I have stopped accumulating more assets in Splinterlands in the last 6 months as I got burned out by how cards constantly continued to be devalued. However, there are enough positive factors now that I'm willing to push my Staked SPS toward a new 500k goal...

The State of Splinterlands

Splinterlands is still alive and there is no sign that it will go down like many other web 3 games, which on its own is quite the achievement, especially as the altseason bull market has been canceled, as retail seems to have zero interest anymore in crypto.

The main change that has been made is the new reward system which so far is holding up much better than I expected. Basically, right now, there is demand from the whales for the gold foil cards that come unlocked from the rewards, which gives them a minimum value of around 0.40$ for common cards.

At the same time, I'm not quite sure if this will hold up as eventually more of them will get them to max level lowering the demand while the supply keeps coming. They are limited in maximum print rate and that certainly might help to keep the values up. My strategy right now is to just sell all the ones that I earn, use the DEC to pay for the Battlepass, and convert what it left to SPS while keeping an eye out for possible deals on older max level cards.

Aside from this for me, there is almost nothing to do anymore in Splinterlands as a game. I'm burned out by too many cards and abilities with the archmage bot service playing all of my Wild battles and I mainly just manage my collection and my rewards. The only thing I do play manually anymore are the Brawls. Modern is no option as I believe it's a sure way to lose a ton of money and time. Tournaments still feel unfair like a poker tournament which is pay2win which only makes sense for the players who have all the cards and edge. In a way right now, it's a relief that I no longer have to play Splinterlands as a game but at the same time I also would want to play it in a way where it is actually made fun and fair like for example a Draft Mode which I still believe is the key to actually make Splinterlands into a success.

I might make a post next week going deeper into the new reward system.

Welcome To The Family New Max Level Cards

From the looks of it, the prices of old cards on the market have somewhat bottomed. There was a moment when max Level summoners went under 4$ and some of the legendary ones around 6-7$

By now, they have gone back above 5$, despite the fact that DEC and the Burn value went down way below the Peg value at 0.000577$.

Since Survival Mode is offline right now, there is/was more selling pressure which I believe potentially offered an opportunity to pick up some cards. I actually ended up buying 2 more Max Level cards with an eye to put them to use when Survival mode comes back.

Supply Runner

The thing with Wild and Survivor mode is that the most favorable cards are the overprinted Chaos Legion Cards as they get you the most bang for your buck. The Supply Runner as a Neutral card is one that is often used by archmage and especially as a Common card, it's handy to have an extra copy. At 5.819$ it feels quite cheapgiven that it has 400 copies in it and that it's a strong useful card. So I stacked it with an eye on the future.

Merdaali Guardian

Water along with Death remain my favorite Splinters and one of the cards that is very useful in many decks is the Merdaali Guardian. It sucks to lose that in Survival mode so at 5.749$, I also bought another copy of that with an eye to get stronger in Survival Mode once that comes back.

Archmage Beta Upgrade

Somewhere in the past 6 months since the last accumulation update, I upgraded from my standard Archmage Pass which took a whopping 35% of my earnings to a Archmage Beta Pass which now takes 25%. An Alpha pass at 15% would even be better but I would need to see one for sale at a reasonable price to get it.

SPS Accumulation

The general trend in Splinterlands continues in that the bar always gets raised as Glints now is way more expensive and with higher Staked SPS Requirements. This while the vakue of SPS continued to only go down. 6 Months ago, 316k SPS was worth 3381$, while right now 348k SPS (10% more) is worth 2305$ (-32% less)

6 Months Ago Now

I don't see Splinterlands going down completely though, and at one point, I do believe it will start to reverse to a situation where there simply is not enough SPS for everyone pushing up the price again. So, I'm moving my target again to 500k SPS which means I only have to add 1000$ more SPS to reach that at the current price levels.

Looking at the chart, it does feel like it kind of has been setting a base bottom level. There is also the upcoming mini set which should increase demand a bit even though I still believe it mainly gets the price of DEC down to where people actually value the packs.

Conclusion!

Splinterlands has shown some sparks of hope which made me resume my accumulation increasing my Staked SPS goal but still a lot need to happen and improve to actually get some widespread adoption.