Splinterlands Development Update

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This update will just feature a couple of smaller changes we've had time to sneak in now that the guilds feature is launched and running smoothly. Our high level priorities are still the mobile app development which is progressing very nicely and the "asynchronous" tournaments / guild wars that we discussed in the guild feature release post.

Multiple Pack Opening is Back!

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At long last, the ability to open multiple packs at once has returned! For those of you who have purchased and opened large quantities of packs one at a time over the past few months, we want to thank you for your patience and for your sacrifice.

There is now a "3 dots" icon next to the pack quantities on the website which displays a menu that includes the ability to open a large quantity of packs at once. Currently the maximum number of packs you can open in a single transaction is set to 200. This is to prevent some issues with browsers freezing when opening too many cards at the same time.

After choosing the "OPEN QUANTITY" menu option you will be able to specify the number of packs or orbs you wish to open, and then broadcast the transaction. Once the transaction is completed you will be able to flip your cards one at a time, except that duplicates will be grouped together and only require one flip.

This way you still get the anticipation and excitement of flipping your cards, with all of the animations and sound effects, while still being able to open large quantities of packs much more quickly than before.

For those of you who were holding off from grabbing the 500 pack deal in fear of having to open them all one by one, your time has come to get in on the action before the Beta packs sell out!

Market Purchases with Dark Energy Crystals (DEC)

In the next day or two we will be adding the ability to purchase cards on the market using Dark Energy Crystals (DEC). This means that sellers will receive DEC instead of STEEM or SBD if the buyer pays with DEC. Sellers can then exchange the DEC for either STEEM or TRX (and hopefully other currencies in the future) or spend or HODL them of course!

Cards will still be priced in USD and the amount of DEC needed will be based on the current market price on the Steem Engine exchange. The same 5% fee will apply to sellers when using the market on the Splinterlands website, and the fees collected will continue to be put right back into tournament prizes as they have been in the past. The other market payment options (STEEM, TRX, and SBD) will still be available as well and will not be affected by this change.

This is an important step towards increasing the utility of the DEC token and allowing players to grow and level up their collection through playing without having to deal with external exchanges. Now players will be able to win DEC through ranked battles as well as tournaments and be able to purchase cards directly from the market with them.

Tournament Prize Pools

Over the last few weeks you may have noticed that tournament prize pools have been shifting to paying out DEC and requiring DEC as an entry fee instead of STEEM (creation fees are also paid in DEC now as well). This is for the same reasons as described above - to increase the utility of DEC and to give players the option of which crypto they want to convert their prizes to, or to be able to immediately spend them in game without having to go through any external markets.

Please note that we're still committed to providing the same total USD amount of tournament prize pools as we have been. The only difference is the currency in which the prizes are paid out - DEC!

A significant portion of the tournament prizes are funded by the fees collected from sales through the market on the Splinterlands website, so going forward we will be taking any STEEM and SBD earned from market fees and purchasing DEC on the Steem Engine market through the Hive account@splinterlands account to use as the tournament prizes.