Splinterlands - Fast pace trading card game for everyone

Gameplay

Splinterlands is a lightning-fast card battle where you will fight your opponent’s using a vast sets of card monsters and summoners with different kinds of abilities and stats. The game will play out automatically starting with a random mana cap, and ruleset on every battle. The only thing that you can control here is the drafting phase which makes the game easy to play but hard to master since you will be drafting your lineup based on the mana cap, mixed ruleset, opponent’s previous battles and available splinter for the specific match. The game is very competitive especially thru anticipation and crazy strategies that you can build on a specific deck and ruleset. That alone is what makes the game different from the other card games that we know.

For the recap of my previous post, the game will start once you’ve clicked the “Battle” and you will be then matched up with an opponent with the same ratings as yours. In every match, you will be given a randomly chosen set of battle parameters (Mana cap, Ruleset, Splinters available). You will both then have at least 2–3 minutes to create a team of cards, consisting of one summoner card and between one and six monster cards based on the given battle parameters.

Once each player has chosen their team, the battle will begin and will play out automatically based on the predefined game rules, and the first team to destroy all of the monsters on the opposing team will be the winner.

What should we first understand in the game?

• Rulesets

• Abilities

• Positioning

• Mana cap

• Card LVL/BCX

Take note: I can only give some specific Rulesets and Abilities as it will take us a lot of time to cover it all.

Since we’ve already tackled the card basics and stats as per my previous post, now we need to understand the abilities, rulesets, positioning and mana cap.

Rulesets

At every match found, this will be the first thing you need to know as this can help you turn the tides in your favor. Take note that as you climb a higher league, the rulesets in every match will increase(Maximum of 2) so knowing what cards to use in a specific ruleset will give you a higher probability of winning. I will give you examples for some of the rulesets below.

Healed Out - Since any type of heal wont work here, a good cards to pick here are monsters with Scavenge and Life leech ability. By using scavenge monsters, you get +1 HP for every monsters that died in the field. Life leech on the other hand will give your monster a health increase each time it damages an enemy monster’s health in proportion to the damage dealt.

Holy Protection - Cards that have a Blast ability is very useful here since the divine shield will negate the first damage that they received. By using blast, every attack you deal with your opponents will deal adjacent damage to their sides making the opponents lose the divine ability easily.

Lost Magic - There will be only 2 kinds of damage here. Either melee or range. So using cards that provide Protect and Repair is a must here making your line up impenetrable. Other notable ability to use is Taunt, Thorns and Return Fire.

Noxious Fumes - A very useful card here is monsters/summoners with Cleanse ability as this can remove any type of debuffs(take note that the cleanse ability only removes the debuffs in the front card). Tank Heal and Triage ability is also perfect here since this will be a battle of survivability. For counter heals, go Affliction.

Weak Magic - Cards with higher defense are good here since the magic will not penetrate thru the monsters HP. Protect, Repair, Taunt, and Tank heal ability is also very good here.

Armored Up - Since you’ve given +2 armor for every monster, Repair ability is a best pick here. But other crafty players would go straight magic damage cards so they will be ignoring your armor. Just make sure you add tank cards with Void or Reflect ability so you can at least sustain magic damage. Rust can be useful here as well.

Earthquake - Normally, players will go straight pick cards with Flying ability to avoid the earthquake damage. But what I do here most of the time is pick a summoner with Flying ability(Brighton Bloom is the name of the summoner) so that all my monsters would get the flying effect then I would get monsters with Ensnare ability which removes their flying effect upon hit making them vulnerable to earthquake damage. Dragon splinter is also a very good choice here since most of the dragon cards have a flying ability. Notable abilities including Protect for armor and Shield to reduce the damage of the earthquake to 1.

If you wanna check out all of the rulesets. Kindly click here.

Abilities

Using the right abilities and cards will help you increase your chance of winning especially in tournaments and higher league. Knowing each effects will ensure our deeper understanding of the game mechanics. Let’s try and learn some of them.

As you can see from the table above, some of the skills are worth using in every match. You can also experiment on team composition and create something that makes your lineup almost impossible to beat. Here is an example of a known combo.

