"Splinterlands" Power Strategy Tips #80

As I have now been playing "Splinterlands" for over TWO YEARS, 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 semi-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, geopolitics, forensics, law, guerilla warfare tactics, ethics, philosophy, accounting, ergonomics, investing, anger management, the occult, 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 can then do a few "bad" deeds (HEDONISTICALLY speaking) - AND have a little extra Hive to buy/upgrade some more Splinterlands cards and/or buy some more swap.btc ( #Bitcoin ) and/or swap.doge ( #Dogecoin ). Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield.

@transcript-junky

[DISCLAIMER]
Hey folks. I'm still COPING with serious issues with my back, as well as working on SEVERAL OTHER very important projects, but the fact that I was ultimately able to ACTUALLY GET this post published (albeit a bit overdue) is the most important thing. Creating these posts (from start to finish) is an enjoyable process, which is one of the few "positives" going on right now, at a time when I believe we must ALL focus on the positives as much as possible. I'm working on step-by-step, daily solutions to this health issue, as well as some significant life issues (including survival issues relative to residing in a foreign country during "the thing" - including the resulting complications to international travel) and other TALL TASKS requiring a LARGE amount of my current LIMITED energy. We do the best we can do. These are difficult times. Difficult times require FOCUS, PERSISTENCE, and the WILL to survive and/or thrive. That's just the nature of the "BEAST" that is this giant TORTURE CHAMBER called "life".
[/DISCLAIMER]

1 ) Battle of the post:

"Thorn In the Side of the Enemy"
https://steemmonsters.com?p=battle&id=sm_LYO8diYftWtZiOTs8jr7&ref=transcript-junky

I chose to showcase this battle primarily because I got another "Mylor Crowling" gold (summoner) Dice card in the recent 20 ( + 1 free ) Dice pack batch I bought, and this additional card enabled me to bump this summoner up to Level 4. I am beginning to really appreciate the power of the "abilities" these Dice summoners have, and the advantage those abilities provide if used strategically. The "thorn" ability which "Mylor Crowling" provides to all monsters in the battle is very powerful. And although this specific battle is NOT an especially JUICY one, it does well demonstrate how the "thorn" ability can significantly enhance even the "Lucky Golden Chicken" (which some readers will be aware is one of my favorite cards, because I love chickens - like Hindus love cows -- although I love cows also). Notice how the "Lucky Golden Chicken" (with the "thorns" ability provided by the summoner) deals the final blow to the enemy's "Parasitic Growth" monster. Without the "thorns" ability, the "Lucky Golden Chicken" likely would NOT have survived that attack. In addition, since I placed 31st in this tournament (link below), winning this specific battle was very likely the DETERMINING FACTOR in at least placing within the lowest (fourth) tier of the tournament (17-32nd place) which resulted in a nice 1,500 DEC winning. To put things into perspective, since this was a "gold" tournament, that 1,500 DEC has been enough to buy, let's say, the 2 x "Orc Sergeant" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.51 USD - 1,563 DEC) cards I purchased on April 23rd, 2021. And those 2 x "Orc Sergeant" gold card then BOTH boost my "gold tournament collection power eligibility" for future gold tournaments, AND increase the chance of placing in one of the tiers, and winning more DEC to the buy more gold cards. In addition, the powerful abilities the Dice gold summoners provide are FURTHER reinforcement and motivation for me to continue my plan of buying one 20 ( + 1 free ) Dice pack batch, upon accumulating 105 gold and legendary potions (through daily quest and season rewards - usually through roughly two months of daily play) until the Dice cards run out of stock during the current "airdrop" sale (to which I now have 445 packs eligible for the remaining three Dice airdrops).

https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=61b3782314cf79767a6bfb3d5846f227e976249f

2 ) Oh, how "I LOVE the SMELL of "vindication" in the morning"! #Dogecoin made the first MAJOR #PUMP that I predicted, using my magical powers, from ~ $0.05 USD to ~ $0.13 USD on April 14th, 2021:

DOGE soars 80% on the day to become 10th largest crypto by market cap
https://cointelegraph.com/news/doge-soars-80-on-the-day-to-become-10th-largest-crypto-by-market-cap

When I first became aware of this MAJOR PUMP I considered two options : ( 1 ) converting some/all of the the NOW-PUMPED swap.doge to swap.hive to DEC (which would be a gain of probably over $7.00 USD - enough to buy TWO of those "one "Giant Roc" card per week", or ( 2 ) wait a few days and monitor the price, to see if it PUMPS MORE, or if this was just a "quick PUMP". Regardless of whether it UN-PUMPS, or PUMPS-UP the mere fact that it has had this MAJOR PUMP is vindication for my decision to start buying it, and earning it via the faucet site:

https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/746118

So let me, here, REPEAT, that if #Dogecoin continues to pump from the $0.13 USD range (where it is at the time of writing this sentence) to the $1.00 USD range then all of the time I have spent clicking the buttons on the faucet site will have been WELL WORTH it. If it were to PUMP BEYOND $1.00 USD what I would likely do is convert 10 Doge at a time to swap.hive to DEC to buy more cards. In this way I will be able to BOTH "ride the PUMP" AND liquidate some profit to buy more gold cards. I love it when I turn out to be right! It makes me feel TOTALLY #PUMPED.

