How did I discover Splinterlands?
Hello everyone, today I am going to tell you guys a story about how I discovered Splinterlands and why I started to play this play2earn game on the Hive blockchain. As you can see, I am already playing Splinterlands for nearly 2 years, since December 2021. This isn't that long, it was a bit before the beginning of the Chaos Legion sale, but it's already something. So, let's dive into the main theme: How did I discover Splinterlands?
My search for a new game
Around December 2021, I was on the hunt for a new game I could play. With the crypto bull run being at full force at that moment in time, I read somewhere about play2earn games so I thought: let's find out if those are nice to play as well. I started to google lists of different games and the first one I wanted to try out was Axie Infinity. But there was one problem: you had to buy Axies. I didn't want to invest any money into the game as I was still new to web3, blockchain and crypto so I passed on Axie Infinity. Another game I came across was Splinterlands. This time, I found out that I just had to buy a spellbook for ten bucks. As I still had some money laying around on my paypal account, just enough to buy a spellbook, I decided to give it a go.
My first moment as a Splinterlands player
I discovered that I could start playing with the 'free cards: the starter cards. Ofcourse I found this awesome but rather fast than late, I figured out this wouldn't earn me anything or nearly nothing. So I started to search down for more information. I came across a Twitch channel where I got some help of different awesome individuals. I forgot which channel it exactly was, especially as later on I lurked in different streams. Anyways, in that first stream, people were really helpful and even delegated me some cards. (I guess) when they figured out I was truely a noob, some even donated me a couple of cards. I was really impressed. In the past, when I played video games (Runescape, League of Legends, Counter Strike,...), people appeared to be quite toxic to fellow gamers. With Splinterlands, I had the impression that everyone wanted to help out, even though you could earn some tokens while playing the game. It really hooked me up even more!
After playing for several days, I started to figure out what a guild was. This was a next keypoint in my Splinterlands journey. I managed to join the the Syndicate. This was a warm guild which really helped to discover the world of Splinterlands further. It was here as well that I got to know that Splinterlands is built on the Hive Blockchain. So I started to look into Hive and figured out that Hive has a complete social network component. This made me to start writing my first 'post'. I place it between apostrophe as it was merely a couple of sentences without lay-out nor images. I discovered what a lot of people discover when they start their Hive carreer: no upvotes (while others were attracting huge upvotes). Step by step I learned that I had to engage, write quality content, join some communities in line with my interests, etc. But now, back to my Splinterlands story.
The continuation of my story
The first weeks passed by and as already said: I didn't want to invest any money into Splinterlands. So I tried to accumulate cards trough playing, for the reward cards and through participating in giveaways. Yes, there are a lot of giveaways involving cards, so slowly I could accumulate some cards, although these were merely the most cheap and weak ones, but it was something. Slowly I started to think that this would take ages if I wanted to accumulate cards worth $100, let alone accumulating a full leveled full deck. So my interest in the game started to slow down, as battling over and over in bronze, isn't that much of a challenge. But, I tried to stay active on Hive, to be able to collect the rewards of engagement with others. This didn't always work out neither. So, both my Splinterlands and Hive carreer were with some ups and downs. Some periods, I regained motivation and played/blogged and on other periods, I didn't play/blog at all.
There are several people who helped me to find motivation in this journey. Not always related to Splinterlands but related to Hive in general. As this article is focused on Splinterlands, I won't expand further on it. But if they read it, I am sure, they will know who they are. So definitely a big THANK YOU!
Last weeks
At the end of August / the beginning of September, I decided I wanted to be more active again on Splinterlands / Hive. Something which I already have learned is that it's easier if you're surrounded by awesome people. So I found some warm communities on Hive and in terms of Splinterlands, I found a new Guild: The Family Tree, which is part of The Alliance. Here I got once again to know some warm and very welcoming people. I am able to participate in brawls so I can earn some merits. A couple of weeks, I got my first Quora, so was really happy with that achievement! Besides the brawls, they have a very awesome discord as well. So yes, I am really happy that they accepted me!
Besides being in a guild, I started at the same moment with playing my dailies as well. The last couple of weeks, I am not finding the time to fighting my dailies, but when I have some spare time, I really want to do them again. Another aspect I am working on is expanding my collection. In my actual guild, I met a very generous lady who loves hugging, who helped me to acquire some cards I didn't own yet. This helped me to boost my collection further. In the meantime, I bought a couple of cheap cards to enrich my collection as well.
Conclusion
I am already playing Splinterlands for nearly 2 years, with some more active and less active periods of time. While playing Splinterlands and engaging with the community, I have met several awesome persons with who I had some great talks. So a well meant: THANK YOU to everyone who has spent time with me in this awesome Splinterlands community, YOU ALL ROCK!
Do you want to try out Splinterlands aswell?
Here is my referal link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=stekene
