"Splinterlands" Power Strategy Tips #61

As I have now been playing "Splinterlands" for over a year, I've wanted to contribute something of ACTIONABLE value to my fellow players (and FUTURE players) - but NOT just fill my #Hive feed with daily images of quest reward - or battle - SPAM (no offense to those doing so). Ultimately, Hive is about ADDING VALUE to the social experience - that is the magic of blockchain social media technology. So, after some serious pondering, I decided that a weekly "Splinterlands" player strategy diary" type series, with CONCISE and ACTIONABLE tips, would be of most value to my audience. Please let me know your thoughts (good and/or bad), and I hope that readers (now and into the future) will benefit from this series. If you gain a better understanding of blockchain, gaming, "blockchain gaming", marketing, psychology, addiction science, forensics, ethics, philosophy, geopolitics, and/or any other area(s) of knowledge I end up exploring (voluntarily or involuntarily) as this series naturally progresses, then I will have done my "good deed" (of providing value) for the week - and have a little extra Hive to buy some more Splinterlands cards/packs. Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield.

@transcript-junky

1 ) This past week I made the strategic decision to go on a full-on "pack binge" and open ALL of my remaining reserve Untamed and Dice packs. There were several major reasons for this decision. Firstly, the "one pack per day" pace of pack-opening, while sometimes providing just that needed extra boost of motivation to get through a challenging quest, or push to the next level, was just become unfulfilling. Opening only one pack at a time is a bit anti-climactic. In theory it makes sense, but over time it gets boring. Secondly, I was growing increasingly concerned (which turned out to be for good reason) that there were some significantly valuable, and useful, cards laying dormant in the ~ 350 reserve packs I had on deck, and that the cost-benefits analysis of the "one pack per day" strategy (sans the additional daily DEC earning potential of the dormant cards in those packs) was ultimately LESS ADVANTAGEOUS (in BOTH the short-term and long-term) than just opening the packs. So I went on a two-day "pack binge" and landed a nice DUMP of cards, many of which were redundant (and so I burned those into DEC and bought up some of the (primarily gold) cards I wanted to upgrade. I also hit a few very high-value gold cards, one of which I burned to DEC (because I knew if would take a while to sell on the market - if it were even able to sell AT ALL (several cards in the past have NOT, after weeks the market)) to buy another round of 500 (+ 10 free) legendary and alchemy/gold potions, which has now gotten me through all of the remaining ~ 150 reserve packs, with an extra 250 (of each) potion to cover future Untamed* packs I get in quest rewards dumps, as well as any additional Dice packs I may buy while they are still available for sale.

Speaking of the Dice packs, I now have 382 packs applied to the remaining four Dice airdrops, and with the land presale coming up I want to try to conserve my DEC as much as possible. I do have 850k DEC set aside to buy one tract of presale land, which leaves me with ~ 385,000 liquid DEC in my in-game wallet. If I continue buying 2-3 Dice packs per week that will set me back ~ 3 x 2,880 DEC = 8,640 DEC/week, and aside from the extra three packs applied to the airdrop that is 8,640 less DEC to buy land plots, and or buy specific Dice cards, manually, on the market. There is still around two weeks left before the presale, and another goal I am striving for is to see if I can somehow come up with a total of 1,700,000 DEC in order to buy TWO tracts of presale land. It will likely be difficult/impossible to do that, but if I hit some gold airdrop cards (in the upcoming Untamed and/or Dice airdrops) it MAY be possible. Therefore, I want to keep my DEC spending as low as possible until the presale starts. So I am working on spending my daily DEC earnings (via battles) on individual Dice cards (like the "Goblin Dartling" (Gold) cards, which I am within nine cards of maxing). As ANOTHER compromise, what I may do is buy one additional Dice pack each time I reach a new milestone level this season. Since I am currently at "Diamond II" level that would mean I would be buying a maximum of FOUR additional packs (up to "Champion I" level) which would AT LEAST increase my eligible airdrop packs by four packs (per season), and maybe I will hit one or more JUICY legendary and/or gold cards to make it worth the 4 x 2,880 = 11,520 DEC cost. Maybe I will even hit a MEGA high-value gold card which can bring my DEC balance closer to the 1,700,000 DEC needed to buy up TWO tracts of land instead of just the ONE I am planning on. for the rest of this week/season ( and maybe until the land presale starts ) I will likely lay off of buying more Dice packs completely. However, one other idea is that if I hit any especially high-value rewards cards, or cards in reward Untamed packs I may in for a few more Dice packs (in like with the "one Dice pack per season milestone" strategy). Otherwise, I will spend the next 16 days buying cards manually.

