Splinterlands dropped a new update this week and I didn't see coming at all. They announced Avatars & Exemplars. Avatars come with full RPG customization. Race, gender, hair, facial features, clothing, accessories, backgrounds, frames, badges. And I had to read it twice because I thought I misunderstood.
You Can Now BE a Card
You literally create your own card. From scratch with stats, abilities, and everything. And then you can play with it. I've been playing TCGs for years. Magic. Hearthstone. Yu-Gi-Oh back in the day. And not once, has any game let me do this. Every card game in existence says, "here's our cards, pick some and build a deck." Splinterlands just said "nah, you can make your own now." That's insane.
How This Actually Works (The Important Part)
Avatars are your identity. You pick a race (human, elf, orc, dwarf for now), customize your appearance, throw on some gear, add some badges showing your achievements. But Exemplars? That's where it gets wild. Your avatar becomes the base for your Exemplar card. You level it up using glint. Every level gives you points to allocate however you want:
- Stats: Health, speed, armor, attack damage
- Mana cost: You can adjust this up or down.
- Abilities: Up to five ability slots
My Build (Inspired by a Dota 1 Hero)
I went Dragon element, because Dragon lets you play in any splinter (Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death). My inspiration? Venomancer from Dota 1. If you know, you know. You couldn't escape him. You couldn't push against him. He'd die in a team fight and still kill you 10 seconds later from poison ticking. So, I built my Exemplar around that concept:
- Mana Cost: 9
- Attack: 3 ranged damage
- Speed: 5
- Health: 6
- Ability: Poison
Poison is the core. Everything else is just stats to make sure I survive long enough to apply it. High speed means I go early in the round. Decent health means I'm not getting one-shot. Ranged means I'm safe in the backline. The idea is simple: get Poison on as many enemy monsters as possible, then let the poison damage over time do the work. Even if my Exemplar dies, the poison keeps ticking. That's why Venomancer was so OP in Dota 1.
The Grind (And Why It's Actually Good)
Levelling Exemplars uses glint, which means the people who grind ranked battles every day are rewarded. The people who've been stacking glint for months? They can push their Exemplar to higher levels faster. But even casual players can progress, it just takes time.
I'm at level 2 right now. So yeah, it's going to take me a while to max this thing out. But that's fine. The journey is the point. Watching my card evolve from a low-level common to a legendary foil over time will keep me coming back for the daily grind.
Where You Can Actually Use This Thing
Exemplars are not allowed in ranked battles (Thank God). Ranked needs to stay competitive and balanced, and letting people bring custom cards would break that immediately. But they are allowed in:
- Tournaments (No SPS DAO tournaments)
- Challenges
- Future guild brawls (next iteration)
- Upcoming campaign modes
So, letting Exemplars into tournaments makes sense. It's a testing ground. A place to experiment without stakes. And if they eventually split tournaments into "casual" and "competitive" formats (where Exemplars are banned), even better.
What This Means for the Game (Big Picture)
Splinterlands just differentiated itself from every TCG on the market by allowing you to play with your own card. Because now it's not just "I own these NFT cards." It's "I created this card. I levelled it. I chose every stat. This is mine."
Bottom Line
So yeah. Avatars and Exemplars just dropped. Splinterlands let us become playable cards. And somehow, this is happening in a Web3 game that most people don't know about. What are you building? You going tank? Glass cannon? Poison spam like me. Because if you're not already theory-crafting your Exemplar build, you're missing out.
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