It turns out that I decided to watch the price movement of Doge for just one day, and when I saw that it started to go down again I decided that since the GENERAL PATTERN in the past was for Doge to PUMP there would be a good chance it would UN-PUMP, and so I decided to "short" it this time, and I ended up selling it and turning a ~ $7.00 USD profit (in DEC) and used that DEC to max out my "Mantoid"" gold card, and fulfil the new weekly goal I set to buy 1 x "Giant Roc" gold card per week. Those gold cards will earn the extra 15% DEC "gold" bonus into the perpetual future, and so I could use some of that bonus over time (in addition to any large loot chests, or high-value cards) to convert to swap.doge if/when it goes down to roughly pre-pump price. As I said when I first considered starting to buy swap.doge (Dogecoin), I believe Doge will be a "PUMP coin" which will provide the benefit I have just demonstrated with this sale of PUMPED Doge for DEC. I hope to be able to repeat this into the future.

I have also decided that, for buying future Doge (at least for a few weeks) I will use ONLY the Doge earned from the https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/746118 faucet. I will continue to use the HBD income from these series posts to buy swap.btc, and if I hit any ESPECIALLY JUICY Splinterlands cards I MAY convert SOME of that DEC value to swap.hive, and then swap.doge, but as I have learned, EACH additional conversion eats up A LOT of the origInal value, so I want to try to MINIMIZE the number of conversions. With the https://faucetcrypto.com/ref/746118 site I simply withdraw my Doge directly into my @hive-engine account (using the Doge "receiving address" provided in @hive-engine). I want to see how much Doge I can accumulate using this method.

[UPDATE] One day after I liquidated my 110 Doge for a $7.00 USD profit, and bought up some needed gold cards, the price SHOT UP to ~ $0.25 USD/Doge. So what I decided to do is simply continue my faucet activity to implement the SAFEST strategy to see if/when Doge would/might "crash". My theory all along has been that Doge is PRIMARILY a "PUMP Coin" And one way to mitigate the FOMO of watching the price continue to shoot up is to simply make SMALL, safe moves (with the faucet being the best one right now) while I monitor the price activity of the token. And EVEN IF Doge continues to skyrocket long-term, I will AT LEAST have liquidated $7.00 USD of profit, and can CONTINUE buying up more of the coin more slowly via the faucet. I will also start looking for some Dogecoin mining programs, services, (like Cryptobrowser is currently passively mining BTC for me) to see if I can find a more PASSIVE way to build my Dogecoin reserves, as opposed to the faucet, which requires me to press various buttons throughout the day, which is a bit tedious.

^^ OOPS!

Oh well, what PUMP-UP must (generally) PUMP-DOWN. It's all about the PUMP, baby!

3 ) I was successful at fulfilling the new weekly goal I set (in the previous series post) of buying 1 x "Giant Roc" gold card per week. For the FIRST purchase in this plan I used part of the $7.00 USD profit I made on the Doge PUMP. I'll continue the plan to buy "one card per week" of this slightly more over-budget (let's say, my "one per week" intermediate-level cost) gold card, with the goal of maxing it out within a several-month period of time.

4 ) On April 20th, 2021 I realized that I had accumulated over 125 of BOTH "legendary" and "alchemy/gold" potions over the past 2-3 months - via daily quest and season reward dumps. The thing is that these potions are UNUSEABLE unless you buy new packs, and so I decided that, for the sake of ACTUALLY USING that growing reserve of potions, AND since the airdrop-eligible Dice edition sale is STILL going on, and the Dice edition sale allows you to buy the 20 ( + 1 free ) pack batch (which at ~ 57,000 DEC is MORE AFFORDABLE than a 100 ( + 10 free ) Untamed pack batch ( at 200,000 DEC), and which uses up 21 (packs) x 5 potions per pack = 105 potions, and since I had enough liquid DEC to pay the 57,000 DEC, I decided to go in for another batch. This new purchase bumped my total number of packs eligible for the three remaining airdrops from 424 to 445, and the number of packs (21) was manageable for me to open in one hour, and then do a THOROUGH accounting of the value of the cards gotten in the packs, comfortably, within one day, as opposed to the larger amount of time and effort required to do the accounting for 110 packs). This time I also sold most of the cards (which were worth substantially more than 10 DEC from burning) on the market, and after accounting for the "current market value" of "the keepers" PLUS the DEC equivalent value of the card put up on the market (when they finally sell) it turns out that the grand total value of all cards worked out to 79,549 DEC. When you then deduct the cost of the pack batch ( 57,000 DEC ) I ended up essentially turning a PROFIT of 22,549 DEC! It's just that that a significant amount of that PROFIT value is now TIED UP in the NFT cards (instead of being liquid DEC) - although as the cards put up on the market sell the DEC will come trickling back into liquid DEC in my in-game wallet. In the end, I was able to achieve the goal of ACTUALLY USING those 125+ potions which had been accumulating in my reserves, as well as increasing my eligible number of airdrop-eligible packs (for the THREE remaining airdrops), and I now plan to buy ANOTHER of these 20 ( + 1 free ) Dice pack batches when my potion reserves bounce back to 105 potions (each) -- that is, IF the Dice sale is still going on - or if any future edition of cards allows purchasing of the 20 ( + 1 free ) pack batches. In the end, I turned a profit, so it was a healthy risk to take.

