I have never done one of these before but since I am getting back into Splinterlands I figured.... why not?
Background on Cards
Splinterlands is a card based strategy game. You collect cards then you use those cards to battle other people and progress up the leaderboard each season. At the end of the season you get rewards and you start over again and try to climb the leaderboards again. Rinse and Repeat. Splinterlands is not exactly "free to play" as you need to buy a 'spell book' in order to get rewards and buy/sell them but anyone can try the game out free if they want. It is on the HIVE blockchain so you will need an account over there.
At the heart of the game there are 2 types of cards. There are Monsters and there are Summoners. Each battle consists of picking 1 of your summoners and then adding monsters to fight. Summoners have specific abilities and so do the Monster cards. So that is where the strategy comes in. There is also 'types' to each card. So say you pick a Fire Summoner then you are only going to be able to pick Fire Monsters (and neutral as well).
Here are just some of my Monster Cards.
And I know as a new player all those different numbers and icons can be super confusing. I will break it down to be as easy as I can for new players to understand.
For this guide we are going to focus on 1 specific card and level it up to show you the whole process. So we are going to focus on the card "Carrion Shade" and I have a Level 1 card already as seen below.
How to Level up your cards
Before we dive into the deep end there is 1 thing to note. Depending on the rarity of your card it can only upgrade to a certain level.
Common Cards can upgrade to Level 10 (Carrion Shade is a common card)
Rare Cards - Level 8
Epic Cards - Level 6
Legendary Cards - Level 4
Now let's take a look at my Carrion Shade card in my inventory. You will notice a Red banner in the top right corner and the number 2 in it. That means I have 2 of those cards in my inventory.
And if you click on the card image it will bring you here to show you what cards you own.
You can see in the column labeled "LVL" I have 2 cards both of which are level 1.
In the column "Next Level" you will see both are at "0/4" which means no cards have been combined yet and they are both the lowest level they can be. (This is important for later).
Now to upgrade cards what we are going to want to do is to checkmark both cards we own and then click the "combine cards" icon.
That will bring up a new popup showing your stats when combining.
It tells you that you are about to combine 2 cards and it will be converted into 1 card with 1/4 cards towards becoming a level 2 card. At the bottom it also tells you that you are 3 cards short for Level 2. I am going to click "Combine" to merge my cards.
You will need to sign the transaction and then you will see a screen like this.
Now you can see it is still a Level 1 card but the "Next Level" column is marked as 1/4 for the next level. What also changes though is the card image itself. You will now see a green bar running across the lower end of the card showing you how close you are to leveling up that card. For us it is 25% filled. Meaning we need 3 more cards to level him up to Level 2.
So let's go get some cards then!
You are going to want to click on "For Sale" in the upper right and then what I do is sort by Price with the up arrow. Meaning it will show me the cheapest cards at the top of the list.
I am going to select the first 3 cards (the cheapest ones) and buy them with DEC.
It will ask you to confirm that you want to buy those 3 cards and then submit the transaction on the blockchain.
Now back on the "Cards" tab you will see you 1 card that you leveled up to Level 1 1/4 already and the 3 new cards we just bought.
I am going to repeat the steps and select all 4 cards and click on Combine.
A popup will appear stating you are going to combine those 4 cards into a Level 2 card with 0 our of the 9 cards you need to level it up to Level 3. It will also show you a preview of the new card (this matters if the card were to gain any new stats at the new level, more on that below).
And now in our inventory we have a Level 2 Carrion Shade card!
That is how you level up cards. You can follow these steps for any Monster card or any Summoner card. The steps are the same. You can upgrade each card 1 by 1 as you get duplicates. Or you can wait until you get all the cards needed to level it up at once. Having a Level 1 with 0/4 or a Level 1 with 3/4 does not change the cards stats or gameplay. Only when it reaches a new level will it have the chance at gaining new abilities or stats.
**What to know after **
Not all cards require 4 duplicates to level up. As you level up cards they require more and more cards to level up. As as the rarity increases that changes as well. After we upgraded our Carrion Shade to level 2, it now requires 9 more cards to level it up to level 3.
Gold cards are a whole different ballgame. For example this Level 3 Gold "Goblin Psychic" only requires 1 duplicate card to level it up to a level 4.
You can see that for this card, Level 1 and Level 2 are N/A which means they don't exist and the lowest card level for this particular card is level 3.
You can't just upgrade your Monster cards to level 10 and be unstoppable in the game. Your Summoner levels determine what level of Monster you can use. So if you have a Level 2 Summoner and you add in 5 Level 10 Monster cards, then all those Monster cards will be brought down to a Level 2 for that battle. But as you level up the Summoner the Monster cards will be allowed to use their higher levels.
Cards you buys with Glint are locked down when you get them. I have 2 "Tokatag Conscript" cards. 1 is soulbound and 1 is not. If I combine them into 1 card, then that new card will also be soulbound as well.
After combing those 2 cards here is my new card.
- Since you can level up a card to Level 1 1/4 (that means you combined 2 cards together but it is still a Level 1) and you only need to get 3 more cards to level it up to a Level 2. You could go buy a card on the market that is a Level 1 2/4 (which is 3 cards combined) and combine it with your Level 1 1/4 to make a Level 2 card. It can get tricky so pay attention to the column labelled "BCX"
And that is my guide on how to combine cards to level them up. I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and my first submission into the Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge!
Note: I am not trying to double dip on this challenge but not sure if posting on Publish0x counts and figured with more Splinterlands people here I would post here but without the hastags and such. I am still learning the Hive blogging experience so bear with me :)