Front card would be the Shieldbearer with Taunt, Shield, and Return ability that makes the enemy focus the damage on this card which we want cause we have 2 healer at the backline(Truthspeaker which gives +2 armor to all cards and can debuff our frontline with Cleanse and Angel of Light) followed by High Priest Darius that will be our magic damage AOE since he as a Blast ability. Next would be Bila the Radiant. We pick this card since Bila can gain HP whenever she attacks making her like a second tank DPS if incase the opponent successfully breaks our frontline. Our range support would be the Lone Boatman. He can repair the shield of our main tank while hitting the enemies backline as well since he have a Snipe ability which is a good DPS for me.

Lastly, our summoner Chanseus the Great with repair and Triage ability which is very helpful for our tank and backline since he can repair and heal backline if in case the opponent have blast ability.

If you notice you can see 3 cards there with a Resurrection ability. That will be our trump card for the setup. Imagine, killing Shield bearer is already hard since the guy can take a beating then suddenly would be resurrected for three times?! Pretty sure your opponent would be scratching his/her head after that.

However, the downside of the combo is if the opponent goes for magic damage setup which will tear down our build. So make sure you always check the ruleset if there is “Lost Magic” or “Weak Magic” before going for this kind of setup.

You can also check out all the ability effects here.

Positioning and Mana cap

Now this one is gonna be a tricky part. Right positioning and mana cap utilization is critical in every battles. Let’s understand first how the battlefield work.

What have we learned in the image above?

• Range monsters cannot attack if the card is in the front unless there is a ruleset (Close Range) which makes them allow to do so.

• Melee monsters cannot attack from the backrow unless the card have a Sneak, Opportunity ability or the ruleset gives them (Melee Mayhem, Super Sneak, and Equal Opportunity)

• Melee monsters can attack in second position if the card has Reach ability

• Always check the ruleset first before setting up your team. This can help you visualize what cards and abilities to be used in the specific match.

Now lets go to mana cap. There will be times that the mana cap is very low and if that happens, you should be prioritizing low mana monster cards and summoners so you can maximize the space of the battlefield and the attack instances of your build. You don’t wanna pick a high mana monster in a low mana cap matches unless it favors the ruleset (see below).

Lets check the ruleset first:

Super Sneak (which gives all monsters a sneak ability) and Spreading Fury (gain rage upon taking damage which gives bonus attack and speed)

Mana cap: 12

As you can see, Player 1 have 5 low mana cards in place in the battlefield while Player 2 only have 3 since he/she used one high mana cap monster in the front which leads to wasted mana. Player 1 got 5 cards that can attack in every turn. Since there is a Super Sneak rule, all of melee cards can attack at the back of the opponents card which gives Player 1 the upper hand since he/she have 3 melee cards sitting at the back and ready to attack while Player 2 only have 1 at the backline who can attack which is the Furious Chicken.

Tip: Always check your opponent’s previous game as this will give you an idea of what setups are he/she doing the most. Remember the game requires good skills, anticipation, and understanding of the game mechanics and ruleset.

Card LVL and Collection Power

As you climb higher league, the level limits of the cards are going up as well. So make sure your cards are at their limit on a specific league before going on the next. You don’t wanna climb asap while your card levels are low and get a blustering defeat as this will reduce your ECR (Energy Capture Rate which we will discuss in Tokenomics).

To climb the ranks in Splinterlands, there are two things needed:

• Rating

• Collection Power

Collection power is a bit more complicated so let’s dive into it first.

What is Power?

The Power of your deck is the collection power of all of your playable cards (excluding the starter deck). This includes the cards that are delegated or rented to you and your owned cards (Excluded are the cards you have delegated or rented out to a different player).

Where to check for the Collection Power of a card?

The Collection Power of a card is it’s burn value in DEC.

Each card in Splinterlands has a DEC burn value. This is the amount of DEC you would receive if you destroy the card. If you check your owned cards, you can see the burn value in the DEC column.

Tip: The card prices tend to increase over time and as they can be rented out as well so I would discourage anyone from burning those cards.

How to estimate a cards value according to their visuals

All cards have Editions, Foils and Rarity.

• Edition - Splinterlands releases card packs in phases. Each phase has a set amount of packs. There were 4 editions sold till now: Alpha, Beta, Dice, Untamed and Chaos Legion. With each of these editions (except Alpha) additional reward cards where introduced, which could be won in daily and season end loot chests. You can identify which card belongs to which edition according to their card border style.