2 ) On the BetFury.io front, two weeks ago I set out the goal of using the daily passive income of ~ 19 Tron per day ( ~ 133 Tron per week) to do a weekly play of the slots to see if I could bump the 133 Tron up to 500+ Tron and then convert that Tron to DEC and buy more Splinterlands cards. Last week I described how I actually was able to bump each daily ~ 19 Tron "daily dividend" payment up to ~ 40 Tron and then after three or four days got lucky, got it up to 500+ Tron and converted that to DEC and bought 2-3 cheap gold cards. Hey, at least my INTENTION was in the right place. However, this past week I reaized there were two main problems with my long-term strategy. Firstly, I kept getting impatient with the slow trickle of only ~ 19 Tron per day, and found myself not waiting (or BEING ABLE to wait) the full week to play the 133 Tron. This resulted in losing the 19 Tron more easily by not having the impulse control so wait a few days. I own it. I have impulse control problems - especially if I don't put proper behavioral psychology control mechanisms into place to save myself from myself (although usually I am pretty good). In addition, he whole world is on the verge of spontaneously combusting lately, which is only EXACERBATING my "impulsive tendencies". I'm only human. Oh, yeah, and in addition, ALL of these crypto casino's (like BetFury.io) are ultimately COMPLETE SCAMS. Ive lost at leats 0.30 BTC to these scam casinos (all of which are, of course, linked to those prize specimins of humanity over in "The Middle Kingdom" over the past two years. In NONE of those cases did I know BEFOREHAND that they were scams. The SOCIOPATHS who ru these operations, like that "waste of DNA" #JustinSun take advantage of human ignorance (like the unwillingness, or inability, of the search engines to delist these scam sites), and the since Bitcoin spends are ONE-WAY there is no ability to safeguard oneself (ex. charge-back, etc.) So there's my defense. The only hope at this point is that the "play to earn" potential of #Splinterlands will enable me to gradually recuperate the above-mentioned losses. This is why I have moved ALL of my remaining crypto (let's say $5,000 USD+ ) into Splinterlands, where I believe the fundamentals are strong, and the likelihood of recouping the lost BTC is feasible. Let's hope that the "crypto gods" concur. Fingers crossed.

Secondly, in the process of monitoring the daily amount of passive Tron I was earniing on my ~ 90,000 BFG ( in-game BetFury token ) I was seeing the ~ 19 Tron dwindle at a substantial enough daily pace that I was beginning to question if the daily passve Tron income would remain "substantial enough" for the next, let's say, 6 - 12 months to even justify the time and energy to actually play that passive Tron. Then I watched a video about BetFury where the YouTuber (who original brought BetFury to my attention) mentioned that you can actually PLAY the in-game BFG token, and it was all downhill from there. I ended up BLOWING most of my BFG after a few days of play, and now have barely enough to earn 2 Tron per day. On the other hand, even with the 19 Tron per day (which was gradually declining) I would NOT have been able to play enough to replenish, or even MAINTAIN the ~ 19 Tron I had spent a good 0.20 Bitcoin accumulating over the past year. So, while experimenting with BetFury.io has definitely been an EDUCATIONAL experience (ex. learning how to exchange DEC to Tron (and vice versa), mining the BFG token so as to create a daily passive income stream of ~ 19 Tron, getting lucky several times and using the winnings to buy gold Splinterlands cards which CONTINUE to earn me a 10% DEC per won battle ""gold" bonus", etc.) I believe that into the future I will likely just convert a small amount of "surprise/bonus" DEC I may earn in Splinterlands (let's say, in tournaments), to Tron, and play a few hours of "slots for entertainment", and if I can turn the original amount into a significant enough gain (let's say DOUBLE the amount) to buy a few more gold Splinterlands cards I will convert it back to DEC and do so. So BetFury will be my place to go when I feel the itch to play some quick slots with "bonus" DEC I may earn occasionally. I think that's a good place to leave things at this juncture.

