I am certain you are tired of reading about this damn game because plenty has already been written about it since SPS started dropping. Here is me begging your pardon, indulge me if you would, I am not gonna sing another praise of the game, enough has been sung. But I come with a Mylor Crowling smug...
I am just gonna write about my experience generally and the incentives within the game that would make it worth anybody's while. I wrote a post last week about my experience 3 weeks into the game, now I have played for one more week and I have more to share.
Current Challenges
Since the start of the SPS airdrop, the game experience has been generally pretty bad. A lot of people rode the airdrop hype and jumped in and this has caused quite the overload on the website.
You'd be lucky playing engaging in 10 straight battles without experiencing any kind of hiccup. I guess the developers didn't expect to see the number of new users rise the way it did and I am sure they have been doing everything they can to get it back to the smooth level it was at before the airdrop.
Many times you'd find out that you surrendered a battle(without your knowledge), even when you had submitted your team even a whole minute before the countdown elapses. This has made me lose some massive points many times to move up on the leaderboard.
In-Game Experience
The website overloading and going into maintenance is all I would say has been the biggest challenge thus far, every other thing is about the difficulties you'd expect in learning a new game.
From the outside, it might look and sound like just a card game, but it isn't just that, you'd have to get in to really understand. It is war, that's why we do battle.
I have had my ass kicked severally by players using much superior Summoners and Monsters but I usually don't take it laying down. I note down the names of these badass Monsters/Summoners and head straight to the market to either buy them if they are cheap enough for me or I rent them when I cant afford outright ownership.
Utilizing The Renting System
I have found the renting system quite helpful in my race north of the leaderboard.
As someone who is just in the intermediary levels, my stockpile of cards is currently lightweight and to boost my Power level and also win hard battles, I needed to do something and that's where the renting system comes in handy.
Currently, I have 5 Summoners and 18 monsters rented out to me which altogether are worth approximately $500 but cost me probably around $8 to rent for 7 days.
The earnings from those rented cards within the 7 days I have used them have well made up for, plus profit, the money spent on them.
Also, I have bought some cheap cards, as well as holding on to the ones I earned in battles and my daily quests, you'd never know what they'd cost tomorrow.
Making It Worth Your While
In the end, it is a crypto based-game and it wouldn't be worth anybody's while if they aren't earning from it.
Spending $10 on a Spellbook kinda threw me off when I first got in, but after playing the game for a week or so and reading the reviews of many older adopters, paying for the Spellbook was a no-brainer and it has been absolutely worth it.
So far, in just about a month, I have recouped my initial investment of $10, made some profit and currently receiving the SPS airdrop, even though it isn't significant when compared to some of the numbers I have seen people get, but there is a whole year to go and I still have the chance to stockpile game assets and increase the quantity of the airdrop I'd be getting.
I am currently working towards buying another Spellbook for my second account with earnings from the first account, so I'd be battling on two fronts and increase my earnings and my chances of getting mind-blowing cards from daily quests and end of the season rewards.
For a game I started playing barely a month ago, my assets haul is very encouraging and since this is still early days, I can't help but imagine the value it'd hold in the next 3 months. I am having fun and I am building a sustainable income stream along the way...SWEET!
Play, Write & Earn
Besides just battling away in the arena and earning a bunch of shiny DEC, playing Splinterlands has been a revelation for me in terms of daily/weekly earnings on the Hive blockchain.
There are many ways you could boost your income and rack up on this crypto just by interacting with Splinterlands. You can earn DEC, SPT, HIVE, LEO and even SPS along the way.
A lot of people are fixated on the increased price of DEC and are spending a lot more time playing the game to accumulate more DEC but that's not the only way you could earn.
The Splintertalk front end needs engagements and the SPT token is currently trading at 0.02 HIVE / $0.008 on the Hive Engine and good posts are encouraged with a lot of upvotes. So what I do, and what Splinterlands is encouraging every gamer to do is, battle away, then share your experience with the rest of the community.