I Journeyed Into the Splinterlands (And Survived)
Surviving the Splinterlands
If there’s one thing I’ve learned covering play-to-earn economies and blockchain gaming, it’s that before anything else the game should be fun. If the games aren’t fun to play, you’re never going to get traditional gamers to give blockchain gaming a chance. You can fool the average Joe with fancy graphics and exciting buzzwords, but you can’t fool me.
The reason I say all of this is because in my short time with the Splinterlands, I’ve become enthralled with the game. Splinterlands is a game that has been on my radar for the better part of a year, but I never took the leap and created an account. That all changed this past Tuesday, when I decided to finally cross the game off of my list and “walk the walk”, so to speak.
This is an account of my short time in the Splinterlands, as well as a brief overview of the game and a guide on how to get started yourself.
Introduction
At its core, Splinterlands is a trading card game. Build up a collection of cards, buy and sell your unwanted ones and use what you’ve collected to defeat your opponents. On top of that, it’s also an auto battler. For those unfamiliar with the genre, in an auto battler you have a pool of cards or characters which you play on your side of the board or field and your opponent does the same. Once units are set, the fight begins and subsequently ends a short time after. The gameplay in these games is found setting the lineup and theory-crafting, deciding what is the most optimal lineup to counter your opponent.
The speed of matches is one of the main draws of Splinterlands, matches rarely take more than two to three minutes from start to finish.There are three steps in the gameplay loop, let’s talk about them.
1. Rules of Engagement
Each battle in Splinterlands has a different set of rules. This includes fight conditions (example: you can’t play Legendary units), Mana Cap (the cost of your team, each unit has its own mana cost), and selectable Splinters (Splinters is another word for factions, of which there are six).
2. Set Your Team
First, we need to select a Summoner. The rules of any particular match can exclude certain Splinters, so keep that in mind. Don’t become too comfortable with one Splinter because chances are you’ll be thrown into a match where they are not selectable. Your Summoner will determine the level and type of units available for you in the match. In addition to your Summoner, you can select up to six units.
3. Battle
Steps one and two make up the gameplay of Splinterlands, this third step is all about watching the battle unfold and learning what you did or didn’t do correctly. What did your opponent do that you could have avoided, or was there a unit you could have summoned to counter their moves? It’s all a big learning experience and the matches are so short that losing doesn’t really mean anything, it’s inevitable. There would be no desire to keep playing if you won every match, failure is an invaluable lesson.
Those are the steps of Splinterlands gameplay, but by now I’m sure you’re looking to see some gameplay. Let’s walk through a match from start to finish.
Prepare for Battle
This is the Splinterlands battle screen. Towards the top you have the latest information on the current season (the current season has a little over one day remaining). To the right of that you have your current rank, where I am currently ranked Bronze II. Ranks begin at Novice and go all the way up to Champion. Next to the battle button you have your game mode selection (your options are ranked, challenge, how to play and practice).
Ranked is the most common, as its the only game mode where you can raise your personal rank to earn rewards. Next to that you have your active quest, which is a daily mission which when completed will reward you with a chest full of valuable rewards.
Note: Splinterlands is free-to-play, but the quest pass you need to purchase in order to participate in quests is $10. The quest pass also gives you access to every feature on the Splinterlands site. For the full experience, I would recommend purchasing the quest pass.
The bottom two-thirds of the screen is taken up by the Battle Log. This contains a record of your recently played matches, providing you with information on who your opponent was and the makeup of his lineup. Also found here are season leaderboards.
The Match Begins
This is where the match conditions are set. You can see your opponents last five Splinters that they have battled with, the rules of combat, Mana Cap and active elements. For this battle, Water, Earth and Dragon are the active elements.
Now it is time to select our Summoner. I have been playing good with the Earth element recently, so that’s where I’m focused.
With Prince Rennyn as my Summoner, I begin to choose my lineup. The one match condition here was that melee units could not be selected so my only options were ranged and magic units. I ended up using all of my Mana, bringing me right to 25. I find that it is advantageous to use as much of your Mana as possible. Having one or two unused Mana is fine, but the difference between a four or five-cost unit might be big enough to sway the outcome of the game.
This is the battle screen, all of our preparation has led to this. My Summoner and units on the bottom and my opponents on top. After hitting the Rumble button, the match plays out over a number of rounds and the victor is decided.
Unfortunately, this time I was not the victor. For losing this match I lost 20 rating points towards my next rank. Losing is not the end of the world, we can take lessons from each match and apply them to our next battle.
