As I have now been playing Steem Monsters and Drug Wars for several months, I've wanted to contribute something of ACTIONABLE value to my fellow players (and FUTURE players) - but NOT just fill my Steemit feed with daily images of quest reward - or battle - SPAM, (no offense to those doing so). Ultimately, Steemit is about ADDING VALUE to the social experience - that is the magic of blockchain technology. So, after some serious pondering, I decided that a weekly "Steem Monsters + Drugs Wars 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, and/or any other area of knowledge I end up exploring as this series naturally progresses, then I will have done my "good deed" (of providing value) for the week. Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield...

@transcript-junky

1 ) Being now one season into the release of the Untamed edition of cards, I discoverd one day early this past week that there is a option to buy 500 (+75 free) pack batches of Untamed cards for $1,000 USD (or equivalent in crypto). And although I had bought ONE 100 (+ 10 free) pack batch of Untamed cards during the first round of the pre-sale (primarily to be eligible for ALL of the airdrops of the special Untamed fundraiser airdrop cards), AND THEN another 100 (+10) pack batch (to open more gradually (two packs per day)), the thought of those extra 75 free packs, and the value of what could be in those packs really had me seriously thinking about "going all in". Then someone in my guild ( @forever-crypto ) hit the one and only "Prince Julian" (Gold (summoner) - Level 4 - $20,000 USD - 24,218,939 DEC), and when I heard about this it kinda "triggered" me to just go for it. I sold off $1,000 of Bitcoin from Coinbase (which was something I was in the process of GRADUALLY doing anyway) and bought the 500 (+75 free) Untamed pack batch. I also did this during the SECOND round of the pre-sale, which added an extra 500 packs to my total "packs purchased", and so I now have 796 packs purchased, which will significantly increase my chance of getting any of the remaining airdropped cards. It turns out that one day this week the Splinterlands admin did make the first airdropped card available for claiming, and I did NOT get one. So, this means that the original 100 (+10) packs from the first batch I bought (during the first round of the pre-sale) was not enough packs to be likely to get one of the airdrops. It should now be interesting to see if I get the second one (and any of the other remaining 13 airdropped cards), now that I have a LOT more packs to increase my change.

I had a bit of "buyer's remorse" after purchasing the 500 (+75) batch, as $1,000 USD is quite a bit of money, and it was a significant amount of my Bitcoin holding to sell off. Plus, after I made the purchase, another guild member said that she thought the cost of the 500 batch "wasn't worth it, except for the extra perks." (for example, the physically printed cards, and other Kickstarter perks). This got me a bit worried about what I have done, but I had already done it, so would need to stay positive and see what happens. I opened the first 75 (free) packs on the first night after making the purchase). Here is the actual meticulous record of the especially JUICY cards which came out of those 75 packs:

starting at 668 packs ( - 575 ) = 93 ( remaining from the first 100 ( + 10 ) Untamed pack batch
668 - 75 = 593

"The Vigilator" - non-gold - Level 1 - $6.11 USD - 1000 DEC - subtotal - 658/668 - $6.11 USD - $6.11 USD

"Luminous Eagle" - gold - Level 2 - $2.39 USD - 2,000 DEC
"Cornealus" - non-gold (legendary) - Level 1 - $9.99 USD - 1,000 DEC
"Kron The Undying" - non-gold (legendary) - Level 1 - $9.19 USD - 1,000 DEC - subtotal 648/668 - $21.57 - $27.68

no good ones - subtotal 638/668 - $21.57 - $27.68

"SoulStorm" - non-gold - Level 1 - $1.79 USD - 200 DEC
"Light Elemental" - non-gold - Level 1 - $2.32 USD - 400 DEC
"Parasitic Growth" - gold - Level 3 - $2.50 USD - 500 DEC
"SoulStorm" - non-gold - Level 1 - $1.79 USD - 200 DEC
"Lone Boatman" - gold - Level 3 - $2.40 USD - 500 DEC
"Lone Boatman" - gold - Level 3 - $2.40 USD - 500 DEC
"Mitica Headhunter" - non-gold - Level 1 - $1.63 USD - 200 DEC
"Mitica Headhunter" - non-gold - Level 1 - $1.63 USD - 200 DEC
-> subtotal 628/668 - $16.46 - $44.14

