Alright, I’ve got to admit that everything was fairly easy to set up: a Splinterlands account and Keychain wallet account are pretty much all you need and there are plenty of helpful guides on the web.
I was so eager to see the battles in action that I jumped right in and, after going through the quick tutorial, I played a few Practice battles. I quickly found out that I needed to do some more reading because I was completely unaware of what was going on and why I (obviously) lost 100% of the battles.
Got to say, joining the official Discord channel turned out to be a gold mine of amazing information. The community is amazing, and I very quickly found a lot of help from more seasoned players.
Another helpful resource I found out about is https://www.splintercards.com. The website offers a database of all cards, their stats, description of the abilities and a lot more. Check that out!
As I started to build more confidence on what I knew about the game, I decided to purchase my Summoner’s Spellbook, which is required to access the full features of the game (more info here: https://docs.splinterlands.com/summoners-spellbook).
Since my first daily quest was going to be Earth (win 5 battles using an Earth deck), I decided to get familiar with these cards and Practice some more. I did not like the Summoners in the starter’s pack, so I went in the Market and rented a Mylor Crowling card for a day, which only set me back 7 credits.
Other cards (all from the starter set) I found myself using more frequently with good results were Stone Golem, Child of The Forest and Earth Elemental. In higher mana battles, I’d throw into the mix the Unicorn Mustang.
Equipped with my renewed confidence, I finally decided to jump into the Ranked battles in pursuit of my daily quest!
This turned out to be easier than I thought (makes sense since I was starting from the lower league…lol) and took me only 6 battles to clear the daily quest. This time I tried to pay more attention to the battles unfolding, to understand how my cards were interacting and where I might need improvements.
I did encounter a mix of decks from different elements and thus far this Earth deck seems well rounded with a good mix of starters card. I did struggle in battles with high mana, likely because the rarer cards that use more mana have much higher power. Well, we’ll get there eventually!
I was kinda thrown off by the very low amount of DEC I was getting for my wins, and I soon found out that using certain cards and joining a guild, as long as your winning streak, give you sizeable boosts.
I was happy with my cards for now, considering I was only at the beginning, but wanted to see those boosts in action so bad… I went in the market and rented a couple more cards, an Alpha Gold Goblin Sorcerer and Stone Golem (they are cheap, but this way I could get double boosts on them…LOL!).
Much better, now I was getting 40% extra DEC for my wins, around 2-3 DEC on average per battle!
Day-1 was very productive and here are my main takeaways:
If you have come this far in my post, *THANK YOU!!! and be on the lookout for the next episode of my journey!
