Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! With the end of this most recent season, the team has instituted a 2,000 Dark Energy Crystal (DEC), or 40 Voucher, fee to be able to play in the Wild format for the season. The reasoning behind this decision has been put forth that it's not really economically sustainable to keep letting older cards earn indefinitely without continuing to contribute to the game.
The team isn't actually taking this fee, but like many things in this game it is just getting burned. The Wild format has had about 100,000+ accounts playing in it, compared to the about 3,000 playing in Modern. Part of this is number likely due to Wild being the only format where bots are considered legal, so there are tons of accounts there that are automated.
Having bought a Node license, I can pretty easily afford the cost in Vouchers. But, I'm not sure if I want to bother paying for my alternate account to be able to play in Wild, so I may just start only playing Modern with it. I am hoping that Voucher prices might rise, so I can sell some off to get other things I need, like more cards.
However, this change may well be the death knell for the mass number of accounts in Wild with next to no cards. A lot of big bot networks were running junk decks, since they could win against each other to move up. This was why Wild format was so easy compared to Modern, and is no longer going to really be economically viable with this change.
There were a lot of other updates in this past patch, but the Wild pass requirements were the biggest ones of note. There was some improvement to Mobile, bug fixes, and other assorted clean-up. As always, you can check out the full release notes on the official page here.
Season Wrap Up
Not that it matters overly much anymore with the way rewards now work, but I ended up in Champion III with both of my accounts at the end of the last season. I didn't play too much Modern, but got into Silver with my alternate account. I am planning on playing Wild on my main this next season, and Modern on my alt. We'll see how that goes!
I got about 75K Glint from the end of the season on my main account, and spent 25K of that on 10 Ultimate draws:
And, aside from the epic card, was mostly disappointed.
I got about 16K Glint on my alt, and also bought 10 Ultimate draws using some of the Glint from playing:
At least I got a lot of Merits and one epic.
I also went ahead and bought 50 Major chests on my alt, as I'm really just looking for more cards:
I got lucky and got a Legendary! This let me level my Drybone Raider up to level 2.
I'm at about half a million Glint on my main account, and debating if I should try to save up for the million Glint title. It will also really depend on how this upcoming season goes, as previously I was able to beat up on poorly equipped bots to farm Glint rather easily. The competition may be a lot stiffer with the new Wild pass in place.
I'm curious to see how things go, and if this leads to a big selloff from bot nets, or if they'll pay to get into Wild in any sort of numbers. Also of note, the long awaited Soulkeep (tower defense game) is supposed to launch at the end of this month. I have a handful of packs, and am curious to finally try it out.
That's about it for this week. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Also, thank you for reading and I should be back in about a week with my first thoughts on the new Wild pass season!