Welcome new Initiate!
I assume you are here from the Mage Academy 101 Series.
I'm here to help show you around on your first day!
My job today is to get through a few basics:
- Sign up with your email address
- Complete the Tutorial Quest
- Get through a few battles
- Talk about the Summoner's Spellbook and what it gives you
- Introduce the four primary tokens you will see in-game
- Learn the Importance of Staking SPS
Sound good? Let's begin!
First Things First: Sign up!
I'm assuming you've signed up for a free account! (If not, please go do that now...)
You can sign up at splinterlands.com, or use this referral link to support this tutorial series.
Today is about the basics. You don't necessarily need to buy anything today, we'll talk more about that below...
Please use an active email address
Splinterlands won't send you lots of spam, but since some assets can be quite valuable, I'm guessing you may want Splinterlands to be able to recover your account if necessary! So sign up, and verify your email address!
Three Quests are Waiting for you
The first thing you'll notice is Splinterlands has three quests waiting for you.
But don't just dive in without reading further - we've got some important tips!
Quest 1: Visit the Tutorial!
Okay, yes, you can, in fact, dive straight into this one. The team has put together a little interactive Tutorial to walk you through the basics of battling, so let's just start there!
It will give you a feel for what the main battling game looks like.
You can do that now - go watch it, and come back after you've completed the Tutorial.
Alright, all done?
Welcome back!
As you saw, the tutorial gives a quick overview of the types of cards, stats, mana and game rules, and what a match generally looks like. Your experience can vary depending on cards and abilities and other stuff, but overall that's the flow of a match.
Quest 2: Play a match!
The next quest is going to ask you to play your own battle. This means finding the bright orange Battle Button!
(If you are told you have NO CARDS, click BATTLE ANYWAY. We will rent cards later...)
Don't sweat this battle too much. This one isn't important - yet... it's just to help you try it out and find the right buttons.
You can try to use your knowledge you just got from the Tutorial!
- First pick a summoner...
- then pick your monsters...
- and depending on your choice of summoner, you may see a Tactics selection screen.
- and watch the battle! See what happens!
And that's your first independent battle! Quest Complete!
But wait - now I'm going to tell you to do something unexpected...
Don't move on to Quest 3 yet!
I recommend you try a few more battles first.
You might get a NO CARDS warning - click BATTLE ANYWAY!
Why you shouldn't Rent Cards yet
- The spellbook will give you a small amount of tokens to use for renting or buying cards
- I want you to try each of the starter summoners and as many different cards as you can
- Better to try these free starter cards before you spend your limited tokens on rentals
Battle until your Rating is around 200
You can do another 5-10 battles in Novice league with the Starter cards, but I suggest you stop as soon as you get a Rating of 200.
Why?
Because it's decision time... if you achieve a rating of 260, you will advance to Bronze League.
Before you advance to Bronze League is a good time to decide:
- Do I want to keep playing for free to make sure I like the game?
...or... - Do I want to buy the Summoner's Spellbook now to start building my account?
You DON'T ACTUALLY NEED to decide now
...but you might want to...
Buying the Spellbook before achieving Bronze 3 league is an important decision point, because when you unlock it, it can reward you with 3 Minor chests to open, and any wins in Bronze will start to earn battle rewards.
Beyond that, each Tier beyond that will award more chests, as you can see below:
But ... you will need the Summoner's Spellbook for that. So decisions...
STOP AND READ THIS BEFORE YOU BUY THE SPELLBOOK...
There are some things you should understand first.
This is what will happen once you click Buy:
- You will get to pick a new player name (if available);
- An account and wallet will be created for you on the Hive blockchain;
- You will get a Quest reward of 1000 Glint after all three quests are complete;
- You will get 3000 credits to spend on some stuff;
- You will get some staked SPS delegated to your account for a month;
- You will be able to start earning battle rewards, climb the leaderboard, join guilds, and other stuff.
Let's dive into what that means:
Account Stuff: Your Player name is your Hive Account - and it's permanent.
When you pick your new name, you will need to pick a name that hasn't already been used before on the Hive blockchain. This new Hive account will also allow you to use the same account to log in to other Hive games and applications. That's the magic of Web3!
Ok, so what is Hive?
Let's just say it's the basic foundation that Splinterlands is built on.
For now, I will just tell you this:
- Hive is a blockchain
- Hive is a decentralized blogging platform that can pay rewards to its users
There's more... much more, but this lesson is already gonna be long.
Don't worry, we are going to talk plenty about Hive in a later lesson.
Free Tokens! Credits and Glint: But don't spend them... yet!
The game has lots of different kinds of tokens and assets.
