Have you ever played MTG(Magic The Gathering), Yu-gi-oh, Hearthstone, Pokemon, or even the Gwent(The Witcher card game) and still find yourself looking for more battles to dominate and become the best of the best when it comes to card battles all of that while earning? Worry no more cause I will share with you one of the next big thing when it comes to TCG.
This content will cover the following:
-The Game
-The Team
-Partnership
-How to get started
The Game
Splinterlands is a digital, collectible card game where you build up your deck with different sets of abilities, stats and splinters, and battle your way with other players from around the world to reach the highest league and to earn the bountiful reward possible every end of season. Furthermore, the game has developed its digital cards using NFT technology that helps the collectible cards to gain more potential value depending on the rarity and demand of the card.
The game is built on the Hive blockchain technology where players can buy, sell and transfer their digital assets freely. For more information regarding the Hive blockchain, please see https://hive.io/
They also launched a new set of cards, the Chaos Legion, which besides expanding the current card supply, involves a new token earning ratio. Also, the game will introduce resource gathering on virtual lands, adding another economical layer to their ecosystem.
There are 3 types of currencies within the game:
Dark Energy Crystal(DEC) — This is the official in-game currency. You can earn them thru winning battles, finishing daily quest, season end rewards, selling/renting/burning out your cards, and joining tournaments. You can also buy from the market.
Dark Energy Crystal(DEC)
Splintershards(SPS) — Is a new cryptocurrency governance token which will be integrated into the Splinterlands game in order to provide increasing levels of decision-making ability and control over the product to the player-base, asset owners, and other stakeholders. You can obtain SPS just by holding your assets within the game. Also, there’s a lot of ways you can get SPS. You may kindly refer to the link for more information: https://sps.splinterlands.com/distribution
Splintershards(SPS) — Is a new cryptocurrency governance token which will be integrated into the Splinterlands game in order to provide increasing levels of decision-making ability and control over the product to the player-base, asset owners, and other stakeholders. You can obtain SPS just by holding your assets within the game. Also, there’s a lot of ways you can get SPS. You may kindly refer to the link for more information: https://sps.splinterlands.com/distribution
Credit — This may be used to purchase items in the shop or marketplace. You may buy Credits with PayPal or various forms of cryptocurrency. You can also obtain some credits just by referring new players. Take note that they need to purchase Summoner Spellbook or Card Packs first before you can get the 5% rebate from your referrals purchase.
Let’s get to know the basics. There are 2 types of card:
Summoner card - These are the cards that you will be needing to summon the monster cards, each with different kinds of bonus stats for their monsters
Monster card - These cards are the one that will be doing the actual fighting.
There are 6 splinters in total. These are Fire, Water, Earth, Life, Death, Dragon. The 7th one is called Neutral and you can use those cards in every splinter.
Now let’s jump in to the card basics:
Breakdown of a card(Take note: A Gold foil have a higher value than a regular foil cards)
Mana Cost - The more powerful the card, the higher the Mana Cost. This cost will influence how you create teams.
Splinter/Rarity - The icon represents Splinter and the color indicates Rarity (Common, Rare, Epic, or Legendary).
Card Name - This is the name of the character.
Abilities - These are special skills or powers that are used during combat.
STATS - These numbers reflect the physical power, speed, toughness, and health of the character.
Level - A higher level translates to a more powerful card. Gaining levels may increase STATS or unlock abilities.
Experience - Experience is gained by combining duplicate cards. A green bar indicates your progress to the next level.
STATS
These are the core attributes of the character.
Image taken from the game FAQ
If you ever want to review how a character’s STATS will change as it levels up, simply head over to your collection. Click on the character, then select the second tab labeled “STATS”. This will display a chart that shows you all the STAT increases and Ability unlocks for each level.
Chaos Dragon card from the Chaos Legion edition cards
Abilities
The skills of the cards is so immense with combinations and effects that if you used properly with the right positioning and combined it with the ruleset it will give you some crazy advantage. They also keep adding new abilities for every new edition of packs they release which makes the game more evolving and competitive for everyone. If you wanna learn the effect of each abilities, please check the link below:
https://splinterlands.com/?p=gameplay
Different kinds of abilities in Splinterlands. Image taken from splintercards.com
Battle
Once you’ve clicked the “Battle”, you will be then matched up with an opponent with the same rating as yours.
You can check their recently played teams so as to have better anticipation on this match.
In every match, you will be given a randomly chosen set of battle parameters(Mana cap, Ruleset, Splinters available). You will both then have at least 2–3 minutes to create a team of cards, consisting of one summoner card and between one and six monster cards based on the given battle parameters.
