Greetings, Splinterfans!
This week it is time to look back at my Splinterlands journey, how I discovered the game, the ups and downs, future goals and some of the most memorable moments!
For me, Splinterlands has always been a pretty laid-back experience. It doesn't take too much of my time since I have balanced my playing sessions in two parts: early in the morning I make a cup of coffee and enjoy that while playing about 10 games which takes less than half an hour. In the evening, after my in-game energy is replenished, I play another set of 10 games before going to bad.
So yes, it's a very laid-back and fun routine but only if I win of course!
Fond Memories
Earlier today I really tried to rack my brain. Still, no, I can't remember the very moment I came across the name 'Splinterlands', nor can't I remember the situation which eventually got me so hyped enough that I finally checked it out and bought the Spellbook. I do have some guesses though.
According to my in-game profile, I have been battling since January 2021. Back then I didn't have my Hive account yet and had only heard about it being this blogging site where good authors made good money. Even though I had not been in the crypto space for that long, I knew the concept of getting tipped because I was reading crypto-related stuff here on Publish0x
My best guess is one of those many Splinterlands articles there finally got me interested enough to start doing my own research. Now if I remember correctly, The price of Spellbook first turned me away for a couple of weeks or so but the seed was already planted...
At the time when I started playing, the Untamed edition was on sale and with a very small amount of crypto I began to build to build my modest deck. One of the fondest memories I have of breaking those packs was pulling Lir Deepswimmer, a legendary summoner out of one. At the moment this card costs $28 on the market but at the time it was way more expensive, maybe even $100.
I then made a strategic move, sold the card, bought some cheaper cards I needed, and of course - bought more packs. One of those packs happened to hold another legendary summoner inside but this time it was even better. Byzantine Kitty was valued at almost $500 and besides that, it was amazing on the battlefield!
While crushing my enemies with Kitty's sheer awesomeness I felt pride in owning this card and remember thinking about how my opponent's faces looked when they saw who they were up against.
Just the other day I found this screenshot dated 24th of May, 2021. Kitty is now gone but I still hold it in my heart and decided to frame this picture of the pack opening to remember those happy times. I framed it only on Canva but still, such a beautiful picture.
Dark Times
Some time ago I was going through some hardships in real life, needed fiat, and had to cut back on something. I still regret this but I ended up selling a big part of my deck(Kitty included). The cards were gone but the spark was still there and as the darker days passed, I started rebuilding again. Slow, but steady.
Again, I used the same strategy and sold a legendary summoner at a good price to buy some cheaper, more useful cards to gain some depth. This time the summoner was Lily Shieldpaw, another super cute dragon splinter summoner.
I managed to sell Lily at about $30 if I remember correctly. Nevertheless, it was almost right after it was airdropped during the Chaos Legion sale.
Today Lily Shieldpawn costs $8.37 which is a pretty good price for this elusive summoner. Just like with Kitty, I was quite fond of this one and promised myself to buy it back someday. Since the card prices have decreased for a while now, that day might be closer than I think.
Sometimes you have to sell cards you like to get the cards you need.
Selling cards is always a hard decision but with the current low prices, I feel like we've just had a second chance. If I were to start Splinterlands today, I would feel quite privileged and would feel like a kid in a candy store when scrolling through the card market. So many bargains there.
New Beginnings
As I mentioned, due to unfortunate circumstances, I've had to build my deck twice from scratch and therefore I see my Splinterlands career as in two parts. In the first part, there weren't Guilds or Brawls yet and even at the beginning of my second chance, I didn't fully understand how exciting and lucrative it can be to help my guild to fight for those prizes.
For a long time, I was stuck in an idle guild where I was usually the only player to take part in brawls. Only after changing to a more competitive and active guild, I experienced a whole new boost of excitement in my SPL play.
By receiving more Merits I was now able to buy Gladius packs and use those powerful Gladiator monsters to help my guild and spice up my gameplay leagues. SPS rewards from guild battles have also become an important part of growing my SPS stake which is another part of the game I've been neglecting for far too long.
Here you can a screenshot of my first, and only, clean sheet in Brawls also showing some nice Merit and SPS rewards.
The Future
I'm currently playing in the Silver League and have been there for a while now. Even though I was given the opportunity to move to Gold, I've decided to stay for a couple of reasons.
First, as you can see, my Reward Boost is pretty low even for Silver League and it would still decline if I moved up. This would then mean fewer Reward Points, fewer chests, and fewer rewards.
To increase my Reward Boost I would need to stake more SPS which I've actually been planning to do for quite some time since the price of SPS has been down. Well, by the time of writing this, it has obviously surged! 😅 So not gonna buy more today.
But what I can do to prepare myself for the Gold League is to build my deck.
Chaos Legion summoners are currently on my radar as they are needed to use higher-level cards. Also, their current prices are extremely low. I remember not long ago these four summoners were costing at least $2 on the market! If you're just starting your SPL journey, I envy you. It's so much easier to upgrade these now than it was when I started to play for the second time.
At the moment I'm kind of DCAing myself into buying cheap summoner cards. This has proved to be a good strategy since I first planned to buy and upgrade them at once at a much higher price.
Besides getting all of these to at least level 3, I'm also constantly on the lookout for some bargains on monster cards. Splinterlands has many exciting updates such as Land and Rebellion on the way and it's quite difficult to predict the price development of older cards. Still, if I keep my focus on the gameplay and make strategic buys I shouldn't go wrong very badly and who knows, there might even be some valuable gems among them!
Conclusion
Yeah, my Splinterlands journey has been a rollercoaster for sure with awesome victories and bitter losses. Still, I'm very optimistic, bullish even, for the future of the game.
In the vast crypto space, we are on the verge of the upcoming bull market and as the rise of GameFi was cut short by the bears I think we haven't yet seen the play2earn hype even begin. If we look at the market cycles, the best times to invest in crypto assets are the end of the bear market and the beginning of the bull run. We are currently somewhere between those two.
I strongly feel that during these past couple of years, this is the best possible time to start playing Splinterlands. Cards are cheap, SPS is cheap and the new edition, **Rebellion**, is coming with all its new addition to the game. Almost feels like a new beginning of something!
Thank you for reading!
Let's continue Splinterlands discussion on INLEO! Just use the tag #splinterlands over there and you are in.
Let's Connect - Linktree
Also Playing:
- Wombat Dungeon Master
- Terracore
- Rising Star
- Army of Crypto
Disclaimers:
Thumbnail background image made with Canva
Other pictures are screenshots from Splinterlands