"Feasting Seaweed" - Gold - Level 3 - $1.50 USD - 500 DEC
"Mother Khala" - Gold - Level 2 - $6.74 USD - 2,000 DEC
"Serpentine Spy" - Gold - Level 3 - $2.03 USD - 500 DEC - subtotal 618/668 - $10.28 - $54.42

"The Vigilator" - Gold - Level 2 - $69.00 USD - 50,000 DEC
"Cave Slug" - Gold - Level 3 - $1.49 USD - 500 DEC - subtotal 608/668 - $70.49 - $124.91

"Feasting Seaweed" - Gold - Level 3 - $1.50 USD - 500 DEC
-> subtotal 593/668 - $1.50 - $126.41 USD -- ** end of 75 free packs **

You can see that I hit the : "The Vigilator" (Gold - Level 2 - $69.00 USD - 50,000 DEC) card, and that at the end of opening the 75 free packs the total value (of just the especially valuable (non-common) cards) was ~ $126 USD. So this means that since each Untamed pack costs 2,000 DEC, then the actually "retail cost" value of those 75 packs is -> 75 x 2.00 USD = $150 USD. And since I got $126 USD worth of cards in these 75 packs which would cost $150 (if they were not free!) then it looks like I at least NEARLY recuperated the $150 USD value of those packs. HOWEVER, we also need to account for the fact that some of these cards are "gold" cards (like the above "gold Vigilator", and other in the above record), which means that earn get an additional 10% DEC bonus per won battle FOREVER, and so when you project this value into the future it ends up being MUCH MORE than the $24 USD difference between the cost value of the packs and the value of the especially valuable cards in those packs --> $150 - $126 = $24 USD . So, in this sense, by doing some basic accounting it seems that I did NOT take a major loss by purchasing the 500 (+75) pack batch. But I can't, of course, determine this definitively until I have opened all of the packs.

When I purchased the 500 pack batch I was already in the process of opening two packs per day (from the SECOND batch I had purchased). For the first 100 (+10) pack batch I opened it all in one go, with the main goal of having a foundational collection of Untamed cards to begin using them in the game. However, after a few days I found that these 550 cards were NOT enough to make/keep me "competitive enough" with the many other players who had clearly loaded up on the new Untamed cards. So I decided to buy the SECOND 100 (+10) pack batch, and open them more gradually. However, I was ALSO finding that the slow-opening of the second batch was NOT helping me reach the "competitive enough" state fast enough. It turns out that those first 75 free packs from the 500 (+75) batch DID help give me a significant boost of Untamed cards, to the point where I now feel "confident enough" to BOTH use the cards in battle, and win enough battles, AND ALSO have enough of the Untamed cards at a decently high enough level to really be able to get a feel for the cards, and start deciding which cards I want to upgrade, and or buy new ones (and/or gold ones) of.

Finally, after buying the 500 pack batch my intention was to increase the number of daily packs I would open to more than the current "two per day - one "morning" pack, and one "evening" pack". But after a few days of attempting to open a total of FIVE packs per day I came to an enlightening discovery. That is, the amount of DEC liquidity I was able to maintain (through the core tasks of battling, paying for full "potion power" for all reward cards and Untamed pack cards) was actually LIMITED ENOUGH to naturally LIMIT the number of packs I can open per day. So after experimenting with the ideal daily pack number (yet again) I found that returning to the original "one morning pack + one evening pack + one pack each time I reach a new level in the season (including the first battle of the season (which pays out a nice amount of season reward cards (ex. 26 if I start a new season at "Gold II" like I did this current season). This pacing strategy is ideal for SEVERAL reasons. Firstly, it is within my "comfortable" means of earning DEC through my normal daily battling activity. Secondly, it provides a nice control mechanism by which to BOTH limit my daily pack opening to a "slow and steady" pace (for instance, as of writing this I have 446 Untamed packs sitting in my inventory, and so at "two packs per day" that works out to 446/2 = 223 days worth of packs (or 220 when you account for the extra "milestone upon reaching each higher level in the season" pack. Now that I have "enough" ***Untamed""" cards to feel "comfortable enough" using them in battles, I can introduce additional cards more slowly, as I SIMULTANEOUSLY earn DEC from my entire active collection. By doing it this way I BOTH maintain steady DEC liquidity, WHILE ALSO having a consistent amount of packs to open daily, and by doing so can GRADUALLY become acquainted with the new Untamed cards, at their different levels, over time. And since 200 - 223 days is a substantial amount of time, there is a good chance that additional perks will be made available in the game as it continues growing, and so proceeding this way keeps enables "slow and steady" progress. And finally, one other important thing is that each time I open a pack I also need to record all of the cards in my ongoing log of activity (part of which is included as the last section of this weekly series post (#5 (below) in this post). The time and energy required to screenshot the rewards/pack cards, upgrade or convert the cards to DEC, and record the values, makes this task a more time-consuming process, and so naturally makes it easier for me to pace out the pack-openings to "two packs per day, plus the rewards cards, plus the season milestone" packs. Overall, I think that the overall strategy I have outlined above is ideal considering all of the factors currently at play.