3 ) Another option related to the BetFury issue (in #2 above) would be to finally get up-to-speed with how the Splinterlands card rental system works, with the goal of generating a NEW - more ETHICAL and DEPENDABLE - passive DEC income stream. That is, when we calculate the ~ 19 Tron per day I was earning in BetFury, you get 19 Tron/day x 7 days/week = ~ 133 Tron/week x 4 weeks = ~ 532 Tron/month x $0.027 USD/Tron (quoted at the time of writing this sentence) = $14.36 USD/month (of passive Tron income on BetFury). However, this does NOT account for the DECLINE in the daily amount of passive Tron over time as I DISCONTINUE mining the BFG token by playing ( or more accurately, GAMBLING ) significant enough amounts of Tron to justify the risk. So, if I can figure out how to REPLACE that ~ $14.36 USD worth of passive Tron income via renting some of my high-value ( and less-frequently- used gold cards in Splinterlands) that would likely be a MORE STABLE ( and ethical ) passive stream of DEC income ( without the decline in passive Tron income over time due to eliminating the mining -- Oops! I mean, gambling) and enable me to the continue doing the weekly BetFury slot plays of the equivalent of 532 Tron per month. Or I could simply use the 532 tron equivalent of DEC passive card rental income to buy more cards (without the chance of increasing that 532 Tron worth of value into, let's say, DOUBLE that amount (to buy more cards)). The point is not about gambling. It's about FINALLY properly focusing, this week, on figuring out how the rental system works in Spinterlands. I have tried it 3-4 times in the past year to get my head around the rental system, with no success, and with the recent loss of the 19 Tron of daily BetFury passive income I think it is an ideal time to FINALLY get some of my cards rented and earning passive income. The good thing is that my collection is big and strong enough to allow that. So this will be one of my main projects for the week/month, and I hope to be able to report (in the next post in this series) that I have finally SUCESSFULLY rented out one or more cards ( via Peakmonsters : https://peakmonsters.com/@transcript-junky/collection ).

4 ) Related to my major "pack binge" described in #1 (above) I managed to hit one gold version of one of my favorite Dice cards (1 x "Poseidon" (Gold - Level 2 - 50,000 DEC). With this 1/2 Level 2 card I would the need JUST ONE more of this gold card to bump this card up to Level 3 (which is also the current level of my non-gold version of this card - and is a "high enough" level of his card to make it useful in daily battles). So I started thinking of any specific high-value gold cards I could sell, burn, or trade to get the addition "Poseidon" gold card needed to bump it up to Level 3. I had been wanting to get rid of my single "Fallen Specter" (Gold - Level 2 - 75,000 DEC) card I had gotten lucky enough to hit in a daily quest reward dump several months ago. I barely even use the NON-GOLD version of this card (which I maxed out just so that I had it maxed) unless I am playing the ruleset where all cards have the health level of the highest health-level card in the battle. Otherwise, this card tends to get knocked out within 1-3 hits of the battle. At "2" mana is it ideal to throw this card into to these "highest maximum health" battles, but the sheer RARE FREQUENCY of times this becomes feasible makes it so that I barely use the non-gold version of this card in ONE battle per month - and the gold version EVEN LESS, of course, since that would require BOTH using it in a gold card tournament WITH the "highest maximum health" ruleset, which probably happpens once every THREE months! Plus, my lower-level gold version of this card lacked most of the abilities of the maxed out non-gold version. So I went into the Discord server and put out the offer to trade my "Fallen Specter" (Gold - Level 2 - 75,000 DEC) for a "Poseidon" (Gold - Level 2 - 50,000 DEC). Within hours, one of the top dudes in Discord ( @byzantine ) messaged me something to the effect of "Have you been hitting the crack pipe (again)? Are you sure you want to trade a 75,000 DEC card for a 50,000 DEC card?" (or something to that effect). I explained to him that I had carefully thought it through, and outlined my reasoning that EVEN if I make a direct swap of the 75,000 DEC card for the 50,000 DEC card ( and so immediately take a loss of 25,000 DEC) the simple fact is that since I basically NEVER use the "Fallen Specter" gold card I am basically NEVER earning the extra 10% DEC "gold bonus" per won battle that I WOULD be earning through my "several battles per day" use of the "Poseidon" card, which if I could trade for the gold version could then start earning a nice stream of 10% DEC "gold bonus" per battle. In addition, I am involved in Splinterlands to ACTUALLY PLAY the cards - not just let them sit there and grow digital cobwebs in the SOLE hope of cashing out on their appreciation over time. That's what I did with Bitcoin (sit around for 4+ years waiting for it to go nowhere). In other words, I'd rather have a nice collection of slightly LESSER value gold cards which I ACTUALLY USE daily, than a handful of "museum pieces" which I merely look at from time to time. However, with the new collection power system it IS also important to have some of the less-often-used gold cards sitting in your collection keeping your collection value up so that you will be most qualified to enter as many tournaments and season levels as possible (whose eligibility is now based on your total collection value). But why not strive for BOTH? So you need to decide on a case-by-case basis if making a specific trade is feasible in the grander scheme of things. In this case it was. @Byzantine was able to get a nice 25,000 DEC bonus on the trade, while I was able to immediately bump my "Poseidon" gold card to Level 3 and start earning the 10% "gold bonus" to offset that 25,000 DEC "discount/loss" resulting from the trade". I have also been monitoring the rough amount of 10% bonus DEC I have been earning this week by using the "Poseidon" gold card, and I would estimate it to be ~ 100 DEC/day. So at 100 DEC/day it would theoretically take 25,000 DEC/ 100 DEC/day = 250 days to recuperate the 25,000 DEC. However, it turns out that I also had ANOTHER strike of luck in opening the packs, landing a "Zir Deepswimmer" (Gold - Level 2 - 50,000 DEC) card the same day, and since I needed to buy another round of 500 (+ 50 free) batches of BOTH legendary and alchemy/gold potions I decided to burn that card for 50,000 DEC and use 42,250 DEC to buy those two more batches, which technically got me 50 free legendary potions ( valued at 5,700 DEC ) plus 50 free alchemy/gold potions ( valued at 7,125 ) for a total value of 12,825 DEC , which I could then logically deduct from the 25,000 DEC hit I took on the "Fallen Specter"/"Poseidon" trade, to give an adjusted balance of 25,000 DEC - 12,825 DEC = 12,175 DEC. In addition to this, though, is the fact that the difference in the 50,000 DEC burn value of the "Zir Deepswimmer" card and the 42,250 DEC total cost of the potion batches ( 50,000 - 42,250 = 7,750 DEC), it ultimately works out to 12,175 DEC - 7,750 DEC = 4,425 DEC loss (instead of 25,000 DEC loss) at the time of the trade. So at 100 DEC/day projected "gold bonus" earning it will now take only 4,425 DEC / 100 DEC/day = ~ 44 days (compared to 250 days ) to recuperate the "loss" of 25,000 DEC from the trade. This, of course, DOES NOT account for the ADDITIONAL ongoing 100 DEC/day income from the "Poseidon" gold card into the perpetual future. That 100 DEC/day will actually fully cover my current 80 DEC/day guild contribution into perpetuity, once I recoup the 4,425 DEC loss from the trade. In the end, this trade provides a good example of the kind of strategic thinking which leads to longer-term progress in the game.

