Many awesome updates to Steem Monsters have recently come to pass! I would like to share some valuable information on how to take advantage of them. I will touch briefly on the new rental market and then give some clarification on the use of Dark Energy Crystals, including details on earning daily DEC through SP delegation.
A rental market was added which allows us to rent our cards out. I have a few valuable cards that I am not using and have just put them on the market to see if I can get some use out of them. The way to rent your cards is to use the @PeakMonsters website, which has a card rental section when you are looking at individual cards in your collection. You have to agree to give them an additional access to your cards to allow you to begin leasing them. Additionally, SM has provided optional escrow accounts, which penalize either party from ending rental contracts prematurely.
DEC were added in an update a couple of months ago, sometime in April I believe. They are a crypto based on STEEM, created using Steem Engine, and used as Steem Monster's in-game currency. They make the gameplay and strategy of SM more fun and complex, and also increase the daily crypto payouts and long-term crypto investment of playing SM. You can earn DEC for free by simply winning ranked battles, and the amount you earn goes up 4x for every 2x of rating points. Also, if you're not already, start saving those gold cards! You get 10% DEC bonuses for each gold or alpha card in the battle and 5% for each win in a win streak.
I've noticed a lot of comments by people who are interested in delegating to @steemmonsters. The reason they are keen on donating their precious Steem Power is that SM announced that they would be awarding daily payouts of Dark Energy Crystals to SP delegators. If DEC were worthless, then no one would care. However, DEC adds a ton to the game! You can use DEC to buy new packs of cards and buy potions which increase your chances of receiving gold foil and legendary cards anytime you get a card from a quest, orb, or pack! In my opinion, you want to save up your DEC to buy potions first so that any new cards you receive can have up to double the chance of being gold foil or legendary, and of course, the ultimate is the gold foil legendary which are worth a ton and you would at least double your chances of getting one with the "brilliant" potions. Once you have your alchemy and legendary potions purchased, you can use your DEC to buy orbs knowing you have much better odds of receiving the best cards.
So now perhaps you see why folks want to delegate SP to receive their daily DEC payouts? I gave it a shot with a 50 SP to see what would happen. Low and behold I started getting separate daily payouts of Steem Engine DEC, which is like DEC halfway between STEEM and Steem Monsters: you can transfer your Steem Engine into DEC or STEEM or any other crypto on Steem Engine. Here are the juicy tidbits for you number crunchers. I seem to be getting around 11.5 DEC per day for a delegation of 50 SP. Not bad, eh?
One important point about DEC. You can also get DEC by burning your cards for a set amount based on the rarity. DON'T DO IT. Especially not legendarys(legendaries?) and golds! Legendaries sell for a lot more than their DEC value and golds can be used to increase your DEC capture rate! You get more DEC by selling the card on the market and then buying Steem Engine DEC. It is a good idea to go ahead and get signed up on Steem Engine and start utilizing that platform as well. So if you just wanna go straight from STEEM to DEC it looks like the cheapest way is also the easiest: using Steem Engine.
So, how to delegate to SM? Write a comment to @ tipu and request a delegation link for @steemmonsters. Leave a comment if you want me to show you how to do it. Well, I think that's everything I wanted to share about the rental market and Dark Energy Crystals for now. See you in the Arena!