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).
The exciting news for Splinterlands is the release of the new reward cards. They were added to the game a few days before the end of the season, along with an adjustment that makes it less likely to get potions as chest rewards. I have also noticed that they seem to have also dropped the average amount of DEC that you get per chest.
Along with the new cards, they also added some new card abilities, like Camouflage where monsters can’t be attacked if they are not in the front row and Force Field where, if the monster would take more than 5 damage, it is reduced to 1 damage. It will be interesting to see how it shakes up the game. Still no word on when land claims will be out or when the Chaos Legion pre-sale will start.
Even though I post this across three different platforms, it looks like only two people read all the way through my last post. So, congrats @sumoist and @modough, you both got delegated a card that I thought might be useful after reviewing your collections (Mylor Crowling and Bila The Radiant respectively). Maybe I’ll sneak some more giveaways in here every month or so.
I’ll talk a bit more about the end of the season at the end of the article, but for now here is the weekly breakdown:
Daily Quest Rewards:
Daily Quest # 370 – Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I got a Chain Spinner (common monster) and 62 (11 + 14 + 37) Dark Energy Crystals (hereafter, DEC).
Daily Quest # 371 – Win 5 with Life. For finishing this daily quest, I got a whopping 38 (10 + 8 + 8 + 12) DEC.
Daily Quest # 372 – Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to Win 5 with Dragon. For finishing this daily quest, I got 1 Gold potion and 97 (59 + 25 + 13) DEC.
Daily Quest # 373 – Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this Fire daily quest, I got 2 Gold potions, a Legendary potion, and 23 DEC.
Daily Quest # 374 – Win 5 with Life. For completing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion and 39 (15 + 15 + 9) DEC.
Daily Quest # 375 – Win 5 with Water. This is where the new reward cards released. I went ahead and decided to jump up to Gold league for the extra chests. For completing this daily quest, I got a Charlok Minotaur (common monster), 2 Exploding Rats (common monsters), a Uraeus (epic monster), a Demented Shark (common monster), a Pelacor Mercenary (common monster), and a Legendary potion.
Daily Quest # 376 – Win 5 with Earth. For completing this daily quest, I received 21 DEC (3 + 18), 1 Legendary potion, a Lava Launcher (epic monster), an Exploding Rats, a Charlok Minotaur, and a Gargoya Devil (rare monster).
Daily Quest # 377 – Win 3 with No Neutral. I managed to grind up to Gold I right at the end of the season. This week I wasn’t away, so I was able to pull my cards off Atomic Hub to get enough collection power to qualify. For finishing this last daily quest, I got 3 DEC, 2 Legendary potions, 2 Pelacor Bandits (common monster), a Pelacor Summoner (common monster), and a Pelacor Deceiver (common monster).
Tournaments:
The conversion of the Bronze Blunderbuss tournaments to be SPS entry fees and SPS prizes seems to have reduced the number of players, and increased the amount of higher level players in them. The same seems to be true of the novice tournaments, which I feel should have been left as DEC to lower the barrier to enter. Granted, player made tournaments have been filling in with @MarcusWahl running a lot of Bronze tournaments and giving out small amounts of DEC on his Twitch stream.
Thursday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, all sets tournament. I went 8-3 the first day, making day two readily enough. However, I finished up 12-7 to come in 17th place for 30 SPS (minus the 6 entry fee).
Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament. I went a pretty poor 6-4 the first day, which was still good enough to make day two. I finished 13-8 to come in 18th place for 25 SPS.
Guild Brawls:
Guild Brawl #33, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I only had one opponent this time, and failed to write down how the guild finished. I think it was in 4th place this time around.
Vs BENNYONETWO of Digitspin FuriousChickens
The Rest:
No trading this week. One exciting thing was that I won a Beta pack for coming in the top 8 with my Zen Sports tournament bracket picks. I didn’t open it yet, as I feel like it’s worth so much unopened I should probably sell it, much like my Untamed packs that I have yet to open (or, sell).
I should also mention the USD price of DEC has dropped of late, going down to 1,000 DEC = about $5. I’m tempted to spend some of my DEC holdings to get the new reward cards, as I’m not sure which way the prices will go on them. They did cut their collection power in half from Untamed, which I expect will also be the same for the Chaos Legion set. The Gold Foil cards from the new cards are also only 10X the collection power, as opposed to 50X in all the prior sets.
My alt account InvestYGator got nothing particularly exciting in terms of rewards. He managed to roll exceptionally poorly, and got a lot of potions even after the new reward cards came out. I rented a few cards to get him to Silver I, but didn’t have the time to rent more and push higher on him.
Here are the season rewards on his account:
The season rewards from my main account:
Splinterlands support is still fairly well buried under a big backlog of player issues. Some of which could be fixed if people simply read the pinned posts on the Discord server, though the developers really should start putting announcements into the game about upcoming game changes. The season reward changes also don’t seem to have gone smoothly for everyone, so hopefully that will get worked out before the next season ends.
I did not bother trying to vie for the leader board spots, as I’m excited to get more cards from the new reward set. I’m thinking that maybe I should try to drag myself into Gold earlier in the season now for the additional daily quest rewards. Though I did struggle to get wins since my deck is still mostly Bronze-level cards.
For the upcoming first half of the season, I want to try to get my accounts at least back up to Silver I. My time to play is pretty limited between all of the other work I’ve been doing of late, like my day job and helping do support. Unless I go on a massive spending spree, I’m not really seeing my deck getting all that much more competitive for higher leagues.
That’s about it for this week! 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 another update!