5 ) Okay. As I did in the last post in this series, the highly-detailed "diary" of my daily #splinterlands activity is laid out in the last part of this post, for those of you who are inclined to follow, more closely, what I am doing. It occurred to me that this "diary" section is JUST THAT - a highly-detailed record of my daily activity in the game, with some JUICY "play-by-play" analysis notes, and commentary, on what works, what doesn't, and some suggestions for further tweaking and experimentation. So, with this in mind, I hope some/any of you will enjoy this information. If not, you are under no pressure to read it fully, and are free to SKIM, or even IGNORE, any parts, or ALL parts, completely - at your discretion. I lay this out because it also HELPS ME to document my progress in the game over time, and may help some people NOW, and into the perpetual future...

October 10th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,212,083 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 96.46%
Ending DEC - 1,213,010 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 95.69%
Balance = DEC Earning = 927 DEC = -> 5.192 HIVE x ~ $00.179 USD/Hive = ~ $00.93 USD

Notes: The accounting, this week, got ALL funked up because of the Hive blockchain fork instability (some days I could barely play), and the NASTY "dragon" quest which I got stuck on for four days (partly due to the Hive blockchain issues). So today, I hit "reseton the quest, and instead of getting the dreaded "life" quest (for which I have ZERO cards) I actually lucked out and got a "neutral" quest. As a result of this recent debacle I will now formulate a plan in case this sort of scenario occurs again - because it has messed up all the accounting, and the general pace of my daily activity.

