I caught a really bad cold last weekend and wasn’t able to work or even play games the beginning of the week. While I was lying on the couch suffering, I had an epiphany that was quite similar to the one @Khazrakh had on his Hiking Trip. Not playing all of these Play2Earn games for half a week was, surprisingly, somewhat of a relief.

Let us take a look at this from a rational point of view: Spending my time on this stuff should either be fun or financially rewarding. If it is none of the two, I should stop doing it. The same applies to blogging. While I enjoy writing a meaningful post every now and then, having to publish one because the next Weekly Digest or the next Splinterlands battle challenge is due, feels more like work than a hobby. Consequently, I may space out these reports more and only create one, when I have stuff I actually want to share. I may also skip a battle challenge or two every now and then. Sure, the battle challenges earn nice upvotes, but the author reward on Hive is only 50% of that (or is it, still?). And when you convert it to fiat you lose even more value on the way. All posts not included in a super whale upvoting circle only earn cents.

Speaking about games, I will drop Rabona. It is just not fun (for me). I converted my RBN to $HIVE and put my players up for sale. For the same reason I dropped Prospectors. And while Cryptomininggame is actually quite fun for it being a gamified faucet under the hood, I have a feeling that I will never get anywhere close to a meaningful payout account balance. So let us now look at some of the games that I still enjoy logging on and what happened in them since our last highlight report.

Splinterlands

Instead of just reporting on how much DEC I earned from Splinterlands, I thought it might be interesting to share what I have done with this DEC. I used to reinvest everything in the game but I have reached a level where more cards will not (significantly) increase income (the land expansion may change this?) so I am pulling out profits and investing in other areas.

I had three great drops in my reward sets of which I kept the Shadowy Presence for my deck. I sold the Spirit Shaman because I already maxed him out and the Golden Temple Priest because he earned me a whopping 2.38 USD. Incredible, which prices gold cards can fetch these days.

I sold the DEC for HIVE and exchanged it for:

• 2 LBI
• 9900 Starbits for Rising Star increasing my total balance to 220k. Still a long way to go to unlock the millionaire achievement…
• DCity cards: Art Gallery, School, Research Center, 10 Luxury Homes (I am still pondering about whether to get serious with DCity. Until this week I only owned a lake and a Police Station, both of which had been airdropped to me from somewhere)
• 53 BCX of Rusty Android (ok, I am still re-investing in Splinterlands a bit… I would like to max out my Android before the land expansion. I have a feeling it might be useful then.)
• 0.0000174 BTC (because stacking sats is always good)

It has been some time since I participated in any tournaments at Splinterlands but this week there was one where the winners would get NFTs on the WAX blockchain for prices, which I found to be quite an interesting concept. I ranked 7th and found myself in possession of a whole bunch of different (unverified) assets in my WAX wallet soon after. The organizer is a member of the Team Possible guild who intends to make this a regular thing, so who knows, maybe the NFTs will soon have some value.

Lost Relics

I started playing Lost Relics at a terrible time. For months now all easily obtainable blockchain items have been out of print with no new ones having been added to the game so far. Finally, after hours of playing, I managed to accumulate enough gold coins to buy a Katana, a green bow and a healing ring. As these are virtual items (and not blockchain items) I will lose them again when I die in a dungeon, the game crashes or my internet connection is interrupted… I was therefore hoping to get blockchain weapons but realized now that the green (uncommon) and blue (rare) ones are not obtainable anymore.

I somehow managed to get my hands on my first blockchain item this week, though. It’s Abrasive Paper with no use in the game yet, yay. Want one yourself? Alas, by now it’s out of print as well. Having upgraded my gear, I am now able to play the second dungeon where you can also get blockchain resources from mining. This is a nice silver lining, as it at least feels like getting something. Even if they too do not have a use in the game yet.

I kept playing to level up, though. As I was hoping that a higher level would give me better access to earning new items, once they are added to the game. With the Easter Event scheduled to launch on Wednesday, I was excited. Being on sick leave, I might be able to sneak in a little extra play time between collapsing on the couch and the bed. Then the update came, one day too late, and it broke the entire game.

The performance was already quite at its limits with amount players online having grown from 500 to 850 in just the three weeks I was playing. The update then did the rest and now the game is down for some days.

While I am convinced that Cliff, the sole developer, is doing everything he can to get it back online soon and stable, this again shows how risky investing in indie blockchain games can be.

Gods Unchained

Gods Unchained launched their first phase of Immutable X. The official announcement can be read here.

Apparently, everyone and their mothers are currently working on (different) scaling solutions for Ethereum. From what I heard, Lost Relics is looking towards something called Jumpnet, Neon District runs on Matic and Gods Unchained will soon be minting its cards on Immutable X.

So far all you can do is link your Ethereum wallet to the Immutable X network.

If you purchased any cards of the Trial of the Gods edition before linking the wallet, these will be minted to the chain at the time. Over time they will transfer all cards to the new network and then will activate the forge again allowing you to combine core cards (earned by playing for free but in-game only) into meteorite cards (minted to your wallet and tradeable).

Dr. Who - Worlds Apart

I have no idea where they came from but all of a sudden I had an extra 1000 Pandaks sitting in my Dr. Who account.

I bought some packs with these which I intend to hold sealed for now. As you know, I have recently unpacked my first Dr. Who booster pack but as stated there, I have no idea what the cards are good for and as at the moment they are neither tradeable nor playable, holding on to the packs for now might be a better idea.

Publish0x

A lot of my information about new dApps and blockchain projects I get from Publish0x. I also republish my higher quality Hive posts on that platform to each a larger audience. My monthly earnings are currently only $1.64 on average but for no extra work, I’ll take it!

As of this week, they enabled withdrawals to KuCoin so that no gas fees occur by sending payments to your wallet. You still can choose to withdraw to your wallet but the payout threshold is 5 USD then. You can withdraw to KuCoin starting from 0.50 USD.

I used the opportunity (they are currently adding a 10% bonus to all KuCoin withdrawals) and requested my first withdrawals.

What are you waiting for?

While these games will not make you rich, they're handing out free money for doing (almost) nothing. I will grow my stake in these games by re-investing the earnings and also swap some fraction of the tokens for Satoshis to add to my stack.

Disclaimer: No financial advice included in this article. Just sharing my personal experience. Do your own research!

Some links in the article are referral links, feel free to use other sign-up methods.

Images courtesy of Unsplash.com or taken in-game.

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