There's more and more interest in Splinterlands with new users piling in at record rates.
With no current edition available and the SPS airdrop coming soon, people are stacking cards, lands, DEC, and all other game assets. That's great for hodlers, but how will new people get to compete at top levels?
Enter rentals.
Peakmonsters.com has made the interface to efficient rentals and @jacekw has shown us the way.
So, if you want to get involved in the game as efficiently as possible, here's the guide.
Step 1: Get a spellbook: Sign up at https://splinterlands.com?ref=nealmcspadden
This will get you a hive account and access to the game. The spellbook comes with usable virtual cards at level 1. Where we are going, that's not going to cut it. We need high-level cards.
Step 2: Install the keychain plugin and get your private keys from your profile. Enter your user name and private posting key into keychain. Then go to manage accounts and add your private active key.
Step 3: Now you're ready to rumble. Buy some credits from Splinterlands. It won't take a lot. 2,000 to 5,000 per day will get her done. Prices of rentals are constantly changing, so don't take this amount as gospel. If you need to add more, add more.
You can pay with PayPal or a variety of cryptos.
Step 4: Now we are ready to party. At the time of writing, there are almost 300 types of cards available. Which ones do you need to compete? Renting max levels of all cards would work, but it would be inefficient.
Fortunately, one of our resident data scientists has made your job of picking cards super easy:
Jacek has compiled and published usage rates for monsters and summoners by league. We're headed to the top levels, so we only need to pay attention to the Champion data.
There are 5 elemental splinters/teams, dragons, and neutral cards. You'll want enough depth in each element and dragons to be competitive. As your skill progresses, you can refine your selections. But for a beginner, best to get a wide variety.
So what I would do would be to look at the monster list. Grab each card that has a usage % greater than 1%.
For summoners, I would get the top 2 most frequently used summoners for each splinter.
Step 5: Once you have identified your targets, time to rent. Go to https://peakmonsters.com/rentals and sign in with keychain. Your credits balance will be able to be used to pay for rentals.
We want max level cards, so click the MAX button on the right-hand side to filter out all the lower level cards.
Then you can just copy-paste from the monster and summoner list into the name search.
Click the add to cart button and move on to the next.
When you have added everything to the cart, select a 1 day or more rental, and you're good to get started.
Step 6: Start playing!
Go back to splinterlands.com and start battling.
Splinterlands gameplay has a couple different modes. There's ranked season play and tournaments. In season play, we have 2 seasons per month. Each day you'll have daily quests to complete that give you rewards. Players compete in different leagues for leaderboard positions.
With a top-level deck like we have, the goal is to go from a ranking of zero with a new account up to the Champion league. In Champion you will get the greatest rewards both daily and seasonally.
So when you are starting from zero, you want to ignore quests until you are in at least Diamond league.
Your quest rewards are determined by your league at the time of claiming the quest rewards.
Your season rewards are determined by the highest league achieved during the season.
Your leaderboard rewards are determined by your place on the leaderboard at the end of the season.
So push hard and push fast to advance your account as much as possible.
Special note: the different leagues are gate-kept by what is called collection power. This is basically the burn value of the cards in your deck in DEC terms. If you hit one of the upper leagues and you don't have enough collection power to advance, go back to peakmonsters.com and rent some cheap gold-foil cards. Those will give you the most collection power bang for your buck.
To read a post from our same Jacek on how he's done all this, check out this recent one: https://www.splintertalk.io/hive-13323/@jacekw/testing-splinterlands-new-rental-system-peakmonsters-interface-2-from-1900-to-champion-league-with-668-dec-spent-on-rentals-
You aren't going to be as efficient as he is so don't get hung up on the numbers.
Step 7: Tournaments
In addition to the ranked season play, you can play in tournaments. Splinterlands hands out thousands of dollars in tournament prizes each week.
Check out the list on the events tab of upcoming tournaments and enter ones that look good to you. If the entry fee is low (10 DEC) that means you are in the appropriate league. If the entry fee is high (1000 DEC) that means you aren't in the appropriate league for that tournament.
There are a couple different styles of tournament. Some are synchronous, so you are battling it out in real time. Some are asynchronous, so you submit all your teams in one shot and check back later. Play the ones that work for you.
Step 8: Stack DEC
Your rewards will come in a few flavors: Potions, DEC, and rewards cards.
Potions are to increase your odds of good cards when you open packs. That doesn't apply much right now since there aren't any packs to buy. When Chaos Legion is released, that will change.
DEC is the in-game currency for Splinterlands. It ranges around the par value for 1 credit = 1 DEC, but there is market variation. At the time of writing, DEC is high because people are stacking for the upcoming SPS airdrop.
Rewards cards are NFTs that you own and are usable in battle. It takes a lot of cards to reach max level, so my advice is to sell those cards on the market for DEC and add that to your stack.
SPS is the governance token that is going to start being airdropped about 2 weeks from this writing. All game assets held by you will get you some SPS airdrops, but DEC is one of the most efficient ways. Use https://splintercards.com/tool-sps-airdrop.html to play around with your numbers.
Step 9: Profit
I know, profit is supposed to be step 3.
But here we are at Step 9.
Profiting is simple.
Win DEC from battles. Win DEC and rewards cards from daily quests. Win DEC from tournaments. Win DEC and rewards cards from season rewards. Get airdropped SPS from your DEC.
Pay rental costs.
The difference is profits.
Step 10: Optimize
As you gain experience in the game, you will figure out better what cards and splinters work for you and which don't. To optimize, stop renting the cards that don't work with your play style. Rinse, repeat. Spend less, make more.
Step 11: Earn on content
Post your battles, investment decisions, and results on splintertalk.io (for all things splinterlands) or on leofinance.io (for investment-specific content) with hashtag #splinterlands. You'll get some upvotes. Splinterlands has their own SPT token that rewards blogging content. If someone votes for your post, you'll earn SPT that will be deposited into your keychain wallet a week after you publish. Those SPT can be sold or stacked (again, SPS airdrops).
Step 12: Join the community.
Splinterlands is very active on discord and telegram. Join up and you'll meet other players and investors and learn a lot about the subtleties that aren't covered here.
If you made it this far, congrats! You have learned how to start playing Splinterlands for a couple bucks a day and start stacking crypto. Just remember, market prices change so you'll have to evaluate the market as you go and make your own decisions.
Edit: I have finally joined the club and have been downvoted by @smooth because my HIVE rewards were "too high." Success? And people wonder where all the users go.