The State of Splinterlands
I always like to start these posts with a general view of how the game is doing. When looking at the economics, everything right now is better than ever. Card & Dark Energy Crystal values are up making it so that the value of players their card collection is at an all-time high. The fact that the market has absorbed the whale discount selling (See Reasons I'm Buying More Cards & DEC) along with the first Land Sale going live are big factors in that regard.
However, looking at Splinterlands as a game, it has turned into the worst Pay2Win experience ever. (at least from my perspective) Not so much because the game requires more investment to earn something, but because the matching system is completely broken. Imagine Call of duty where you are playing a match against a player that has guns that do 10x damage or 10x less damage. That is what Splinterlands feels like right now and the thing that worries me the most is that the devs don't even seem to see it that way because they are raking in a lot of money from the Land Sale while the majority of the players (bots & those that just care about earning) aren't complaining. Many that are here for a fun gaming experience and see the earnings as a nice bonus like me are quite frustrated with the game as it all seems to be just about money and greed instead of gameplay and fun.
The good thing is that not that much needs to change in order to fix the issues and the player base just increasing on its own could also solve a lot. For now, Splinterlands for me is a daily task I just grind away at in anticipation for things to become fun again which is quite sad.
October 1st Collection Value
I still haven't sold any card yet this year and aim to keep it that way until at least the end of 2020. I started the month of October with a total card collection value of ~1135$. A good part of that value comes from duplicate cards I use to attract new players offering a monthly sign-up deal so it should be able to easily reach the same rankings with a lot less.
The entire month, I deliberately stayed in the Gold League with my main Level 5 account and in Silver with my Alt Level 3 account which gave me a chance to compete for the Season Reward Packs at the cost of getting less daily quest rewards but with the convenience to having a "pay2win 80%+ win rate". In the month of November, I am testing what it gives to move to Silver/Diamond which brings just a lot more frustration. I would say in 80% of the matches, the winner is almost certain in advance and there is no fun whatsoever. So I guess I rather go with the less frustration. Also in order to reach the top of the leaderboard, you need to grind out a crazy amount of matches which gives bots an advantage. I only reached A top spot in Silver with my alt account getting me 2 Untamed packs from the leaderboard rewards.
Based on the card values the day they were earned and current 0.00088$ DEC Value, just playing 20 minutes on a daily basis earned around ~43$ or an average of 1.43$ a day (I skipped 1 day not completing the quest).
October Reward Cards
The current value of all reward cards I got from the Loot Chests added up to 18.936$
October Untamed Pack Card Rewards
I got more Untamped packs compared to last month getting 10.312$ worth of cards from them!
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OctoberDEC Earnings
My overall DEC earnings added up to 31734 DEC and it was a -15.7% decrease compared to last month. I guess luck from the reward chests has a lot to do with it and overall the DEC earnings are still holding up pretty well.
| Account | Dec | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Main Account Ranked Wins | 13139DEC | 11.56$ |
| Main Account Reward Chests | 4696DEC | 4.13$ |
| Alt Account Ranked Wins | 13032 DEC | 11.47$ |
| Alt Account Reward Chests | 867 DEC | 0.76$ |
All combined at the current DEC price of 0.00088$ it adds up to 27.92$!
I had ~30k DEC on the side in anticipation for the Land sale but didn't get any despite being ready waiting for the countdown to hit zero. This really pissed me off along with many other loyal players so I dumped that DEC on the market instantly after buying some more WIN tokens (See WIN & SBET | Dividend Report) with it and I'm not planning to buy any land now. I do have ~300k DEC in the liquidity pool which will get me at least some plots to get started with once that expansion is done.
October Affiliate Earnings
I continue to add at least a couple new Affiliates each month as my Referral Link for as far as I know is the most favorable to sign up with for new players. (See Sign-Up Deal). I still don't really like the loophole how purchases done in DEC don't count toward affiliate earnings as they tend to be more favorable while the devs being able to earn from them is no issue (I'm not complaining though). For now, I will continue to offer the sign-up deal and I will see how the game evolves in the coming months.
