This week, the theme in the Community Engagement Challenge for Splinterlands, the theme is all about Leveling Up cards. this is a Full Guide after playing the game for 7+ Years...
The Card Levels Basics
Unline most Collectible Card Games, Splinterlands works in a way where the same cards has different statistics and abilities based on the level of the card, the higher the level the more powerful it becomes. Similar to other Games, there are 4 rarities which are Common (Grey) / Rare (Blue) / Epic (Purple) / Legendary (Gold)
The way to level up cards is by combining multiple copies into one. The amount of copies needed depends on the rarity and the level. The higher the level the more extra cards you need. The early sets had lower/different requirements but ever since the Untamed set things have remained the same. Some Examples:
Common Cards have 10 different levels and need 400 single copies to get them to MAX level, these are the cards that you will be getting most from packs and chests and there tend to be plenty of them going around which makes them cheap at Level 1 but sometimes expensive at MAX Level since so many are needed.
Rare Cards have 8 different levels and need 115 single copies to get them to MAX Level, They are not as easy to get but still quite a lot of them are in circulation
Epic Cardshave 6 different levels and need 46 single copies to get them to MAX Level, They become harder to get a hold of when opening packs
Legendary Cardshave 4 different levels and need 11 single copies to get them to MAX Level, these tend to be very hard to draw from packs and they always give something of a dopamine rush when getting one of them.
The Summoner Levels
Summoners are the cards you need 1 of in order to play a match and they give fixed abilities while their level decides which level of Monster Cards you can play. So they in a way are the big bottleneck as you are nothing with MAX Level Monster cards if you don't have the Summoner card that supports that level. Because of this, they tend to be more expensive.
Their number of cards needed to get to a higher level is same as the monster cards but instead of their statistics that improve, the level of monster cards that can be used increases.
Gold Card Levels
The difference with Gold Level cards is that they start at higher level and less cards are needed to level up. This along with the generally increased earnings when playing them makes them more valuable compared to regular cards.
Card Levels Are A Monetized RPG Element
Basically, card levels are a way to monetize the fun RPG element of games. Where in other games you most of the time need to grind it out in order to get stronger, in Splinterlands you need to buy more packs or cards to get this effect even though you can also get it purely from reward cards. This Pay2Win aspect has some positive and negative side-effects...
+++ Leveling Cards is Fun and it keeps you occupied especially the max level whale players. If anything it really captures the fun of collecting which can be highly addictive.
+++ It Sells Packs as many have gotten addicted to the feeling of opening them and trying to get legendary cards or others that they need in order to get to the next level.
+++ It Gives An Unique Twist To Splinterlands. Say what you want, but Splinterlands does feel like an original game instead of just a poor copy of Hearthstone and the card level dynamics are a big part of this.
--- It Created and Extreme Pay2Win environment especially after league caps were removed. Basically in many matches you either win or lose because you have better or worse cards than the opponent which takes away a lot of how fun Splinterlands Potentially could be.
--- It Makes Splinterlands Extremely Expensive as to get a max level edition of the latest Rebellion set by opening packs it quickly adds up to over 6000$. This was the same for the older Chaos Legion set which now on the secondary market can be bought for ~700$. This gap between old and new cards especially once they get dumped in Wild is what made a lot of players leave and it put more pressure on the economy.
--- It is Unfriendly to new and smaller players since for most it will be impossible to ever get to MAX level so at some point they will just get hit by a wall their can't get passed
--- Lower Level Cards are Less Fun mainly because higher level cards have more abilities and are just way more interesting. Ideally for Splinterlands to be the most fun possible, everyone would need to have access to all Max Level cards. The card leveling system is one of the many economical choices made at the cost of fun and gameplay.
What To Level Up ?
Leveling up cards in a way always is capital destruction as Single cards so far always have been sold for more compared to cards that are already leveled up. Especially in case there would be another new player info since there are simply more buyers at lower level compared to those who want to get them at the max level. This also means you can at times get good discounts on higher level cards when someone wants to sell but needs to lower their price in order to attract a buyer. There is also a big difference between old Set cards / Chaos Legion Cards, and new Rebellion cards.
Old Cards: They right now have less utility as they can only be used in Wild (where 99% of battles are played by bots with limited returns). Generally there are less of these cards in circulation making them somewhat of collector items and they did get a bonus on Land which right now is useless. On top of all this there is the power creep factor which only really makes a handful of them meta in Wild as the devs tend to make newer cards more powerful to sell packs and make money which is one of the curses of Collectible Card Games. One of the key factors in these are the number in circulation and the lower the easier it should be to hold their value.
Chaos Legion Cards: This is the set that came out during the peak hype and the devs ramped up the printer while increasing the price which created an insane oversupply. Thise by far are the cards that have most cards in circulation especially the reward cards and many of them are trading at the burn value. This means that the downside in theory is limited since you are always to burn and that that money back. In some months, these will rotate out of Modern and it remains to be seen what happens with the new Survival mode which basically is created just for these cards.
For some of the reward cards like the Pelacor Bandid there are literally 1.3+ Million copies out there and these at max level go for just 2$ while the card itself is pretty powerful. just as a reference, a 3$ pack right now most of the time will include 4 commons and 1 rare To me while this card of 2$ has 400 copies into it combined. These cards for me are still the best 'bet' as they have upside potential while the downside is limited and only really is a factor in case Splinterlands would go bankrupt.
Rebellion Cards: So Splinterlands Learned from the mistakes of Chaos Legion which makes it so that a lot less of the Rebellion Cards got printed (also because the demand simply wasn't there as so many players got screwed over). This makes Rebellion a set with small supply which for now is holding up in value. However, once these get dumped into wild it feels like inevitable for the card values to also get hit hard simply because it is way more efficient to only use Chaos Legion and Reward Cards in Wild or Survival Mode. Many of these cards have the power creed advantage but eventually will get 'power-creeped'. So for me it is no option whatsoever to get these cards maybe aside of 1 or 2 just for the fun of them if they ever get more affordable.
How Far To Level Up ?
Most of the cards give the big extra ability at the highest level while some other cards have most of their usecase just when owning them at level 1 in case the right rule set comes up. So it depends on many factors along with the summoners you own and your budget how far you want to level up an individual card. Right now Splinterlands still is in a state where I would not actually recommend it to new player who want to start playing. If you buy into the new set you likely will get crushed financially eventually and if you buy into the cheap older sets you simply won't have much fun playing Splinterlands. Splinterlands right now is mainly a gamble hoping there will be another adoption wave which would increase all the prices.
Card Level Solution
While in a way the entire card level dynamic brings a lot of fun to Splinterlands, it also is just a big mess and brings about too many issues that mainly reduce the fun of the actual game. For me the solution to this which would solve nearly everything is pretty clear. Splinterlands needs a new game mode where players pay a fixed fee to enter with packs as rewards (and an indirect way to purchase them). in this game mode everyone plays at a level playing field with Max level cards which is most fun and the cards are provided by the ones who own them by staking them on land. In return they get part of the entry fee paid as passive returns.
Conclusion
The entire Card Level System in Splinterlands surely in interesting but to me in the end, it remains a case where economic motives come at the cost of fun and gameplay. It does more harm than good in the current state of the game mainly because of the overprinting on Chaos Legion and the utility drop of older cards when they get dumped into wild makes it that buying packs of the new set is a sure way to lose a lot of money instead of having the potential to actually earn something.
