Hey Everyone! It's Saturday again and as usual, there is a ton to talk about from the last week. No sooner did the Chaos Legion pack sale end than the next Riftwatcher airdrop milestone got ticked off as well. But that's not the real news, obviously. The real news is Land...
The Secret of Praetoria
After months and months of waiting, and a final week after the target date, the team from Splinterlands finally released the Whitepaper for the upcoming Land expansion: The Secret of Praetoria. Reading through it, it is obvious to see why it took so long to complete. There is a ton of information packed inside. I'm not going to repeat it all here but there are definitely some highlights that need to be addressed.
Surveying
First, the target is still for surveying land plots to go live before the end of Q1. That means sometime in the next two weeks. They released the 14 different terrains that are possible for each plot and also the fact that there will be four possible rarities and each plot will have three different potential resource types: Natural, Magical, or Occupied. Depending upon what the plot "surveys" as, the player will have access to different resources on each plot. As of v1.5, these resources will not be available yet so everyone will have the same resources until v2.0 goes live. In the meantime, Magical and Occupied plots will not mine these resources since they will produce different opportunities down the road. The Magical will instead start researching the Secret of Praetoria and the Occupied will mine SPS. The rest will produce Grain, something needed to feed your workers and keep them working the plot.
Starter Packages
(Building in a Box)
Before surveying your plots, you will need to decide if you want to purchase some "starter packages" for each of them. One will jump start building and include a free power source, one will provide some Grain and the ability to speed up construction, and the third will offer a temporary Totem that can double production for a month. All are geared towards giving players a head start on developing their plots in the first weeks of the game when resources will be understandably very scarce and expensive. They will cost 10k DEC or DEC-B each and must be purchased before surveying each plot. If you want to start producing with maximum efficiency as quickly as possible, these will probably be a must-buy.
Card Staking
Probably the most important information this whitepaper reveals is the mechanics of how staking a players NFTs (cards, titles, totems, runis) will work. Suffice it to say, GoldFoil cards rule the day here. The older the better. For example, a maxed GF Legendary Alpha card will provide a base of 100,000 PP (Production Points) while a maxed RF Legendary Alpha only provides 15,000 PP. That's still good though compared to a maxed GF Legendary Chaos card which provides 10,000 PP, which definitely trumps a RF Legendary Chaos card which provides 1500 PP. In other words, people who have been here for a few years are getting paid off for waiting.
While these numbers may seem pretty crazy, in the grand scheme of things the devs don't think it will be game-breaking simply because there are very few of those cards around. By my calculations there are only about 6900 GF Alpha Legendaries in existence, which means there could be a maximum of 2300 maxed cards (it only takes three GF to max Alpha Leg). That's if all of them were combined, which they won't be. Compared to 150,000 plots, you're probably looking at maybe 1% of the plots having these cards. But considering they will be 10 times more powerful than Chaos, they will probably still eat up a significant percentage of the overall production. Which is why I think these numbers will probably get tweaked downwards a little before all is said and done. Especially considering they already have the advantage of only needing three cards to max. The team has clearly reserved the right inside the whitepaper to make any changes they deem necessary. This may be one of them. Just my opinion.
While those numbers are the extremes, the vast majority of landholders will not have access to many of the high-powered Alpha and Beta cards so there will be a LOT of lesser cards used on the vast majority of the plots. This already has and should continue to result in more cards being combined and taken off the market. It remains to be seen just how many big landholders will try and survey and then produce on their plots. Some people own 1000 plots or more by themselves. It will cost 10000 DEC to stake each card so they would be looking at having to stake 5000 cards for maximum efficiency which works out to 50M DEC. At the peg, that's $50k just to stake all your plots full of monsters. So, chances are, there will be a pretty large percentage of plots that do not get "worked" in the first few months of the expansion. Which is another reason I think they'll probably have to tweak the Alpha numbers downwards. It's one thing if these say 1500 plots that have GF Alpha Legendaries on them are competing against 148,500 other plots. It's quite another if they're only competing against 50,000 (or less). In that case, they'll probably be eating up more than half the overall production of all lands combined and will obviously make it very difficult for the smaller landholders to compete.
