I've been with Splinterlands since the early Beta set time. So many things have changed since. Then, it was more of an adventure, now it became more of a business, with polished products and with an eye on their balance sheets, to see what's possible and what not and in what time frame. And that is a natural evolution.
On the gameplay side, for me the ranked play has become overwhelming. And it has been so for a good while. That's why I let the bot play in Wild. Brawls is the only format of battling I play manually, and that's good enough for me. When it happens to enter my teams after the opponent and watch the fight, I sometimes see how much the metas and playstyles evolved, while I have to check out newer abilities when I form my team to see what on Earth they are doing. It's obvious I don't know to use them the right way or in the best combinations. And that's an evolution too. Some keep up with all these, others don't.
What I keep and have always kept up with is Land. I may not have the resources to be a top player on Land, but I'm doing pretty well myself, compared to my results, and especially understanding of the current Ranked Play modes. Who knows, maybe I will like to play in the Foundation format myself every once in a while, if those cards and abilities don't "evolve" over time, or they do much slower...
But back on Land. I know some people think this is not really a game. It is not yet a full game, but it has its choices. It is more of an economy development/long term strategy game than it is a battle system, that's true. But it is a game. And I see more players "discover" it, which is interesting, but they need to understand this is a totally different game style, even if it is and will be even more integrated with Ranked and other game modes in Splinterlands.
Lately, I started to reap some rewards from what I sow on my Land in Splinterlands. Before crafting, one could swap their natural resources for DEC or put them in LPs and get rewarded that way. I've done both. I also built up stashes of all resources. Now, I'll have to replenish some of those stashes and continue to add up, at a lower pace. We could also earn SPS on land, but last week I turned off my last plot doing that, as Last resources (including Aura) will be more important for the Land economy. I also still had a few plots mining research and turned those off too. Seems most people have done the same (including Yaba, when I checked, but he has a nice stash).
Crafting has been very lucrative lately. It started really well with Midnight Potions, but I ended up still holding a few dozen, because I don't want to sell them at this price. Maybe better prices will come in the future. I'm not in a hurry.
The craftables for auctions haven't worked great for me, but I anticipated that and only crafted two. Over the two higher-priced ones that I crafted and sold, I was in profit, after all.
Wagon kits are going really well, but they are also in high demand and will continue to be, including for many land owners, who might otherwise sell. I ran out of stone for the time being (which is the resource I produce the most, but also swap to everything else I am short of or want to stockpile), or I would have sold more. I don't need wagon kits, because I have a different strategy, and I had let others enjoy what I could produce, for a good price.
I haven't done the totals, but I think I sold north of 25k DEC-worth of Wagon kits, and I staked all those DEC back to Land to be able to add higher-PP (and higher-energy cost) cards on Land to increase, basically, my Stone production.
New Cards Specific for Land Coming
We don't know many details, but @cryptomancer let us know in his weekly update that he is working on Land-specific cards, with special abilities on land. These cards cannot be used in battles, and, at the time he didn't know if they were soulbound or not. First, there will be 4 such craftable cards, one for each rarity. So, cards for Land, produced on Land.
I'm thinking I should stockpile my Aura and not use it to craft more Wagon kits for the time being. We don't know how much Aura (or resources) these cards will cost. I imagine the legendary one will be quite pricey. We also don't know the kind of abilities they would provide on land. They will be upgradable too. Also, it will be useful to know if they eat (pretty sure they do), and how much they do. If they come in addition to the 5 cards (unlikely) or will replace one of the cards.