2 ) As the SteemMonsters ( @splinterlands ) admin has ramped up the marketing effort, primarily as the result of the massively successful recent Kickstarter campaign, and subsequent release of the new Untamed edition of cards, I have noticed an increase of posting on BOTH the #splinterlands hashtag pages within the Steem ( Steemit) ecosystem, AS WELL AS external news articles related to the game. Since more and more of the regular posts and articles on the game are becoming more detailed and informative (including THIS post you are reading, which has been consistently getting a 100% upvote (which I believe is completely justified, because I put serious effort into composing these posts ), it is now MORE VALUABLE for me to re-focus on consuming articles related to the game, in line with one of my original tasks of this process, which has been to "read one #steemmonsters / #splinterlands , and one #drugwars related article per day ). When I started this series many of the articles were simple "quest reward showcase", or "free giveaway" types posts, which are FINE, but they didn't provide the more SERIOUS type of data/analysis which I need to be able to reach the ultimate goals of this series, and my overall effort on #Steemit , and the blockchain industry as a whole. I am happy to say that there are now MORE THAN ENOUGH totally JUICY posts being made daily to keep me highly-engaged with the game, and I am now in the process of following more and more of these serious players who are posting consistently, as well as ramping up my Twitter effort so as to leverage my substantial social media network to give more exposure to the many good posts related to the game as possible. For instance, I have been tweeting out EACH weekly post in this series, like this one:

"Steem Monsters" + "Drug Wars" -- Power Strategy Tips #35 steemit.com/steemmonsters/… #blockchain #gaming #gamers #eSports #crypto #Steem #steemit #Steemmonsters #startups #splinterlands @steemmonsters @splinterlands @Drugwarsio

( Tweet URL: https://twitter.com/TranscriptJunky/status/1204635749812850688 )

as well as my other two series posts, and now some of the growing number of articles throughout the internet which are mentioning #splinterlands , and using some JUICY relevant hashtags, and ReTweeting these tweets from one more more of my Twitter profiles which have a significant reach. The increased focus on this task has the ADDITIONAL benefit of enabling me to remain productive when my battle capture rate goes down in the game (in combination with playing tournaments (which also do not use up capture rate), and so I can focus on this task while the capture rate recharges, instead of waiting impatiently for that to happen.

Also, as the sheer mass of serious posts related to the game increases, so does the sense of community amongst the players and admin of the game. This is one core thing which was missing on Steemit before a proper game like Splinterlands hit the scene. Sure, people interacted here, shared posts, commented, and there WAS a sense of community then, but obviously it wasn't strong enough to keep a lot of people from dropping out of their regular activity once the price of Steem plunged. Luckily, I had the experience, as professional marketer (and all-around smart guy) to see the trend that gaming was going to be a major use case for crypto, and so as many people dropped out of this platform I simply began laying the foundation to redirect my main effort in the direction of " blockchain gaming ". You can see this evolution if you look at my profile feed. Until around a year ago I was focused on showcasing my art and writing. Then, once it became clear that " blockchain gaming " would be revolutionary I launched my three current weekly series projects, which are now serving me (and my audience ) well, with consistent, valuable information, and a steady trickle of Steem/SP income to stay motivated. My point here is that this " blockchain gaming " stuff literally kept me going, without pause, on Steemit, when other people simply dropped out.

