My first title was without "Splinterlands", and probably, as a clickbait, it would have been even better than the one with it. But I wanted to be fair, and not bait anyone not interested in Splinterlands to read the beginning of this post thinking it is about some sort of potion you apply at midnight... 😀
So, what is a Midnight Potion on Splinterlands? It will be a consumable item produced on Land which can be sold on the Non-Card Market, doubling the chances of pulling a Black Foil when opening a Conclave Arcana pack. You need one for each card, so 5 per pack.
This is an eye-candy published by cryptomancer in the land-barons channel; everything is subject to change until released.
Note that according to Matt in the Town Hall, the Midnight Potion doesn't double the chances of pulling Black Foil Arcane, only Black Foil. BFA differs from BF by being pre-minted, scarcer, and having collectible numbering, plus some cool special effects, like this:
Let's take a look at the benefits of BF that have been presented in the official Conclave Arcana announcement:
- fully leveled up
- +20% Reward bonus in ranked battles (compared to 10% for GF)
- Half the cooldown of Gold Foil cards in Survival Mode
- 5x the DEC burn value, Collection Power, and Contribution in Conflicts of Gold Foils
- 5x base Production Point multiplier (same as Beta cards)
All packs except Starter ones have chances to include Black Foils, as such:
- Standard Packs: 0.025% (1 in 4,000 cards or 1 in 800 packs)
- Alchemy Packs: 0.25% (1 in 400 cards or 1 in 80 packs)
- Legendary Packs: 0.125% (1 in 800 cards or 1 in 160 packs)
- Starter Packs: 0%
So... how much will black foils cost on 3rd party markets? That will obviously vary. But I was curious what would be the floor price we could think of, and think upward from there. What I did is more of a guesstimate than hard facts, but I wanted to know that for myself anyway.
What did I do? First, I took the cost of the cheapest Rebellion GF cards, by rarity.
| Rarity | Min Price Rebellion GF per BCX (DEC) |
|---|---|
| Common | 736 |
| Rare | 1,476 |
| Epic | 7,307 |
| Legendary | 39,965 |
Then, I considered a multiplication factor, based on the extra-benefits, from which I excluded the benefit of being max level. That would make BF between 2x and 5x better than GF, at the same level. I took the conservative middle ground: 3x.
And then, I considered the BF cards are fully maxed. If we apply these factors onto the minimum prices of Rebellion GF cards, we would get the following minimum prices for Black Foil cards. Note we are talking about Black Foil cards, not Black Foil Arcane, which automatically have more reasons to be much more expensive.
Let's see:
| Rarity | Min Estimated Price Conclave Arcana BF (DEC) |
|---|---|
| Common | 883,200 |
| Rare | 509,220 |
| Epic | 1,,008,366 |
| Legendary | 1,318,845 |
Ok... we can see some pretty big anomalies here, like the price of commons pretty high or the price of rare cards pretty low, but maybe utility for Rebellion pushed this kind of inversion of the minimum prices by rarity. I don't have Rebellion cards (other than soulbound or promo), so I can't tell...
But even like this, we can see the minimum price for a Conclave Arcana BF is unlikely to drop below half a million DEC, no matter how bad the card is, since, if it bad for combat, it can always find a place on Land with a great PP or in Conflicts with another nice 5x compared to GF.
I believe the minimum is more likely to push toward 1 million DEC than lower, even for lower rarities, all things considered (including the price increase of SPS and the likely end of the bull market in the second half of the year).
That's my speculation, of course, and you can have your own.
But I tried to understand where the floor for BF would be to see what to expect from the Midnight Potions, of which we talked at the beginning of the post.
Knowing with 4,000 DEC you have 0,025% chances to pull a, let's say, 1 million DEC card, how much would you pay to double your chances?
If you are after BFs and nothing else, the highest chances to pull one is from the Alchemy Packs, so a minimum of 12,000 DEC. They are also the cheapest for the same chances.
With 1 Alchemy pack your chance to pull a BF is 1.242%. How much would you pay to make that chance 2.484%? Keep in mind that for each pack you need 5 potions, but also that production for these potions will start the soonest close to the start of the presale. Luckily, no one will need potions to open their packs until the general sale, when packs will be openable.
We find out from 