Welcome to another update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues with only the initial set of cards!… Plus, whatever I can earn or win. With the start of this new season, I spent the first day grinding out the approximately 40 matches needed to climb up into Silver II ranking, after the season reset had put me back into Bronze III. I also bought a few cards prior to my first daily, to get my card power back up over 40,000 to qualify for Silver II, since some prize delegations had ended.
My gold Flesh Golem delegation expired, so I spent 2037 Dark Energy Crystals, DEC, to pick up 5 level one copies of the card, to combine them for a normal level 3 copy. I also spent 2255 DEC to pick up a legendary reward monster card, Robo-Dragon Knight. This made up the card power difference, so I could get back into Silver II.
Daily Quest Rewards:
Daily Quest # 182 – Win 5 with Fire. For completing this quest, I received 20 DEC (16 + 4) and a Gold Potion.
Daily Quest # 183 – Win 3 with No Neutral. My delegation actually ended on this day and there was an odd glitch with my daily rewards. Even though I was back in Silver II, I got only two reward chests – the Silver III reward. I reported this as an issue, but didn’t really hear anything back about it. The chests contained a Gold and Legendary potion.
Daily Quest # 184 – Win 5 with Earth. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Gold potion (no surprise); an 8th copy of the common Earth monster card, Barking Spider; and a new rare Fire monster card, Efreet Elder!
Daily Quest # 185 – Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this daily, I received a Legendary potion, a 9th copy of Barking Spider, and an 8th copy of the common Death monster, Phantasm.
Daily Quest # 186 – Win 5 with Earth. For completing this quest, I got a Gold potion, 14 DEC, and a 9th copy of the common Fire monster, Flame Monkey.
Daily Quest # 187 – Win 5 with Death. For finishing this daily quest, I received a Gold potion, 13 DEC, and a new epic Water monster card, Axemaster!
Daily Quest # 188 – Win 5 with Dragon. For finishing this daily quest, I got a Legendary potion, 13 DEC, and a 16th copy of the Rare dragon monster, Gloridax Soldier.
Tournaments:
This season, they revamped some of the tournament requirements. Novice tournaments now cost 1,000 DEC to enter if you are not in Bronze. This is also the case for the player-run delegation tournaments. So, outside of ones I had entered when I was still in Bronze last season, my tournament play was down a lot this past week.
Friday player-run Novice league rules, no legendary cards, tournament: I went 6-5 day one, which did not make the cutoff for day two. I still finished in 57th place winning 44.4 DEC. This tournament mainly rewarded card delegations to the top few spots, outside of the DEC rewards.
Saturday Blazard Force Face-off, free-to-enter player-run Bronze league rules tournament: Since it was free, a ton of people entered this making for some long rounds. I went 11-3 on the first day, but finished 18-9 to come in 60th place. The prizes only went to the top 25, but it was free to enter!
Sunday Kobold Novice, Untamed set, no legendary cards tournament: Since this was my last one for the season, I managed to finish strong. I went 10-1 on the first day, and finished 17-3-1 to come in 3rd place. This earned me an additional 1,000 DEC.
Monday Madness, live Bronze rules, with no legendary summoners, tournament: I did fairly well, surviving until round 4. I ended up coming in 6th place and earning 500 DEC.
Thursday Bronze Blunderbluss, no legendary cards, all sets allowed tournament: I went 8-3 on the first day, and finished up 17-5 to come in 8th place. This earned me another 833 1/3 DEC.
Outside The Game:
I’ve been tossing some bids at cards on Card Auctionz site and ended up picking up a few cards. I got a 2nd copy of the common Water monster card, Sea Monster, for about 26 DEC; a 9th copy of the common Earth monster card, Screeching Vulture, for 18 DEC; and a new rare Water monster card, Electric Eels, for 16 DEC (which is a bargain). This doesn’t count the cost of putting in bids, but I had won about 1,000 free bid credits back when @marcuswahl was doing streams and giving those away as one of the prizes.
I won an Orb pack as a door prize during @unitqm‘s New Boost stream on YouTube. For anyone unfamiliar, the New Boost program is an event where experienced players donate DEC and it gets used to buy cards & packs for new players. In theory, you play for an hour and contribute your winnings. I had burnt my DEC collection rate down to about 20% at the end of last season, so I just donated 250 DEC. If you are new to Splinterlands I highly suggest you apply for the next one of these!
At this point, I no longer really consider myself a new player. It’s been about 6 months, and I’ve placed in prize winning positions in Bronze league a couple of times now. Since the community helped me out so much, I feel like I should try to pass it on to other new players, and I plan to contribute for the next New Boost event as well.
I haven’t opened this pack yet, as they are out of print and fairly expensive. It would probably make more sense to sell it and buy cards directly, but it is tempting to crack it open and see what’s inside. So far, I’m just putting off making a decision and holding on to it.
Splinterlands also built a bridge over to the WAX network, a separate blockchain for collectibles. This has brought in a number of new players, and also driven the prices of cards up slightly as a new marketplace has been added. A player-created Wiki is also in the works, which is worth checking out if you are new to the game.
@clove71 has also moved her Stream to Theta.tv, where I’ve had problems verifying my e-mail account. But, she tends to also do a lot of giveaways on her streams. So, worth checking her streams out if you can get onto that platform!
To wrap things up on my progress, farming in Silver is going fairly well. After my collection rate recovered, I’m getting about 20 DEC per win in ranked play. The number of tournaments I’m playing in is down to just Bronze ones, but so far I’m still managing to usually place where I can get a prize.
I still have 4,000 collection power from two delegated cards, which I would like to try to replace with owned cards, in case they get removed at some point. Silver I requires 70,000+ card power, which is a ways off. But I feel like I am making progress towards that, with how much DEC I can earn in a season.
Right now I’m in the top 100 on the Silver leader board, but I don’t think I’ll be able to come in at a pack-winning position. I’m still essentially playing a good set of cards for Bronze league. Anyhow, we’ll see how things go next week when the season wraps up!
Even after my big purchases at the start of this season, I’m back up to about 7,000 DEC. I’m not sure what I will pick up next. The price of Beta set cards, which I feel would add to my Bronze set of cards, has been shooting up quite a bit. I’m also toying with the notion of working on actual Silver level cards. If you made it this far and have any suggestions on what I should get, then please let me know in the comments below!