When I started playing Splinterlands 10 weeks ago I joined the discord server right away. At roughly that time someone posted the following sentence in the General Channel:
People come here, buy the Spellbook and then proceed to consistently earn their daily as well as end-of-season rewards, only to be surprised after a couple of month that their card collection grew to be worth several hundreds of dollars.
This was a bold statement and my first (very sceptical thought) was: That's Bullshit!
I understood that you could grow your collection without spending any money on the game, but I was convinced that after a couple of month your collection would be worth 10$ and if you are lucky maybe 20$, but definitely not hundreds.
Since I've already bought the Spellbook and enjoyed the game very much, I could easily prove or disprove this statement. (I was obviously hoping to prove it right, but if after a year I still didn't reach 100$ I could've at least ranted about the game and that play to earn is a scam).
Humble Beginnings
So I started off by just playing. Doing my daily quests in Bronze III and getting one reward chest per day. As expected my card collection did not grow much and neither did the worth of my collection. Even though I had enough ranked points to advance to a higher tier, I was not able to, because of my limited card power. I was stuck.
Learning about the Game and the Community
After another season of not advancing to a higher tier due to missing card power I thought to myself: "I can't be the only one with this issue. There must be a bunch of people with the exact same problem."
And there were. The discord channel was full of the same questions:
"How do I increase my card power. What's the cheapest way to advance in a tier."
As mentioned in previous posts, the Splinterlands community is very awesome and insanely beginner friendly, so they gave a lot of very good ideas on how to increase your card power, with spending very little or no money at all.
Unfortunately most of the thinks they talked about went straight over my head or sounded too time consuming for me, which is why I didn't take their advice until much later.
Giveaways - One Minute Effort for a Free Card (?)
The first advice I actually took was joining free giveaways on peakd.com. All I had to do was log into my hive account and drop my name under a post. It took me less than a minute per giveaway and I already won a bunch of cards that way. There won't be a gold foil Yodin Zaku waiting for you of course, but common and rare cards are very frequently given away, which is why I still join them.
The Splinterlands Wiki - A Gamechanger
Around six weeks ago my Splinterlands journey became a hell of a lot more interesting and it didn't even have to do with playing the game. On the discord server someone was asking for help in contributing to a new Splinterlands Wiki. This Wiki should help new players get up to speed and is designed as a common place to learn about the game.
I started writing a couple of pages and after each day they transferred some DEC to my account.
I created over 100 Wiki pages with information that is available within the game and this way earned around 50.000 DEC. For someone who was getting only 1-2 DEC per win it was truly a gamechanger and only made me more invested into the game.
Joining an Active Guild
I was now heavily invested in the game and the community. I spent a lot of time on the discord server, always on the lookout for new opportunities to increase my card power, earn DEC or just help out new players like me.
At the same time was looking for a guild. I joined a bunch of free guilds for the little perks they bring, but I wanted to be in guild that was more than just random people. I wanted to discuss ideas, opportunities and even strategies.
And then there it was. A message on the discord channel: "If you want to join an active guild, you can join Team Possible. We have an active Discord Channel and lots of active player."
That was it. I joined their discord and asked for a spot in one of their free guilds.
From this moment on, the Team Possible Discord Channel was my place to go for information on how to advance.
Renting Cards - The Start of something Big
I still had the same question: "How do I get more card power to advance to higher tiers".
There were two things that came to mind:
- Buy single cards instead of packs
- Rent cards on peakmonster.com
I already bought my two favourite cards with Yodin Zaku and Scarred Llama Mage, but there was no way I could buy enough card power to advance to a higher tier.
So the only other option I had was renting cards. Because I still had no idea how to rent cards on peakmonster (or was just too lazy to figure out how), I asked my guild if they would rent me some cards in exchange for some DEC. They delegated my a bunch of gold foil cards, which increased my card power to several thousand.
With the increased card power I managed to rise up to Gold II, my peak. It was magical opening 26 reward chests at the end of the season. Combined with the daily rewards of 6-7 reward quests and 10-20 DEC per win, I truly felt to have arrived in the beautiful land of playing to earn.
But all good things have to come to an end. And so, starting with the current season, brawls where introduced to the player base and with it gold foil only brawls. The people who rented me their gold foil legendaries needed their cards back to compete.
Understandable, of course, but it still left a sour aftertaste. I was back in Silver III, with disappointing rewards.
I gave renting through peakmonsters another shot and I wondered how this could've ever been a problem for me to figure out. I had my hive account (I'm writing on it right now), where I earned a little bit of hive and all I needed to do was transfer it into my peakmonsters account, which is a very easy and straight forward thing to do.
I now had the ability to rent cards, but no idea which cards to rent. I looked at the gold foil legendaries and although a lot of them were quite cheap (at around 0.10$), I was wondering if there was something even cheaper. And then I found it:
Alpha Gold Foil Epic Cards. They add 30.000 card power and I was able to rent some for 0.01$ per day. I earned more winning 1 game in Gold than I had to spend on renting a card that lets me play in this tier. Simple, sustainable and just plain perfect.
Where I am...
I currently have a very nice collection of cards that is worth around 100$, with enough card power to play in Silver III. With my rented cards I can currently compete in Gold III. The battles are obviously tougher and my daily quests take around 1-1.5 hours now, but it is all worth it if I see the six reward chests waiting for me every day and also the 22 reward chests at the end of the season. I'm already looking forward to it.
...and where do I go from here
I think playing in Gold is currently the best I can do. I have a couple of good decks and can finish my daily quests without losing my tier. I like the amount of rewards I receive, especially because I occasionally win some more DEC from tournaments.
The next steps I'm planning is getting a nice Bronze deck, that can compete for the top spots. I'm not necessarily eager to play so much to actually get to a top spot in Bronze, but having a Bronze optimized deck gives me at least the opportunity to do so and will also help me battle in higher tiers.
My 10 Week Conclusion
If you are consistent in doing your daily quests and willing to learn about the game and the community, a lot of possibilities will appear in front of you to increase your card collection, both in worth and in quality.
If you just want to earn money without enjoying the game, you will have a bad time. But if you already enjoy the game and look for these little opportunities, you will truly realize the beauty of the game.
As for my beginning statement: I am glad that it turns out that it's true, you can get a card collection worth 100$ without paying anything. But this doesn't happen if you just play on your own.
The community is what makes this game awesome and if you want to advance in the game, you need to learn what options more experienced players provide for you to advance. It doesn't matter if they provide you with cards or advice, the community will benefit you greatly if you let it.
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