I restarted playing (botting) in wild a little under a year ago, before that I was only renting my cards. But a conversation on discord convinced me that there was value in ranked play, something I was dismissing previously. Now I'm glad I reactivated my ranked account, because after roughly 10 months of diamond level grinding in wild, I just finished maxing out my commons and rares, and I'm halfway through the epics. It was never about earning SPS, although it does accumulate slowly. The glint is much more valuable, and these reward cards, which are soulbound but grow and improve your deck over time. They are the prize, allowing you to keep playing and improving through the years without more monetary investment. You are rewarded for your presence in time, earning cards that are only available for a limited time, that others in the future will have missed after they joined the game, late to the party.
Above this is the collection of soulbound cards I have acquired over time. It's starting to look like a deck of its own. And the best about this is, they were all acquired for free! Well, not really "free", but we will get to that later. But you can put a real price tag on these cards. On the market, a common goes for 10+ cents, a rare for 40+ cents. Of course, those are unbound card, but if you can see the same value in your own soulbound cards, accepting the value they provide to your collection without the need to cash it out, you stand to benefit big from maxing out these cards. Every season, you are offered a first batch of common cards at the price of 60,000 glint for 400 cards. At 10 cents a copy, that is 40$ of value given to you every 2 weeks. And the rares, 75,000 glint for 100 cards. Another 40$ if you consider them being worth 40 cents per copy.
135,000 glint per season is not a difficult target, at this time I am making about 200,000 per season, and now that my commons and rares are maxed, I am chasing after epics and soon, legendaries. But this is not achieved without cost. My playable cards include 87 max level monsters and summoners from the Chaos edition that could be rented otherwise. This amounts to roughly 500$ of market value. This added to my soulbound cards is a modest but efficient deck that can hang around in high diamond/low champion and add a steady stream of glint to my account. And the best part is, I don't have to pour more value into it. It is sufficient, and will continue to improve over time. No further effort required. Just accumulating rewards.
I use the Archmage bot to play ranked in wild. Sure, you need to own a token, and it takes 35% of your SPS rewards from you. But boy, this program is worth it. Establish yourself in the ranked ecosystem without effort! Archmage is a highly efficient bot that plays the game like it understands it. Not a mindless card spammer, a strategic thinker and competent player. Let it take your account to the next level... if you dare.
You will also need a good amount of SPS staked in order to unlock a modifier that makes sense. I built my stack from zero, from land and play, but in the beginning I had to rent SPS. I was comfortable playing with 75,000 SPS staked, either owned or rented. Now I am at 93k owned and staked. Owning your staked SPS as opposed to renting it makes a real difference. When you rent it, it comes as an extra cost, a cut on your earnings. When you own it, it gives you more SPS and vouchers that help to outset the other costs, such as the 2,000 DEC season pass.
If you have all these ingredients, you are set to have success in wild, and to accumulate these oh-so-precious soulbound cards, the ones you can't get otherwise, the ones you will regret missing out on. You only have to reach out and grab 80$ worth of cards you can claim every season for just participating. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
Thanks for reading, and for your continued support! Feel free to delegate me more SPS if you think I don't have enough, I won't be mad! Stay tuned for more Splinterlands and Hive related content!