Using Shards to Rise as a Star

Purchasing some Rising Star packs using Splintershards in order to do a special mission.

I have been playing Splinterlands since close to when it started. I didn't buy many packs and mostly relied on winning cards. Now, with how things are going, I probably regret not buying more packs. I haven't had a lot of Steem/Hive, as I only earned my crypto, instead of paying in to get some. However, it hasn't stopped me from taking some crypto from one source and buying other crypto. Not that any of those investments were awesome, but sometimes I made a good buy.

Splinterlands started offering Splintershards and I have been earning about 25+ shards each day due to the cards I have collected while playing. I staked over 2,000 shards and then decided that I would put most of the daily payout into the Hive-Engine and stake the small remaining amount. On top of getting the free shards, Splintershards have held a very good price and I was able to sell some at 1+ Hive.Swap. This quickly ramped up my Hive.Swap to over 100 and began burning a hole in my pocket.

It is getting close to Halloween and Rising Star has Special Mission for Halloween 2021 with a card called Scary Mary. The only way you can get Scary Mary, at the moment, is to purchase a deck and hope that you get the card. Currently, you can by 1 pack of 3 cards for 5 Hive , 12 packs for 50 Hive, or 24 packs for 100 Hive. You can also purchase 12 packs for 100,000 Starbits. In perspective, I can currently only earn about 2-3,000 Starbits a day. I also have to spend about 10-15,000 Starbits to earn 1 StarPro, in order to run the Festival mission to earn a wristband that later can be merged with other wristbands in order to make a new card.

Needless to say, it would be a long haul to earn 100,000 Starbits at my current level.

But, the current price of Starbits, allowed me to buy 100,000 Starbits for 34 Swap.Hive. A savings of 16 Hive (including not transferring out to my wallet, which has a small fee to it).

Card Purchasing Note

In order to purchase using Hive, the Hive needs to be in your Wallet.
In order to purchase with Starbits, the Starbits need to be in the Hive-Engine

I probably should have checked the Swap.Hive to Starbits price before withdrawing 60 Swap.Hive to Hive, but now I have 60 Hive in my Wallet for other usage.

So, without putting more Hive in to the game from my article earnings (which haven't been much lately), I have been able to purchase 12 packs for Rising Star. And, one of those packs did give me a Scary Mary, which will allow me to do the special mission. The special mission rewards you with another NFT card.

If you collect 10 of each of these, you can blend them to make them animated, without losing the Fan/Luck/Skill/IM for all 10. I don't think I will purchase 9 more 12 packs to try to get 9 more Scary Mary NFTs. And since each special mission takes 30 minutes and uses 65% energy without any Skill reward, I won't be doing too many of those.

Also, my Fan Base and Skill level has increased a lot! So, there is an added bonus to this spending spree. As for what I got, probably too many Brodies and no Legendary cards.