Intro
With a hefty price tag of $850 USD on Hive Engine, Splinterlands lands are among the hottest commodities Splinterlands players can get their hands on. This week was an insanely busy week for me, but I did manage to finally get my hands on my first Splinterlands land. And with this purchase I have delved into the deep end of research and speculation regarding Splinterlands lands and their in-game release.
What is a land?
Lands are in-game item that will have a type (plains, hills, tundra, swamp, bog, mountain, canyon, caldera, river, lake, forest, jungle, desert, badland) category (natural, magical occupied), and rarity (common, rare, epic, legendary). On these lands you can build and level up buildings and use monsters and summoners to work the land. Depending on the type of land, particular summoners will more efficiently work the land and buildings present on the land.
This leaves so much to speculation! What buildings can I build? What resources are required to build these buildings? How long will it take? What will these buildings look like? And what will the user interface and map look like while playing this mini-game?
This may be the most exciting part of the entire ordeal! Splinterlands is effectively creating a game within a game. The “land game” will exist as both an ecosystem and an economy within the Splinterlands Metaverse. This will create a level of depth the likes unseen within a card game, and I for one am here for it!
What will lands do?
Lands will create new playable cards within Splinterlands itself called items and spells. Players who own lands are the only ones able to mint items and spells. So stringent is this statement that Splinterlands will NOT officially sell items and spells. In order to acquire these, you will need to rely on the secondary market or your own cultivation of land.
We don’t know what these items and spells will do specifically, but we do know an additional phase will be added between team selection and battling in the arena. During this round, players who own items and spells will be able to play these cards to influence the ensuing encounter.
Splinterlands devs have iterated and reiterated that no more lands will be issued that mint lands and items. This leaves open the possibility of creating more lands with other functionality, while maintaining the rarity and desirability of Splinterlands lands.
Again, this leaves me excited and full of questions! Will items and spells be burned upon use? What will they be able to do? How powerful will they be? Will there be rarity of items and spells? What is the percentage change of getting common, rare, epic, and legendary items and spells? The list goes on and on and I want to know!
How to I Buy Lands?
Where can you get your hands on one of these tasty morsels of land you ask? Currently they are sold out, but not to worry! You can get them on the secondary market, either buying with WAX on atomichub or on the HIVE Engine. The specifics require a unique post in and of their own which I will get to if there is interest.
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)Originally there were 3 different land claims: plots, tracts, and regions. A plot is a single unit of land; Praetoria is made up of 150,000 player owned lands. A tract is 100 plots with a guaranteed keep, and a region is 1,000 plots with 1 castle and 9 keeps.
Conclusion
There is still a lot unknown about the specifics of land, resource development, buildings, and the forthcoming item/spell economy. We will simply have to wait and see.
In the end I am a dreamer, and I hope to see a day when I can walk through my in-game land with an AR headset and watch the sun rise and set on the horizon overlooking whatever resource I am lucky enough to have. Imagine the possibilities of setting foot on virtual land!