Splinterlands Strategies: Keep Buyers, BEWARE!


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So you want a Keep. How can you not like one of these shiny pieces of old, decaying brickwork complete with green dripping mould that doubles as a tax collector?

I was lucky and was handed one as part of my FIFTY-EIGHT plots of Celestine, Tract 6, during the initial opening of the land cards. I knew I had a 58% chance of bagging one and was lucky, and more so because the other plots that I don't own are mostly worked by other players.


SwampKeep.PNG
...'a Keep in the middle of a Swamp for a snip at $950, but should you buy? read on'...

Meanwhile other players have not been so lucky but have the overwhelming desire to be a tax collector (of Grain, SPS and Research for now). I will be honest with you, owning a Keep in today's world is somewhat underwhelming and needs some work from the team.

Every 7 days, you spend 1000 Grain which is not a big deal if you have another bunch of grain-generating lands in the same tract, click 'Harvest' and then swear loudly if you don't get a Totem.

The last two times I have harvested, I got no Totem and that's down to my peon monsters that are poor, under-nourished and of a low social rank…. however…


HarvestTime.PNG
...'Harvest time, not likely at 2% full. Fat chance of a Totem'...

Let's get back to the subject matter and the whole point of this article. Keeps are going for $750 upwards, some at more ridiculous prices.

...'Keeps are equal, but some Keeps are more equal than others'... - George Orwell.

I will say to you, BEWARE if you want to buy a Keep as you might be buying a big nothing. Several of those ‘cheap’ Keeps are owned by Land Mavericks who bought whole Regions and are offloading some of their Keeps to pull back some cash.

Why is this bad you might say? Well, these Tract owners can't fill the land with monsters so they belong to the Maverick, and if you buy the Keep, it could be a redundant keep and at the mercy of said Maverick!


KeepsforSale.PNG
...'Wolf is selling a lot of Keeps, but no BOGOFF sale. Don't know what means, try Google'...

Staking monsters is an expensive business, and if you have several hundred plots not doing anything, due to the DEC staking requirements, then why not flog a few Keeps?

Yeah,.. at the expense of the poor buyer who now has a non-productive Keep.

I know several other players who have bought Keeps blindly, and some have fallen foul of this trick which is not an act of malice by the seller, but… 'simply business'.

with open(filename, 'w') as file:
    for deed_id in range(start_id, end_id + 1):
        url = f"https://vapi.splinterlands.com/land/deeds/{deed_id}"
        response = requests.get(url)

        deed_data = response.json().get('data', {})
        region_uid = deed_data.get('region_uid')
        player = deed_data.get('player')
        worksite_type = deed_data.get('worksite_type')
        listed = deed_data.get('listed')
        listing_price = deed_data.get('listing_price')
        in_use = deed_data.get('in_use')
        UIDData = deed_data.get('deed_uid')
        output_line = ""

Intrigued by this, I wrote a script to check a tract and get the production data from it in the form of Grain, SPS and Research per hour. While the data is not 100% accurate it will let you know if you are buying a 'dodgy' Keep.

@abh12345 recently purchased the cheapest Keep on the marketplace at just over $700, but did he get a good deal or does his Keep yield fuck all every 7 days?

AshersTract.PNG

I worked with him on this, so he knew before buying that it was not a 'dud'. Not mentioning any names, but another player I know quite well got somewhat robbed some time ago with a terrible Keep due to 85% of the plots being dormant and belonging to the previous seller.

@abh12345 has some big Grain farmers and should thank @orrkis for placing such prestigious high PP monsters within the tract, thus generating a nice wad of tax for him.

The overall data for this tract is as follows:

Region: Osburg Tract: 03
Uncleared Land: 24
Cleared, but Not Used: 5
Total, Idle Land: 29
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 14156.08542002
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 3.61318624
Research Per Hour for Tract: 25.823764500000003

'Uncleared Land' is as is appears, it's full of clutter, weeds, old rusty implements, worn tyres, stinking used underwear with 'skidders' and needs attention.

'Cleared, but Not Used' means a monster gang has cleared it, and then bailed to clear another plot. It's a common tactic and Splinterlands encourages this.

SlobsTract.PNG

I ran the same script against the Tract of which I am the Keep owner. It showed similar stats, being worse in Grain Production, but more yielding in both SPS and Research.

Region: Celestine Tract: 06
Uncleared Land: 10
Cleared, but Not Used: 14
Total, Idle Land: 24
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 8787.83844
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 4.0647946600000004
Research Per Hour for Tract: 38.359507900000004

Thank you @extraball for working so hard on your Reseach Hut and giving me a decent tax return. @lordfrost has some idle plots that are for sale, but at the prices listed I will wait until he gets a little more desperate.

It’s not ALL my Tract but I am the majority holder and while Research seems like vapourware, that’s my strongest generator.

Which one would you prefer? I would say @abh12345 has the edge.

