I wanted to write a post of my tips/tricks for newer players because a lot of what I am reading here on HIVE is from players who are... well not new players lol. People with thousands and thousands of SPS staked and playing the WILD format and destroying people in Brawls like it's nothing.

That is not me. But I have been around long enough, and done enough stupid things that I think I have a few helpful tips and tricks to share with people that are not experts. What I won't share is any Battle Strategy because that is 1 thing I suck at still.

1. Buying Splinterlands Cards

This is one of the most important aspects of the game because as a new new player you have very limited cards to pick from. You are going to want to buy some cards of your own so that you have more options to pick from when you battle.

1a. Where To Buy Cards?

• The in-game shop
• PeakMonsters (3rd party marketplaces)
• WAX blockchain

In-Game Shop:

You can always purchase cards on Splinterlands.com and buy them with DEC. This is the easiest solution but it may not be the cheapest (more on that later).

The reason that is important is because of exactly where I am at. I have spent the last couple seasons buying cards with the Glint earnings and primarily buying Common and Rare cards with my Glint so I have most of them. And now if I want to start buying cards the round out my collection I will search for NON-Reward cards on the market.

As a new player with limited funds I will just sort whatever filters I am using by "Price ⬆️" which will put the cheapest cards up top.

Find a card you want to buy and click on it.

Then it will show you all the cards of that exact one for sale. I do the same here and sort by "Price ⬆️".

Then when you find the cheapest one you can click on "BUY" in the top right corner (if you have enough DEC to buy it).

That is how you purchase cards in the in-game shop.

3rd Party Marketplaces:

I am not going to go into HOW to buy cards on each but the process is basically the same as the in-game market.

WAX Blockchain:

This one is a little different because it's a completely different blockchain. But there is a bridge in place where people can export their Splinterlands cards from HIVE to their WAX wallet. Since I am primarily a WAX guy for the last 5 years I have way more WAX than I do HIVE so this is where I buy a bunch of cards but I have noticed there are not that many 'new' cards here due to issues with the bridge (more on that later). But if you are looking for Chaos Legion cards this is a great place to look.

You can search on any WAX marketplace I prefer NFTHive but I will use AtomicHub because that is where the SmartContract bridge is.

Navigate to Atomic Hub here is a link to it already filtered.

You can sort through and find whatever cards you want and buy them with $WAX. Once you have cards in your inventory we need to send them over to Hive right? So follow these steps. Lucky for you I have some ready to send so I can show you.

This is the official link to the bridge so bookmark this page:
https://splinterlands.atomichub.io/tools/overview/splinterlands/deposit

Then scroll down and click to select every card you want to send over to your Splinterlands account.

Back at the top make sure your HIVE/Splinterlands account name is there and if not put the account you want to send the cards to in there.

Once you are ready click on "DEPOSIT".

You will get a popup to sign the WAX transaction. Then you will see this window. MAKE SURE YOU WAIT until you see the transaction # because you will need that.

Click on that "View Transaction" Orange Numbers. It will bring you to the waxblock.io website with the transaction information.

You are going to need to save those Asset ID numbers and the URL itself okay? so copy and paste all that info into notepad or keep that window open and head back to Splinterlands website.

You are going to need to open a Support Ticket to get the cards fully sent to your account.

Once it is all filled out you click on "submit". I usually wait between 1-3 days before its fixed (depending on weekends). You will get a e-mail with the update and then you will see the cards appear in your in-game account.

1b. What Cards to Buy?

I have talked about this a little bit before but I wanted to go more into detail on it. For newer players this is key but for seasoned players you can ignore all of this.

My suggestion would be to purchase on Rebellion Core cards if you are buying cards on secondary. There are a few reasons I think that.

1. The Rebellion Set pack recently sold out. Which means there are no more new packs ever. Why that is important is because of the Modern/Wild Ranked Play. Only the latest 2 sets are available to be played in Modern. So that means when the new set of cards get released it will only be Rebellion and the new set in Modern. So if you purchase Chaos Legion cards they will be helpful for now but will be useless when the new set drops.

2. Rebellion cards are fairly cheap. All of the packs are out on the market either opened or unopened but the scarcity of the cards isn't bad right now. So that means it should be fairly cheap to purchase the cards which is what we want.

3. Core before Reward! Buying Rebellion Reward cards is pointless starting out. You are going to earn GLINT from the season and battling which you can use that Glint to buy Rebellion Reward cards. So why spend your DEC on those cards when you can get them "for free". Now later if you just need like 1 more of a specific Reward card to upgrade yours then sure but starting out, it's a waste.

4. There are no summoners in the Rebellion Reward subset so if you want to buy Summoners, stick with Rebellion Core.

5. Now what specific cards to buy? I would focus on lower MANA costing cards to start with and figure out what abilities you like and work well with your playstyle before investing more into them.

2. Upgrading Cards

I know you are tempted to upgrade cards as soon as you can. I get that because I have the same feeling but what new players need to remember is that even if you have a Level 8 Unit card... If your Summoner is level 1 then that Unit card will be played a Level 1 Unit card.

So upgrading your Unit cards without upgrading your Summoners is 100% pointless and a waste.

Buy Unit cards to have more cards to play with and more strategies available. However, do not start to purchase duplicate cards of your Units until you have upgraded your Summoners.

1. Buy single Unit cards in the Rebellion Core set.
2. Keep spending your Glint on Rebellion Reward cards.
3. Start to purchase Rebellion Core Summoner cards to level them up.
4. Once your summoners are decently levelled up (level 2 or 3) then start to purchase duplicates of your Unit cards to level them up.

3. Soulbound

All Rebellion Reward cards that you get with your Glint come as "Soulbound". What the essentially means is that you do not own the card yet but you can use it. In order to "own" the card you will need to release the card.

You can see that my Janni Rebel card is Soulbound, which means I can't sell it, rent it or delegate it. If you want to do all of those things you need to select the card and then Release it.

For that same Janni Rebel card, it would cost 400 DEC to release her. You gotta weigh the pro's and con's of releasing cards. Can you sell it for more then what is costs to release?

Why do you want to release it? Personally I don't release them anymore because DEC is just a valuable resource it makes zero sense for me to release the cards to just sit in my account anyways.

1 thing to note though, even if cards are soulbound you can still upgrade them to higher levels (but the cost to release soulbound card will increase with each level).

4. Staking

Stake SPS. Every single SPS you have stake it right now. It plays just a huge role in your overall experience so start staking every SPS you get. The amount of Glint you earn in a battle is determined in part by how much SPS you have staked.

That isn't the only place to stake SPS though. There are Liquidity Pools that have a decent return as well that you should consider. This comes down to each person's overall SPS balance and their game strategy. But don't ignore them.

And with that my personal tips and tricks has come to an end. Splinterlands has endless possibilities and you as a player have limitless growth in the economy and community. So get out that grind those battles and raise up in the ranks!

Link to the Community Engagement Challenge Post: @splinterlands/splinterlands-community-engagement-challenge-tutorials-and-tips-from-the-community-srov8g