One of the most important decisions during the Splinterlands season outside of actual battles is deciding when to make the leap and increase your Collection Power to move up a league. So the question is, is moving up in leagues worth it?
Here is a table with all of the relevant data. As you might expect, there are a lot of numbers. We'll get to what all of them mean!
For starters, the first two columns are each league, and the average relative DEC gains you can expect to earn in each league. In case you missed my earlier article on DEC gains, this post here explains how exactly we got these numbers. Note that for the purposes of this calculation we will be assuming that you are playing within the league rating range, and will therefore have a rating around the midpoint of the league. Bronze III doesn't earn DEC so we're leaving it out, and Champion I and II have the same CP requirements as Champion III so we're also leaving those out.
The "%DEC Increase" column is the percentage increase in DEC per win you should expect to obtain by moving up in league. This is super important because it lets you know how much more currency you can gain by moving up. For example, moving from Silver III to Silver II would be expected to just over double your daily DEC income (a 100.45% increase, to be precise).
The next few columns are related to the costs of moving up. They are, in order, the Collection Power required for each league, the additional CP you need to move up from one league to another, and finally (just for kicks) the percentage increase in CP moving between leagues. The "Additional CP Req" column is particularly useful because that lets us determine the cost of moving up from one league to another - that's how much more CP you'll have to rent or buy!
Now, we have to compare the costs of moving up with the benefits of doing so. It is a slightly tricky calculation, but is a bit easier with the table above.
The benefits are easy - look at your current (daily) DEC income, and multiply it by the %DEC Increase column (converting the percentage). For example, if we are in Bronze I making 30 DEC per day and thinking about moving up to Silver III, we stand to potentially gain 30 DEC x 1.4765 = 44.295 DEC per day. That would be our additional revenue (or Marginal Revenue for any econ people out there) gained by moving up in leagues.
Next, the costs of moving up (or Marginal Cost). This is a little trickier, because you need to add up the estimated costs of renting cards to be competitive at a higher league, as well as the cost of renting straight up Collection Power in order to qualify for the league. Using the same Bronze I -> Silver III example, we can see that the additional CP is 10,000, which is a 200% increase over Bronze I.
Just for the purposes of having an example, let's say that the CP market is currently at 250CP/DEC and that we would need to rent 20DEC/day in higher quality cards in order to have a reasonable win rate in the higher league. So the additional costs would be 40 DEC/day in CP rentals + 20 DEC/day in single card rentals. (Note that our actual cost would be slightly lower since single cards also contribute CP)
We're almost there! Finally, compare the benefits and the costs of moving your league. If the costs are lower than the benefits, then you should gain DEC in daily winnings by moving up and it is most likely a good idea to do so.
If the costs are higher, than you will be losing DEC by moving up. So similarly, if the costs are significantly higher than the additional winnings you would receive then you most likely want to stay in your current league.
In our example, you would gain 44.295 DEC per day in income from wins, and be paying an additional 60 DEC per day in rental costs. From a straight DEC flow standpoint, you will be losing DEC each day by moving up (44.295 DEC - 60 DEC = -15.705 DEC/day). However, you would also be gaining additional chests from your daily quests and (potentially) end of season rewards. In cases where the cost is close to the additional revenue/winnings, you may choose to have a negative DEC cashflow in order to have a positive expected return once chests are taken into account - whether or not that cost is worth it is up to you.
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