NOTE: Some of this information is repeated for the sake of those who might be reading a post from this series for the first time. For those of you who have been following this eXperiment, scroll down and begin reading at the Current Status section.
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 months 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). This account is not expected to make much progress in the first couple of months, so I will work on creating a post (or maybe two) per season. If things begin to get interesting, frequency should increase.
When I initially created this account, I was several days into a 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. I was not very consistent in entering said giveaways, though. However, since then I have found this to be best way for me to acquire new cards and have begun to focus more on finding the time to be more consistent in these efforts and have seen a smattering of success.
Current Status
Since the last post, there has been a major change to the Reward Cards that are won from your Daily Chests and Season Chest. Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have already heard that there were new Reward Cards instituted which are SoulBound (cannot be traded, sold, rented, or delegated) and all Reward cards that were in-print prior to their arrival are now out-of-print. This change could possibly have a short-term negative effect on me. If the value of the most recent set of Reward Cards increases significantly (due to now being out-of-print), the giveaways for these cards could effectively dry up. Since this is my main source of new cards at the moment, this could severely curtail my acquiring new cards. However, with the shear volume of those cards that are in circulation right now, I don't see that happening any time soon, but it is a definite possibility.
In further news, with the upgraded version of the bot and the cards that I recently added to my collection (by way of both winning giveaways and purchases), my RP production has increased. This led to me finishing the last season in the Bronze II league and earning enough RP to win THREE Season Chests (woohoo!) and my first ever new SoulBound Reward Card! I don't know if this new card will help me much any time soon, because I haven't seen any of the new cards being used in the bot, yet. Not knowing enough about how it works, I am assuming they have to start being used in regular game play for the bot to start registering their popularity and usage (which would lead to adding them to the hands being used for battles). Either way, it's nice to see I have made a small step toward progress. Unfortunately, as you can see below, I am still not accumulating RP fast enough to earn any Daily Chests, yet, so the number of new SoulBound Reward Cards I win will be extremely limited for now.
As usual, I have had several transactions since my last post. However, not all of them were winning cards in giveaways. I started out by purchasing these two starter cards:
Once again, these cards were specifically chosen because they were the highest used starter cards that I could afford. There are a few others that are used more often, but they are out of my price range at the moment. As before, I am trying to increase my RP so I don't lose so much due to using starter cards.
On the giveaway front, the next day I was able to snag:
This one from 
A couple of days later, I won this one from 
And on the same day, I got this from 
That was about this time that I noticed that 
Special THANKS to
Two days later, I won:
This one from 
And this one from 
And 200 MEME from 
And finally two days after that I won a week's delegation on these cards from 
As you can see, I am starting to double up on a few more cards in my collection. I now have a dilemma. Do I hold on to the duplicates and try to rent them out? Do I wait to see what the Reward Card market is doing to see if the prices are going up now that they are out of print? Do I sell them now to get more currently unowned Starter cards and reduce the number of those I am having to deal with? What do you think I should do?
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...
I did get a few more encouraging responses in my last post, but no new questions. Thank you for all of your support.
What's Next
Thank you to everyone who continues to follow this series. A special thank you goes out to all of those who have been gracious enough to contribute to this journey so far. Also, if anyone joins Splinterlands from one of the links in this post, they will be indirectly providing support to the eXperiment, as well. Who knows...this eXperiment could be your training on how to build an account without extra financial input (besides your Spellbook, of course)...both what to do and what NOT to do.
Just because I have enough CP for a Max Tier of Bronze II, that doesn't mean I will earn enough to reach that level each season. I think this is where my Starter cards are hurting me most. I will continue to focus on eliminating as many starter cards as possible. Since REBELLION is not going to be released until Q3 or Q4, I still have several months to deal with the current starter cards. The faster I acquire replacements the faster I can reach Bronze II and start accumulating RP (and chests) faster.
On a similar note. I was reminded that rentals and delegations are another way to help increase your CP (and possibly RP by removing the need to use started cards). I did not feel like I was in a position to rent any cards before now and will have to do some figuring to see if that is something this account can afford, but I haven't been able to focus on that yet. I don't feel right about delegating cards from my other accounts to help with this eXperiment account (I feel like that would be cheating). However, if anyone else would like to help give this account a boost by delegating any cards to it, I would offer the same courtesy that I do for the giveaways by mentioning you in my post and including a link back to a Splinterlands post of your choosing. Thank you again to
“Do not sit still; start moving now. In the beginning, you may not go in the direction you want, but as long as you are moving, you are creating alternatives and possibilities.” ― Rodolfo Costa
If you missed any of the previous episodes of this series, you can find a link here:
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Changes - Trying to make things better.
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Trading Places, Changing Luck, & Bot Revelation - Things change.
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Am I Just Lucky? - My giveaway success continues.
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Going About This All Wrong? - It appears maybe I have been.
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Unexpected Success - Winning multiple giveaways.
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): It Actually Happened! - Finally won a reward card.
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): I'm Getting Stronger - Added more SPS and a couple of new cards
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): I Finally Got Lucky - Get your head out of the gutter
- SplinterlandsX (eXperiment): Mid-season update of second full season - A surprise boost
- 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
NOTE: Individual card images provided by Splinterlands developers (see Splinterlands Card Images by Level).