3 ) On the "Drug Wars" front, I have continued to consistently contribute 500k of each resource (drugs, weapons, and alcohol) to the gang buildings, and it seems that the other member has started doing the "gang jobs" again after taking a hiatus last week (for some reason). I also continued experimenting with "at least one gang job" per day, but around three days ago I tried doing the higher level non-gang jobs, and there was some sort of a glitch in the system so that the amount of units I lost for each job showed incorrectly, and I ended up doing one or two additional jobs without realizing that I got hit down 6,000 "bouncer" units. Of course, I wouldn't have done the additional jobs had I realized immediately that I had lost so many units. This was a good lesson for me to pace myself properly so that I am completely sure that I have replenished lost units before doing another job. It has taken me a good three days to recuperate the lost units, but one more positive thing here is that this experience has made me realize that it would be beneficial to add a "weekly sweep" to the routine. That is, I can run through my list of "valuable past prey" ONE time per week, to get a nice boost of resources, while not discontinuing this important task completely. The issue was that doing it daily was becoming tedious, and I simply didn't have the time nor energy.

Finally, through my research for my series post on "blockchain gaming" (current week's post here):

Trending Blockchain Gaming News #22 - December 13th, 2019
https://steemit.com/gaming/@transcript-junky/trending-blockchain-gaming-news-22-december-13th-2019

I discovered a new game, which looks promising. Here is the original post, which mentions #splinterlands as well as the new "Prospectors" game (referral link : https://prospectors.io?waxref=jfkqq.wam ), which is a lot like "Drug Wars", but on the WAX blockchain, which it appears that Splinterlands is moving towards integrating with:

Games and social media dApps leave EOS in favor of WAX
https://www.nederob.nl/2019/12/06/games-and-social-media-dapps-leave-eos-in-favor-of-wax/

The best part about this is that the "Prospectors" game seems to have many of the same core functionality as Drug Wars, but it has a different theme (gold prospecting versus drug dealing), and is on a different blockchain, and so I am thinking that adding "Prospectors" into my gaming routine, AND my ongoing marketing analysis of "blockchain gaming" will enable me to diversify, and likely earn additional crypto which I can eventually convert into Steem/DEC to buy more Splinterlands cards. I will be exploring the "Prospectors" game in more detail for the next few weeks, and provide updates on the progress in future posts (as I deem appropriate). The best news is that it is likely that the skills I have learned by playing Drug Wars can transfer to "Prospectors", which will make the learning curve less steep, and enable me to "hit the ground running" and making progress in that game quickly. I like what I see so far with "Prospectors" (referral link : https://prospectors.io?waxref=jfkqq.wam ), especially the fact that it is more immersive than Drug Wars, and the in-game token can be converted into EOS, which can then be converted to Bitcoin and held in my Coinbase account.

4 ) Following on from #3 (above), by the end of the week ( before publishing this post ) I have now watched a bunch of YouTube videos related to the "Prospectors" game, and by doing that am able to actively play that game (at the beginning level) to start slowly building momentum there. One of the nice things is that it seems that the community based around "Prospectors" is actually quite polished, as evidenced by the significant number of YouTube videos of people analysing the game (including some of the admins). Th user interface is actually much more engaging than that of Drug Wars. Now, I don't want to take "cheap shots" at Drug Wars, because I do believe that they have a good idea, and I have been playing that game for a year now - and will CONTINUE to do so BOTH because I want to support the Steem-based blockchain gaming apps, AND because I would like to now do a COMPARATIVE marketing analysis of Drug Wars versus "Prospectors", because I believe that some very valuable insights can be gained for everyone here by doing this. In fact, if I end up getting more deeply into "Prospectors" I may include the name of that game in the title of this series, since from an SEO perspective that would help these posts attain further reach when shared on social media (ex. Twitter). On a more positive note, my experience playing drug Wars has PRIMED me to be able to more rapidly get up to speed with the rudiments of "Prospectors", as many of the core features/concepts of each game are similar. The main difference is that Prospectors is more ENGAGING, in the sense that you are engaging in a more "immersive" environment (while carrying out some of the same activities as Drug Wars) than Drug Wars. I have been saying for a while now in these posts that, although I continue to perform some basic tasks to keep moving forward on Drug Wars, I just feel like the "engagement" level is not enough to motivate me to spend hours each day pushing buttons to earn resources. It feels ROBOTIC. Someone else in my guild agreed with me that we need a certain baseline level of "active stimulation" in these games (as in ALL games - online or offline) to stay engaged. Drug Wars just doesn't have that right now, but I hope they will take this feedback as motivation to introduce some more engaging elements into their game. As I said, I am still "in the game" on Drug Wars, and if they DO make that game more "engaging" I will be ready to spend more time on it than I currently am. In the meantime, I am going to invest more of my time/energy on "Prospectors" for now, and include analysis of that activity in these updates going forward.