- Some will help you win.
- Some will not help you win.
The economy here is pretty complex, so it's easy to buy something thinking it is useful, when it fact it's only used in a very different part of the game.
So save your tokens just for a few days and I'll give you some guidance on how to spend them WISELY.
Four Primary token types:
We have dozens of tokens in Splinterlands. Some are transferrable, some aren't.
We'll discuss most of them over the next two weeks, but for today, we need to talk about FOUR in particular:
- Credits
- Glint
- Splintershards (SPS)
- Dark Energy Crystals (DEC)
If you bought a Summoner's Spellbook and completed the 3 Quests, you received some Glint and Credits to help get you started!
Glint:
I like to think of Glint as the "Battle Experience" token:
- You can only get Glint from battles or quests,
- You can spend Glint to get more cards to improve your playing deck,
- Glint is non transferable and you can't buy or sell it,
- In general, most things you buy with Glint are locked to your account and can't be sold.
Credits:
Meanwhile, I think of Credits like "locked money".
- You can use Credits to buy many types of in-game items,
- Credits don't fluctuate in price. They are always $0.001 (1000 credits is equivalent to $ 1 USD)
- Credits are not transferable. You can buy them from the game (with Paypal or Crypto) but can't sell them
- You can spend Credits like cash, using them to buy most purchasable in-game items.
Dark Energy Crystals (DEC):
DEC is the game's "Cash" token. It is a fundamentally important token, and used for all market transactions. DEC can also be "burned" sometimes, to enable features or to upgrade some types of assets.
I won't cover all the uses (you can find out more here), but at a glance:
- DEC is used for all market transactions, and can also be used to buy packs
- DEC is freely transferable, and can be bought and sold on Crypto exchanges and in-game
- DEC can be staked to Land (We'll talk about Land later in the course)
- DEC can be "burned" to buy or enable various things in-game.
While not a stable-coin, the "Tokenomics" are designed to help keep the price of DEC relatively stable
- Demand for buying Splinterlands products gives support to DEC price;
- Note that price is usually capped around $0.001 USD due to tokenomics design.
Finally, DEC can created by burning Splintershards (SPS) or some types of Cards, but often at a penalty.
(You may be better off trying to sell or swap your SPS or Cards for DEC, instead of burning them!)
Splinter Shards (SPS):
Last, but not least, SPS is the Governance token for the game.
Officially, SPS allows you a vote on SPS Governance Proposals, to help direct the game or economy.
- Players can get SPS as a reward from battles, from staking, and from other parts of the game
- By staking (locking up) your SPS, you can increase your battle rewards and your staking rewards
- Staked SPS gives you the right to vote on SPS Governance Proposals to help direct the game or economy!
- SPS can be bought/sold or transferred, including through Crypto exchanges or Liquidity Pools.
- SPS can be "burned" to produce Dark Energy Crystals
The relationship between DEC and SPS is a foundational concept in the Splinterlands economy, and players will often find that more rewards accrue to players that have staked (locked up) larger amounts of SPS.
So that brings us to...
The Importance of Staking SPS
As we said earlier, SPS is the governance token for Splinterlands.
Owning and Staking SPS gives you a voice in the game's future. It also puts some "skin in the game".
The Splinterlands economy rewards players that stake more SPS, from higher staking rewards to higher battle rewards.
Staked SPS and Battle Rewards
After you unlock Bronze League, you will find a Glint Boost multiplier on the main screen:
This Boost number determines what multiplier to give to your battle rewards, and it can go from 0 (no rewards) to over 20X (with enough bonuses).
Now, we don't expect new players will have any SPS to begin with. So our SPS DAO Foundation loans every new player 100 SPS - for one month - after they buy their Spellbook, to help get them started!
This should allow a typical player to have a good multiplier to start out their journey.
Be aware that as your rating gets higher, you need more SPS to keep the same multiplier.
Beginners can often find helpful players that are willing to provide some SPS for a period; while advanced players often choose to buy or rent SPS to enhance their battle earnings.
For now, you'll have enough for the first few leagues, so don't waste your Credits renting more.
Use what you have, and keep reading and playing every day!.
Last thing: Come hang out with us in the Official Splinterlands Discord!
Lots of passionate players hang out on Discord to talk strategy, share ideas, celebrate successes, or complain about the latest unlucky losing streak!
We are a community that likes to help each other out - and we love to see new players!
Join the Discord group for tips and advice, and even with the occasional giveaway!
Come and introduce yourself and share a battle in the Tavern!
For our next lesson tomorrow, we are going to talk about how to improve your game and your cards! Don't miss it!