Survival: Variety Mode | Splinterlands

I've been playing the new Survival Mode recently and have been having a BLAST. I didn't quite realize what the value was in Survival until I started playing it, so I'll cover here why I think it's fun and game-changing.

Stakes, stakes, stakes

At the core of Survival is the fact that every battle has STAKES. It's not just about wasting some energy if you lose - any card that dies goes on cooldown for a period of time.

In the Survival format, you can use any card across any set, just like in Wild. The difference? In Survival, when you’re cards are defeated, they’re depleted of their magic, and they can’t be used anywhere—including brawls, land, tournaments, any format of ranked play, and so on and so forth—until their cooldown is over.

The cooldowns vary based on level, foil, and rarity. Goid foils reduce the cooldown time by 50% (those are in parentheses below). In my table below, everything is in days for simplicity (unlike the website, where they're shown in hours).

Rarity	Base (level 1) Cooldown	Max Level Cooldown
content1	15 (GF: 7.5)	5 (GF: 2.5)
content1	12.5 (GF: 6.25)	4 (GF: 2)
content1	10 (GF: 5)	3 (GF: 1.5)
content1	5 (GF: 2.5)	2 (GF: 1)

Since cards go on cooldown if they die, that adds utility to having multiple copies of the same card. Furthermore, given the cooldown setup, Survival adds value to higher rarity (i.e. Epic/Legendary) cards as well as Gold Foil cards.

Let's come back to the stakes. Here's a recent battle where @vugtis won 168 SPS in a Survival mode win. Now of course, it's Vugtis, which means he has the absolute best multipliers and also has the highest current rating in the mode due to his vast collection. Still, it shows you what can theoretically be won given there's a new pool up for grabs here that few are able to (or attempting to) compete for.

Now with stakes comes ADRENALINE. The rush of playing a lineup against a big-time opponent (like Vugtis, @clove71, @dejota, @lorkus, etc. is a real THRILL. If you're not careful (and even if you are...), you can get trounced. Take a look at the battle below, where I lost a GF Tofu, Beta, a maxed Fizbo, a maxed Mossmender, a GF Olivia... I went all in against this "xtremeplayer", and I lost. Those cards went on cooldown and still have some time to go. Fortunately for me, GF legendaries are only on cooldown for 24 hours so I get to see my Tofu back relatively soon...

Battle link: https://splinterlands.com/battle/sl_a7ff4c6e3e9da6ad4167375c31b834e5?ref=bravetofu

These battles are incredibly thrilling and I actually felt my heartrate go up during certain battles, where I knew the risks were high and the outcomes unpredictable.

And when the risks pay off? Oh man, that feeling. Here's Heloise dashing into a battle like an absolute boss, with Drath at the helm giving her True Strike: https://splinterlands.com/battle/sl_28446a4b73908f773e548c99c0406b8f.

The rewards (at least at the moment) are high enough to warrant a risk. But there's a tradeoff of course - those cards you lose in Survival mode can't be used in Modern/Wild/Tournaments/Brawls for some time, so you need to plan carefully!

Variety

There are plenty of reasons why Survival increases variety:

Players have fewer cards to draw from (since they'll have some on cooldown), which means they'll be limited in the kinds of lineups they can use.
Players EXPECT different cards, so they won't necessarily go with their typical lineups.
Players don't want to lose their best cards, so they may opt for different lineups that "risk" less-used cards.
It's in Wild, where all cards are allowed

#3 is pretty crucial to me. Think of a card you use maybe 1% of the time. It's sitting in your collection but you don't reach for it. That card is PERFECT for survival mode. Firstly, it's bringing relatively low value to you in the arena, so risking it in Survival is reasonable. Secondly, it's probably a less-used card to begin with, which means opponents may not expect it.

Also, the very best cards simply can't be used ALL the time. As Bananas (@sharkmonsters) puts it:

"It means someone can't spam it (OP cards) every single time like they can now. Eventually, it'll get taken out, and very few people can afford multiple copies of some of those cards." - Bananas

Over time, as more and more people participate in Survival mode, I predict it will radically change the variety of lineups we see in battle, increasing the FUN we get from the game.

Manual vs Bot

Ok so this one's very interesting. Of course there's something to be said about getting bots to play in Survival. There may be way more battles, which is easier for a bot to do. Bots also know lineups better. However, here are two things bots are currently not taking into account.

Who you're matched up against
What you're willing to risk

Now theoretically, both of these things can be programmed in. You could specify risk-tolerance for certain cards or it could be algorithmically decided, but would you want to leave that to a bot? Maybe, maybe not.

In terms of who you're matched up against, there's a decision to be made each time. When you see Vugtis's name pop up, do you take your chance? Should you throw a match? Well in principle, you should NEVER throw a match. But logically, it may make sense. The ruleset may not be suitable for whatever cards you have (or have left). Or maybe the ruleset prevents you from getting your "unfair advantage" (e.g. those pesky 12 mana games with silenced summoners, or back to basics). If a ruleset "evens out the playing field", it may be better to just sacrifice low level cards rather than go all-out and risk top cards.