We'll see. It's still very early, obviously, and there is still a lot of testing to be done.
Production Boosts
To go along with the varied "base" production given by your cards, there are also "bonuses" that can be added from other things. For example, certain Splinters will add a bonus depending on terrain type. There will also be bonuses for titles, totems, land rarities, and especially Runis. You can read about them all in the whitepaper.
Grain
The first and only "physical" resource able to be produced in 1.5 is Grain. The workers on each plot need to be fed in order to keep working. There will be an internal market set up to buy and sell if necessary to keep your workers working. The Grain necessary will scale to the "power" of your workers. In other words, GFLs will consume more than RF Epics, for example. Once "harvested", Grain will be able to be stored for free in v1.5. That will change in 2.0. It can also be moved to a different plot to feed those workers, or sold on the internal market.
While harvesting, the game will also check to see if your workers "found" any Totem Fragments. These will ultimately be able to be combined to form Totems you can use on your land or sell.
Land Conclusion
Those are some of the highlights of Land 1.5 in a nutshell. A BIG nutshell. Like a coconut. But there is a lot more you can read about in the whitepaper itself. If you own any land or are potentially interested in getting some, I highly recommend reading it. There's a ton of information but it's a well-written document and pretty easy to read.
Prices on the Rise
As you could probably imagine, all of the new mechanics laid out in the whitepaper have caused a major commotion in the card markets. GoldFoil cards especially have seen a significant jump in the last 24 hours. I don't own any of the older editions (Alpha, Beta) but my collection has gone up by more than 25% since the paper was released yesterday. There is definitely some excitement and FOMO back in Splinterlands right now. Even with the regular economy looking ragged at best, Splinterlands continues to thrive. It's fun to watch things go up for a change.
That said, there is still a long way to go until Land is fully implemented and there are still literally thousands of monsters that will need to be maxed over the next few months. I don't think we're anywhere near done moving yet. I have no idea how high things will go, but every day with no new packs for sale (other than Riftwatchers) is another day the amount of cards out there contracts. As always, time will tell, but things are definitely bullish for now. 
Riftwatchers Airdrop
Speaking of Riftwatchers, the 1M pack mark was finally eclipsed and the third airdrop happened this morning.
Ancient Redwood looks like a good counter to some of the Speed tanks. Not only does it have TrueSight, but Fury and Piercing as well. 11 Mana is a lot and it's slow with 1 speed, but if and when it gets a turn, whoever is standing in the way is going to feel it.
Conclusion
That's it for the news. Once again, a veritable ton of information to digest again this week. I'm starting to think of Splinterlands like the NFL in the US. No matter where we are in the yearly cycle, there is always something going on and something to talk about. Seems like a good business plan to me.
My Stuff
As for me, I am starting to get comfortable playing in Champion. I actually got a few days playing there last season and I'm trying to get there faster this season. I've amassed a whopping 234 Champion Points. lol A grizzled veteran already.
No real buying other than once the whitepaper came out and I saw the importance of GF, I quickly scooped up a few cards to max out some Legendaries. I needed one Queen Mycelia, Uriel, and Venator Kinjo, as well as a couple Djinn Oshannus. I now have 5 max GFLs for Land so at least I've got something to work with once the surveying is done.
In the meantime...Soulbound.
- 835 RF Common; 34 GF. (4/12 with 0).
- 178 RF Rare; 5 GF. (10/12 with 0).
- 26 RF Epic; 3 GF. (6/7 with 0).
- 12 RF Legendary; 0 GF. 12/12 with 0).
That's it for this week. I'm sure there will be plenty to talk about again next week. Happy Battling!
PS. Weekly reminder: if you're not on Threads, get there. It's the perfect place to show off fun battles or lucky pulls from chests. Plus, you could earn some money to help buy more cards. lol
Hive is the Way.
LeoFinance, the Gateway.
