This guide is targetted towards splinterlands beginners. If you are not signed up for Splinterlands yet make sure to use my link, you will get a free card!
When I first started playing Splinterlands, I soon realised it would take a long time before I would be able to climb the ranks (at least if I didn't invest more than $20 into the the game) . It seemed like it would take ages before reaching Silver, especially getting the power requirements seemed difficult. That being said, if I would have know then what I know now, it would be quite a bit easier.
If you feel stuck in bronze, this post should help you out!
Why reaching silver should be a priority
It's simple, the rewards in silver are better than the rewards in bronze. First, you'll get 2 daily rewards instead of 1, this will even go up when you reach silver 2 or silver 1. Also, you will get at least 12 season reward chests!
Rating requirement
Let's start with discussing the first requirement, rating. You will need to get at least 1.000 rating.
When you are first starting out, it's quite normal that you struggle with finding the right strategies, especially when you don't have a lot cards yet. That being said, it should be possible to reach silver with just a couple of cards (excluding the free to play cards of course).
First, I would recommend to get a couple of staple cards, exact recommendations can be found in one of my previous posts: How to spend your first dark energy crystals.
Next, it would be wise to start learning some beginner strategies:
Fire strategy
Water strategy
Earth strategy
If you follow the tips in these posts you should be able to get the required rating for silver!
Power requirement
The other requirement, is power. 15.000 is needed for getting into the silver league.
Now, this one might be a bit harder if you don't really know what you are doing. You probably already know that you will gain power by buying cards. However, you may not know exactly how many power you get per card, this image should help you out:
There are 2 possibilities here, you can either buy or rent cards, let's discuss both options.
Buying cards
If you only collect regular foil common cards, you'll see that it will take ages before you actually get to the 15.000 power mark. If you really want to gain power, you might want to forget functional cards that you actually need, instead you should only focus on getting the most power for the price of the card.
When you do this, you will automatically realise that you should focus on gold foiled cards. In order to find the best options you should divide the power of a card by the cost. It can take some time before you find the best deals on the market.
I'm actually working on a tool that can do this for you, but for now, it's still work in progress. I'll make sure to create a post about this when I finish it!
Even when you find the best deals, it will still take a while before you reach 15.000 power. Luckily for you, there is another option, renting cards.
Renting cards
Renting cards is possible on peakmonsters.com, if you don't know how this works, there is plenty of information to be found online (or ask in discord).
When you feel like it would simply take too long to buy the cards, renting is your best option. I found that I can get around 15.000 power for around 1 cent per day, so 14 cents per season. That's not too expensive, right?
I even rented a card for 40 cents for 1 day, giving me 150.000 power, boosting me from silver 3 to gold 3, just to get the season rewards!
If you don't have any hive available and you don't want to put in any money, you can write articles on peakd.com. Take a look at this post: social media challenge, if you want to make sure that your articles earn enough hive to cover the cost! Otherwise you can simply get enough dec and transfer this to hive. If you are not sure what I'm talking about you might want to search for a hive-engine tutorial.
Conclusion
The conclusion is pretty straightforward, if you struggle with the rating requirements, start implementing some strategies and get some of the recommended cards until you reach the required rating.
If you reach the rating requirement, you can start working on your power levels. If you want and can buy the cards needed to reach the power requirement, go for it! Keep in mind that gold foiled cards will give you more power for the money.
If buying cards is not an option, you should consider renting them!