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As I have now been playing Steem Monsters and Drug Wars for several months now, I have wanted to contribute something of ACTIONABLE value to my fellow players (and FUTURE players) - but NOT just fill my Steemit feed with daily images of quest reward - or battle - SPAM, (no offense to those doing so). Ultimately, Steemit is about ADDING VALUE to the social experience - that is the magic of blockchain technology. So, after some serious pondering, I decided that a weekly "Steem Monster + Drugs Wars player strategy diary" type series, with CONCISE and ACTIONABLE tips, would be of most value to my audience. Please let me know your thoughts (good and/or bad), and I hope that readers (now and into the future) will benefit from this series. If you gain a better understanding of blockchain, gaming, "blockchain gaming", marketing, and/or any other area of knowledge I end up exploring as this series naturally progresses, then I will have done my "good deed" (of providing value) for the week. Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield...
1 ) It turns out the SteemMonsters upvote service, whereby I deposit (currently) 2,000 DEC to get a nice, JUICY upvote of around $3.00 for each of my new SteemIt posts has provided the added advantage of saving me from the tedious task of posting each of my new Steemit posts in SteemChat. I can now spend just a few minutes in SteemChat sending the link to each new post to those generous select few Steemians who have consistently supported my efforts over the past two years. In addition, SteemChat tends to eat up a lot of RAM on my computer, and so having it upon in my browser for a minimum amount of time actually saves me additional troubles. So now I can pop in to SteemChat for five minutes after making each post, and save a lot of time and energy.
2 ) I stumbled upon the new Kryptogamers Blackjack ( https://kryptogamers.com/blackjack/?ref=transcript-junky ) (Steem-based) online gaming site through a post by @vlemon. As I play blackjack occasionally at : bitcoincashvideocasino.com I was happy to see that there is now a proper gambling (Blackjack specifically) dApp built on the SteemIt blockchain. It took me a good half-hour to figure out how to bet, how much to bet, and how to confirm each transaction via SteemKeychain. One thing that I disliked from the beginning was the need to click through SteemKeychain for each and every transaction (including each bet, AND each double-down, AND each split, etc.) This is quite a bit more tedious than the bitcoincashvideocasino.com system, where you simply make ONE deposit of BCH, then play, and then when you want to withdraw you do ONE withdrawal transaction (or even multiple smaller ones, at your discretion). I also don't like how every single transaction on Krytogamers adds an entry on your wallet, so that after playing a while day I ended up with like HUNDREDS of entries on my wallet page. The good news, however, if that on the first day I ended up winning 60 Steem, and then found a nice daily payout o ~ 52,000 GAMER tokens AND like ~ $3.00 of Good Gamer tokens in my SteemEngine wallet. I then played a second day of the game and was up like another 100 Steem, but then lost a bunch of it, and spent the whole damn day playing (and negllecting some other important daily tasks). And so since I know myself well enough, I DO NOT think it will be good to play KryptoGames Blackjack often, as there is the VERY REAL potential of losing (like any other casino), and I have worked hard to earn my Steem over time. But, it was a good opportunity to learn about this new game (as part of the grander research effort of this series), and I also decided to use all of the ~ 90 Steem I won over the two days to upgrade some key, regularly-used SteemMonsters cards I have been wanting to purchase. The most interesting thing is that although the main benefit of Kryptogames Casino is that you play directly for Steem, the downside is that - unlike DrugWars and SteemMonsters, there is the potential to LOSE - both $$ and (more importantly) TIME. This gives me greater appreciation for the "free to play" nature of SteemMonsters and DrugWars. Without that "dark cloud" of potential loss of Steem hanging over your head you can have a MUCH more enjoyable experience playing these new blockchain games. The main risk is taken out, and your main cost is simple TIME and EFFORT. But luckily, if you are good, those merit-based talents can earn you Steem and enjoyment in these games. This was a major revelation for me this week, since (as I stated from the first post of this series) one of the main goals is the exploration of blockchain gaming. So sometimes I may experiment with new games just to expand my understanding of the entire space. The last two days of playing Steem blackjack were fun, yet tedious, but in the end I earned 90 Steem and learned some valuable lessons.
3 ) It was my understanding that the DEC rewards for battles you win at higher levels (Gold, Diamond, Champion) increase progressively, so I wanted to take this week to set aside the time to TRY and reach the highest rank possible. I also did this because in past weeks I was only able to attain the Gold level, and so many of my cards and summoners were limited in their abilities. At the Diamond level there is no restriction, so that has been the goal I have set. However, the competitiveness at Gold 1 was formidable, in addition to the time I lost playing the blackjack game above, and I am finding it hard to get up to the Diamond level this season. I will try to figure out a more effective way to achieve this in the next season. However, the higher payout of DEC for battles at the higher levels will give me a jumpstart to be able to buy the "+5 reward card" potion before my first quest of the next season. I noticed that this season I needed to buy TWO of these "+5 reward card" potions so that I as able to get five extra reward cards for each quest I was able to complete for the season.
4 ) My new strategy (taken from @zainenn in his @drugwars video : https://steemit.com/gaming/@zainenn/8tk7467l31r ) of building a list of "high return" battle prey has started paying off. I am adding the top ones to my running .txt file list and then go through that list (sending one spy per each) daily. This helps maximize the number of high-return battles, enabling me to upgrade everything faster, and saves time in general. In addition, using this strategy turns the more TEDIOUS task of just going down the list of potential prey in a random manner into more of a "mining" activity, in that over time I am mining for the highest-return prey, and the longer I do this the higher the gains will be. I am also limiting my battling activity to around 10 battles (although I may try to go up to between 10 and 15). This number of active battles seems most manageable. Anything higher than this becomes confusing, as you have to monitor all of the battle info before executing battles, and the battle info page for each player minimizes everytime you leave the "targets" page.
5 ) I made some progress in the goal of "reading one #steemmonsters and one #drugs wars related Steemit posts daily", in that I have started creating a running list of key players of each game which post the most valuable information regularly. This will help insure that I have one post to read daily, as well as minimize time spent choosing and reading posts which are less valuable/informative. For example, "non-strategy" posts, like "reward card" posts, free giveaways, etc. I don't have the time to waste on those, as they don't provide information which can actually help improve my game play. This is important because time and energy are my most limited commodities these days, so I want to get the MAXIMUM results for the time I put into this effort.
I hope you find some/any of these tips useful in increasing your understanding and/or skill level in the Steem Monsters (Splinterland) and/or Drug Wars game(s). More JUICY tips to come with each weekly update, as I become more experienced and successful in the game.
See you on the battlefield...
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