If you joined Splinterlands somewhere between October last year to January this year or invested in that time, chance are you're at a loss right now. Both DEC and SPS have been and keep declining in the past three month and card prices are as well. Maybe you remember the times, wenn a Djinn Oshannus was $40-60 or DEC was at a cent.

This has people worried, asking if the game is dead, if they can still earn and so on.

While all this is a discussion for itself, I want to shine a light on how much you can actually earn by playing Splinterlands if you'd start today. This is not going to be a super low budget, free to play, grinding post. This is for the people who have invested into the game or want to.

Fund Allocation

For this example we take a hypothetical investment of a $1000 for simple math and put $440 in cards, $200 in packs and $260 in SPS.

This will not be the most effective nor best way to invest, but rather a broader approach to have a little bit of everything to showcase as many aspects of Splinterlands as possible.

Fund Allocation Breakdown

If you're interested in which cards I would purchase or want to check the math, feel free. Otherwise you can skip this part.
(If you have questions regarding the decks or deck building in general, feel free to ask me in the comments.)

First deck, Water:

Kelya Frendul lvl 4, Pelacor Bandit lvl 5, Flying Squid lvl 5, Deeplurker lvl 5, Diemonshark lvl 4, Venari Wavesmith lvl 1, Igor Darkspear lvl 3, Nerissa Tridawn lvl 1, Wavebrood lvl 1, Axemaster lvl 1, Djinn Oshannus lvl 1, Torrent Fiend lvl 1, River Hellondale lvl 2

Total: $225.429, 5,820 CP

Second deck, Life:

General Sloan lvl 4, Stitch Leech lvl 5, Pelacor Conjurer lvl 5, Chaos Knight lvl 4, Pelacor Arbalest lvl 4, Time Mage lvl 4, Venari Crystalsmith lvl 4, Celestial Harpy lvl 4, Djinn Renova lvl 1, Primologist lvl 3, Soul Fiend lvl 1, Adelade Brightwing lvl 2,

$190,381, 6,730 cp

Neutrals & missing CP

Supply Runner lvl 5, Xenith Monk lvl 2, Sand Worm lvl 1, Uraeus lvl 3,

$ 18.213, 1,410 CP

You can usually get 180CP / 1$, probably even more, but that would be another $5,7.

Grand Total: $439,723

Packs:

50x $4 = $200

SPS

$260/$0.10 = 2600

Now lets get to the earnings part.

Daily Quests and Season Rewards

In Silver 3 we get two chests each day and 12 each season, which adds up to 84 chests a month. With the current estimated value of a chest in Silver 3 being $0.103, that's $8,652 a month from reward chests. I did not include the DEC which you get for winning ranked battles, because that number is very volatile, but keep in mind that it would be slightly more.
(You can use this Splintercards Tool to check chest value)

SPS Airdrops

We have 15k CP and 50 Chaos Legion packs, which gives us 30k Airdrop Points total, so we get 2.4 SPS per day from the airdrop. Thats 72 SPS a month, at the current price of $0.10 per SPS, that's $7.2.
(You can use this Splintercards Tool to calculate your SPS Airdrops)

Staked SPS

We have 2600 SPS staked, which gives us a daily staking reward of 2.03 SPS, which is 60.9 SPS a month, again at the current price of $0.10 per SPS, $6.9.
(You can use this Splintercards Tool to calculate your SPS staking rewards)

Vouchers

The 2600 staked SPS also give us 0.162 Vouchers a day or 4.86 Vouchers a month. At the current price of $1.05 per Voucher, that's $5.103.

Total monthly earnings

Chest Rewards: $8,652
SPS Airdrops: $7.2
SPS Staking Rewards: $6.9
Vouchers: $5.103

Total: $27.855

$27.855 a month is $334.26 a year which translates to 33.43% return on investment.

Conclusion

1. There's no bank or fund that will give you a ROI of 33.43% per year.
2. The crypto market and the Splinterlands market are down right now, which impacts the value of these assets in a negative way.
3. The cards you own are deflationary in nature and will likely appreciate in value in the future.
4. All Splinterlands assets have a compounding nature. If you weren't to liquidate or extract your returns, but keep them in the game, they would further increase your returns.
5. All of this is a risky, speculative investment, but the assets have a chance to double, tripple or 10x in value. They have done so in the past.
6. With the above not being the optimal investment in terms of maximizing returns, but rather a spread out Splinterlands portfolio and highly focused on cards for playing and enjoying the game and prices being way down - you're still going to make 33.43% back on your money each year (as of todays prices).

In my opinion this is absolutely unbelievable and a far cry from the game being dead.
With the upcoming changes mentioned above I personally am very bullish on the short term future of Splinterlands and think that prices could go up by quit a bit (card prices sort of already have in the past two days).

Disclaimer

I am not a financial adviser and non of this is financial advise. Please do your own research or consult a professional.
Like I stressed out several times now, this is probably not the most optimal way to invest $1000. You can get SPS Airdrop points from other sources than Chaos Legion Packs, but they do give you a chance to get the future legendary summoners and hold their value pretty good. You definitely don't need two decks like the above to compete in Silver 3. You could rent, only buy a few of the cards or go for completely different decks.
However with the upcoming changes to the reward system and the team stressing the point that it want's to incentivize players to own cards and progress up the ranks, I do believe that building out strong decks will be very profitable in the future. Furthermore you can participate in tournaments and maybe earn even more.

Also, all prices of the assets mentioned above (DEC, SPS, Cards, Vouchers) are volatile in nature and can change on a daily basis.

Referrals

If you're not playing already create an account over at Splinterlands.com and hop right into battle
Thanks to Carrie Allen for the amazing Markdown Tutorial
and to Chris Roberts for this Thumbnail Tutorial
Background Thumbnail image is from Pexels
Free image editing software used Canva
Check out Splintercards for their amazing tools

Also check out my 5 tips for newer players

I hope you enjoyed this read and maybe got some helpful tips or inspiration. Until next week,

Pinkman45