As I started the series about land and getting deeper into the topic I started to think about what Items and Spells might look like.

You can find here all my articles on land (including this one):

• What do we Know about Items and Spells
• How Could It Work - Items and Spells A Few Thoughts About The Expansion
• What do we Know about Buildings - Splinterlands Land Expansion
• What Do We Know About Plots, Tracts and Regions? - Splinterlands Land Expansion

These are just my ideas. This is NOT confirmed information from the Splinterlands team.

What do we know

Really not that much:

• Items and Spells can be used when the battlefield is set up and visible
• Amount of mana for Items and Spells in each match
• Items & Spells have a limited duration on the battlefield. Items have Durability and Spells have Duration

Here you have a full post I wrote about this topic: @arkasz/what-do-we-know-about-items-and-spells-splinterlands

My expectations

The fiction begins

Value of Items and Spells

I would plan each item to have a

• Mana cost : How much mana is needed to use the card
• Effect stats : Defines what the item or spell improves or de-buffs and by how many points. I will get deeper into this in the Item and Spell sections
• Durability/Duration stat : How long the item/spell is active. I will get deeper into this in the Item and Spell sections
• Affiliation with damage type of the creature : Sword can be used only by melee characters, arrows by ranged types, and wands by magic characters.
• Affiliation with Splinters : Items and Spells will be used only by specific splinters. This is only a possibility, though maybe it would make the whole system to complex.

Items

Item usage

I believe items will be things like weapons, arrows, armor, clothing and gadgets. From this they could increase base stats like damage, speed or armor. It would be possible that they also provide abilities for melee or ranged creatures like shield, blast or reach (see picture below).

I would prefer if items could be used by any rarity of creature (from common to legendary), as in my mind these would be higher quality equipment.

Durability would define how often these added powers can be used:

• An offensive item would loose one durability after each attack (even if it hits or misses).
• A defensive item will loose one durability after each defense action (including misses)

Examples for Items:

Now depending on the usefulness of the item it would be divided into categories. Here are some examples I could think off:

Rarity	Name	Effect
Common	Dagger of Fire	Add +1 melee damage
Rare	Mirror shield	Add Reflect magic ability (as does Blinding Reflector on higher levels)
Epic	Poison arrows	Apply poison
Legendary	Cloak of disguise	Add Camouflage ability

Spells

Spell usage

Spells could be very simple but also game changing. They could affect one creature or the whole battlefield, add or take away abilities or even change the games ruleset or simply cause chaos.

Duration defines how long the spell applies to the battle and it would be counted by rounds. After each round the duration would decrease by one until it drops to 0, when it dispels.

Examples for Spells

Now depending on the usefulness of the item it would be divided into categories. Here are some examples I could think off:

Rarity	Name	Effect
Common	Heavy shoes	The selected creature would loose 1 speed
Rare	Strong winds	-1 ranged attack for all creatures
Epic	Earth Tremor	An earthquake would shatter the battleground
Legendary	Tornado	Creatures would be shuffled and put back on the field in a random order

Unfortunately there were no graphics created for spells shared by the Splinterlands team as off now, at least I didn't find any.

Upgrades

Important part of the whole system would be upgrades. How should this be implemented:

• Increasing duration: The longer an item or spell has effect the better. So I would set the durability/duration on the base level to 1 or 2 rounds and this could be one of the main stats, which could be upgraded.
• Mana cost: The lower the mana cost the more items and spells can be played. Great motivation to upgrade an item.
• Effects : Increasing damage for weapons, if a spell gives holy shield to a character on base level, it could give it to the whole team on max level for a limited duration.

Contest

Do you have an idea for an Item or Spell as well? Write in the comments an interesting idea with stats. I will reward the best ideas with 20 DEC ;)

Final words

I believe that items and spells could bring the variability of the matches to a whole new level and it is fun to thing about it, but I have no background in game design, so this is just my imagination playing games. Take it with a large grain of salt.
I believe this could make boring characters shine in new light, make common characters into almost legendary ones : Just imagine a level 5 chaos agent, which has evasion with phase and could get flying with an item for 1 round. With a bit of luck it would defend for a whole turn without getting hit), or completely change the outcome of a game. That is why every item needs to be thought through.
I'm really looking forward to this expansion!

Have fun and see you in the game! :)

Art is taken from Splinterlands post about the land expansion or from the game.
Dividers can be found here: @freeztag/splinterlands-or-art-contest-173-or-a-free-to-use-splinterlands-divider

Short ad for players who would like to start playing

If you are new to the game, then feel free to reach out to me on the Splinterlands Discord channel https://discord.gg/7TjZ2jg2 , my username is Arkasz there as well.
If you would like to buy a spellbook the game feel free to use my referral link https://splinterlands.com?ref=arkasz and let me know your in game name. I will send you some DEC so you can start renting cards and delegate to you a few cards for starters as well.s