Spent :

80 DEC - daily contribution to guild

1 x "Goblin Dartling" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.63 USD - 710 DEC -- two (2) cards remaining to Level 7)

5 x "Naga Brute" (non-gold - Level 1 - $0.18 USD - 198 DEC --

Dice (Pack #1 : Today's Daily Pack)
keepers -
(+) 30 DEC
nonkeepers-
(+) 40 DEC (+) 20 DEC (gifted to gang)

Daily Quest (today's "neutrals" quest)
keepers -
(+) 160 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 25 DEC
potions - 2 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 83 DEC

Dice (Pack #2 : Celebration pack for reaching "Champion III" season --> + 20 loot chests - + 80 season loot chests)
keepers -
(+) 210 DEC
nonkeepers-
(+) 30 DEC

October 11th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,212,141 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 92.00%
Ending DEC - 1,188,760 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 80.80%
Balance = DEC Earning = I bought and opened a bunch of packs today and that completely messed up the calculations. Will start fresh tomorrow.

Spent:

80 DEC - daily contribution to guild

2 x Dice packs - 5,700 DEC

received 38,730 DEC from BTC sell

20 (+1) Dice pack batch

Untamed (Pack #1 : today's daily pack)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers-
(+) 80 DEC

Daily Quest (today's "earth" quest)
keepers -
(+) 120 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 35 DEC
potions - 4 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 2 packs (bought two (2) more Dice packs against these two Untamed reward packs)
DEC - 116 DEC

October 12th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,188,670 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : [accounting all muffed up again]
Ending DEC - [accounting all muffed up again]
Ending Capture rate : ~ [accounting all muffed up again]
Balance = DEC Earning = [accounting all muffed up again]

Spent:

80 DEC - daily contribution to guild

Daily Quest (today's "earth" quest)
keepers -
(+) 380 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 60 DEC
potions - 2 legendary potions, 4 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 126 DEC

October 13th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,188,670 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ xx.xx%
Ending DEC - I did a massive pack-opening of my remaining Dice and Untamed packs today, including buying numerous cards after burning some of the DEC from the unwanted/redundant cards in the packs. So the record-keeping was totally thrown off today. I will try to recalibrate everything tomorrow.
Ending Capture rate :
Balance = DEC Earning =

Spent: too complicated to lay out clearly here.

October 14th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,213,864 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 88.16%
Ending DEC - 1,214,724 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 78.08%
Balance = DEC Earning = 860 DEC = -> 4.667 HIVE x ~ $00.152 USD/Hive = ~ $00.71 USD

Spent:

80 DEC - daily contribution to guild

2 x "Maggots" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.15 USD - 1,314 DEC -- bumped up to Level 7 (to increase "speed" from "+2" to "+3"))

Daily Quest (today's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 50 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 60 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 7 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 96 DEC

Untamed (Pack #1 : today's daily pack)
keepers -
1 x "Bone Golem" (Gold - Level 2 - $2.00 USD - 2,000 DEC -- three (3) cards remaining to Level 6)
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers-
(+) 40 DEC

October 15th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,213,409 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 78.21%
Ending DEC - 1,236,839 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 82.39%
Balance = DEC Earning = 23,430 DEC = -> 122.237 HIVE x ~ $00.152 USD/Hive = ~ $19.43 USD

Spent:

80 DEC - daily contribution to guild

2 x "Parasitic Growth" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.35 USD - 1,561 DEC -- bumped up to Level 8 (to increase "speed" from "+2" to "+3")

Daily Quest (today's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 20 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 60 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 4 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 140 DEC

Earned 22,489.008 DEC for the sale of 3 x "Lorna Shine) (Gold - Level 2 - $7.00 USD each)

October 16th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,235,278 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 88.89%
Ending DEC - 1,238,185 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 85.00%
Balance = DEC Earning = 2,907 DEC = -> 15.866 HIVE x ~ $00.160 USD/Hive = ~ $2.54 USD

Spent:

80 DEC - daily contribution to guild

3 x "Goblin Dartling" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.90 USD - 2,272 DEC -- four (4) cards remaining to Level 9)

22,141.942 DEC income from sale of "Yodin Zaku" (non-gold summoner which I got in the remaining 64 Untamed packs)

Season Rewards ("Champion II" season level --> 120 loot chests)
keepers -
(+) 430 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 1,195 DEC
potions - 18 legendary potions, 19 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 1 DEC packs
DEC - 933 DEC

Whew! These posts are growing dense - but that's okay. Take what resonates with you,and leave the rest. I hope you find some/any of these tips useful in increasing your understanding and/or skill level in the Splinterlands and/or any other game(s) - and the " blockchain gaming " industry as whole - which I end up exploring as this series evolves. More JUICY tips to come with each weekly update, as I dig deeper into this whole REVOLUTIONARY PHENOMENON, and become more experienced and successful in the game(s).

See you on the battlefield...

@transcript-junky