Part 1: Novice – Silver 3 – Knowledge acquisition
Introduction:
I wanted to start by sharing some information about myself and my playtime within Splinterlands.
Splinterlands is my first pay 2 earn game and I have no previous crypto experience, this means that getting into the game and understanding how to purchase DEC etc. was very hard for me. Lucky for me the discord community is amazing. All the questions I had were answered and I was ready to go almost instantly after a few hours research.
I’ve been playing Trading card games (TCG’s) for nearly 15 years on and off and love every second, finding Splinterlands was like a dream. Fun and earning potential wrapped into a very cleaver card game. Perfect.
Like a lot of people searching out these guides, I started my Splinterlands journey, very recently, on July 29th 2021. I had spent a few days reading over questions in the discord to get an overview of what people were doing and trying to navigate the new renting system. Following this I jumped straight into the game and bought a spell book. (We spend $50 on a console game so $10 was a steal to play). We learn best by trial and error anyway so I thought I’d just start hammering out games. This is where I stared to understand strategy is key. I have just completed my first full season and have achieved Champion rank. I started this game with a 300 DEC investment and reinvested my winnings into rentals to climb. Here’s my journey:
Novice:
As we all know, we get thrown straight in at Novice league with a level cap of 1 on all cards.
Here is where I quickly found that certain splinters perform better with level one cards and all cards are not created equal. Some cards are just better. I began to analyse what strategies and cards were beating me and why. I implemented these strategies in my own battles and quickly pushed out of Novice and into Bronze with 0 rental costs or cards purchased.
Some cards of note are: Living larva, Cerberus, Kobold Miner, Haunted Spirit, Twisted Jester, feral spirit and Elven cutthroat.
I’d let you figure out what’s good when, that’s part of the fun and how you will grow into higher leagues.
Bronze:
Bronze is very much the same as Novice. It uses the same strategies with subtle differences created by the raised level cap.
Here are the level caps for bronze:
You won’t have the heartbreak of not being able to play your favourite Splinter (colour) yet or have too many conditions applied to your games. This means you just need solid basic strategy and positioning to win games. Focus on understanding what cards are strong and why. Begin to learn what different abilities and cards do, this will bode well for later.
A very useful site for this is Splintercards. I always have the ability page open for quick reference.
https://www.splintercards.com/abilities.php?ab=31
My journey to Bronze 1 was very quick and simple. I played the colour I thought was best over and over and over until I hit maximum points in Bronze 1 This did not place me in bronze 1 because of my Power (more on this in a moment) but I had the points required to move into silver. I did not buy or rent for bronze 0 DEC spent.
A few things to note about Bronze: You will start to run into people renting/using legendary monsters or level 3 commons. This is fine, they can be beat with level ones. If you lose, no problem. Move on. You don’t need to rent llama/kron or spend large amounts of money to get out of bronze. Enjoy the process. Acquire the knowledge.
If you are looking to rent in bronze I’d advise you to look at Mylor Crowling summoner.
This guy is fantastic as most people are still using very small card pools. He has the ability Thorns which returns damage to melee attackers. Mylor plus some high health units can win a large portion of matches with ease, but watch out for them magic water teams. He won’t help you there!
The First Wall: Power, What is Power?
Once you reach maximum points for bronze 3 you will notice that you need Power to move up a league. Power comes from the Dark Energy Crystal Burn Rate for the cards you own/are renting. Each league has a different power requirement and you will need to own or rent more/stronger cards to keep progressing. Keep in mind that leagues also have level caps, like the ones I listed above and you will be wasting your own money if you rent level 10 cards for bronze.
Here is a table that shows power for each card type:
This is where cost calculation and strategy start to come into play. Get an understanding of this table and of teams you want to use before you rent.
A few beginner tips:
- Before renting, get an understanding of the splinters you think will do best in the league you want to push through, pick splinters you enjoy. I always recommend 2 splinter and a handful of strong neutral cards. You can’t go wrong with Furious Chicken, Creeping Ooze and Sandworm. A rent these out for the duration you think you will take to achieve your goal. As you move up the league you will replace level 1 cards with higher levels so don’t rent level 1’s for 30 days. You don’t need to.
- Watch League Top battles. There are people who dedicate themselves to dominating different leagues. These guys have all the cards available to them and know the Meta strategies really well. Spending a bit of time watching their matches and trying to figure out why people win will help you with your deck construction and rental choices.
- There are loads of great content creators out there. Go check them out. With so many new players there loads of new content for people to check. The official discord has a strategy discussion group and plenty of pinned posts with great beginner resources for different splinters. Well worth a look.
- Lastly have fun, don’t stress. The games great fun. Learn via repetition and enjoy the process. Gaming is about having fun anyway right. Don’t let it be anything other.
Signing off:
Thanks for reading to the end, this is my first ever blog so any feedback is appreciated. In my next post I will be going over my journey through silver and gold and sharing my rental list and strategies.
Look forward to seeing you all there! – Winty.
A final shout out to this wonderful community and guild: Go check us out.
