Welcome to another weekly update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues! Initially it was a self challenge, to see how far I could get with the initial set of cards plus whatever I could win. But, that kind of fell apart around week 30 (with the game integrating with the WAX network and users being able to buy and sell cards on Atomic Hub).
It has been another wild week in Splinterlands! New players have been pouring in to such a degree, that the developers had to make some emergency changes to how the game runs. Some functions have been moved off the Hive blockchain to help alleviate load times, though the game’s assets and match history are still on that network.
Even with this change, there ended up being some server downtime during which, for the first time, users of the mobile app were directed to join the Discord to get updates. Due to the increase in users, the team has been recruiting helpful experienced players from Discord to act as volunteer part-time support. I ended up joining the part time support team, and spent a lot of the past weekend in the game’s Discord server directing people to read the official updates or to create support tickets.
Card prices have continued to skyrocket, and at the time of this writing Dice packs have just sold out in the in-game store! This means that the only cards available are from other players, and second hand packs are going for $20 or higher. The next big set release, Chaos Legion, is likely to come out sometime in October, so I expect card prices will continue to climb as new players buy up what they can afford.
Due to the server issues, the season ended up getting extended by 1 day. With the game’s currency, Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), and cards being so highly valued of late, I bought some quest potions this week to increase my odds of getting rewards worth much more than the price of these potions. Quest potions are 750 credits ($0.75) or 750 DEC ($6) and give you 5 extra daily quest reward chests. I’m going to shorten my rewards history a bit from previous weeks, but here’s the usual weekly breakdown:
Daily Quest Rewards:
Daily Quest # 340 – Win 5 with Dragon. For completing this daily quest, I received 2 Gold potions, a Legendary potion, and 12 DEC. This was prior to my purchase of the quest potions. You’ll see this get a lot longer when I add them.
Daily Quest # 341 – Win 5 with Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Gold Foil Phantasm and 786 DEC (768 + 10 + 8)! I didn’t have a Gold Foil of him previously, though my rental alt account, InvestYGator, also got one this past week!
Daily Quest # 342 – Win 5 with Snipe. This was the first quest I completed after picking up quest potions. I got an Onyx Sentinel (epic monster!), a Nightmare (common monster), 2 Legendary potions, a Gold potion, and 43 DEC (5 + 15 + 11 + 12).
Daily Quest # 343 – Win 5 with Death. For completing this daily quest, I received 2 Gold potions and 76 DEC (13 + 9 + 12 + 13 + 6 + 15 + 8).
Daily Quest # 344 – Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this Fire daily quest, I got a Gold potion, 64 DEC (55 + 9), 2 copies of Chain Spinner (common monster), a Sand Wurm (common monster), a Charlok Minotaur (common monster), and a Kretch Tallevor (epic summoner)!
Daily Quest # 345 – Win 5 with Dragon. For completing this daily quest, I got a Gold potion, a Legendary potion, a Sand Wurm, a Demented Shark (common monster), and 2,037 DEC (2,000 + 10 + 6 + 6 + 15)! At this point, the lucky 2,000 DEC hit has basically made it worth getting the quest potions.
Daily Quest # 346 – Win 5 with Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Nightmare, two Charlok Minotaurs, a Chain Spinner, a Phantasm, a Sand Wurm, a Legendary potions, and 101 (12 + 32 + 7 + 41 + 9) DEC!
Daily Quest # 347 – Win 3 with No Neutral. A bit of a spoiler, but I had moved up into Gold expecting the season to end. However, when it got extended by a day, I ended up doing this daily in Gold league – hence the extra rewards. I got a Sand Wurm, a Harvester (common monster), an Efreet Elder (rare monster), 2 Gold potions, 3 Legendary potions, and 113 (12 + 14 + 14 + 14 + 44 + 15) DEC!
I also opened up pack 21 of the 50 Untamed packs that I had gotten months ago now. I was very disappointed until I got to the last card:
When I took a look at the market, there was 1 Gold Foil Byzantine Kitty listed for sale for $3,000. I don’t know if anyone is going to buy one for that much, but it’s now the most expensive card I own. Logically I should probably sell it, but I am tempted to keep it and try to slowly work up a Silver league deck now that I have one of the three most expensive Untamed summoner cards.
Tournaments:
There were very few tournaments this past week. The developers were holding off on adding new ones, expecting to add the SPS governance token as a reward to the new tournaments. However, server issues delayed that implementation, so normal tournaments were added a bit later than usual.
Sunday @MarcusWahl Bronze league rules Tournament: Marcus has been doing daily tournaments, but I can usually only make the ones on the weekend. With the prevalence of rented Yodin Zaku and Scarred Llama summoners, I’ve usually been losing fairly early. I ended up coming in 2nd place in this one, losing to Marcus playing in his own tournament. I did get 300 DEC at least.
Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: I went 8-3 the first day, but had a poor showing on day two, finishing 15-7 to take 45th place for 150 DEC.
Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: The following week I had one of my worst showings of late, going 6-5 on day one to not make day two. I still came in 118th place for 100 DEC, but trying to do support and enter teams didn’t work out well.
Guild Brawls:
Guild Brawl #28, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I only had two matches, out of which only one opponent submitted a team. However, the guild once again put in a good showing and came in 1st place in our grouping!
Vs WINNINGSTREAK of Team Possible S-Force
Vs CRYPTOWOODY of MAZA – failed to submit a team
The Rest:
I’ve been doing a little trading between the in game store and the Atomic Hub market. I added two legendary monsters to my own collection from the profits, Caladuum and Chromatic Dragon. I’ve also staked quite a lot of the air dropped SPS tokens, which is giving me even more SPS tokens. The developers have said that the Chaos Legion set pre-sale will only be open to those who have a certain, yet to-be-determined amount staked.
My InvestyGator rental account has continued to be a pain to manage. Card contracts are constantly being cancelled and the prices raised. It’s getting increasingly difficult to find cards at a price where the account doesn’t lose DEC just to play. On the bright side, I got a really great set of quest rewards the first day I tried quest potions on the account:
For leagues, I was able to get InvestYGator up to Gold I briefly, before too many of his rentals were cancelled. Surprisingly, when doing my final daily quest in Gold league, I was also able to get up to Gold I on my main account! That’s the highest I’ve finished so far!
With DEC still hovering around 1,000 DEC = $7, and the prices of everything skyrocketing, it’s really tough to know what to do. I feel like I should sell at least a little bit for more stable funds, but it would put a dent in my SPS air drop points. Still, the price of DEC will probably fall a bit once Chaos Legion releases, as people sell to get the new set.
I’ve also committed to helping out do Discord support, which can be quite time consuming. My actual amount of time playing the game dropped significantly, as I spent more time helping people in chat. I’m trying to step away a bit from Discord during the week, as I do have a regular full-time job, and I need some time to get other things done – like writing this article!
For the upcoming season, I plan to stay in Silver on my main account. I’m tempted to parlay the Gold Foil summoner into a lot more Silver league leveled cards, and try to make an attempt at the leaderboard. On the other hand, it might be a better idea to move into Gold for the extra rewards.
While my collection is still mostly Bronze level, it seems like it is actually a lot deeper than many rental accounts. That is to say, I have a lot more cards to pick from, and something to play in every Splinter. It may have just been the odd end of this season, as I would likely lose horribly to any players with actual Gold level cards.
That’s all for this season! Thank you for reading and if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below! I’ll be back next week with my results in the first half of this abbreviated 2nd August 2021 season!