Splinterlands is built on Hive, and getting involved with Hive is a great way for new (and old) Splinterlands players to engage with the community, find other cool apps and services on Hive, and earn a little Hive by producing high quality content.
In this post I'll talk about the basics for getting started with content creation on Hive, which will let you earn some crypto that you can put back into the game (or take out if you want!).
1. Make sure you have your Hive keys and Hive Keychain set up
First thing you want to make sure before you start exploring the Hive ecosystem is that you have your Hive keys backed up and Hive Keychain set up on your machine. These are steps you will do after getting your Summoner's Spellbook.
Hive Keys
When you buy a Spellbook on Splinterlands, you automatically get a Hive account. After that, you should request your keys from Splinterlands and back those up. The support team has a great article that describes what each key does and how to store them and use them: https://support.splinterlands.com/hc/en-us/articles/4414914065940-Hive-Keys
In a nutshell, your keys are the equivalent of a seed phrase on other blockchains. But on Hive, you have different keys that give different authority. This has many benefits, one of them being that you can use lower-authority keys for less sensitive things (e.g. posting a comment on a blog) without requiring your most important keys (which give access to your funds).
Hive Keychain
The next thing you'll want to do is set up Hive Keychain. Here's another great article from the support team that explains how to set that up: https://support.splinterlands.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412500061588-Hive-Keychain-Installation-and-Usage
Hive Keychain is your Hive wallet, and it lets you interact with all your Hive apps (including Splinterlands). It's fast and lightweight and has a very simple user interface.
2. Learn the basics of content creation on Hive
There's a lot to it but I'll keep it simple in this post: one of the core parts of Hive is a massive decentralized social network where people can publish content on the Hive blockchain, and holders of $HIVE (with the staked or "powered up" Hive called "Hive Power" or "HP" for short) can then upvote (or downvote) content. Upvotes from big HP holders means you can earn from your content.
In the screenshot below, you can see some of my recent posts. The number on the bottom right of each post shows the payouts based on the upvotes received and is denominated in US dollars. 50% of that goes to you, and the other 50% goes to the people who "curate" (upvote) your content. This encourages you to write good content, and also encourages you to go curate other people's good content.
By default when you write a post, half of your earnings come in HBD (Hive Backed Dollars, a stablecoin pegged to the USD) and the other half comes in powered up Hive (i.e. "HP"). I recommend keeping it that way, and keeping your HP powered up so you can build your Hive presence over time. As for the HBD, I recommend swapping it to DEC and buying stuff in Splinterlands!!
Before posting your own content, I also recommend spending a little time looking at a few different authors' content to get a sense of what people expect and what curators will upvote. Here are a few I recommend taking a look at:
- Mine ( @bravetofu ): My focus is entirely on Splinterlands at the moment, and I work hard to create quality content that isn't repetitive, that is fun, and that helps new & old Splinterlands players.
( @azircon ): Azircon is a data geek (it's a compliment AZ - I consider myself one as well), a provocateur (another compliment!) and a Hive & Splinterlands OG. His content covers a lot of ground with a particular emphasis on Hive.
( @tarazkp ): Taraz puts out 1-2 posts a day and focuses on a lots of different topics. Every post is headlined by a beautiful image and he goes into very thought-providing ideas (just check out his latest post, "We're All Dead" 😶)
3. Write your first post
Once you have an idea of what's out there, it's time to write your first post. There are many different "front ends" for blogging on Hive, but my favorite is 
Since this guide is about Hive for SPLINTERLANDS players, my recommendation is for you to write Splinterlands content. However, it's absolutely not the only type of content you can or should write. If you're going to write about other topics, I encourage you to find communities on Hive that talk about the topics you're interested in and engage with them so you can build connections with people who have similar interests.
When it comes to Splinterlands content, there are plenty of ways you can take it. If you're a new player, I would suggest documentation your onboarding experience and your progress. Write down the stuff you feel is useful and that you think other new players should know. Give your take on what are the powerful cards in the early game, or your point of view on improvements that should be made. Learn about some of the various tokens we have, including SPS of course, and share your thoughts. Bring analogies from other games you've played (web3 or not) and how Splinterlands could adapt those ideas.
Here are a few more practical tips:
- Don't be repetitive: Even good content, if done over and over, will start to bore readers and curators. I overdid it on tier lists and saw there was tier list fatigue, so I moved on to other topics. Don't put out the same content every time.
- Use AI, but do it right: Using AI for cover images (great way to stand out), or in some cases for your core content, can be a great idea. However, I'd recommend against using AI to write for you (it's pretty easy to tell...) and as for images make sure you make it clear to your audience they're AI generated. If you use AI in a "lazy" way it'll be obvious, however if you use AI as a foundation and build on top of it, it can give beautiful results.
- Consider being provocative: If you engage your readers and make them want to comment, or suggest things that are out-of-the-box, or if you hit a nerve, you're more likely to get noticed and curated. AZ does this best 😅
- Reply to every comment: Engage with everyone who engages with you. Get them coming back. In fact, go engage on other people's posts as well. Build connections the old-school way, by going and talking to people.
4. Participate in Splinterlands weekly challenges
The Splinterlands team puts out various challenges each week focused on different things, such as community engagement, art, and social media. You can find all their contests on @splinterlands. You can submit your content on any of these and, if your content is good, you may get curated by the team. Doing so can earn you quite a few rewards, but it only works if you produce GOOD content. If it's clear you're just quickly cranking something out just to check the box, you won't (or shouldn't) get curated. Plenty of people do these challenges (you can check in the SPL Community on Hive here: created/hive-13323 ) and you can see which ones get the most rewards to get inspiration.
If you do all of the above, you should be able to fairly easily get 10 HBD (or more!) each week just writing content. And if you like Splinterlands, you'll put that 10 HBD into the game to further your account there!
I hope this post was useful and that you too will get involved with Hive and start producing lots of great content for us. If you're new, be sure to tag me in your posts so I can come check them out!