Here are some good videos on the "Prospectors" game. Feel free to use my referral link to help me get a much-needed boost of resources in that game during this very beginning stage, where my process is slow, but steady : https://prospectors.io?waxref=jfkqq.wam

Here's a well-produced, and informative, step-by-step tutorial video series, on the official "Prospectors" YouTube channel, which will get you "over the hump" and operation in the game. There are 10 episodes of the series:

Prospectors: Eposode 01: Get started

And if you do a YouTube search for "Prospectors game EOS" you will find a PLETHORA of valuable videos about the game. I am quite excited about the more internet-wide community of this game, as well as the fact that it's one of the most popular dApps - placing at #2 on the "Top 10 dApps" list on : https://dappradar.com (as of writing this post). I urge all of you who are reading this to try this game. We could bring some of the Steem gaming community to "Prospectors", collaborate there, earn some EOS, convert it to Steem and buy some more JUICY SteemMonsters cards. Just an idea.

5 ) Okay. As I did in the last post in this series, the highly-detailed "diary" of my daily #steemmonsters 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 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 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...

December 10th, 2019

[**DISCLAIMER - On a complete whim, I had the impulse to buy a 500 (+75) Untamed card pack batch (actually, prompted by someone in my guild getting a $20,000 USD gold Untamed promo summoner, AND the fact that when you buy the 500 (+75) pack promo batches you get a whopping 75 packs for FREE. Part of me regrets making such an impulsive decision, but what's done is done, and now I need to see what cards will come out of the 575 packs. I opened 200 (the 75 free ones + 125 more) packs on the first night, and landed two god legendary: including:

"Magnor" (Gold - Level 2 - $73.95 USD - 50,000 DEC)
"The Vigilator" (Gold - Level 2 - $69.00 USD - 50,000 DEC)

for a total estimated value of ~ $277 USD for the first 200 packs opened (that is 75 (free packs) plus 125 paid packs). I then decided to try to add opening 5 (five) more of the new Untamed packs per day to my routine, but found it difficult to earn the ~ 2,150 DEC needed DAILY to buy the 25 potions needed to open 5 daily packs (5 x 5 cards = 25 potions of each (legendary and gold)). So, since it is now possilble to buy single "+1" charges of each potion I will try opening UP TO 5 packs per day of the new Untamed batch, based on the amount of DEC I can earn each day through battles. Today I was able to afford to purchase enough DEC to buy potion to open 1_ pack from the 575-pack batch. I am also keeping a detailed record of all of the significantly-valued cards I get as I open the remaining packs of the 575 batch. By doing this, I will have a good idea of the value of the cards I ultimately got from spending the ~ $1,000 USD (in Bitcoin) for the 575-pack batch.

Untamed (Pack #1: celebration pack for reaching "Diamond III" (+10 season rewards cards) level)
keepers - 80 DEC

Daily Rewards Cards
keepers - "Fallen Specter" (non-gold - Level 1 - $1.83 USD - 1,500 DEC), "Exploding Dwarf" (Gold - Level 4 - $0.72 USD - 750 DEC) + 30 DEC
nonkeepers - 210

Untamed (Pack #2: morning pack)
keepers - "Mitica Heahunter" (non-gold - Level 1 - $1.84 USD - 500 DEC) + 40 DEC

Untamed (Daily Pack #3: evening pack)
keepers - 80 DEC

Untamed* (575-pack batch - Pack #1 (of 5 daily max):
keepers - 80 DEC

Untamed* (575-pack batch - Pack #2 (of 5 daily max):
keepers - "Thunderbird" (non-gold - Level 1 - $1.16 USD - 200 DEC) + 40 DEC
Total = 240 DEC