• Foil - When winning a card it can be regular foil or gold foil. Gold foil cards have a golden yellow border, so they are easy to spot. These cards are more valuable, start on a higher level, need less cards to get combined and are rare. They give also more Collection power and add a 10% bonus DEC if used in a ranked match you won.

• Rarity - The rarity of the card defines how many of them will be in the total supply. You can find them in this order from lowest to highest amount: Legendary (Gold), Epic(Purple), Rare(Blue) and Common(Gray). When you look at a card, you can see a little circle in the middle of the card below the cards picture. This shows the card type (symbol in the middle) and the card rarity (color of the circle).

Rating

To earn rating is fairly simple. After each won fight you get rating points and after a loss you lose rating points.

For every league there is a limit of the level of the card that you can use. As you can see on the image above, bronze league has a low level limit per card rarity while silver league got higher. Now let’s jump in to the cards.

For us to level up our cards, we need to combine the same cards. As the level goes up, you can see your card gaining an increase stats and new abilities which will be more powerful as you go into higher league.

Tip: A max level card receives an additional 5% of Collection Power.

Tokenomics

There are 3 types of currencies within the game:

• Dark Energy Crystal(DEC)

• Splintershards(SPS)

• Credits

Dark Energy Crystal(DEC)

This is the official in-game currency. You can earn them thru winning battles, finishing daily quest, season end rewards, selling/renting/burning out your cards, and joining tournaments. You can also buy from the market.

Energy Capture Rate

By doing battles, you will notice your Energy Capture Rate(ECR) percent is going down as this limits how much DEC each player earns from each Ranked match win. Every Ranked battle played reduces your ECR and it regenerates overtime. At 50% ECR you will earn half of the DEC for a win as you would if your ECR were at 100%.

What are the factors that affect DEC earned per battle:

• Win Streak is one of the factors. Winning consecutively will give you a boost of DEC reward bonus.

• Every Gold foil cards you use in the match will give you 10% bonus in DEC per win so collecting those cards is very nice but it comes with a higher price than a regular foil cards.

• Alpha/Promo cards is counted also. Alpha is the first card edition that the game release so if you plan to get one, you can check in the marketplace. As for the Promo cards, you can get those cards thru airdrop by buying packs in the presale, market or in the general sale.

• Guild also affects DEC reward bonus so joining one would be beneficial.

• As you climb higher league, DEC earned per battle increases. The equation used to calculate DEC earnings is exponentially proportional to Rating. If you have a low rating you will get much less DEC per battle.

• The game has a DEC Reward Pool which replenished every start of the season so if you grind at the start of the season you will noticed that your DEC earned is big since the reward pool has just finished replenishing. As the day goes by, reward pool is getting depleted making the DEC earned per battle less. Monitoring the reward pool is a must as this will tell you if you can earn or lose more from your rentals. The link for checking the reward pool is.

When the Reward Pool is Reduced When the value of DEC drops below the intended value of 1000 DEC = $1, the reward pool is automatically reduced. The amount of reduction is proportional to the amount that DEC has deviated from its intended value.

When the Reward Pool is increased When the value of DEC rises above the intended value of 1000 DEC = $1, the reward pool is automatically increased. The amount of the increase is proportional to the amount DEC has deviated from its intended value

For example, if the current value of DEC is 2x (500 DEC = $1), then the reward pool is doubled and 2 million DEC can be earned by players daily

In this way, the minted DEC won’t get flooded in the market and balance out the circulation from its intended value.

Splintershards(SPS)

Splintershards is the official governance token for Splinterlands. The purpose of the token is to empower players to participate in the evolution of the game. Overtime, it will become possible for SPS owners to influence the direction of the game in a wide variety of ways. From creating proposals to voting on gameplay options to reviewing new third party applications that support the ecosystem, SPS gives you a voice to help shape the future of the game.

As a game enthusiast, having those kind of privilege is very crucial to the growth of the game as players will have a share of rights to decide on how the game will innovate. Not only that, but there are a lot of benefits just by staking and holding them.

What are the benefits of SPS?

• SPS owners will gain access to special promotions, receive extra rewards from promotions, and many more.

