SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Mid-season update of second full season

This is the next installment in my experiment in building a Splinterlands account from scratch without additional monetary investment after the initial Spellbook purchase. I am chronicling my journey so see if this is a viable activity and, if so, how long will it take to reach that level (I'm shooting for SILVER...after that, we'll see).

Brief History

In lieu of all of the recent changes in Splinterlands gameplay, a few weeks ago, I started an experiment to see if a new player could build a viable account without any monetary investment (besides the Spellbook, of course). I created a brand new account for my wife and started playing it (you can read the previous installment in this series HERE). Initially, I don't expect this account to make much progress, so I will work on creating a couple of posts per season. If things begin to get interesting, frequency should increase.

When I initially created this account, I was several days into the season. Even though I was playing this account with a bot, I was unable to accumulate enough points to earn a season chest at the end of that season. I wanted to see if it was possible to earn a chest with a bare minimum account that only contained a few cards that could be purchased with the original 3000 credits and starter cards. However, during my first full season, I was able to earn a single season chest with the few cards this account currently owns. It would have been nice to obtain a new card with that chest, but hey, SPS is progress.

I also began entering card giveaways to see if I could increase the collection before the season ended. Unfortunately, as with last season, I did not get to enter as many giveaways as I would have hoped and was unable to win any additional cards for this account since the season began. Since this is be best way for me to acquire new cards at this point, hopefully I will be able to get into a more consistent routine and increase my entries as time goes on.

Current Status

I have to say, this account is fairing much better during its second full season. While it took me almost the entire first season to earn one chest, we are half way through this second season and I have already accumulated 2 Season Chests.

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I have to thank Hive account@oadissin for that. By delegating a Blood Maker, a Gold Exploding Rats, and a level 4 Disintegrator, the CP on this account has been increased enough to attain BRONZE II level (thereby increasing the RP for this account). Thank you so much.

By the way, Hive account@oadissin has a giveaway where you can pick from several Chaos cards to be delegated to your account. There are several higher level cards (for me, anything above level 1 is higher) and even some GFs you can choose from. You can check out the most recent post by going to:

Contest // Chaos Legion cards Delegation // Twice Weekly #47

AMA (Ask Me Anything)

In my first post, I stated:

If you have any suggestions on how a new player can progress without having to invest any outside influx of capital, I'd love to hear it. Also, if you are a new player that has questions about anything I am doing with this account (or anything else, for that matter), leave me a comment...

With this is mind, there were a couple questions posted in comments associated with my last post that I should probably address. I don't know if either of these are from "a new player", but, hey, a question is a question.

Hive account@benthomaswwd said, "Interesting you use a bot to play the game?". Was this really a question? :) In response, I do use a bot to play the game for one reason...time. In addition to having four other Splinterlands accounts, I also have a full-time job that sometimes goes more than full-time. Time (or lack thereof) is the one thing that would doom this experiment from the very beginning. The only way this would be a valid experiment is if the account played enough matches to accumulate RP. With my schedule, the only way that would happen is by using a bot. I hope the purists can find it in their heart to forgive me.

The other question came from Hive account@darmst5339, who asked, "which bot program are you using or did you write one yourself?". After reading the response to the last question, I hope that explains why I did not write my own bot. I actually found one called Ultimate Splinterlands Bot V2 written by PC Jones that was fairly easy to configure, has a lot of options, and is working quite well for me.

What's Next

I will continue to let the bot play this account to see what kind of additional rewards can be earned in this current season (and beyond). Maybe, with the additional CP provided by the delegations from Hive account@oadissin, we can win a new card or two at the end of the season.

In addition, I have set the entire Hive Rewards for this post to go to my wife's account. Also, the rewards from my previous post (0.366 Hive Rewards) as well as the additional tokens a few people contributed towards it (BBT, CTP, and ALIVE) were also forwarded to my wife's account and will be used to build toward purchasing additional cards when enough has accumulated.

I will try to continue with my plan to be a little more diligent in joining in giveaways, as well. Hopefully, I will have better luck this time around.

Only time will tell where we go from here...

If you missed any of the previous volumes of this series, you can find a link here:

• SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): The First Full Season - Results from the first full season
• SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): The Experiment Continues - The first update
• Starting Over - An Experiment - Setting up the experiment