December 11th, 2019

Daily Rewards Cards
keepers - "Creeping Ooze" (Gold - Level 4 - $0.90 USD - 750 DEC) + 165 DEC
nonkeepers - 480 DEC
Total = 1,395 DEC

** You can see (from the daily rewards cards above) WHY I continue to apply the brilliant legendary PLUS alchemy potions to the rewards cards also. That is, I may have a few days of crappy rewards cards, BUT then I hit a JUICY gold card, or even a gold legendary (like the "Fallen Specter" (Gold - Level 2 - $76.50 USD - 75,000 DEC) , which MORE THAN offsets the daily cost of the potions. The only issue, then, is that since I want to HODL those "super cards" I can't immediately convert the value to DEC to maintain adequate DEC liquity. However, since I am now maxed out on reward "super cards" like the "Ruler Of The Seas" (non-gold - Level 1 - ~ $4.25 USD - 4,750 DEC) if/when I hit more of those I can convert the cards into a JUICY amount of DEC to quickly boost my DEC liquidity back to where I want it to be.

** I am finding that I ACTUALLY LIKE being so low on DEC, in the sense that I need to EARN the ~ 430 DEC necessary to buy the +5 "brilliant legendary" and + 5 "brilliant gold" potions that I need to apply full "potion power" to each additional Untamed pack I open. This actually help me to PACE myself. Also, immediately after opening each pack it takes me a good few minutes to upgrade the cards, record the DEC amounts, and create the log entry for this section of the posts (which is also my "daily activity record". So this is an ADDITIONAL way to TEMPER my "pack habit".

Untamed (Pack #1: morning pack)
keepers - 80 DEC

Untamed* (575-pack batch - Pack #1 (of 5 daily max):
keepers - 110 DEC
-> 372 packs remaining (+ 90 from 1st 110-pack batch)

** Way low on "capture rate" ( ~ 48% as of opening this above pack), and so I have stopped doing ranked battles for most of the rest of the day ( although I could potentially do "one battle per hour" as the "capture rate" slowly recharges. But this is where is is ESPECIALLY valuable to play tournaments, as those don't use up ANY capture rate. So I am planning to play ALL tournaments within the next 24 hours.

** I placed 17th in the "Kobalt Mining Expedition" tournament (December 11th, 2019 - 4 pm (Bangkok time)), which served the DUAL function of enabling me to earn an additional 200 DEC (part of which funded the additional "brilliant gold" potion needed to open another pack (below), AND the ability to allow an additional hour for my captuure rate to recharge (up to 51.3% by 5 pm, when I was defeated in the tournament).

Untamed (Pack #2: evening pack)
keepers - 110 DEC

Untamed* (575-pack batch - Pack #2 (of 5 daily max):
keepers - "Sporcerer" (non-gold - Level 1 - $1.00 USD - 200 DEC), "Cornealus" (non-gold - Level 1 - $9.90 USD - 1,000 DEC) 50 DEC
Total = 1,250 DEC
-> 371 packs remaining (+ 89 from 1st 110-pack batch)

December 12th, 2019

Daily Rewards Cards

Notes: I hit the "Ruler Of The Seas" legendary today, which will give me a nice boost of DEC liquidity by selling it on the market, and a good example of why it's always BEST (in the long-run) to have maximum "potion power" on at all times.

keepers -
"Ruler Of The Seas" (non-gold - Level 1 - $3.50 USD - 1,500 DEC -- put up for sale on market for $4.00 USD), + "Daria Dragonscale" (non-gold - Level 1 - $0.81 USD - 300 DEC)
plus 105 DEC
nonkeepers - 160 DEC

Untamed (Pack #1: morning pack)
keepers - 80 DEC

** Okay, because I have now spent a few days opening an extra two packs per day (from the new 500 (+75) Untamed pack batch), I have gotten a better sense of the amount of effort involved to earn enough DEC to apply full "brilliant legendary" plus "brilliant gold" potions to eack pack. The numbers (currently) are specifically:

190 - +5 "brilliant legendary"
238 - +5 "brilliant gold"

