As a beginner it can be hard and sometimes even frustrating by how slow you advance. May it be the amount of games you win, the tier your stuck at because of your card power or an overall lack of having the nice cards that you want. Especially if you don't want to spend that much money on the game, it can be hard to improve.
So here are a couple of ways, how you can advance in Splinterlands without spending any money:
Use a Referral Link
Before buying the Spellbook and get you Splinterlands journey rolling, make sure to use a referral link when creating your account. It will immediately reward you with one random Reward card for free. A good way to start!
Daily Quests
The daily quests are your most reliable source of improving your deck. Since the reward can have cards, potions, DEC and even packs, it is a must to finish the quests on a daily basis, if you want to get ahead. Especially in lower tiers (like Novice and Bronze) it's quite easy to get the necessary 5 wins with a certain Splinter.
As a small tip: You can re-roll the daily quest once. If you get the daily quest for a Splinter you don't like, re-rolling might be your best option. In the lower tiers I'd recommend to always re-roll Death, because it's the hardest quest to finish in lower tiers.
End-Of-Season Rewards
A season lasts for approximately 2 weeks. At the end you will get End-Of-Season Rewards based on the tier you finished in. There are big differences in the amount of loot chests you will get.
If you are just starting to play, you might get enough points for Bronze I, but don't have enough card power to advance to that tier. Here it makes sense to borrow some cards, to get enough card power to advance. Make sure that you hold enough card power for at least 2 days to be eligible for the higher End-Of-Season Rewards.
Join Novice/Bronze Tournaments
Basically the title. There are dedicated tournaments for beginners, where you can win some DEC and if you perform well, you might even get some cards delegated to you. Beginner tournaments are usually quite cheap, so it's easily affordable and most of the time you end up with more DEC than you invested.
Join a Guild
Joining a guild comes with a bunch of benefits, but for a new player the best benefit is the extra amount of DEC you earn with each win. Even if it's just 1% (if you're entering a small guild) it is still basically free DEC that you get. There are no downsides in joining an open guild.
Join the Telegram Group
Splinterlands has its own Telegram Group. Besides the awsome community that will help you with any question you might have, it also rewards active members with small amounts of DEC daily. So ask your questions there, help other people by answering their questions and earn some DEC on the way. Just make sure to not unnecessarily spam the group.
Enter Giveaways
Every week there are a bunch of giveaways you can join. They are usually hosted on peakd.com and all you need to do is enter you Splinterlands name. To get notified when a giveaway is happening you can join the Splinterlands Discord, where the giveaways are usually advertised.
Contribute to the Splinterlands Wiki
Some veteran players are currently working on a Splinterlands Wiki and are always on the look out for people to contribute. Even as a beginner you can add information to the Wiki pages and get compensation from it in form of DEC. If you like to help, you can start out here.
If you have other tips for beginners to extend their collection or in general earn some DEC, please add your suggestions in the comments. Being a beginner myself I'm always on the lookout to learn.
Crossposted on publish0x.com
Though I will never post links that I am not convinced are legitimate and useful, you should always do your own research before signing up on a site. I will benefit if you sign up through one of the below links:
Pipeflare - Games, Technology, Blockchain
Presearch - Get payed searching the web decentralized
Binance - Largest crypto exchange
Splinterlands - The next generation of collectible card games