Welcome back Initiate, to Day 2 of the Mage Academy 101 Series.
Last time, we gave a quick intro to the game and the most important things to learn on Day 1.
Today we are going to talk about cards and how to improve your playable deck.
More specifically, we are going to discuss:
- Modern vs Wild?
- Hint: Stick with Modern!
- Talk about lineup positioning
- Help you understand card levels and summoner levels
- Help you understand abilities
Sound good? Let's begin!
Modern vs. Wild - What to choose?
You might have noticed that at the top of the screen, you can select Modern or Wild.
So what is the difference? Should you try them both?
Modern league: Built for Fair Play
Currently, the Modern league allows cards from the Rebellion and Chaos Legion sets. This will change as new sets get released, and the next set release is planned sometimes in 2025.
Just check your filter is set for Modern cards!
Modern cards are generally more readily available, and can often be found on the rental markets or from the in-game shop.
Key Features of Modern League:
- Battle rewards for new players tend to be significantly higher in Modern than in Wild
- Provides starter cards so they can experiment with different cards and lineups
- Players can learn the game with a more manageable and balanced set of cards
- Alpha, Beta and Untamed Cards are not allowed in Modern
- Players aren't allowed to use any external assistance in creating their team
- If there isn't another player around at your exact moment of playing, Splinterlands may match you against an automated opponent (PvE) to keep wait times low and keep you playing and having fun!
Wild League: Anything goes! Any card, player or bot is welcome!
So, Wild league is a bit different. It allows all cards, from any edition. To play in Wild, you need to purchase a Wild season pass, which will cost 2000 DEC.
Key Features of Wild League:
- Players are not provided with any starter cards and must provide their own deck
- Battle rewards tend to be lower.
- Players require more SPS staked to achieve similar Glint Reward multipliers
- Players can play any card from any edition
- Players can use Bots and Battle Helpers to assist or submit battles
TLDR: Most new players are advised to play in Modern.
Review: The Tutorial doesn't teach you EVERYTHING...
In yesterday's lesson, we had you watch the tutorial, so you should already understand card stats, positioning, and how to put together a working team.
Hopefully yesterday you managed to climb all the way to Bronze 3 without renting any cards. If not, I'd suggest to keep working at that before you try to climb higher.
Questions: Why bother wasting time climbing to Bronze 3 with just the starter cards?
The reason I tell you to play with starter cards until Bronze 3 is because opponents in Novice are easy. All you usually fight are other beginners and "training bots" and you don't need stronger cards to beat them - you just need to understand basic positioning strategy...
Until you have the basics of good positioning strategy, stronger cards won't help you.
Positioning - the first, most crucial lesson
Here's some easy-to-remember, free advice:
"Melee, then Magic, then Ranged.
Rarely should this order be changed!"
I'm going to tell you the "Basic Starting Lineup".
Regardless of Summoner, the most basic team starts like this:
- High health Melee attacker in front:
- Starting out, use 25%-40% of your mana for your tank
- Another Melee attacker with Reach ability in second spot
- Middle spots are where you can be strategic:
- Another melee attacker with a special targeting ability (Like Sneak or Opportunity)
- Magic damage or Healing ability
- Ideally use something that complements your Summoner's abilities
- Protect your backside
- Higher health or shields can absorb a few hits
- Thorns ability is usually most effective at the front or back of your lineup.
Here is an example - let's look at the team on the bottom:
- Lots of protection up front with the two strong melee attackers
- Reach ability in the second spot
- Summoner tactic uses Shield on the "tank" to further strengthen the front line
- Opportunity monster in 3rd position.
- The Healer is safely tucked in 5th position, safe from sneak and snipe attacks
This isn't the only way to build a lineup of course, but it's a good basic position to understand.
Once you get to know the monsters and abilities better, you'll know when to deviate from this pattern.
Understanding Card Levels
So, you already know that players will need skill, strategy and luck to advance.
But in order to get to the higher leagues, you'll need more than that - you'll need to learn about levelling cards.
Let's compare how card levelling affects a card:
I'm going to use this Giant Alpine Skink card to illustrate.