Before I share the code so you can save yourself pain, let me show you what the cheapest Keeps on sale will net you.

CheapestKeeps.PNG

$728 is now the cheapest one, and what rings my alarm bells right away is one seller trying to offload THEE Keeps. Is that seller a Region owner, let's have a look.

As well as these Tracts, he wants to offload the Region Castle for Val De Lun; a warning signal.

CheapestKeep.PNG

One manual step you will need to perform if you want to use this script is figuring out the start and end plot numbers for a tract. I will end up adding all this data into the script eventually but for now, it’s something to work your brain.

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To get the data for Val De Lun, Tract 7, open the plot and check the URL.

See the number, 96807? That means the Keep is Plot 7 in this tract, but we need the range. In this case it's, 96801 – 96900. Not too tough to figure out unless you are a mindless moron.

Add it here in the script…

region = "Val De Lun"
tract = "07"
start_id = 96801
end_id = 96900

This Keep is not bad at all, mostly due to @vugtis running some of the Grain fields but otherwise is mostly unused.

Region: Val De Lun Tract: 07
Uncleared Land: 71
Cleared, but Not Used: 13
Total, Idle Land: 84
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 8384.16
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 4.4
Research Per Hour for Tract: 7.3149999999999995

What you need to look at is if there are any of the other Plots for sale. If @vugtis decides to pull his monsters, then you are clawing at next to no tax.

This post is getting overly long, but let me show you one last Keep, and one you should avoid. The $950 Briarwood, Tract 3. While Briarwood is a desirable region with leafy forests, and bounding squirrels jumping everywhere, this Keep should not be bought. Let me show you the data.

DigitalTract.PNG

Region: Briarwood Tract: 3
Uncleared Land: 99
Cleared, but Not Used: 1
Total, Idle Land: 100
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 0
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 0
Research Per Hour for Tract: 0

This is every buyer’s nightmare. All the plots are owned by someone else, and you have a crappy Keep that will generate nothing for you.

I don’t need to share the script in too much depth as there is a link at the bottom of this article, so you can grab it yourself, change some things (there is some redundant code in there), and get more attributes.

def fetch_yield_data(UID, region_UID, plot, total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield, worksite_type):
    url = f"https://vapi.splinterlands.com/land/stake/deeds/{UID}/assets"
    response = requests.get(url)

    data = response.json()
    monsters = data.get('data', {}).get('cards', [])
    total_production_per_hour = 0

    for monster in monsters:
        production_per_hour = float(monster.get('work_per_hour', 0))
        total_production_per_hour += production_per_hour

    if worksite_type == "Grain Farm":
        print(bcolors.GREEN + f" {region_UID}-{plot} (GRAIN - Combined Production Per Hour: {total_production_per_hour})" + bcolors.END)
        total_grain_yield += total_production_per_hour
    elif worksite_type == "Shard Mine":
        print(bcolors.RED + f" {region_UID}-{plot} (SHARD MINE - Combined SPS Per Hour: {total_production_per_hour})" + bcolors.END)
        total_shard_yield += total_production_per_hour
    elif worksite_type == "Research Hut":
        print(bcolors.CYAN + f" {region_UID}-{plot} (RESEARCH - Combined Research Per Hour: {total_production_per_hour})" + bcolors.END)
        total_research_yield += total_production_per_hour

    return total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield

This will need to be modified once 'Wood', 'Stone' and 'Ore' become commodities, but even a non-coder can see what needs to be done…., or maybe not.

Python can be a little cryptic at times, calling a function and getting back many results can give you a line like this.

total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield = fetch_yield_data(UIDData, region_uid, plot, total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield, worksite_type)

I find the ability to send back more than one result from a function refreshing after working with other languages that only allow one and force me to send back an array.

I would love the @peak-monsters guys to pick up on this, adapt it to Javascript and add this functionality to PeakMonsters. It's not that tough, needs some tweaking but easy for a wizard such as @asgarth.

You can download this script from my GitHub Repository here.

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I really hope that someone wanting to spunk that amount of money on a keep does their research and uses this so they can avoid that nightmare generating nothing scenario!

Yes, they are so shiny and glittering, one can turn into Gollum and be tempted so easily...

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They know their audience well!

Seems like it isn't worth money at all. I am glad I didn't get any then! I doubt they will turn things around either.

The depends if you get a duff Keep, I am quite happy with mine, but Keep-holders should next expect excitement as it's far from that. As you know, I am buying plots, don't follow the masses.

I don't have that kind of money, so it doesn't really matter anyway. I'd probably end up with a crap one anyway. That's just about how it goes.

I know you can run Python scripts, so that won't happen now 😀

Python snippets I can learn from = ✅
Cool stuff I didn't know about Splinterlands = ✅
Quote from a great book (Animal Farm) = ✅
Something shiny to look at even if I will never have it (a Keep 😂) = ✅

A great post, indeed! I had no idea a Keep was worth as much as the taxes generated by other lands in the same area... luckily I never buyed one, otherwise I already know I would have gotten the worst deal possible 😂

I took me a while to find the API call for Land as it's not the same as the general assets call. Once discovered it wasn't to hard to drum this up and nobody else seems to have done anything like it.