Affiliate Promotion Cards
The Splinterlands team continues to run a promotion where everyone who signs up using a referral link will receive 1 random card from the @sl-giveaways account when they buy the 10$ summoner's spellbook. The account from which the referral link was used also receives 1 random card. I had 7 sign-ups that also got the Summoner's Spellbook last month so I received 7 cards along with some affiliate earnings.
| Affiliate earnings | Credits | $ Value |
|---|---|---|
| Credits | 4300 | 4.300$ |
| Promo | - | 0.321$ |
| Total | - | 4.621$ |
Special Thanks to everyone who signed up using my Link!
October Splinterlands Blogging Earnings
I continue to join the weekly Share Your Battle Challenge & Social Media Challenge and did end up making 9 posts last month. Special thanks to everyone that showed some support liking and upvoting my content! These were the post and the earnings on Hive/Publish0x/Splintertalk
| Post | Hive | Publish0x | SPT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Splinterlands October 2020 Sign-Up Promo Deal | 1.274$ | 1.09$ | 76 SPT |
| Pirate Archer Challenge | 1.547$ | 1.56$ | 1527 SPT |
| Has Splinterlands Gone Pay2Win? | 3.389$ | 2.62$ | 4618 SPT |
| Serpent Of The Flame Challenge | 0.374$ | 1.69$ | 1169SPT |
| September Results & Earnings Report | 2.597$ | 1.60$ | 4227 SPT |
| Scale Doctor Challenge | 2.066$ | 1.82$ | 1320 SPT |
| Onboarding 100 Players (Affiliate Report #3) | 2.813$ | 1.33$ | 331 SPT |
| Rusty Android Challenge | 1.356$ | 1.14$ | 1675 SPT |
| November 2020 Sign-Up Promo Deal | 1.350$ | 1.60$ | 2761 SPT |
| Total | 16.77$ | 14.45$ | 5.57$ |
Ever since writing a post (Link) on the Splintertalk.io platform and the SPT token, I actually started cost-averaging my way into it last month which got me up to 400k SPT in total that I'm leasing out to the 
All Blogging earnings combined added up to 36.79$ (this is the net amount after subtracting curation rewards and such)
October Monstermarket Cashback
Buying cards from the market on Monstermarket.io gives 3% cashback instantly paid out in DEC. With the lower affiliate earnings combined with my rather low sentiment on the game which doesn't really give me much reasons to buy more cards it only added to 23.005 DEC good for 0.02$ in cashback.
TOTAL OCTOBER EARNINGS
All numbers are based on current minimum values in case I would sell everything I right now have from last month's earnings in terms of HIVE / SPT / Cards / DEC / Credits / ...
| Source | Earnings |
|---|---|
| Reward Cards | 18.94$ |
| Untamed Pack Earnings | 10.31$ |
| DEC Earnings | 27.92$ |
| Affiliate Earnings | 4.62$ |
| Post Earnings | 36.79$ |
| Cashback | 0.02$ |
| Total | 98.60$ |
| Date | Account 1 | Account 2 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| January 1st | 354.12$ | 138.36$ | 492.48$ |
| February 1st | 363.79$ | 141.86$ | 505.65$ |
| March 1st | 434.96$ | 133.98$ | 568.64$ |
| April 1st | 452.02$ | 132.81$ | 584.83$ |
| May 1st | 562.78$ | 153.83$ | 716.61$ |
| June 1st | 765.89$ | 215.29$ | 981.18$ |
| July 1st | 732.60$ | 223.39$ | 955.99$ |
| August 1st | 740.99$ | 198.74$ | 939.73$ |
| September 1st | 873.32$ | 237.23$ | 1110.55$ |
| October 1st | 879.37$ | 255.17$ | 1134.54$ |
| November 1st | 1134.58$ | 407.95$ | 1542.53$ |
Here is a short Gameplay Tutorial for those who are looking to test the game for themselves...
Important: Treat games in the first place as games and not as investment opportunities, Splinterlands allows you to earn some money and get good returns but you are generally much better off flipping burgers in Mcdonalds when looking at the money earned for the time invested. It also comes with a risk of card values going down.
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