Hello to all my fellow splinterpeeps and welcome to my blog! This season we had some major changes to the reward system in Splinterlands and I would like to share my experience and opinion with you guys. Lots of battles and lots of chest openings happened this time, so step in and let me show you how the last season went!
Pack Opening Service
It seems like everybody's doing spl giveaways now and I would like to offer something unique to you guys! So, I've been thinking about this for a while now and I need some input to see if it's just a crackpot idea or if people would actually be interested in such a thing.
As you sure know, everyone is receiving those lotions from reward chests that are consumed at pack openings to double your chances for a goldfoil or legendary card. Most people might be annoyed by them, but if you start opening some packs, they get consumed quite fast and you may have to spend some money to buy more of 'em, which can become quite costly. Right now a set of lotion for one pack cost $.45, which is about 10-15 % of the pack value, but you definitely don't want to miss out on the increased chance for shiny leggo.
As I'm not opening up many packs and are not planning on doing large numbers in the forseable future, I figured I might as well help others out with my stack of lotions that have been piling up since Untamed ran out. As they are not transferable and I can't give them away like any other asset, one would have to send me the packs and I would open them in a weekly video or something and then send the cards back to the owner.
Let me know if anybody was interested, so I can maybe incorporate it into my giveaways!
Rewards Rework
I gotta admit, the past months strolling the Splinterlands was not the most exctiting time. I started two additional accounts because I was sick of watching the bots leeching all the rewards and the only rewarding aspect of the game were the season chests and to some extend the daily chests. On my main I was hovering around silver 2 and my smurfs were able to reach silver towards the end of the season, sometimes after playing up to 100 games.
Not only was this not really exciting for me, it's also not a healthy behaviour for the game economy.
So I was quite thrilled when the massive change to the reward system was announced:
Plans for the new rewards system
As you may know, the dev team has rolled out major changes to the reward system at the start of the expiring season. Beeing strongly against the laissez-fair attitude towards the bots, this was exciting news for me. Will it solve the entire issue with botting and funneling assets to botfarms? We'll see soon!
But this change doesn't affect bots exclusively. Actually the average player like me also had to adapt to this situation.
For the past seasons I've been distributing my CP between 3 accounts. At first because the DEC rewards were insanely good and the ECR of one account was not enough to satisfy my gaming needs.
With rewards constantly losing value to the point where playing was nothing but a necessity to climb into silver or finish the daily quests for at least some rewards, it made even more sense to split my CP for a total of 8 daily chests and 39 EOS chests, compared to the 6 and 22 for beeing in gold. Additionally I would have to miss out on the rental income from my GF leggo card, which is pretty much equivalent to what I could earn in gold but with very little effort. And I'm not even talking about the crazy EOS income I get for staying in silver. This is obviously not how it's supposed to be and I'm happy to finally see some change.
With the new reward system, I changed my approach trastically. Playing my smurfs like I did before would not make any more sense. I still rely a lot on the starter cards, which will not count towards the rewards anymore. But more importantly the winrate is now impacting your earnings. Sometimes I needed 100 games to reach silver as it's pretty much a coinflip, this will not be viable anymore as it depletes the ECR, which factors into the reward formula.
As I'm quite short on liquidity, it's kinda hard for me to build strong decks from scratch.
Luckily I was able to build up my main account to a point where I'm somewhat competitive in silver with water and earth splinters.
The FIRST SEASON summary
First day of season was rough. I needed 100 rating to reach silver, but it took me about 20 games to achieve it. Generally I felt like this season was a lot more competetive, which very well might have been related to the fact that my rating was probably way higher than it used to be, as a result of the addictive nature of the new reward system and the increased amount of games played.
One day my ECR dropped into the 50% region but unlocked a whopping 15 daily chests alone! Even if I played all 3 accounts I could only have made a total of 8 daily chests before! (Silver chests should have pretty much the same value as before)
My usual loot for a day from casual playing adds up to around 10 treasure chests, unless I get a really bad focus splinter. Just 3 games are enough to unlock 4 chests, which means less work with the reworked system AND I'm free to continue playing for a lot more rewards. LOVING IT!
Here's the return from one season:
What about Smurf accounts?
Like mentioned before, I removed all delegations to my smurf accounts as it makes zero sense playing on a second account unless my ECR goes way low.
Realizing how cheap the rentals are and beeing curious about how the game feels for new players, I decided to go on a mission and test it anyways. For science and such.
Not having played this account last season, I stared at a pathetic 100 rating. The daily focus turned out to be water, so I went to the rental market and spent a total of 14 CREDITS on a Lir, Kelya lvl 2, Crustacean King, Deeplurker lvl 3 and Sea Monster lvl 3.
I could have probably rented all the starter cards for another 2 credits and make my life a lot easier, but stuck to the few cards I already have and managed to earn half a focus and half a season chest in about 20 games (roughly 10 RP per win).
At around 300 rating I noticed the RP going up to 25, 48, 64, 78, quickly unlocking my first chests. After 30 games I already earned a total of 5 bronze chests, receiving about 200 RP per win (without alpha and gf bonuses) which went up to over 1k RP by the end of the 24h. Also the battles felt a lot easier once I got out of elo hell.
With an estimated chest value of 3.3 cents (according to splintercards.com) and rental fees of 1.4 cents, this seems to be a no-brainer. My CP is over 5k with the cards I earned during the past months and the rentals, so I can easily play in bronze I without renting additional power.
Obviously I need some DEC or CREDITS in my chests to sustain the rentals, but I think it's safe to say that a new player should have no problem sustaining their account without spending more than the Spellbook cost.
Results one day of playing in bronze (day before EOS):
Rental Cost: $0.014
Games: 51
Wins: 40
Chests: 38
Approximate Value: $1.21
Actual Value: $1.69
I would call this a really nice ROI! The epic pulls were quite lucky, but plenty of funds to rent for the next season plus a lot of usefull cards to build up my deck.
See you and thanks for stopping by!
Everyone who is picking up this game right now should have a pretty incredible experience.
The devs might implement some changes to the focus soon which affect the rental approach that I used for my bronze account, but overall the changes turned out to be pretty awesome! If I get too bored, I can even play on two accounts, as long as the rental market is so generous.
If you have not yet entered the world of splinterlands and want to check it out while simultaneously supporting me, feel free to use my affiliate link: Start playing Splinterlands
Let me know if you do so, I will share some of the affiliate rewards, so you can buy or rent a few cards!
For those who are playing already, don't miss out on all the juicy giveaways and challenges here on hive! I'm going to be hosting giveaways for all the games I play personally!
Also make sure to have a look at all the other awesome NFT games here on the blockchain like the 
There are still two weeks left to do the birthday mission as well as the Pascala mission, both of which can get you quite awesome cards!
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