Once that data started flooding down the screen, it was like.. cool! You need to be a coder to understand.

It would be cool to see a feature like this added to Peakmonsters or another similar site; in general, it would be cool, imho, to have somewhere a section for custom features like the one you coded here, and others other coders may come up with. Often through API calls can be made a lot of interesting stuff that a regular users might not even ever know...

I love my keep only issue is I'm the one that owns all the land lol I guess that makes me a control freak. There can be some good deals out there still compared to the prices that these plots used to be at one time. It's a long game for sure and hopefully we see at least wood come out for buildings. That should really inject value at first for swap fees on grain, wood etc Would be awesome to see this added to peakmonsters but there's also other little known projects that some cool features to manage Splinterlands assets and get a snapshot of what's going with your lands.

I love my keep only issue is I'm the one that owns all the land lol I guess that makes me a control freak.

That's the best position to be in!, owning the other plots in the same Tract. I have some others scattered around, but would gladly trade them off for others in this one.

A couple of Epics were for sale recently but got snapped up quickly by another player. They are being worked so I can't complain, they are giving me tax.

True I am In full control. It of course is always nice to profit off of others efforts lol but from the looks of it the amount of plots that are active and luck you'd have with a keep with active plots you don't know seems kind of low.

The staking requirement are too high! 50k DEC for a set of Chaos Legion Max cards.., that's a large outlay so it doesn't surprise me. This why I have been picking up Beta's, with that 5x modifier.

Yep I'm struggling with the 50k DEC per plot it ends up being millions of DEC I need to get everything online not including the cards. Beta cards are og for sure!

Your posts are always so hard for me to vote but this is pure gold! :)

So hard..., all you need to do is click! ... but thanks for the comment, I saw something that nobody had visited so filled the gap,

Yeah ofcourse; if I vote you that is cabal activity for author's guild! Didn't you know that?! :)

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😀😀

Never believe in coincidences Slobberchops! Everything is deliberate

In short, a lord with no serfs is no lord at all!

Exactly, that digital dude needs to put up half of the plots on his tract for sale... and then it will be worth considering.

That being said, an alternate use case would be for the title bonus. If you thought you could recoup the money over time battling.

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serfs them well

Excellent work sir!

Thanks for your help, I think!

I think! - LOLS! 😀

Break even in 10 years :)

We are long term investors!

That's the theory, I might even be still alive!

I'm really happy with my keep. I like that it will bring all types of resources. Probably more useful further down the line when the new resources are released

If you tell me what Region and Tract yours is, I will run this for you and send you your data. Not everyone is geeky enough to be able to run Python.

...'Keeps are equal, but some Keeps are more equal than others'... - George Orwell.

that was funny lol

I don't want you all falling asleep, this post is already too long.. and susceptible to TLDR..

Not at all, you write in a way that captures the reader's attention. I would like to learn how to do that too.

I can't explain where it comes from, it's just me and my style 😀

Excellent.

Wow, this is the type of information that a lot of players don't have but need. It's very nice of you to make it public; I can see how people can take advantage of it if only a few people know.

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Amazing report on this strategy
I have no such a land characteristic to imagine or implement these tips.
Thank you for sharing
Peace

You're welcome.

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sounds quite complicated

Land is complicated and seriously underdeveloped, but you will know that already. This is more of a technical post, as you would need to be able to run a Python interpreter to run the code.

It could be hosted on a website with a fancy front end with drop down boxes to select the Region/Tract but the @peakmonsters guys could do it better than me.

haven't looked at spl lands deeply, but yea tools to make it easier to understand would probably help regular users and to potentially avoid what u mentioned of buyers getting rekt paying for "bad" lands.

Have had some ideas for holo land plots but it's still quite far into the future if our team stays the size it is currently, just wanna make sure it'd be as simple as possible.


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Huh, I got mine allright, with castle and keep in the same region, but I must to admit that while I own most of the lands, I do have 18 magic with only 1 monster. I got all the grain ones full with 5, for the simple reason that I can now sell the grain for DEC.

As Castle as well as a Keep, very cool.., you have it made then. 2 Tracts is probably enough to keep you going.

Yeah, I was lucky, bought a tracts and won another on the raffle. But then, I bought an enormous number of raffle tickets when they were cheap.

Thanks for sharing! - @azircon

It's crucial info that everyone should be aware off! Reblogged.

I should have followed your posts earlier. This content was amazing, even though I don't plan on buying a Keep anytime soon. We are in a downturn, at the very least I would buy a good Land.

nice one @slobberchops - I still sit on around 80+ plots and recently gave away my KEEP to a good friend who can benefit more from it as me. Is Land still on the agenda of the NGs (given most OGs been driven out already :-)?