Splinterlands is a concept that I have only recently been exposed to (2 months), in-fact, it in itself is what brought me to hive and the wonderful communities within it. It was a cold dark stormy night as I browsed a reddit crypto channel and a user started talking about NFT's and gaming associated with them, he mentioned a few that really didn't pique my interest but then he talked about splinterlands. Now being an avid fan of the TGC format with MTG in my youth and small dabbles with more modern digital versions such as MTG Arena and Hearthstone hearing about a TGC on a block chain instantly opened up a new world and the myriad of possibilities came flooding in.
I pretty much took one look at splinterlands and bought the spell book, some credits to buy card packs and some land, not really knowing what I was doing and a way I went. I probably made the classic rookie mistakes with not researching the game mechanics and wasted a lot of resources and burning cards for DEC. I still had no idea about HIVE at this stage and was blindly fumbling through.
I joined an open guild and enjoyed the community aspect of being part of something, unfortunately the guild leader went awol so I decided to leave and start my own guild - Easy Company (yes the one from band of brothers) and we have grown into a great little community with active participation in the guilds discord channel. It is fulfilling to watch and be apart of a little community of newbies grow, help and share to become greater than we were individually.
Renting has been around for a while on 3rd party sites like peakmonsters but for me was a bit too complicated to see how it worked properly and then out of the blue market place 2.0 emerged to allow an in-game renting system that while not as robust as peakmonsters, was simple and clean, this allowed rapid climbs up the tier systems and access to the greater rewards these afforded and the rental costs were easily recouped. Traders were making more than ever and players were making real gains.
Then came the SPS airdrop. This was a concept that I was unfamiliar with but still very exciting to say in the least, receive governance tokens for most assets held in your account that can be sold or staked for more gains, this has lead to a massive increase in the user base which can only be a good thing for the game long term and the team so far has handled the games direction well and I can see no reason why they shouldn't continue to do so. You could feel the electric tension and excitement in the chat rooms as the buzz about what ifs and maybes were flung around and the possibilities of different strategies as to what was the best way to earn SPS. Finally it came, yesterday, the SPS token had arrived and the influx of new users must have been overwhelming for the devs, Aggroed was in channel for hours doing his best to answer every mundane question thrown at him, he has a stronger will than me as it would have worn me down lol. The nodes and servers were overwhelmed and technical issues ensured but quite remarkably were sorted without to much disruption to general play.
The prices for the in game resources are in flux as I speak but I have a feeling that once the excitement wears down the economy will settle once more but where it lands is anyone's guess as the bulls go all in and the bears hold strong.
If you have thought about trying splinterlands then I highly recommend giving it a go. You can sign up for free at https://splinterlands.com?ref=platypus-dundee and try it out (using this link will make me your referral, totally optional if you wish not to). You can't earn or receive rewards until you buy the spell book ($10US) but it will run you through an induction into the game and allow you to see if this is something you want to be involved in, you get a basic starter deck which is good enough to win in the starter leagues but like I mentioned before renting is a good way to start build your DEC to grow into the higher tiers.
See you on the battlefield!
- Platypus-Dundee
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