Seeing that it has been almost seven weeks since I started playing Steem Monsters, and the current (fifth) season is about to end, I wanted to take a look back and evaluate my experience with the game so far.
Since a battle can be played in only a couple of minutes, with a myriad of possible combinations, resulting in very different outcomes, it literally never gets boring. The variety of cards, along with their differences in levels adds to the complexity of the game, while the basics stay just as simple. All this makes it a fun experience to play, even a bit addictive, and I haven’t even mentioned the reward cards yet. Of course, there are some proper hurdles to pass, whether they were put in place intentionally, or by the forces of circumstance.
Battling Against the Same Line-up
I’m sure you’ve noticed, how the silver and golden leagues are seemingly dominated by players who tend to favor a certain splinter (Life), with a certain, virtually un-changing, line-up. That’s right: a Silvershield Paladin as the tank, followed by the Divine Healer, and the Peacemaker behind her, usually all at level 3. Sounds familiar? This is the core, behind which they may add some level 1 neutral cards if the mana permits, but those don’t really make such a great difference. To give them credit, this is not a bad combo at all. The Paladin is well protected anyway, his health is continuously restored by the Healer, who also launches magic attacks at the opponent’s tank, and the Peacemaker provides an additional formidable support, especially at level three.
I can see why they picked this arrangement. After all, this is the whole point of the game: having your monsters work as a well functioning team. But to think that this triad is the only effective combination that so many players have chosen… now that’s a bit suspicious. After all, you could form similar teams in each splinter, with a tank, a healer/weakener, and a range/magic support. So why only in Life? Also, looking at the names of these “players”, such as Giantroc, Claygolem, or Seleniasky, one must wonder… maybe they are just like they behave: bots, bots, bots!
Beating the Bots
As it usually tends to be the case, such a situation is only frustrating until you figure out how to beat them. Sure, I could have bought a bunch of cards to level up my existing monsters to where I could easily overcome such a force… but I preferred to keep my summoners at level 2 for now, until I’ve sold some more reward cards. The alternative is not always that straight forward, but a good strategy involves using a good sniper, a good sneak, maybe both, or a couple of them, depending on the splinter and the mana cap. That way you can get rid of the Divine Healer, without whom the Paladin can be whittled down to nothing.
Collecting and Trading – the Other Addictive Part of the Game
The most exciting part of playing battles are the daily quests, especially when you complete them, and get to see what new reward cards you got. This daily Christmas-moment is only surpassed by the excitement of putting these new cards to good use.
Monsters for Battles, for Sale, or for Leveling Up
Having a new card in my deck, I always like to play it at first, to see how well they perform. Sometimes they work as well as I expected, other times they don’t. The Goblin Mech is a great example for a seemingly powerful card, which however is not more than a pile of junk. And at 10 mana points, a quite expensive pile of junk at that. Other cards, such as the Kobold Miner turned out to be highly effective monsters, in spite of their low mana cost. So ultimately, I tend to pick my favorite cards to play and level up, the rest I sell. I don’t see a point in catching them all, just because they are there. That way I would spread myself too thin, and end up paying more than I want to.
Some cards are funny in the way that if I was to sell them individually I’d get a few cents, while combining three or five of them could get me substantially more. This is what I experienced with the Mushroom Seer. At level one I could sell one for four cents, but five of them sell for thirty! So far I’ve tried it a couple of times, and it always worked. I was even thinking about buying five of them at level one, and selling them at level 3, making ten cents each turn.
Closing Doors on a Fun Game
Granted, by joining the monster party only in the third season, I basically missed out on the great bonanza of the early days. Beta cards for reward? Entire booster packs for a daily quest? It sounds outrageously too-good-to-be-true, but that’s what I keep hearing about those good old days of Steem Monsters. In the last season the number of reward cards have been greatly reduced, and we can probably expect even further restrictions in future. This is what 
So maybe today’s conditions will soon also be seen as too-good-to-be-true. That’s reason enough to play as long as it’s still fun, and collect as many cards as I can, while I can. Once the doors have shut completely, and it won’t be possible to go on without paying, I can still sell my deck. Even without the $250 from my gold-foil Sacred Unicorn, all my current cards should be at least $50 worth. Not bad, doubling the $25 I put into it, in under fifty days.
Here's a list of my previous Steem Monsters related posts:
- Lessons From the First Two Weeks
- How to Rock SteemMonsters (While Remaining Stingy)
- The Joy of Trading Cards
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#ecotrain | What is EcoTrain | Discord Community
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