A little over a month ago I started tracking all of the most important metrics around the Play2Earn games, yield farms,and other projects I’ve been educating myself about. My Splinterland collections EV (which had been doubling every three weeks) showed that I needed to have a much better understanding of which projects were rewarding well and deserved focus. I first envisioned this document as a simple spreadsheet for my eyes only but I’m realizing how helpful this could be for others as an unbiased data-set.
I started playing Splinterlands 3-4 months ago and quickly found an entire ecosystem of sites, tools, and services who exist to support the most fun and unique new TCG I’ve played in years. As I personality love TCGs I quickly set out to learn the games meta and rules and bought a small collection in a series of small purchase. I ended up spending about $700 in BTC buying some other peoples collections at below market value on the discord and, at this point, I’m quite happy with my collection.
In the weeks before starting this document my collection value nearly tripled topping $2000 before marching on to $3000. That’s the kind of growth you just can’t be unhappy with. I’ve also been using these cards in game as seems best to increase my rewards but I want to be clear, I play about 10-15 matches a day, I’m not grinding Splinterlands. I’m specifically not overplaying to keep my DEC capture rate between 90-100% as often as possible. There is a lot more to say here about the power of goldfoil cards, the booming Splinterlands tournament scene, Untamed selling out, and the coming LAND update but this is a place for metrics so I’ll let my numbers speak for themselves.
Rising Star has separated itself from the pack of same-y feeling timer based games with it’s unique late-game play. While you’ll spent your first weeks in Rising Star mashing that mission button as much as possible soon new opportunities show up and, with a little investment, you can transition from starving artist to other roles like amateur promoter, record producer, or even a celebrity type path and seat on Starbits Millionaire.
I first experimented with promoting missions and feel like I got a pretty good understanding of the price range one should look for to maximize their STARPRO return for STARBITS spent. I quickly found myself feeling like I didn’t have the budget I really needed to play in that area as well as I’d hope (and questioned why I was stacking STARPRO at all) and switched over to producing real like music NFTs for artists releasing music in the Rising Star ecosystem. At this point I’m earning on my investment each time any of the NFT albums released over the past few months sells. For the simple price of staking my ‘BITS this feels like a better fit.
I was not aware that I had reached 100,000 total STARBITS staked in this venture! That’s both surprising to me and the kind of thing that has me wanting to keep better notes like this. Now to reach 1 million ‘BITS!
All seems quiet in the darkness of space. I’m just out here mining TLM like it’s my goddamn job and patiently waiting for the Binance mission update that has been revealed but not yet released. I’ve seen a lot of people quit Alien Worlds over the past 2 months and, while I get it, I think it’s short-sighted. This game is still in alpha and, if you have a problem with the limited timer-based gameplay currently available, signing up may have been a mistake.
I feel like this just the beginning for Alien Worlds and look forward to be earning assets in a game we cannot yet even imagine in a few short months by funding expeditions through staking the TLM I’m building up now. I’ve got the long view on this one ya’ll and I advise you to keep your eyes on the horizon.
Neon District feels a lot like Alien Worlds felt before the big Binance announcement broke. At this point the whole gameplay loop is setting a team to start a shift delivering pizza ever 8 hours. By delivering pizza your team will earn Neon, the games currency. Currently you can use neon to upgrade your characters, equipment, and buy packs of items. The game has a presence over on OpenSea but the market dose not have enough activity to make pricing feel at all accurate.
From w4 to w5 I spent a few thousand Neon on packs and upgrading the most unique weapon I found: Cranberry.
There is only one other Cranberry on OpenSea and it’s listed for $1k+. It would be easy to feel prety giddy about this pull but, for the moment, I’m just going to wait for the market for this game to grow and develop. I’ve seen some data that makes me suspect that far more people are sleeping on this game than I expected and I’m happy to quietly deliver my pizza in the background each day to build power for the games release.
UpLand is a game I stepped into more 3 months ago when I really started focusing on the Play2Earn scene more. I’m not a huge fan of virtual real estate games normally but this one has a very high level of polish and promise that convinced me to spend a little to get exposure to it. Adter buying a few dozen propertys in Brooklyn for less than $100 (from Paypal) I started collecting steady rent and honestly didn’t really think about UpLand much. I just added it to my daily collections.
