There is a lot of talk about the land expansion and excitement around it so I decided to create a summarization of what was foreshadowed till now in this miniseries. This is going to be a bottom to the top run through, where we start with items, move to buildings, lands and regions.
As I finished my series I update this post with the links on all the articles on land I wrote(including this one):
- What do we Know about Items and Spells
- How Could It Work - Items and Spells A Few Thoughts About The Expansion
- What do we Know about Buildings - Splinterlands Land Expansion
- What Do We Know About Plots, Tracts and Regions? - Splinterlands Land Expansion
Let's start with, what most of us are interested in:
Overview:
- How will battles evolve with Items and Spells?
- How to get Items and Spells?
- FAQ
How will battles evolve with Items and Spells?
Game flow changes
- Selection of Summoner & Creatures
- Reveal battlefield with selected summoners and creatures of each side
- Applying Items & Spells
- Fight
There will be two separate mana pools for each fight.
Mana pools
- Mana for Summoner & Creature selection
- Mana for Items & Spells
Known properties of Items and Spells
- Every deck will have a starter set of Items & Spells
- Item & Spell cards can be combined and are upgradeable
- Items & Spells may degrade. DEC can be used to maintain the condition.
- Items & Spells have a limited duration on the battlefield. Items have Durability and Spells have Duration.
I believe Items will be "used" by creatures, when they attack or defend and Spells will be active for a set amount of rounds.
How to get Items & Spells?
Craft or Buy
Craft Items and Spells
To craft items and spells you will need to have:
- Resources
- Access to specific buildings
- Time/DEC
- Luck
Resources
Magical Resources
- These can be mined on Magical lands.
Essences / Shards (name is not set)
- Received from in-game actions like ranked matches, boss fights, guild wars, player versus environment fights. Available also in daily and season end loot chests. Due to this crafting can also benefit casual players who are not interested in crafting.
- Essences / Shards will have different qualities based on rarity levels and foils (as creature cards have as well).
- Older edition summoner and creature cards might increase the chance of receiving Essences / Shards.
Buildings
When you have the resources you need to use a crafting building.
For this you have 2 options:
- Own the building - Own a land plot with the necessary building.
- Rent the building - Rental market will be designed by Splinterlands, where building owners can rent out their buildings to crafters for a fee.
Buildings will have different types and levels. I will describe this in a future post.
Time
The crafting of each Item & Spell will take a set amount of time. This will be defined by multiple factors, like:
- Crafting materials
- Building type and level
- Creatures working in the building
- Bonuses from Totems assigned to the building
- other...
DEC can be used to shorten the crafting time.
Luck
It won't be possible to select which Item or Spell to mint!
Possible outcomes of the crafting will be determined similarly as time above.
- Crafting materials
- Building type and level
- Creatures working in the building
- Bonuses from Totems assigned to the building
- other...
Buy Items and Spells
The Splinterlands marketplace will be upgraded to:
- sell Items & Spells
- sell resources
- sell essences / shards
- rent buildings on lands
FAQ:
Where there any examples shown on Items & Spells?
- No.
Will there be spells & items offered for sale by Splinterlands?
- No, only spells and items minted in the land expansion will be sold in the marketplace.
Are there any concrete timelines for this expansion?
- No, ETA is being postponed on a regular basis. But this was affected also by the huge growth the game experienced. I hope with the increased team the development will move forward and planning will be possible.
Features will be released in multiple batches
Till then, see you in Game! :)
Dividers designed by 
Short ad for players who would like to start playing
If you are new to the game, then feel free to reach out to me on the Splinterlands Discord channel https://discord.gg/7TjZ2jg2 , my username is Arkasz there as well.
If you would like to buy a spellbook the game feel free to use my referral link https://splinterlands.com?ref=arkasz and let me know your in game name. I will send you some DEC so you can start renting cards and delegate to you a few cards for starters as well.