Also, since publishing this post is LONG OVERDUE, I figured I would report here the accumulation of 18 new alchemy potions, and 20 new legendary potions since I purchased the recent 20 ( + 1 free ) Dice pack batch on April 26th, 2021. That was EIGHT days ago, and so if we do a rough EXTRAPOLATION, let's assume I'm able to accumulate 15 alchemy potions + 15 legendary potions per week (from the regular daily quest + season rewards dumps when playing daily). Since a 21-pack of Dice cards equals 21 x 5 = 105 potions (alchemy and legendary) then 105/15 = 7 (weeks) of regular daily play to accumulate enough potions to cover all cards in another 20 ( +1 free) Dice pack batch. This is a helpful estimated time with which to coordinate my SAVINGS of daily DEC with the rough amount of time it will take to accumulate the necessary potions to apply to that - that is, if I don't hit something especially JUICY before the 7-week estimated "organic" accumulation of potions" timeframe.

5 ) Okay. As I have done in the previous posts in this series, the highly-detailed "diary" of my daily #splinterlands activity is laid out in the last part here, 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. Also, I have changed the format of the this diary section to include a more "random" record of three of the relatively most recent daily records I have been able to keep, since I am spread so thin with various other projects. However, these three more "random" daily records STILL perform the important functions such as showing how much (in USD) I am earning per day (which at this point is approaching the "$2.00 USD+ per day) rate consistently. That's some significant long-term progress.

April 22th, 2021

Starting DEC : 126,365 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 86.00%
Ending DEC - 130,330 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 97.00%
Balance = DEC Earning = 3,965 DEC = 6.506 HIVE x ~ 0.616 USD/Hive = ~ $4.00 USD

2 x "Tortisian Fighter" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.52 USD - 1,589 DEC -- bumped up to Level 8 (to add "repair" ability, and decrease "health" from "+4" to "+3")

3 x "Harvester" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.90 USD - 937 DEC -- bumped up to Level 4 (to add the "oppress" ability)

1 x "Orc Sergeant" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.75 USD - 782 DEC -- six (6) cards remaining to Level 9)

1 x "Ant Miners" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.89 USD - 928 DEC -- four (4) cards remaining to Level 8)

earned 1,500 DEC for placing 31st in the "Golden Rule - Silver" tournament""

https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=61b3782314cf79767a6bfb3d5846f227e976249f

earned 2366.009 DEC for sale of 1 x "TruthSpeaker" (Gold - Level 2) card on the market

Spent:

Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest)
Notes: Cancelled "dragon" quest, and luckily got "sneak" quest - instead of "life" quest (which I have ZERO dick for). However, for the sake of continuing to move forward, and for recordkeeping purposes, I will close out the accounting for the day, and essentially "skip" one day of quest. It's not the end of the world.

April 23rd, 2021

Starting DEC : 126,204 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 96.47%
Ending DEC - 139,775 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 89.43%
Balance = DEC Earning = 4,071 DEC = 6.608 HIVE x ~ 0.628 USD/Hive = ~ $4.20 USD

earned 2911.688 DEC for sale of 1 x "Spirit Druid Grog" (non-gold - Level 1) card on the market

earned 810.745 DEC for sale of 2 x "Lunakari Mistress (non-gold - Level 1) cards on the market

contributed 500 DEC to the "DEC Hunters" guild "arena after the recent Brawl

2 x "Orc Sergeant" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.51 USD - 1,563 DEC - four (4) cards remaining to Level 9)

2 x "Ant Miners" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.81 USD - 1,878 DEC -- two (2) remaining to Level 8)

Daily Quest (today's "sneak" quest)
keepers -
1 x "Spirit Druid Grog" (non-gold - Level 1 - $2.95 USD - 3,046 DEC -- put up for sale on market for $2.95 USD)
(+)964 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 832 DEC
potions - 0 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 20 DEC

April 24th, 2021

Starting DEC : 126,827 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 89.73%
Ending DEC - 128,990 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 67.78%
Balance = DEC Earning = 2,163 DEC = 3.729 HIVE x ~ 0.595 USD/Hive = ~ $2.22 USD

Spent:

2 x "Ant Miners" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.73 USD - 1,815 DEC -- bumped up to Level 8 (to increase "speed" from "+2" to "+3")

paid 15,000 DEC for 1 (out of three per month) land plots, purchased from guild member

Daily Quest (today's "sneak" quest)
keepers -
(+) 216 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+)86 DEC
potions - 2 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 241 DEC

Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 293 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 56 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 100 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 semi-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