---

428 DEC - to apply full "potion power" to each pack opening

and since I ALSO want to purchase some specific card upgrades using some of my daily DEC earnings, I have decided to simply drop the pace of Untamed pack-opening back down to the original strategy (one morning pack, one evening pack, and one pack upon reaching the next higher level of the season). With ~ 450 packs remaining, this will allow me to consistently open new packs for a good ~ 220 - 225 days, which I think is BETTER than the fast pace. I am also now planning to start doing a monthly buy-back of Bitcoin to begin recuperating as much of the total amount of Bitcoin I have sold for the several pack batches I have purchased in the past few months. Ideally, I want to recuperate ALL of the BTC I have spent, and then all of my Steemmonsters cards, and activity, will be a leisurely profit activity. I am thinking about converting $25 USD/month from DEC to Steem, and then buying BTC with that Steem. But I will need to do a more detailed/accurate analysis of exactly how much DEC/Steem I am earning per month from my SteemMonsters activity before I can decide on a monthly amount to buy-back BTC. I will be working on this analysis over the next few weeks.

Untamed (Daily Pack #2: evening pack)
keepers - 80 DEC

December 13th,2019

Untamed (Daily Pack #1: morning pack)
keepers - "Living Lava" (Gold - Level 1 - $2.25 USD - 2,000 DEC) + 40 DEC
Total - 2,040 DEC

Daily Rewards Cards
keepers - 240 DEC
nonkeepers - 120 DEC

Untamed (Daily Pack #2: evening pack)
keepers - 140 DEC

December 14th, 2019

Untamed (Daily Pack #1: morning pack)
keepers - "Failed Summoner" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.47 USD - 500 DEC) + 100 DEC
Total - 600 DEC

Daily Quest Rewards
keepers - 435 DEC
nonkeepers - 165 DEC
Total - 600 DEC

Notes: I made the mistake, once again, of focusing too much on playing ONLY the daily quest "death" splinter (in combination with trying to reach 3,100 scroe ("Diamond III"), and BOTH of these goals combinated resulted in - yet again - getting stuck in that frustrating LOOP of losing battles simply because I wasn't willing to be flexible enough to play "the best" splinter for the battle. I continue revisiting this issue (luckily less often as time goes on - which is, of course, a sign of improvement). So when this happens, it is a PAINFUL REMINDER of how important it is to be FLEXIBLE. Also, having as high of a "capture rate" at possible at all times is an additional buffer when this happens, because if you get "stuck" like this when you have adequate capture rate it allows you a buffer from descending into the ABYSS of "low capture rate", where "bad things" happen. Luckily, as mentioned in #2, I have been putting some mechanisms in place to mitigate this risk of "descent into the abyss of "low capture rate", including playing tournaments (which DO NOT affect capture rate (positively OR negatively) while also allowing you time for the capture rate to recharge, AND focusing on reading and tweeting articles related to the game, which can easily buy a few hours of recapture time.

Untamed (Daily Pack #2: evening pack)
keepers - 110 DEC

December 15th, 2019

(Pack #1 : Celebration pack for reaching "Diamond II" level for the season)
keepers - 80 DEC

Untamed (Daily Pack #1: morning pack)
keepers - 80 DEC

Daily Rewards Cards
keepers - 480 DEC
nonkeepers - 525 DEC

Untamed (Daily Pack #2: evening pack)
keepers - "Mantoid" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.66 USD - 500 DEC) + 70 DEC

December 16th, 2019

Season Reward Cards
keepers - "Wood Nymph" (Gold - Level 4 - $0.79 USD - 750 DEC), "Ettin Spearman" (Gold - Level 4 - $5.00 USD - 750 DEC) + 780 DEC
nonkeepers - 300 DEC

Untamed (Pack #1 : Celebration pack for start of the new season at "Gold II" level (with 26 cards after first completed battle)
keepers - 80 DEC

Daily Reward Cards
keepers - "Sea Monster" (Gold - Level 4 - $0.72 USD - 750 DEC) + 135 DEC
nonkeepers - 105 DEC

Untamed* (Pack #2 : morning pack)
keepers - 80 DEC

Untamed* (Pack #3 : evening pack)
keepers - "Child Of The Forest" (Gold - Level 2 - $2.85 USD - 2,000 DEC) + 40 DEC
Total = 2040 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 SteemMonsters (Splinterland) and/or Drug Wars game(s). More JUICY tips to come with each weekly update, as I become more experienced and successful in the game.

See you on the battlefield...

@transcript-junky