Last week I took a closer look and decided to drop another $25 to buy about a dozen properties spread over a variety of other cities. Many of these cities had collections I could complete (“Have 3 properties in …”) which rewarded some UPX and increased my production 3-4%. For the investment it’s a no-brainer and, as I’m not going anywhere, this should pay off really well over time. I really look forward to seeing my increased production over coming weeks.
Atomic Hub has a very convenient auction-house I use to sell NFTs I earn and collect each week. These NFTs could be packs earned in games, air-dropped items, art assets, or really anything else I have access to that can fut in the wallet.
My wallets EV still makes me quite happy as I’ve spent $152 on items, have sold $117, and am currently holding $217 worth in my wallet.
The WAX I make here I then take over the WAX Cloud Wallet and stake for passive rewards. I have no plans to take any of this WAX out anytime soon and plan to ad to this staked pool for many months moving forward as the Play2Earn scene develops. I've already got a nice little bag.
There is a lot to go into here about how I pick which items to hold and how I generate the things I sell that I hope to get into in more detail soon.
If you’re read this far please leave me a comment answering: Have you ever heard of Lost Relics?
I feel like it’s the sleeper hit of the Play2Earn scene. It’s like some sort of mash-up of Diablo 1, NFTs, Runescape, and ENJIN coin and it deserves your attention. If you want to be clearing dungeons in search of … well, Lost Relics that are worth their weight in crypto than this is the game for you.
I’ve been play Lost Relics in whatever form it’s existed for about 3 months now and it’s been a wild ride. Due to some clever trading while the Easter Event was running I was able to get set up with some badass blockchain gear and a 3 month pendant (subscription, you can still play without one though). The game then got a massive update spiking the difficulty by taking most of the more rare equipment out of my usable pool for low level dungeons.
Thankfully it seems as of today the Daily Quests are back and we can all get back to grinding those for Chests.
Without spending too much time going into specifics I want to warn perspective players that Lost Relics is a survival game disguised as a dungeon crawler and nothing will work as you expect going in. The weapons damage, leveling up, equipment/dungeon caps, and order-book style market all trip up new players. If you are clever and looking for interesting game systems to learn from and abuse Lost Relics is fun as hell. Here I am leveraging the unique market rules to buy an item for 16/17 gold while at the same time selling it for 19/21.
I grew up on the EverQuest market so this feels like coming home in a way and I’m hooked.
FreeBitco.in is the oldest BTC faucet still running on the internet and it looks like it was designed by someone with serious mental health concerns. I love it and have been using it for years. I currently have them holding 13,500 FUN so I can be a Premium Member and collect a ton of daily Wheel of Fortune spins while also enjoying better interest rates.
This one is where I learned to understand the basics of staking and, while it might feel a little silly to new folk, I’m happy to show up here a few times a day to earn a small pile of Satoshi each time. In the past I’ve used the website to bet on BTCs end of month price but I never touch the other games. All and all it’s a slow and steady build and, while I don’t think I’ll win the Lambo or Rolexes they give away, I’m having a ball.
Cub DeFi is my current favorite DEX due to its DEC/BUSD farm. I have things set up so I can take the DEC I earn playing Splinterlands and pair it with BUSD to provide liquidity for CubDeFi. In return I’m rewarded LP tokes I keep staked to earn CUB which I also keep staked to earn even more CUB at 54.4% APR.
If this is leaving you scratching your head I’m working on a much more in-depth article to cut through the jargon and explain how (and why) you can set this by step-by-step.
Follow me to be alerted when that articles releases soon.
That’s it for the initial installment of Scorecard. I really look forward tot he data we are going to gain as this series continues. Please feel free to sign up for any of the games mentioned via the links provided in this articles to earn extra rewards while also helping me get a little boost.
If you are looking to stay updated and on the cutting edge of the Play2Earn scene please come and join us over in The Crypto-Gaming Guild discord. We are looking for game captains and folks who can help organize. If you are interested, please step up. The games we are currently focusing on are:
Rising Star
Splinterlands
UpLand
Neon District
Alien Worlds
Lost Relics
eXode