Hi fellow Splinters!
Here is an update after about 5 months of playing Splinterlands, a bit on what I did since my first season and my current progress on building my very own gold league deck. This is work in progress which really picked up after the general sale of Chaos Legion (CL) came out about two weeks ago.
My current deck is worth about 90k collection power (CP) and I am planning to hit 100k before the end of this season, which will be enough for gold III league. Of course for that I had to invest quite a bit in the cards and so far I have bought DEC with a total of about 1.8k USD, a big part in the second week of November, while it was at 0.012 (yay, I bought close to the top), some more later on at 0.007 and another big part in the last two weeks (I am improving and buying all the dips now). I was enjoying an increased SPS airdrop due to the DEC held for a while and slowly began building my deck.
But going back towards the beginning, in my first two and a half months, I was playing by only buying a spell book (and some SPS, which I staked) and renting cards. I was lucky to get a water legendary Djinn Oshannus and a rare Venari Wavesmith cards soon after the current reward cards came out, which with free to play summoner Alric at the time, gave me a then meta water deck. I was initially renting one splinter lvl 5-6 and the Dragon splinter Daria lvl 4-5, but I later switched to two splinters + Daria. For other splinters I would often change but in order of preference I rented Lyanna, Vera, Qid, Malric, Tyrus, Contessa, sometimes Mimosa or Chanseus if I caught them at a good price. See one of my favourite rented earth decks bellow. I mostly played in gold III and II leagues and rented on the budget, spending between 400 to 800 DEC and then grinding for 24 hours. With 25 to 40 wins (and a win rate of 50-55%) I was able to get my renting investment back and often ended with 100 DEC or so in profit. I would also finish two daily quests in this time and then two days off. For end of season (EOS) I would finish in silver III.
Although the rent and grind was profitable, the growth was still very slow and the whole renting, grinding and repeating was getting annoying and also often I had to delay the whole process for an extra day or two because life. So after mid November I decided I need to build my own deck faster and move away from the grind and back to enjoying the game. The first big number to reach was 15k CP, unlocking the silver III league. My first larger card investments were: (1) a gold foil (GF) Dark Ferryman (was among the cheapest GF rare cards and had at the time great CP per dollar ratio of 33, plus I found the card useful in all lower leagues including gold), I payed 60 USD for it, which brings me 2000 CP and (2) the Creeping Ooze lvl 2 for 20 USD. Today you can get the first for ~18 USD and the second for ~9 USD. I am not sorry at all for buying them back then, I use both extensively and believe they are great cards that fit well into my play style.
Then came December 8-th and opening of the CL presale packs. With my staked SPS and the airdropped vouchers I was able to buy a whole 3 CL packs. Having some great luck, I got the legendary card Doctor Blight airdropped, which also got me over 10k CP with my whole deck and I was getting closer to silver III. From the three packs I also got one death summoner Thaddius Brood, a GF Riftwing and a 0 mana death legendary card. It was time to decide and start getting my hands on more summoners. Since my water deck at the time was the strongest, I decided to buy Vera (which is one of the cheapest summoners, but I find her really good) and already aiming for the gold league, I got her to lvl 5. Also since Alric got replaced in the starter deck, the magic water deck meta changed, resulting in a huge drop of prices for both Oshannus and Wavesmith. I was happy that due to that, I cold get the first to lvl 2 (for ~24 USD at the time) and the second to lvl 4, they are both still amazing cards and are the backbone of my water deck.
In the second part of pre-sale I bought 7 more booster packs and I was saving more vouchers for the general sale. Although many players, me included, were expecting a huge drop in card prices after the general sale (January 17-th), I still had a big chunk of expensive DEC that I bought before and which dropped in value quite a bit. I thus continued DCA-ing and building up my water and death decks; I bumped Thaddius to lvl 3. I also got fire summoner Tarsa and life summoner General Sloan both to lvl 2 and continued buying and upgrading the monsters. Although dollar vise the summoners are cheaper now, looking at their DEC price, I was paying around 100-200 DEC less in late December than after the general sale.
When the general sale started, I had my credits and vouchers ready and within first few minutes of the sale I bought 110+11 CL booster packs. With my available budget, I decided this was a decent number of packs and I could put the other funds into buying singles, which is what I am still doing now. So far I have opened a little more than 20 packs, within which I got 4 legendaries, but the best pull so far was a GF earth summoner Obsidian. For now I will hold on the other packs and just occasionally open a few here and there. From the other 6 airdrops I also got the death legendary card Lira the Dark and a neutral legendary Spirit Hoarder. With 131 packs bought in total my chances for the next seven airdrops coming will be less than 20% per airdrop, but if the odds play out, I expect to get one more legendary airdrop, hopefully it will be one of the summoners.
How does my deck look like now? I have bought several of maxed reward cards, first for the CP and also for eventually using them in a diamond league deck later on. I am also building up my water, death and fire decks. Summoners: Vera lvl 5, Thaddius lvl 4 (already have the BCX for lvl 5), Tarsa lvl 4. I am upgrading the corresponding monsters and will write about some of my favourite ones soon, but you can see my main three elements here.
Although the value of my deck and the SPS amount is currently lower than my total investment in the game, I am happy with my progress in Splinterlands and now by soon getting into the gold III league without any renting, another big personal achievement will be reached. I believe now is a great time to get deeper into this amazing game, with the Chaos legion booster packs available (currently we are at ~7.1 million out of total 15 million packs sold). Also the prices of singles are very affordable compared to a few months ago and this is exactly why I am currently upgrading my deck heavily. And if the current dip dips much further, I will be building my diamond deck sooner than planned ;)
Thanks for reading and see you on the battle field!