So, a bit over 3 weeks ago i started playing Splinterlands...

Goals are obvious:

•  - Have fun
•  - Profit

So, once i bought the spell book (basically entry fee, 10$),  i played for a couple of days with starting deck and decided to buy some card packs, first 10$ then another 10$ and finally 20$ for a total invested of 50$. Now, i wanted generally to invest 100$ in crypto but long KYC times made it difficult (still waiting for Gemini...) and so Splinterlands was a perfect way to do it.

Overall my deck is currently worth $40+ which considering 10$ went for the spell book is basicly 1 : 1 ratio to my investment which gives me now more cards to play with and thus chance to get more rewards from higher leagues but still, what i did was a mistake in hindsight. 

You see, as it is always the case with gambling, you rarely get back more or even the same what you invested. I was really lucky to get 1 : 1 my money worth and that's all thanks to 1 card:

Otherwise my deck would be worth around 10$ which is 1/4 my investment in cards and 1/5 my total investment in Splinterlands...

The correct approach:

We know that cards will most likely go up once they are out of print / Splinterlands gains more players, thus the safest way to make some money long term and still have fun would be:

1). buy credits worth of our intended investment

2). after playing for a weak or so, just go on the market and buy cards you want

This will leave you with far better deck and 1:1 investment that will (possibly) only go up in value. 

Further Tips:

• Join a official discord and ask if you are unsure about something.
• Join some guild and ask them as well.
• Don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

Obviously, as you can see i'm new to both Splinterlands and generally crypto so take this advice with a grain of salt.

PS: if you want to start playing Splinterlands, i provided some reflinks. Would appreciate.