I'm back again, and it's already been nearly two weeks since #Splinterlands Season 181 ended. Let's check to see how I fared over the second half of April, from the 15th to the 30th. Thanks to the account history tool from 
Season 181 was pretty consistent with the returns earned during S180, as my ranked strategy has been pretty consistent over the past few months since adding 
Ranked Report
Modern Performance
Once again, my talented Splinterlands scholar
Wild Performance
In Wild, the 
The chance for GLORY in any of those reward loot chests makes it worth paying for the Wild battle pass & the SHbot automation to get to 4300 rating for the two champion league promotion rewards. Those are some of the most exciting flips I watch every season on playback. Thank goodness for Blockchain!
Survival Performance
Another Survival season has passed, and I'm becoming less excited about the format each season. Surely, it is nice to earn those new promo cards, but it is a common that requires 400 copies for a max level unit. Earning between 5 to 8 copies each season is not going to get me to the promised land very quickly, so I've already turned to the secondary market to secure more BCX.
Then there's the Glint, which is also a nice benefit, but not something that motivates me very much. 175K Glint is 17.5 energy at Champion 1, so that is nice to have, but not a big motivating factor to sink more time and resources into Survival. At this point, it feels like a ton of computing power is being used by the company (for liquidity bots) and by 3rd party operators to run account automation. All for a few promo cards and Glint? I think this is a waste of compute and not the best way to increase card demand and asset valuations.
All that being said, it is still nice to see my account among the Top 5 accounts in the most competitive Survival Bracket X, which has the biggest payouts and the biggest accounts. My survival win rate slipped down to 67% for the season, winning 319 of 476 battles. We'll see if I can make the push into Top 3 for even bigger rewards next season.
Tournaments Report
Altumns enjoyed his most lucrative season yet, piloting my pile of Modern and Wild cards in the
Altumns took first place in three events in S181, including the granddaddy of them all, the Expert Wild Gold Foil tournament (formerly called The Wealthy Gambit). In addition to the three wins, he placed in the Top 4 in SIX more events. He placed in the Top 16 in another 12 events, making at least the Top 16 in 21 of the 24 events in S181!
The tournament scholarship is going better than I ever could have dreamed since Duce is no longer fleeing a third of its tournament battles! I don't wake up in a panic over what tournaments I need to submit before getting ready to start my day. And the best part -- we averaged 840 SPS prize per event in S181, winning 20156 SPS from 24 SPS DAO events.
Ranked Rewards
| Ranked Play Wins | Tokens Received |
|---|---|
| Modern SPS Rewards Claimed | ⭐41352.274 SPS |
| Wild SPS Rewards Claimed | ⭐824.387 SPS |
| Survival SPS Rewards Claimed | ⭐JK 000 SPS |
| Season Rewards Claimed | ✨2,749,753 Glint |
Season 181 ticked down for Modern and Wild SPS earnings. In Wild, of course, because I only played 59 battles instead of 100. In Modern, mostly because I played a bunch more battles, bringing down our overall win rate compared to just my scholar.
In Wild, the 71% win rate was still a good mark, but 3% lower than S180. In Modern, the battles I didn't "waste" in Wild meant more battles for me to waste playing in Modern as I shake off the rust.
Based on the 488 wins from 873 battles in S181, I averaged 84.7 SPS/win and 47.4 SPS/battle in Modern. Admittedly, I dragged the averages down a little bit, jamming battles myself. I'm still learning the new metagame strategies!
Comparatively, my Wild ranked splits are trending up, but still more modest, due to the extensive bot traffic in the format. I didn't even crack 1K SPS for my 42 wins in 59 battles. In Wild, I averaged 19.6 SPS/win and 14 SPS/battle, which are both down ~7 SPS from S180 averages.
Survival... say no more SPS rewards.
The huge pile of Glint cheered me up, though. It meant more loot chests and chances for premium jackpot prizes! Nearly 2.75M Glint was earned from ranked play in S181. There's also an additional 350K Glint for Top 10 on the Modern leaderboard, and 175K Glint for 5th on the Bracket X Survival leaderboard, bringing my final tally over 3.25M Glint. That's sure going to buy a lot of loot chests!
I might even save some Glint for my avatar -- just kidding -- the extra Glint will get spent on more energy! Plus, I kinda dig leaving my avatar on Level 42. I still haven't decided on any of my avatar unit stats. I'll likely continue to buy Batch 1 for the epic and legend draws each season to try to spike Gold Foils, but the remainder of my Glint will be used on a couple of batches of all the loot chests and a lot more energy. We love to battle!
⭐ SPS Report
| Type | ⭐ Amount |
|---|---|
| Staking Rewards | 1746.297 |
| Validator Rewards | 1478.487 |
| Ranked Rewards as above | 42176.661 |
| Brawl Rewards | 280.563 |
| Land Rewards | 8946.883 |
| SPS DAO Tournament | 20156.86 |
| NET SPS | 74,785.751 |
Overall, my net SPS from 181 slipped just under 75K to 74785. Duce has six main streams to generate SPS: Staking, Validating, Ranked, Brawl, Land, and Tournaments.
Ranked led the way with 42176 SPS from Modern and Wild. The total seasonal rewards for staking (holding staked SPS) and validating (holding activated validator nodes) finished around 1.7K and 1.4K, respectively, in Season 181. Brawl provided an additional 280 SPS, so I got about 3.5K SPS from staking, validating, and brawling combined!
My SPS mining from land has picked back up by around 2K SPS to nearly 9K on the season after my successful relocation to Pandon Reach Region 41. I've also dropped my DEC bill considerably from all the resource expenses I had from land before I balanced my budget.
I sold off a portion of my occupied plots since it was costing me DEC every harvest to purchase resources I couldn't create. The mined SPS was not pure profit since I was paying back a good amount of the SPS value in DEC just to make the harvest. With this in mind, I moved from Regions 27, 95, 97, and 136 down to Pandon Reach #41 to condense my PP resources onto more select, premium plots for more sustainable returns. So far, it has been a very successful move!
Although the SPS price is still slipping, I continue to HODL most of my stack, while I buy SWAP.BTC on HIVE with the winnings from my two alt accounts. Even at the low spot price of 0.00418 USD, the 74785 SPS is valued at $312. That's a lot of ice cream money!
Of course, a big seasonal thank you for the time and effort
Check out my affiliated guild alliance for open positions.
Discord invite linked to the picture!
Proud members of Splinterlands' top-rated guild,
the original guild in the KoG alliance, 
