My Splinterlands Blog #42 – Back To The Farm & Renting 2.0

Welcome to another weekly update on my attempt to challenge the Splinterlands ranked leagues! Initially it was a self challenge, to see how far I could get with the initial set of cards plus whatever I could win. But, that kind of fell apart around week 30 (with the game integrating with the WAX network and users being able to buy and sell cards on Atomic Hub).

After long hours grinding for ranking in Bronze last season, I have once again returned to farming in the Silver I league (with my Bronze league level deck). It's a bit less stressful just doing the daily quests and some random games, and not having to worry too much about ranking. It has been a fairly quiet week up to this mid-point in the current ranked season, aside from the release of a new rental system in the game.

I'll go a bit more into my thoughts on that at the end. But, for now, here's my usual weekly breakdown:

Daily Quest Rewards:

Daily Quest # 301 - Win 5 with Snipe. I forgot how long it can take to grind from Bronze III back up to Silver I, especially on the first day of the season! I ended up calling it a day in Silver II, getting an 18th copy of the Neutral monster card, Sand Wurm, and 302 (291 + 11) Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) as my daily quest reward.

Daily Quest # 302 - Win 5 with Snipe. Due to a lack of time, I just did the daily quests in Silver II again. For completing this one, I got 9 DEC; a 24th copy of common Water monster card, Wave Runner; and a 15th copy of rare Water monster card, Kelp Initiate.

Daily Quest # 303 - Win 5 with Fire. Finally made it back into Silver I again. For completing this daily quest, I received 28 DEC; an 18th copy of the common Fire card, Flame Money; a 12th copy of the common Earth monster card, Nectar Queen; and a 22nd copy of the common Water card, Demented Shark.

Daily Quest # 304 - Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this daily quest, I got 31 DEC (8 + 23); a Gold potion; and a 15th copy of the common Death monster card, Undead Rex.

Daily Quest # 305 - Win 5 with Sneak. For finishing this daily quest, I received 5 DEC; a 19th copy of the common Neutral monster card, Sand Wurm; an 8th copy of the common Life monster card, Chain Spinner; and a 16th copy of the rare Water monster card, Kelp Initiate.

Daily Quest # 306 - Win 5 with Water. For completing this daily quest, I got a 20th copy of the common Death monster card, Nightmare, and 278 DEC (13 + 207 + 58).

Daily Quest # 307 - Win 5 with Death… re-rolled to Win 5 with Fire. For completing this daily quest, I received a Legendary potion, 277 DEC (263 + 14), and a 20th copy of Sand Wurm.

Daily Quest # 308 - Win 5 with Fire. For finishing this daily quest, I got 8 DEC, a Legendary potion, a Gold potion, and a 13th copy of Nectar Queen. I also had enough potions to open pack 15 out of the 50 I got many weeks ago.

This was a very nice pack, with 3 rare cards, one of them being a gold foil!

Tournaments:

Friday live Bronze League rules tournament: While Bronze is normally my forte, I got eliminated in the first round. I pretty much knew it was going to happen when I saw 12 manna and Life or Water only.

Saturday live Silver League rules tournament: I made it to round 3 before playing someone with actual Silver level cards. That was good enough to come in 30th place for 200 DEC.

Sunday Bronze Blunderbuss, no legendary cards, Untamed set only tournament: I went 7-3-1 on the first day, still making day two. I had pretty similar results that day, finishing 14-5-2 to come in 26th place for 200 DEC. I was matched up against a lot of people that I recognized, so no cakewalk through new players here.

Guild Brawls:

Guild Brawl #20, playing Gold foil Bronze, Untamed set only. I had three matches this time around, two of whom actually submitted decks. The guild overall came in 3rd, missing 2nd by 1 point. We also had one person that forgot to submit teams.

Vs Batow of Zoo

Vs GUEST1 of All For One - One For All (this is worth a watch in my opinion)

I was also paired up against MRCHURCHM of LVLUP SPARTANS, but he/she didn't submit a deck this time around.

The Rest:

The big news this week is the update to add a Rental system into the game. Previously, renting was only done through PeakMonsters, who has also rolled out an improved rental system in conjunction with this official update. Now you can rent cards inside the game for DEC, where the previous system was more complicated and required other cryptocurrencies.

The Land Sales and Other are both coming soon, but seem to be for players selling land or other in-game items, like Totems that will be used for farming on lands.

Right now cards are fairly cheap to rent, at least up to a point. Renting out a full set of cards can still add up quite a bit, and max level cards can have a decent daily fee. That being said, the fees are a tiny fraction of what most of these cards would cost to buy at the time of this writing. It does make it a lot easier to fill out a few missing cards cheaply, rather than having to buy them.

I was thinking of trying to do an experiment to see how cheaply I could run a rental account up to Diamond league. I've held off because of time constraints. I'll be going away for a wedding very soon, and may have quite limited online time for most of a weekend. Most of the less expensive high level cards will probably be picked up by the time I get back.

The DEC rewards also don't necessarily scale to such a degree where it would make sense to rent out a max level deck. Probably the optimal cost to profit would be around Silver league, since you can get into Silver I with a decent set of Bronze level cards. I believe this is also why so many bots are being run in that league.

The governance token airdrop is also supposed to start sometime this month. This has me holding onto my DEC, rather than picking up new cards for my deck, as DEC counts fairly heavily towards getting more tokens. The airdrop is also going to run for a year, so I may be playing my same deck for a while!

Land tokens may be redeemable for the actual land cards either this month or the next. It was originally supposed to be July, but they've said it might be pushed back slightly with all the other things happening right now. I've got the 13 tokens I picked up, mostly from WAX, and am interested to see what they end up being.

I'm not really planning on fighting over the Silver leaderboard, since there are several days where I may not be able to get online. I am debating trying to rent out some of my extra legendary cards, but haven't put anything up yet. Overall, I'm just trying to have a more relaxed season and farm up my daily rewards.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! And, if you have any comments, suggestions, or feedback please let me know in the comments below! I'll be back next week with the season wrap up!