Inspired by the recent partnership of splinterlands and YGG, I have set up a few accounts, so that beginners can play and earn, without first investing in the spell book.
This post is about how I do it, and any learnings for the process
Hive account setup
There are lots of ways to set up a hive account, like we all know, they are detailed in https://signup.hive.io/ and shopwn below:
Some of those methods like ecency, or hive onboard require a unique email, I can no longer sign-up using the free options, so I decided to use 
The reason I chose blocktrades is they are a strong supporter of the hive community, and hopefully by using their service I am giving back to the community just that little bit.
The service is really easy, you just need to send $2 to them and then they will register your key: here is a test I did to demonstrate below (I didnt create the account, so dont bother trying to login with this one)
I pressed the green button below:
This then downloads a file with all your keys, this is an important file to keep, the file
Note - this account wasn't created, so if you are thinking about logging in with this go for it.. it wont work!
you will then need to send the crypto to blocktrades, and you can do that through hivesigner.
What do the keys mean?
As you can see you are given a lot of keys, but the important thing to remember is that you need the active key to transfer tokens/assets of value, and the posting key to post on the blockchain and submit battles.
This means when you find someone who wants to play your splinterlands account, you can give them the "Posting Key" but keep private the "active key".
What do I need to do on splinterlands
Buying the spellbook is a must otherwise you cant accrue rewards. But the most important thing to do when setting up a delegation is you need to go into the setting, to ensure that you need to use the active key to transfer assets. As shown below:
What next?
This is where you can provide the "posting key" to the person who is laying your account, obviously you will need to agree how you share the rewards as well.
But the important thing is you will need to delegate some cards to the account to make them more competitive and their time worthwhile. I find you will often need to coach a little, encourage daily quests, and perhaps even setup a guild together.
Alternatives
If this is too much hassle, there is a service set up called DEC101, that has a bot that helps the whole process. The link to the discord is here https://discord.gg/Drcv8jBwnw