My husband got into Axie Infinity and he was really excitedly telling me about blockchain gaming for about a week until I finally decided to check it out myself. I did some research on Play-to-earn games and Splinterlands was said to be one of the best ones out there. I created an account, bought my spellbook the very same day and I started playing.
I like games with simple rules and though in the beginning it seemed complicated, after a few hours I got the hang of the game... more or less.
At first it was a struggle to even get out of the Novice league but in no time I found myself in Bronze. Well, Bronze turned out to be quite a challenge.
I started noticing the presence of bots and I realised that more often than not, I wasn't playing against actual humans. This post is not about the controversy around bots but their presence is worth mentioning, being a part of my journey playing Splinterlands. Bots were quite annoying but after battling with them for a while I could see their strategy patterns and learn to deal with them, most of the time.
Meanwhile, I have been making some purchases on the market and some of them weren't very smart. To the new players, here is a list of cards I bought that actually proved to be useful:
Brighton Bloom
Centauri Mage
Delwyn Dragonscale lvl3
Demented Shark lvl3
Kelp Initiate
Mylor Crowling
Nectar Queen
Nightmare lvl3
Owster Rotwell
Prismatic Energy
Sand Worm
Sea Monster lvl3
Wood Nymph
I also wanted to try my luck opening some Untamed Packs. I know, they are so expensive now and most of the time not worth the price. Still, I bought 2 packs and I had so much fun opening them. There was nothing really special inside but I had some money left in my wallet, so I thought, what the hell, let's try one last time. I bought the third pack and I drew a gold foil legendary summoner Lir Deepswimmer!
You can imagine my excitement when I checked the card's current price on the market and when I found out that I was now able to advance to Silver.
I decided not to advance because for some reason, I was afraid. I thought that in Silver I would get smashed by the other players and would never be able to win any battles, so I stayed in Bronze.
Well, in Bronze I managed to get to 1800 something rank and that was the highest I achieved. I rented some powerful cards to test them out in battle, such as Scarred Llama Mage or Kron the Undying. For some reason I was still loosing a lot of battles and I felt like I was going nowhere.
Finally, since it started to get boring and the season is ending anyway, I pushed the button and found myself instantly thrown into Silver 2. I was a bit afraid to start a battle but when I finally did, it was my victory. And then another one and another. I managed to almost get to 2000 in a few battles!
I suspect this has to do with a few things:
- The mana cap is higher in Silver than in Bronze, so you can use more of your powerful cards.
- There are less bots in Silver and you can play with humans who actually make mistakes.
- There are more rules which makes it impossible to rely on just one or two super-powerful cards.
So this is my experience and my thoughts after playing Splinterlands for a month!
I hope it's useful to some beginning players. Enjoy the game!