• In the future, most of the upcoming updates will require the SPS tokens to be staked.

• You can get voucher tokens that are used to buy card packs just by staking your SPS. The amount of vouchers you will receive will be determined by your percentage of staked SPS compare to the total amount of staked SPS in existence.

What are vouchers?

These vouchers are used to purchase packs in presale and in general sale and vouchers are also required to get those bonus packs if you buy in bulk. In addition to, they announced that vouchers will be used in buying shop items and other packs that has not yet been released.

Here’s a list of things that will reward SPS or use SPS to function when released.

1. Land expansion - It is expected that, once fully developed and released, this will help propel the entire product to a new level in terms of nearly every metric including player growth, retention, and spend, and should also drive significant value to the SPS token which will be tightly integrated into all aspects of the expansion. Also, land is still being developed, but sps will definitely be needed if you want to be a landowner of the game.

2. Tournament Prizes - The SPS tokens in the Tournament Prizes inflation pool will be allocated to Splinterlands-sponsored tournaments as prizes. Tournaments will begin to have SPS as an entry requirement. This means that in addition to providing access to offers, promotions, and other bonuses, staking SPS tokens will also allow players to compete for larger tournament prize pools.

3. Guild Brawls - Each guild that participates in brawls will earn a portion of the Guild Brawls SPS inflation pool. The amount of SPS earned by each guild may also be affected by various items that the guild may purchase from the guild shop. Certain items in guild shop will increase SPS earned by the guild in each brawl.

4. Special Promotions - Nearly every offer and promotion offered by Splinterlands going forward will either require certain amounts of SPS tokens to be staked in order to participate, or provide significant bonuses to players who have SPS tokens staked.

5. Airdrops - Promotions such as airdrops may provide increased chances of receiving airdropped cards and/or gold foil versions of the card based on the number of SPS tokens the player has staked in their account”

How to earn SPS?

These are the ways to earn SPS:

• First is through staking in the game account. By staking your SPS, you will get additional SPS based on the APR for around 365 days(Currently at 162).

• Holding your assets. As you can see on “My Airdrop Points”, all of those are included in the airdrop calculation so even if you’re not hardcore gamer you can still earn passive income here how cool is that?

• Tournament Prizes and Liquidity Pools

• You can buy in the market (Hive-engine, or TribalDEX).

• Ranked Battles (Not yet implemented) Staking Staked SPS tokens can (but are not required to) be staked on a particular player which will allow both the SPS holder and the player to earn rewards based on the player’s performance.

• Oracle Rewards (Not yet implemented)

The maximum total supply of SPS tokens will not exceed 3,000,000,000 and will be fully released after 65 months. After all SPS have been distributed, no more SPS will be minted which will make the SPS scarce and increase in value overtime.

SPS will become an absolutely vital part of the Splinterlands community as this has a lot of function in the near future. Also, I believe the team will do their best to preserve it’s worth and encourage long term holding, rather than short term gains.

Credits

This may be used to purchase items in the shop or marketplace. You may buy Credits with PayPal or various forms of cryptocurrency. You can also obtain some credits just by referring new players. Take note that they need to purchase Summoner Spellbook or Card Packs first before you can get the 5% rebate from your referrals purchase. In addition to, credits cannot be transfer from other accounts. It’s only sole purpose is to be spent it in the game.

You can also use credits for buying/renting cards.

Tip: You can create 2nd account and affiliate it with your main so every time you purchase packs within the game, you get 5% rebate via credits to your main account. Just make sure the one who will bought the packs is the 2nd account and just transfer the packs to your main.

Strategy

On this part, I will explain to you the strategy that I personally do. Let’s start with discussing our strategy on how to earn in the game.

Renting Strategy

One of the best and cheapest way to climb higher leagues and earn DEC is via renting those cards. Below is the pros and cons of renting:

Pros

• Moving into higher league and earn more DEC per battle as you increase your rating.

• Get daily quest chest(more chest in higher league)

• Experience battling in a high league match.

• You can sit on Leaderboards which gives bonus DEC reward upon end of season

• End of season rewards

Cons

• You can end up at a loss especially when the DEC reward pool is low.

