and the 3 daily quest rewards.

To quality for Silver II, I will need to get up to 40,000 card power.

In some other positive news, my guild seems to have filled up with some new players! The guild leader is also putting a lot of DEC in towards leveling up the guild by the end of the year. I've only personally chipped in a little over 600 DEC, while he's getting close to 100,000!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions in the comments below. I'll be back next week with a wrap up for the season!