Once each player has chosen their team, the battle will begin and will play out automatically based on the predefined game rules, and the first team to destroy all of the monsters on the opposing team will be the winner. It is also possible for battles to end in a draw.
Battle interface(you can press the skip results if you want so you can battle faster)
Lore
The game is also very rich with lore. These details add depth and richness to the universe of the game, expanding its history outside the main plot. If you love cards with history behind it, might as well jump in to the game and explore.
The Team
The head founders of Splinterlands are Dr. Jesse “Aggroed” Reich and Matthew “Yabapmatt” Rosen. Right now, the team is consist of 70 plus members and their still hiring specific positions (you can check the link here if you’re interested) https://splinterlands.breezy.hr/
Back then, Aggroed worked as an assistant professor, and also was part of a software sales and marketing team.
As for Yabapmatt, he’s a programmer and used to create a lot of video games. He also became a lead developer of Rewards Based Gaming and Ryzing.
The team is very active in the community. They also do weekly AMA(ask me anything) that is now called Town Hall in their discord channel in which they pretty much answer all the community questions and give updates with regards to the game and development.
As of today, Yabapmatt has moved from Chief Technical Officer (CTO) to Chief Product Officer (CPO). This will allow him to focus his time and efforts on his areas of expertise which are game feature and economy design and not have to spend as much time dealing with the day to day technical issues of running their servers and managing the technical resources.
Their new member in the team, Hardpoint has stepped into the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) role in the organization. While he is still relatively new to the organization and to Splinterlands in general, the guy is very hard-working, talented, and passionate individual and convinced the team that he is the one that they want leading their technical team going forward.
Also, all of the new members of the team has shown extreme passion for the game and has been putting in an insane amount of work hours to make sure everything is running smoothly and that new features are being developed.
Partnership
VC Investors of Splinterlands includes Animoca Brands, 3Commas, Gate.io Labs, Polygon, Blockchain Founders Fund, Enjin, Yield Guild Games, Alpha Sigma Capital, NFT Horizon, AGE Crypto Fund, Zensports, Xpansion, GameState. They also said that they’re on the works with new partnerships.
How to get started
To start in the game, you can try out the game for free. You can register with my affiliate program if you wanna help me get at least a few credits
https://splinterlands.com?ref=jskillz
or you can visit their site (https://splinterlands.com/) and you can start playing! The game will be giving you a set of what you called “Starter cards” They are not tradeable though but you can use them for trying out the game but this will not make you earn yet.
To start earning, you need to purchase the Summoner’s Spellbook for $10 with either Paypal or a credit/debit card to buy it with fiat. Then you can set your account name and start earning in ranked matches(Take note that you need to hit at least Bronze II to earn DEC every battle won).
Also, by purchasing the Spellbook, your Hive account will be automatically created once you click the “Request Account Keys” in your profile.
After you purchase your spellbook, go to your profile and click “Request Account Keys” to receive your keys in Hive
After you click that, It will send you your Hive keys. You will be receiving 5 different keys. Each used for different types of transactions on the Blockchain.
Master Password - is used to derive all the keys, never post your master password or use it to log into any HIVE application. Use the lower privilege keys to maintain security of your account.
Owner Key - It lets anyone who has it change your password, recover your account, even alter your keys.
Active Key - it lets you transfer funds, buy influence-points, even vote on the future of Hive, since as soon as you sign-up, you’re now a part-owner
Posting Key - is for submitting posts, applying upvotes and downvotes, managing followers and other social functions.
Memo Key - used for handling private messages and encrypted transaction memos.
The username you use in the game will be the name/receiving address in your Hive account.
NOTE: Please store your keys in a safest way possible.
If you wanna start learning more about the beginners guide for hive, you may wanna check this guy posted a full guide: https://jryze.me/hive/
Conclusion
Splinterlands is a very competitive game. The game is running up for almost 3–4 years already and I am always looking forward to the game as it gives a lot function when it comes to your assets. There’s a lot of ways to earn throughout the game and it teaches you how to win in a systematic way not just the technicalities of the game but what it’s like to own your assets. The game is very rewarding especially to those who invest and hold their assets as the cards are very scarce. One thing I like in Splinterlands is that they give you chance to earn big in a small amount of investment just thru renting. You may also want to check out their awesome community, almost all of the people here are willing to help you out and they give a lot back to the community through events and giveaways. At the end of the day, every game has their risk so you invest only what you can afford to lose.
In the next content, I can show you more deep-dive including gameplay, tokenomics, and best strategies throughout the game.