Background and clarifications
Recently, I've been getting back into Splinterlands, which I had known previously as Steemmonsters. I figured why not play a fun game while also earning some money. So, starting with only the starter pack cards, I played. I won a few reward cards before the rewards were changed, and am now accumulating potions because I haven't earned enough to get another pack or mystery orb.
However, besides daily rewards, I found out that you can also win DEC when you win a game. So, after some digging, and finding some DEC gain and drain rates, I wanted to see what was the most effective way to earn DEC. First of all, a higher rank means a higher DEC bonus, but I wanted to find some numbers that were independent of rank, so I just used DEC percentages.
For every win, you get a certain amount of DEC. This harvest rate is shown as a percentage. The more games you play, the less percent DEC gain rate you have, the less DEC you win. The data that I collected is shown in one-game DEC percent. That's to say that if you would earn 5 DEC from a win at 100%, then if the number is 3000, or 3000% then you would earn a total of 150 DEC.
Also for sake of numbers, I assumed you won every game. If I do this for all values, the results won't be affected. However, you will not win this much.
Choosing the Variables
The DEC rate diminishes at about 1% per game played. It is gained back at approximately 1% per hour. While this isn't exact, it makes calculations easier. Due to this, choosing variables of games played and hours makes sense.
However, when people play, they play randomly. To eliminate randomness, we'll assume a person logs in every Y hours, and plays X games each time. How could we maximize X and Y?
I set up my calculator (though it would have been much quicker to use my computer) to run a program. This program would simulate a person playing (and winning) X number of games, then taking a Y hour break. This is followed by another X number of games and Y hour break until we hit 2520 hours (the least common multiple of a lot of numbers between 1 and 24). This way, we could figure out, in a given time frame, what is the most optimized way to play, and if we couldn't play every hour, what could make almost as much.
Results
The chart below shows how many games were played versus the break that would follow. I've colored the numbers based on their total.
As we can see, the most efficient way to play is 1 game per hour. Right when the DEC gain reaches 100%. However, if you could only play every 10 hours, you only lose about 100 games' worth of DEC in the total simulation time of 105 days. That's really not bad. So the most efficient way to play is by playing as many games as you have hours until you can play next. For some people this may be 1 hour, for others, it may be 24.
What you don't want to do, as we move down the chart, is miss hours. Say we only played 1 game every 2 hours. We get just over half as much DEC than if we were to play 10 games then wait 10 hours. This shows as we move into the red in the bottom left-hand side of the chart.
However, what if we moved up? As you can see, if you are impulsive and like to play a lot of games and not wait a lot of time, the numbers start getting red. This is mainly because, during the simulation, the DEC % gain was at or near 0, a LOT. While this would likely never happen to a human, it still goes to show that playing at a lower DEC gain rate is worse than missing a few games at 100% DEC gain.
What's interesting to see is that, near the bottom right, if you wait almost as much time between games as you play, the numbers start to get larger. While the DEC rate in the simulation still reached 0, it took a lot longer to get there. This is good news in that playing a few extra, unneeded games won't completely ruin you; not that you'll be ruined by any means. However, if you just wait for the DEC rate to reach 100% before you play, it is the most optimal.
Conclusion
While I can't tell you when you can or can't play the game, if you want to gain the most DEC, you should play one game every hour. If this isn't possible, you should play as many games as you can to where your DEC gain rate will grow to 100% right as you are getting ready for your next play session. You should attempt not to binge/grind, even when you're trying to complete daily quests. You have 24 hours to do these. Even if you do get a little out of hand, wait for the rate to grow back to 100% and play again.
Thanks for reading,
hope you learned something,
glad to be back,
Buddy