Hello battlers,
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Happy to participate in this week's community engagement challenge which is about the upgrade or leveling up of cards and i better explain on this using cards from earlier versions as those use to have some ability included with each level up and this is very true in case of legendary cards.
So, i thought of explaining this using a gold foiled legendary monster from beta edition i have and that is the gold dragon and look at it in gold foiled edition111, looks so awesome.
So, this gold dragon is from beta edition, belongs to dragon splinter and is a magic attack monster card.
To write more about it, it is a healing tank, means it can heal itself when it is attacked by some monster and this happens just before it attacks a monster in each round.
I said about the healing ability it has, infact, the legendary monsters from earlier versions (I think except for rebellion edition) all have 1 or more abilities included with each level up as i share the details below.
Step-by-step instructions for combining cards:
If we look at above stats for this monster gold dragon, being a legendary monster, it will be a 4 level monster and each level requires different number of cards to be combined to get it into next level as shared in the stats.
As it says under LVL column, it has 4 levels and at level 1, it will have a flying ability and also note the changes in attack, speed, and health although this monster doesn't have any armors.
So, at level 1, it will be with 2 magic attack, 3 speed and 8 health and this will be the basic one even if we have just 1 bcx of this monster.
This being a gold foiled version, it will be a level 2 by default and at level 2, it's magic attack increased to 3, speed remains same and health too remains same, but, what changed is the new ability it got!!! yes, at level 2, it gets that all important healing ability.
When we get this into level 3, it will not have any change in attack, speed or health but it gets blast ability which will make it to attack 2 monsters in each round by attacking first monster with full attack i.e. with 3 magic attack unless there are additional buff or debuffs and then it will attack second monster too with half of the original attack rounded off which means the second monster will be hit with 2 attack.
Likewise, when this is upgraded to maximum level i.e. level 4, it will have additional magic attack taking it into 4 and speed remains same, but health gets +1 to have it as 9 and more importantly, it gets another ability i.e. magic reflect to attack back on a magic monster to reduce it's health.
Benefits of combining/leveling up of cards:
As we saw in above section, with each level up, there will changes to the stats of the monster and with each level up abilities will also gets added and this will make the monster more potent against the enemy monsters to survive the attacks and also attack back with abilities like magic reflect for this gold dragon as i explained above.
So, it is always advisable to level up the monsters if we have more copies of it and enough to upgrade it to next level to have those improved stats.
Tips for deciding which cards to prioritize:
Each edition of splinterlands we have some special cards which, when upgraded, will always be more effective than many others.
To name few here, from alpha and beta, we had monsters like the one i explained above i.e. gold dragon and along with that, we have a rewards card ruler of the seas which is one of the best i would say with regards to attack and abilities and frankly speaking, each of those monsters we have are all special in their own splinter with different abilities.
Strategies for acquiring extra cards to combine:
Being someone who started with zero investment initially, my tips to acquire extra cards will be to keep participating in daily and seasonal quests we will have to earn the crypto required for buying cards and also keep participating in weekly contests to write blogs in order to earn hive and hbd and we can use that to buy packs, cards and other in game items.
I hope this blog is informational for you and helps to level up cards faster.
Thanks and keep battling.