Hi everyone! Time for another explainer for Splinterlands, because it's a great game but with a steep learning curve, but then again... most good games have the same.
In the splinterlands collaboration with the Wasder app, we made a new guild to support and guide new players, and I started writing explainers to refer to, because it's just too much to simply tell people in our discord server.
Are you a new player who wants a nice team to work with and get some advice and support where needed? Feel free to join our Discord server.
In my explainer series I made some posts before:
Getting started in Splinterlands.
Battle basics, rulesets and card placement.
Last weeks, I made the first posts in my 'The obvious, not so obvious series'
You can find part 1 here.
You can find part 2 here.
You can find part 3 here.
For us Splinter junkies some things are so obvious, while they are not at all for players starting and learning the ropes, so I want to talk about some basics and strategies I'm using in different rulesets to help you guys get some guidance because there's just too much to remember. In my country we have a saying, literally translated it goes: you can no longer see the wood because of the trees 😅
In my own gameplay doing ranked battles, brawls and sometimes a tournament I'll try and write down tips I can talk about here, I'll try to make 2 or 3 tips in every edition, depending on how long my post is because no one wants to read for 15 minutes right?
Last week, I was pretty busy expanding my deck, and it made me realize I need to explain buying cards and how you look at what cards are worth investing in, because there are better ways to buy than the in-game splinterlands market.
Because of the SEC drama in the United States going nuclear against everything that moves and is crypto related, I decided to move my funds from Binance just to be sure. Of course you can think 'well if everyone does this, Binance is a goner and we as a crypto community have bigger problems'. While this is also true, I believe you have to protect your own assets, and people withdrawing funds is a good stress test for Binance.
So I was looking at my account and found out I had $85 in BTC and SOL daily staking I forgot about, so I converted it to BUSD, transferred it to my Metamask wallet and converted it again on Pancakeswap for DEC and then brought it in to my splinterlands account, gotta love crypto right? it's so complicated with all the different blockchains and dex's around.
Buying cards, how to decide which ones??
First, just start in playing the game, and when you lose a battle, try to understand why, if you see your opponent using a good strategy, start using it yourself!
When you see some nice (or better leveled cards) used by your opponent, you can consider investing in them, first, let look at breakpoints and what I mean with this.
Writing this, I assume you already know enough about card levels and the required summoner levels to be able to play them.
In the picture above I took one of my favorite Death sneakers as an example, Silent Sha-Vi. When you play it at level 1, it has 2 melee damage, when you level him to the next level you need 5 cards but only get 1 more speed for 5 times the price of your level 1 card.
I'm not saying it's a bad investment this way, but I'm searching for breakpoints, some cards have them at the levels I play in, some don't.
With breakpoints I mean at some level a card really gets a lot better, it gets more attack damage, or maybe an extra ability, which is more useful as 1 extra health.
For this card, when you get it at level 3, it gets 1 extra melee damage which is very nice!
Managing your deck and looking at what cards are worth leveling is a game on itself for me, I like analyzing the cards and look for improvements.
When you have it at level 3, going to level 4 takes twice the money and only gets you 1 extra health point, not worth it for me and it's the reason why my Silent Sha-Vi is still at level 3 while I can play a level 5.
Buying cards
After you decide what card you need at which level, you can go buy it, as an example I'm using Angelic Mandarin, I just leveled this card up myself.
My Angelic Mandarin was at level 2, I wanted to make it a level 4 so it acquired the Triage ability, so I needed 20 extra copies of it. When I look in the splinterlands in-game market place, I can see 1 BCX (or 1 level 1 card) costs $0.17 cents.
This can be a nice price, but we're not done yet, we need to compare it.
I never buy cards in the in-game market place, buyers pay a 5% tax here, so I first check
MonsterMarket. When you buy cards on this site you get 60% of the 5% tax returned to your account in DEC.
When I search for Angelic Mandarin on this site, I see it's $0.168 here, a minimal difference.
Next, I'm going to compare the price on Peakmonsters to see if I can make a better deal.
On the right side, I type the card name I'm looking for.
On peakmonsters, you can create bid buys, like in a auction, so you're not buying it NOW but you're going to make a bid. The High Bid on this card is now $0.114
Now I click on the green encircled 'High Bid' and a new window opens where you can see the current bids on this card in more detail.
Now I click on 'make bid' to list our own bid, we need to bid only a little higher than the highest bidder, so I put in my bid at $0.115 per BCX, I need 20 copy's to make it a level 4, so I type for total BCX '20' and highest level I want to buy is a level 3.
Buying higher level cards is generally cheaper, a level 3 will have 14 BCX inside it so that's ok to buy, I can use it to combine my level 2 with 5 BCX and then still need some copies to get to 25 in total.
Of course, you need enough DEC in your account to make the bid, when you click confirm, your bid gets registered and you now have to wait and hopefully no one will outbid you, now we only need a seller willing to sell for your bid price. So this way it's not guaranteed you're getting the cards for this price, but if you do, you will save money!
I already did this process is the last few days and bought my copies just over 11 cents, saving 5 cents for every copy I bought, so I ended up saving $1 I could spend on other cards to buy
So to summarize things
- first decide what cards you want at which level
- look on monstermarket what they market price is
- compare the bid price on peakmonsters
- if there is a lot of difference, make a bid and wait
- if the difference is very minimal you can buy them on monstermarket and save a little on the 5% market fee.
When the price on monstermarket is good enough to buy them directly just click on the plus '+' sign next to each card for every BCX you want to buy to put them in your shopping cart.
Next, click on the X on the top right to close the buying tab, you'll now see the cards you want in your cart on the top right.
Click on your cart (green arrow) and the screen to pay for them open, you can pay with DEC or Credits on this site, also you can see how much your cashback is going to be.
I don't have enough credits in my account so that's why I can only make this payment with DEC, when you're done making the purchase, you'll need to confirm this with your hive keychain (if you're not using the keychain, you should for your own security!
After that, wait until you see a green pop-up appear in the top right corner, saying your purchase was successful
sometimes, other people just sniped the cards before you and the purchase fails, the you have to refresh the page and try again.
When you have any questions, just ask them and I'll help you out 👍.
Thank you for reading!!!
If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.
Have a great day!
