Last season I came back from a few months' hiatus and was taking Splinterlands more seriously again. I was a fan of rentals in the past. Back then in mid-late 2020, when I first started playing, the official function for card rental was very underdeveloped. All the difficulties involving renting cards had kept most of the public from trying this function out. Most of the rentals happened in PeakMonsters, and I was able to rent a full silver level playset at like $0.30~ USD per day by then. I am serious about the full playset and it includes all the expensive cards like Yodin Zaku. A level 2 Yodin Zaku will take ~800 DEC (~0.48 USD) to rent as of now, which is more than a full silver playset back then. Go figure! It's just a totally different market back now and then. In 2020, it was straight profit to rent and grind all the tournaments and I played like that for a couple months.
Then came the official rental v2, which alongside the crypto spike due to the bull rush, had led to insanely high rental costs around the board. There's no way to profit from rental since then and it's all negative EV for me. So, I changed my strategy and bought some cards with my earnings. Sadly, I couldn't buy many cards because, well, Splinterlands cards are valuable and you have to grab the good cards first and those are not cheap. I soon realized I didn't enjoy the game as much. The playing experience of a limited card collection was too different from having a full playset. After you played with all the cards, it's not that fun to play with limited cards and I have been playing less and less since then.
That was the beginning of my whole hiatus until I decided to return at the end of last month. The rental fee now is more than 2020 for sure, but it is also much friendlier than the bull run period. I think it was time for me to do this test on the profitability of card renting. This article is all about my results and findings after a season of renting.
How Do I Rent?
- No ultra expensive cards like Yodin Zaku. Yodin Zaku would take me 800 DEC per day(~0.50 USD) and I see no way to earn back that amount in reward playing every day. It only makes sense to avoid these clearly -EV cards because I am looking for EV first and foremost.
- If the max level cards (at Silver, so 5/4/3/2) cost like 10x to rent than the cards one level lower, consider not maxing on levels. For example, if a rare card at level 4 would cost me 10 DEC/day while the same card at level 3 would cost me 1 DEC/day, I would most likely lean on the level 3 card. The stat I am most happy to give up is HP. There are matches where 1 HP makes all the difference, but as a budget renter, I simply cannot afford the luxury. Other stats like speed, new ability, and attack power take more evaluation from me. Some of them I went max level and some I didn't.
- If the cards are very unlikely to get played or only situationally useful, ignore them with ease. With so many cards out there, I find myself sticking to a lot of the same cards (as they are just too good to not use at silver level) in the vast majority of the matches and some cards just don't make enough matches per day to be worth the rental. It's very easy to think "Hey, maybe this will win me a match. Hey, maybe this can be useful in situations X and Y" but you just have to accept that those situations are outliers and cut some cards for budgeting.
With all the rules applied, I rented around 75-80% of a full playset and I was giving up somewhere between 5000-5500 DEC per day. That's approximately 3-3.5 USD per day on rental.
Results
Thanks to this generator, I am able to show you all the results (Click to check the report) with ease.
One thing to note, I think the estimated tournament fee is very wrong. The entry fees are either 2-5 SPS or, at most, 100 DEC. One thing of note, the official tournaments give back your entry fee as long as you are among the top 256. As most tournaments have lower than 256 participants, it's free to try. If anyone of you has a decent collection for a certain level of competition, you should try out some of them. If you don't do well, you lose just the time to do the 10+ matches but you recover the entry fee nonetheless; if you do well, you are earning a little bit extra on that day.
I no-showed many tournaments due to the internet outage and sometimes being too busy with my life, but I was not winning a lot of the matches from those I tried either. It was a whole new game that I had to re-learn after my long hiatus. It was very fun to learn all the new cards and pick up on the new meta but it also came with bad results due to a lack of experience and understanding.
Mistakes
1. I Didn't Have Enough Staking SPS
I could not participate in many tournaments, especially the highly prized tournaments (usually, the higher the prize, the more staked SPS you need), which would be a big part of my income as I initially thought. With only 2,300+- SPS staked, I can only participate in what they named as the beginner's tournaments. Even if I top 4-ed every one of these tournaments, I would still come out as a loss with my daily rental fee. These tournaments can only be seen as a boost to my income and not the primary source of it like it was back then in 2020.
2. Not A Mistake But -- Outside Interference
I had 5 days of no internet last season due to some equipment issues outside my house and the rather enthusiastic service quality and speed from my provider. But even if this didn't happen, I am still not able to earn enough to cover the rental fee with the pace (or frequency, if you prefer that term) I am playing. Even If I multiply my 10 days result by 1.5, I am still under heavy loss.
3. Not Grinding Enough
However, there's no excuse for all the days I am not playing even when I can. My energy regularly sits at 100% and there are days when I just don't have the time to play enough. I think there's no point in renting so many cards if one doesn't have the time to play enough matches with them, but life as a freelancer can be inconsistent sometimes when it comes to free time.
Adjustments
1. Hard Budgeting: Renting Less Cards
As I have acknowledged that tournament result isn't as important as before - due to my lack of staked SPS and having no intention to add more of those for now - I don't have to rent all the power cards that cost me above 20 DEC per day or more. I picked some of those that I liked but I am not grabbing every one of them.
I do want to point out that renting for quality and trying to hit the seasonal leaderboard is a viable way to earn back a lot of rentals. The first place of the silver league is 40,000 DEC. I just don't think I have the time and spirit to grind that much, nor the skill to believe I can consistently make top 10. As such, I am taking a safer route and going harder on budgeting. I am also more willing to give up levels on some cards just to get them rented at a much lower cost per day.
2. Focus on Grinding
I am trying to grind more every day as I believe the majority of the profit comes from the chests. I am still participating in tournaments since the entry cost is very low and I will take my shot at any chance to get something extra.
According to SplinterShare, my adjusted strategy only costs me 1,717 DEC per day, a massive cut from the ~5,000 DEC per day in the past season.
After the end of this season, I will collect all the data and write an article about how to rent, and if it's worth it to rent. For now, this is all I get to share.
See you all on the battlefield, and keep on grinding!
If you are not yet a warrior of the Splinterlands, grab your ticket and join us!