The Economy
I can’t talk about Splinterlands without talking about its economy. When we talk about play-to-earn, people are interested in hearing about the earning element. Splinterlands is made up of three different currencies.
- Credits
- Dark Energy Crystals
- Splintershards
Credits
Credits are used to purchase packs and potions, and can be purchased with PayPal ($10 minimum) or various cryptocurrencies ($1 minimum). Credits can also be found in daily quest rewards. $1 gets you 1,000 Credits and a pack costs 4,000 credits.
Dark Energy Crystals
Dark Energy Crystals are the primary resource in Splinterlands. These crystals can be obtained through gameplay by defeating your opponents in battle and opening chests. You can also swap a number of cryptocurrencies for DEC. I swapped HIVE to DEC using a tool on the Splinterlands website. I used BlockTrades to swap ETH to HIVE, and then I swapped my HIVE to DEC on the site. 1 DEC is currently equivalent to 0.002 HIVE. Dark Energy Crystals are used for purchasing cards, renting cards from other users and purchasing the potion that rewards you with extra Loot Chests.
Splintershards
Splintershards or SPS are the official governance token for Splinterlands. Owning SPS gives users the ability to influence changes within the world of Splinterlands. Think of it like this, when you buy a console or PC game that’s the end of the relationship between you and the developer. They will patch the game and push out updates, paying no mind to anything you have to say. By owning SPS and voting with other holders, you control the direction that the game takes. You can vote on the change that you want to see. Owning SPS also gives you access to special promotions and rewards.
How Do I Earn?
Coins, DEC and SPS are the backbone of the Splinterlands economy, but how do you actually earn any money? There are a couple of ways to go about this.
The first option is to purchase packs and resell the cards that you obtain. This is a complete gamble, but it certainly can be viable. You could go the no money spent route and grind out match after match, slowly earning DEC and Coins to purchase cards to flip on the marketplace or to purchase packs and hoping you get lucky. The option I believe is most viable however, is card rentals.
Card Ownership
When you first start playing Splinterlands, you don’t own any of the cards in your collection. These are cards provided to you by the game to use in battle, but can not be sold on the marketplace. Cards you purchase on the marketplace or obtain through packs are “real” cards and you can do as you please with them. These cards can be combined together to increase a cards power, converted to DEC, traded, sold, or rented.
In a traditional TCG you find yourself stuck with hundreds of cards with no value to you. You have the cards you keep coming back to and then a giant pile of cards that you don’t know what to do with. Splinterlands gives you the ability to rent those cards to earn DEC. Cards can be rented for anywhere from 1–180 days. This is a powerful asset for the user renting out the card, earning money for cards they’re not using but it’s also great for the person on the other end of the transaction. Cards in Splinterlands can be expensive, powerful legendaries easily costing upwards of $100. Those same legendary cards can be rented for a small amount of DEC every day.
Many of the cards I use are rented, and I will continue to rent until I am able to afford cards to purchase for myself and then I will become the one renting them out. It’s such a simple mechanic that makes the game approachable for so many more people. Gone are the days of spending $50–100 on a meta deck, instead spend less than $1 to rent some cards and rise the ranks.
I would recommend any Splinterlands players interested in renting to visit PeakMonsters. They have tools to help you make smarter purchasing decisions and rent your collection as efficiently as possible. If you’re unsure as to what price to list a card at, PeakMonsters has you covered.
Having Fun
As I said earlier, the most important thing when playing a game is the fun factor. My good friend Dr. Jeremy said it best in a recent tweet:
Why would we ever play games if they weren’t fun? A miserable experience that allows you to earn tokens while doing it…my friends that is called a job.
I expected to hate Splinterlands, having never played an auto battler and being unfamiliar with the genre. It has quickly become my favorite game that I have played in the past few months, and I have played more than 100 matches in the last two days. I may not be earning any money yet, but the tools are in place for me to do so. I am motivated to keep grinding, raise my rating, open some packs and begin renting cards.
Splinterlands is easy to pickup, hard to master, and a blast to play. This is the game that Web3 needs. Familiar enough for traditional gamers to understand and not be intimidated by, but with the ownership that only blockchain gaming can offer.
Get started with Splinterlands today
Join Us
One last thing before I go, SIDECHAIN has an active guild available to join. On the Splinterlands website navigate to the Guilds page and search ‘SIDECHAIN’ and you’ll find us. If you read this and I inspired you to start playing the game, come join us and let’s start explore the Metaverse together.
