Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! While there isn't a lot of news since my last update, the season did end and we have a fairly large update looming on the horizon. Let's start off with the most recent changes at this end-of-season.
The use of Vouchers for the Wild Pass ended. I was personally using Vouchers to pay for my Wild pass, as getting Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) to pay for it either requires putting outside money into the game or selling, or burning, Splintershards (SPS). With current prices, I don't particularly want to unstake and burn my SPS to play Wild, so my current plan is to shift to Modern on both of my accounts for the time being.
This begs the question of what to do with my cards that are only legal in Wild. Land is supposed to be the answer, and I could shift a few cards onto land for increased production if I'm not going to be playing them, but that's likely to only be useful for maybe a dozen cards. A single gold-foil copy lets me use them in my Bronze gold-foil brawls, but other than that I have a lot of random cards that I can't play in Modern.
Selling them is one option, though the market prices are fairly low on cards right now. There should be a DEC-Voucher swap getting added to the game in the upcoming patch, so I could theoretically sell my Vouchers there in hopes of getting enough DEC to pay for the Wild pass. There is also going to be a card available for Vouchers only, which gets us into the only news since my last update.
The Mana Warden card will be for sale for about 3 months for 30 Vouchers per card. Being a common, this means it will take about 12,000 to get one to max level. While there are millions of Vouchers in circulation right now, I only personally have about 800. This is enough to get a guaranteed gold-foil card, by purchasing 25 in one transaction.
Considering that he gets his new ability, Shield Ward, which gives the unit in front of it the Shield ability, at level 1, then this might be fine to just get for my Brawl deck. I am curious to see what kind of demand there will be for Vouchers with this change and how the price will work out with the in-game liquidity pool.
There was also an announcement about the two promotional cards that will be for sale, one rare and one legendary unit. The rare is called Sanctus Vicar and he has a new Cleanse Rearguard ability that removes debuffs from the last unit on your team. He is going to cost 3,000 DEC a card, but also gets the new ability at level 1 - so, only getting one copy might be a decent option.
The new legendary unit is Elanor Bravefoot, which will cost 50,000 DEC a card. This is a new zero casting cost unit that comes with a new ability, Blasphemy of Uul (odd name, I know), that gives her +1 Ranged damage for every other zero casing cost Chaos Legion fiend on your team. She also gets Weary, and may not attack every round.
For the cost, the legendary card seems like the worst deal out of the lot. It is the only one that doesn't get the new ability at first level, and is really only useful in a very specific niche of low mana matches. It also strikes me as odd that the ability is specific to the Chaos Legion set fiends only, considering that is slated to rotate out of Modern sooner than this promo card.
That's about it for news. For my end of season, I finished in Silver I in Modern on my alternate account and Diamond I in Wild on my main account. I hit Champion III, but had lots of energy left and then lost too many games trying to burn some. I am still conflicted on what to spend Glint on, and so far just got small batches of Major chests to try not to get too much energy at one time:
Since I don't have a full Gladiator set, I'm okay with getting Merits. The potions in the chests are mitigating the potions I am using to open them. I'm really hoping for cards with big multiples, and I have yet to see a Jackpot prize in any of my reward draws.
I am tempted to buy some of the Epic set rarity draws, though the single card per draw there feels kind of slow, compared to the chance of getting multiples out of a random chest. The price for the Ultimate chests seems too high, considering the decent chance of getting something mediocre out of it, at least for how little Glint I earn in a season.
We'll see how playing in Modern goes this season, with the likely much lower number of Wild players. So far, it's been a lot of high level cards at the high end of Bronze and low end of Silver. I'm hoping it will improve as the season moves along.
That's about all the news for this week! Thank you for reading! I will try to be back in about a week to cover all of the new updates and my progress playing in Modern.