Image courtesy of Splinterlands.
I remember reading a post from 
The other day, I took the plunge and successfully acquired my first piece of land for 388 HIVE.
This is not a typical investment for me since we really don't know what the final features of the land expansion will be or how valuable these land plots are when activated. After reading through all the material I could find about the devs conversations on land, it seems like as long as the Splinterlands momentum continues, then land should prove to be a valuable investment for the long-term evolution of the game.
Here's what we do know:
Splinterlands Land Expansion Details
The primary function of land will be to mint Item and Spell cards. These cards will only be able to be produced by land owners. There are fourteen different land terrain types:
Plains, Hills, Tundra, Swamp, Bog, Mountain, Canyon, Caldera, River, Lake, Forest, Jungle, Desert, and Badlands.
What we don't know is which land type or resource our land claims will be. I'm assuming it will be similar to the way cards are chosen when opening a pack, that we will learn of our land type and resource allocation when "opening" our plot after the official launch. In addition to terrain type, they will be further categorized into the following:
Natural, Magical, or Occupied.
Natural Lands will contain one of four natural resources (grain, wood, stone, and ore) which will be required to build, upgrade, and maintain the many production buildings that will need to be constructed.
Magical lands will be filled with one of six magical resources that will be needed to mint Item and Spell cards.
Occupied lands will be inhabited by wild monsters that can be battled to extract their Essences, which is another required component of Item and Spell cards.
Further, just like the cards, each land plot will have a rarity assigned to it: Common, Rare, Epic, or Legendary. The rarity determines how abundant the resources are on the plot. This rarity is where the winners and losers will be determined in the land expansion, just as it is with card packs. If a player "opens" their plot and gets a common piece of land, it may be worth nowhere near the current $700 market price, but receiving a Legendary Magical plot could be worth thousands of dollars. One thing is for sure, the real winners of the land race are those with the foresight to purchase in the pre-sale where a region could be bought for only $7,500!
What's Next?
I think that the land expansion is going to create a whole new ecosystem to the game that could be very profitable for those looking to control many plots of land and either rent out the production or produce a supply chain of their own to produce and sell the resulting Item and Spell cards.
I am optimistic that the devs will release the land expansion in time to continue building on the Chaos Legion hype that will spill over into the new year with the highly anticipated general card pack sale. This should ensure that the demand for these land-produced card assets will remain high.
I have been slowly finding my niche within Splinterlands and I tend to lean more on the side of investor than battler. I've tried rising the ranks and have reached Gold at one point, but I didn't find the cost/benefit to make sense for me since I don't own many cards... the cost of renting was just too high compared to the rewards received. For this reason, I began exploring renting very specific cards that generate an 8-10% monthly return on investment. I look forward to being able to run the same return on investment analysis on the various land plots once the expansion is released!
If you'd like to read more about the Chaos Legion release, I just posted about the pre-sale card release and Doctor Blight airdrop as well as opening a few of my packs: https://www.splintertalk.io/@shauner/splinterlands-chaos-legion-release-and
As a reminder, there is less than 24 hours to go in the current brawls so don't forget to enter your frays! Check out my latest Splinterlands #BrawlReport from the @Hive.Pizza guild: https://www.splintertalk.io/@shauner/shauner-s-19th-splinterlands-brawl