• The higher the league, the higher the rental cost

Going to higher leagues nets you more DEC per win, more loot chests from daily quests, and more end-of-season rewards. Recently, they have changed the formula for DEC payouts to be even more favorable to higher rated players, and nerfed the rewards to bronze players. Clearly, we want to be playing at a higher level.

Next, let’s determine which league do you want to grind at. This will depend on your current rating and ability. I recommend a minimum of Silver 3–1 so you can gain experience playing in the specific league.

If you can play at Gold 1 but are starting the play session from a rating of 900(Bronze 1) due to the season reset, it’s highly unlikely that you will be able to reach gold in a single sitting. Plan accordingly. You can start renting from silver league then hit it to silver 1 then let your ECR rest to 100% before you jump in to Gold league.

After you’ve decided if which league you wanna grind at. You need to pick at least 2 Splinters and some Neutral cards to rent.

Rent the essential cards that you will be using most of the time. We’re only going to rent those so we can maximize our rental cost. You can’t rent full Splinters and expect to earn as it will just eat your gains directly to our rental cost which is not cost efficient.

Now the rented cards should only last for 1 day and not more than that. You can try renting in Peakmonsters so you can rent faster than the in game market.

Next would be checking your collection power if it hits the specific league that you want to grind to. Also note that your rented cards will also give you collection power so you can be able to climb higher league. If incase the collection power is not enough in the specific league that you want to go to simply rent a gold foil legendaries in the market as this will give you enough collection power to hit the power requirements of the league that you want.

Note that the specific card that you select is not that important. This point of getting the card is mainly to get you to the minimum CP requirement for the league you want to grind at. That will be consider a bonus If it has use for your deck.

Lastly, we need to match the splinters that we will be using on the quest(Example, the quest is Fire Splinter then we need to rent the specific splinter)

Doing this over and over will guarantee you a decent to awesome gains and slowly buying your own cards so you won’t be renting anymore.

Tip: Daily quest can stack by 2, so you can rent for one day and finished two quest at the same time which helps you to increase you probability to earn more. Once the 1st quest starts, the timer for 2nd quest will begin as well. Don’t click the “new quest” as this will reset your stacked quest.

Tip2: Every last day of season, rental prices are going sky rocket due to the end of season reward. If you think the rental cost won’t give you a good return for the chest rewards, then might as well not rent for collection power. Either rent earlier or wait for the rental price to die down. Always manage your expectations.

Summary of how we can earn in this game

1. Earn Dec thru battle.

2. Rent out or Sell your cards.

3. Hold your assets for SPS airdrop.

4. Staking your SPS and earn more SPS and vouchers

5. Sell/Use your vouchers

6. Card flipping

7. Daily quest chest rewards

8. End of Season rewards

9. Leaderboard

10. Daily Tournaments

11. Liquidity Pools

And as soon as they finished developing the land, Boss fight, and the fully function of the SPS, I'm sure that they will provide another variety of earnings and rewards incorporated with the updates.

Bonus

Other ways to earn in the game:

• Splintertalk - Just by creating content in either Peakd or Splintertalk, you can earn SPT tokens which you can exchange for Hive, DEC, or SPS.

• NFT Marketplace - You can buy and sell NFTs in their marketplace in exchange for SPT. Also, apply for a whitelist in the Splintertalk and you can mint your NFTs there and sell for SPT.

• Splinterlands Art Contest - Do you have a talent for designing or any creatives? If so, this is your time to shine as the Splinterlands team give card packs weekly for people who can win the weekly art contest.

• Community giveaways - Giving back to community is one of the noble thing to do. And a lot of players are doing it in the game. Just join the Splinterlands discord channel and under #sl-giveaways post there’s always new people posting there giving free stuffs. As a new player, you might wanna check that out everyday to get some.

• Affiliate Program - You can earn just by simply referring players to join the game. Just send them your affiliate program link and as soon as they purchase a Spellbook($10) or any packs available in the in-game market, you’ll get 5% of the purchase cost. Imagine if you have a friend you invited with your link and they purchase a lot of packs, you get yourself some free stuffs.

Useful links and tools for the game:

1. https://www.splintercards.com/Splinterlands

2. https://peakmonsters.com/

3. https://monstermarket.io/

4. https://www.cardauctionz.com/

5. https://www.baronstoolbox.com/

6. https://kiokizz.github.io/Splinterlands/rewardCards.html