Back in the Splinterlands Game

The Monsters Are Back

Okay, that's not true! It's me, who's back with his monsters. About half a year ago I had become quite disillusioned with the game, and started selling my cards. Out of five splinters with level 3 summoners, I sold two, death and earth, as well as all my reward cards, which I had been wanting to get rid of anyway.

That's when I heard that they may introduce a way to rent them out, so I decided to stop selling them, and once renting became an option, I put them up for rent. It took me quite a while to figure out the rental market, including the escrow, but little by little I managed to rent out more and more of my cards. By now, about a third of my deck is rented all the time.

Eventually, I used the money generated from my rentals, to buy all those beta cards I had sold in the death and earth decks. Funnily enough, I only spent slightly more buying back what I had sold, which was entirely because of the summoners.

How About Playing?

Exciting as it may sound, once the card rentals have become so successful, playing hasn't been an option. I mean, how would I ever get to complete daily quests with only one or two available summoners? So first I never even intended on playing myself. But then FOMO took over.

Fear Of Missing Out can be a contagious thing. So much so, that you only have to hear the word, and you find yourself researching the topic, trying to find out what it is that people are afraid of missing out on, exactly. In this case it is the end of the beta cards' supply. We may be down to the last 20% of the entire reserve of cards created by the game. So what can we expect? Well, once all the cards have been distributed, the only way you can buy them would be from other players through the market. And since people tend to combine cards to level them up, the supply of lower level cards would decrease, making them worth more. I'm never going to sell a card again... until much later!

Buying More Beta Packs

Understanding all this made the FOMO just worse. Also, I saw that the company was selling their starter packs for only $2. I don't remember how much it was when I got into the game last December... maybe ten bucks? In any case, I decided to spend $20 worth of STEEM (I had just bought some, taking advantage of the cheap STEEM and the relatively decent BTC rates) on ten starter packs. And then I was playing Christmas, opening them one by one.

The final result was certainly something I could appreciate. There were quite a few summoners there, of both types: the rare three-mana ones like Malric Inferno, and the epic two-mana ones like Talia Firestorm. This means, that even if my summoner for a certain splinter may be rented, I can still fall back on one or the other secondary summoner from that splinter. Usually, however, this means going back to level one monsters (or level 2 in case of the epic summoners and common monsters), but there is one big exception. Actually, the exception is huge:

The Peakrider

I can't help brag about this fantastic card. Who cares about the five mana, with all those extra armors and reduced enemy ranged attack? Sure, I could probably rent out this card for 1-5 cents a day. Or I could even sell it for $13.00 (not gonna happen, but it's nice to know that this one card is worth more than half of what I spent on all fifty.) Though for right now it has come in quite useful, and I intend to keep using it as I'm working myself through the leagues again.

The other idea was leveling it up, maybe only to the next level... But then I realized I'd be spending more than twice of what I had on the starter packs, and the only edge it would give me is in renting it. Oh well, maybe later...

Back in the Game

So how has playing battles been? Challenging to say the least. Sure, I'm mostly back to level one, which is still possible to play with. However, occasionally I do have the chance to use higher level cards, whenever I can use one of my level 3 summoners that is not being rented at the moment, or when I can use The Peakrider in the Life Splinter.

This makes the game nice and interesting, and though I have no idea how far my level one cards would take me, I intend to keep pushing it... at least until the end of the season. And yes, there is still money coming in from my rentals, which I know I'll be spending on... hahaha, more beta cards soon.