Recently, there has been a lot of commotion about how you can't play Splinterlands without investing a ton. While I am quite sure that this is not the case (I mostly rent since the start), I still wanted to try how much a single account, WITHOUT any owned cards, can earn (or lose) in a single season.
In this series of posts, I will be recording the results of this challenge in detail. Here is my second entry for this challenge!
You can access the collection of posts for this challenge HERE. This is best viewed in PeakD with their awesome collection feature.
Stats Summary (before 2nd rentals)
Here is the stats summary before going into the second rental round:
Starting balance: 3,934.909
Starting rating: 1,882
After my first rental round, the DEC balance went up to 3,934 and I ended up on 1,882 rating that time. Hence, these are my new starting points for the second rental round.
I am still starting without any owned cards for this account. All the reward cards are moved to my main account, mainly to level up and rent out. No matter how small, I don't like the feeling of having unutilized assets in my account. 😅
Notes:
- For easier record keeping, everything will be expressed in DEC
- Card rewards will be converted to USD value (based on PeakMonsters My Explorer), then converted to DEC depending on the rate as of writing.
Strategy
- To maximize rental costs, two quests will be stacked before each round of rentals.
- ECR management
- I will only rent when my ECR is at 100%
- Stop playing at 45-60% ECR
- Target league: Diamond II and up
Reason behind this is I am feeling lucky (LOL) with reward chest pulls this season. I never tried calculating which league gives the most efficient DEC reward vs. rental costs. So I'll just go with my gut feel on this one.
More than the rewards, it feels so good to open more chests for daily quest 😅
Second rental run results
Oh well, that was a tiring run. I over-rented again. I did not manage to reach Diamond III, which was my goal for the second round, and I was not expecting a significant decline in DEC rewards (although the DEC rewards are still better than months ago). This resulted to a minimal profit from this rental run. The main good thing from this is I am now closer to Diamond III.
Current rating
Before my second round of rentals expired, I was able to increase the account's rating by 807. This resulted to a current rating of 2,689 -- 111 ratings short for Diamond III.
Battles summary
- Total battles for this run: 252 - 122 (previous) = 130 battles
- Total wins for this run: 145 - 72 = 73 wins
- Win percentage for this run: 56% (slightly lower than the 59% from previous run)
Ranked battle rewards
Rental costs: 1,784.658 DEC/day
This is a very high cost for rentals. My main objective was to rush and open my season rewards once I am in Diamond III, but that did not happen. I kept on losing a lot of battles, so I eventually gave up on that and opened it in Gold I.
Ending DEC: 4,026
Ranked battle rewards P&L: 4,026(ending DEC) - 3,934(starting DEC) - 56(from quest) = 36 DEC (ranked rewards)
Quest rewards
Total cards value: $1.48 + $0.73 = $2.21 or 180 DEC
DEC rewards (Quest): 56 DEC
Total DEC from chest: 236 DEC (chest rewards)
Total profit (including cards): 36 + 236 = 272 DEC
Running profit: 2,401 + 272 = 2,673
That was an uneventful rental run. Main reason for that is I rented cards for Diamond League, but ended up playing the entire rental run in Gold. I did not factor in the fact that it is often difficult for me to move up from Gold to Diamond III.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I think that there are areas for improvement in that run. Here are all that I can think of:
I think that I could have lowered my rental costs to 700-900 DEC/day, if I became more realistic on the League that I can achieve for this run. Renting cards for Diamond was the main mistake in this run.
I shouldn't have burned through my ECR until 35% (did not follow my initial strategy) because I wanted to end up in Diamond III (did not work obviously).
Become more prepared before renting. There were some rentals that I rented on a whim because they "looked good" on my deck, but rarely played with it.
That's it from me for now. I'll keep everyone updated with my next rental round for this challenge account. Let's see if I can finally reach Diamond III with the next rentals. See you on my next post!
P.S. I am planning to add an additional part on my next updates, mainly focused on tips for renters & Spellbook only players. May I know your thoughts about that? Do you think it will be helpful? Or it will deviate the focus of the updates? Please share your thoughts in the comments section!
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