You can see as a card increases its level, it gets better and better! At max level (Level 10), this Skink has more attack, speed, health and shields, it can dodge magic attacks, and can Stun its target! Whoa!
So, how do we go about levelling cards?
Well, every new card from a pack or from the glint shop is a level 1.
PRO TIP:
If you are lucky enough to snag a Gold Foil card - these beauties actually start at a higher level!
Check the stats page for Gold Foil levels!
To increase your level, you need to permanently combine enough copies to bring it to the next level!
You can combine copies all at once, or over time as you collect enough copies. Find out how many copies are needed to on the card's detail page. You can see from the chart below, it will take 60 copies of the card to bring it to Level 5!
The requirements for levelling change depending on Rarity, Set, or gold foil, so always check the card's Stats page in-game for the most accurate information.
You can look here for the Official Support article on levelling cards, with step-by-step guidance.
WAIT! You also need to level your Summoner!
Why? It's simple, actually...
A Level 1 Summoner can't summon a max level monster!
Your Summoner level caps your monster level. You can still summon the monster, but the level scales down to the Summoner's limit.
The specific levels depend on the rarity of the Summoner and the Summoner level. Let's look at Prophet Rosa below:
The dots at the top correspond to the monster's max level by Rarity.
- White is Common
- Blue is Rare
- Violet is Epic
- Gold is Legendary
Let's assume you buy 5 copies of Prophet Rosa, and combine them to make a Level 2!
First, congrats on levelling!
Now, your summoner can summon higher level monsters!
- Common monsters are capped at level 3
- Rare and Epic monsters are capped at level 2
- Legendary monsters are still capped at Level 1
(Note that you would need to have monsters at those levels to be able to summon them! If you use a Level 2 Prophet Rosa to summon a Giant Alpine Skink that is still at Level 1, then the Skink will still be a Level 1 in battle).
Here's some more info from the Support team on Levelling summoners.
Be aware - Combining cards is permanent - you can't uncombine them.
One more note - you can only combine cards you own!
You can't rent 5 copies of someone else's card to combine and make a Level 2 - you'd need to look for a card with the level you are seeking!
That's why sometimes you'll see in the marketplace that people can rent out higher levelled cards - in the example below, I can see this Level 4 Prophet Rosa is available for a little over 1 DEC per day.
If I rent the above Level 4 Prophet Rosa, then when using this summoner in battles, I increase all my monsters' level cap.
- Level 5 common monsters
- Level 4 Rare monsters
- Level 3 Epic monsters
- Level 2 Legendary monsters
Sometimes, players don't have time or budget to level up all their cards, so it makes sense to start small - pick your favourite Element (Maybe you like Water teams?) and increase your Summoner and some of your favourite compatible cards to the summoner's max!
You can also try renting strong decks but it's easy to blow your budget. We'll talk more about renting in a later lesson.
Abilities are Game Changers!
The tutorial already taught you a bit about abilities, and you saw some abilities from our levelling discussion earlier.
I mean, Stun? Come on, that's awesome!
At the time of writing, there are nearly 100 abilities that cards may have, and the game keeps adding more!
I won't go into all of them, but abilities can change the game, by protecting your monsters and hindering your enemies!
The full list here here on the official Support site, where you can learn about all of them!
https://support.splinterlands.com/hc/en-us/sections/6238335928596-Abilities
Also, I'm going to tell you a great resource for looking up card abilities:
Splintercards is an independent website maintained by a community member, that contains LOADS of useful Splinterlands info in one spot. Looking for a particular ability? They have a nifty tool for that! No login required!
https://www.splintercards.com/abilities.html
It even shows you the level that the card acquires the ability, which is great!
I think we covered a lot of ground today. At this point, you are probably learning your cards abilities, and hopefully getting some wins with the starter cards. But you can't really get very far with starter cards.
So our next lesson, we are going to talk about replacing those starter cards with rentals.
I'm going to give some advice so you don't blow all your credits on the first day and and help you avoid some common buying mistakes.
In the meantime, keep battling, young Battle Mage!