I always wanted to write a more detailed Beginner’s Guide for Splinterlands but never found the time or the courage to do so. Now that I played this game for a few months I finally think that I am able to write a serious and helpful Beginner’s Guide for all the people that are looking to get started in this game or that already have started but don’t know how to move forward. I will talk about the first steps, the game design overall as well as the different currencies in the game. Last but not least, I will try to give some tips that helped me to move forward, that might help new people out.
First things first: In order to play the game you need to have a HIVE account. I am assuming that if you are reading this that you most likely have a HIVE Account but if you don’t, it is very easy to get one. You just have to sign up at you get your own Keys to your account. What is very easy about Splinterlands is that you don’t have to pay anything to get started. You just have to use your Hive Name and you have access to the game.
Every player will get a basic deck that consists of the last two expansion cards which contain the majority of common and rare cards as well as the summoners. With this new player will be able to battle out their first battles and learn how the game works, but I will go into more detail in a later section. Unfortunately, this state will not allow you to earn any in-game currency or earn any rewards in the form of daily quest chests. In order to be eligible to participate in the Play To Earn aspect of this game, new players have to purchase the summoner book which is around 10$ at the time of writing. In my eyes this is not that big of a price for a game like this. The beauty about Splinterlands is that it is easily purchasable over PayPal, so there is no Crypto Wallet obstacle that might influence new crypto users. If you want to use my affiliate link, feel free to use it:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem
Next up I want to talk about the navigation menu. In the beginning I was a little lost but it is actually very easy to navigate in this game. In the top left you find the following symbols. They mean the following in the order from left to right: main menu, that is where you get in the beginning of the game. It has not many functions. The money symbol is the shop. Here you can buy packs or potions but I would not recommend that as a new player straight from the beginning. Next up is the pack open button. Here you can open up your saved up packs. The next symbol is the market. In this section you can buy, sell and rent cards. Next to it is the symbol for your own deck. Here, you can find anything that is related with your owned cards. The sword is the symbol for Battle. In this menu you will be able to battle against other players and complete your daily quests. The arena next to the sword is the tournament section. Every now and then there is a very cool tournament that you can play in to earn some cool rewards. Second to last is the guild section. Every player has the option to join a guild which has its advantages. Most of the guilds are asking for monthly DEC contributions which is fair but I did not try it out yet. Last but not least, we have the question mark that is standing for the help section.
Now that we can more or less navigate through out the game, I want to talk about the cards themselves. In total we have two different types of cards. The summoners and the monsters. You need both to go into a battle. The summoner is basically the leader of your squad and determines what buffs your monsters or what nerfs your enemy’s monsters get. Furthermore, we can differentiate between seven elements. Six of them have their own summoners and the neutral one only have monsters. If you play one summoner you can only play the monsters of this element and additionally all of the neutral monsters.
Furthermore, we have different generations of cards. These are the different expansions that came out over the course of the game’s lifetime. The latest one being the Chaos Legion. Before that there were expansions like Untamed or Dice which have their won set of monsters and summoners. Additionally to that the cards have two different Foils: Golden and Standard. While the gold ones are usually worth more they don’t bring any benefit in the game. What is important in the game is the rarity of a card. Here, we have the usual system of common, rare, epic and legendary cards. The higher the rarity the better the card is usually.
Another important point is the level of a card. The higher the level of a card the stronger it gets. The main issue here is that you need more copies of one card to make these cards level up. It is very beneficial in the long run as higher levels grant you also better abilities. But we will talk about abilities in a second. What is far more important that the level you can use is depending on the summoner that you are using! That means if your summoner only allows you to play level 1 common cards, they will have the stats of the level one version of the card rather than the level that your card currently has. A good overview of the summoner level is easy to find by clicking on the Stats section of the card.
Before we continue to the battles, we have to quickly take a look at the different attacking styles and the different stats of the monsters. In the top left there is the mana cost of each card. In our example of the “Stich Leech” we see that this card costs 3 mana. The hearth symbol is traditionally its health and the blue boot on the other side is its speed. The speed determines when this card will attack in battle. Th higher the speed the faster it will attack and the higher the chance to dodge an attack. Above the speed we have the attacking style and how much damage it deals. There are three different attacking types: Melee, which is basically the close range combat, Ranged attackers which are archers and stuff and we have magic attackers that can deal damage through armor. The last important thing to know is that every monster has a set of abilities that makes it unique. Some have the Sneak ability that allows them to attack from the back, others have healing or flying abilities. It would definitely break the information level of this article but I can assure that after a few battles you will get to know the abilities very nicely and will understand all of them.
Now that we know the basics we can jump into a battle and try our knowledge out. When we start a battle we will be given certain battle restrictions. These can vary from battle to battle which makes this game so fun and unpredictable. In this case the maximum amount of mana that is allowed to be used is 40. Furthermore, you are only allowed to use the elements of Fire, Water and Death. The two symbols on the left are giving two more additional information to the ruleset of this battle. In this case all monsters were poisoned, and every melee attacker had the Sneak ability. With these information you now have the chance to build a team that is most suited for these combat rules.
Because of this special rule setting, I chose to select the Fire Element with the Tarsa summoner which gives my monster an additional attack and health point. What’s more is that I only chose Melee attackers as they all would have the Sneak ability and attack the last opponent’s monster. What is important to mention is that the monster in the first position can only attack the opponent’s monster in the first position. That is why it is always favorable to select a great tank. Both of us chose the Living Lava monster which is a fan favorite in the Fire element.
There are more rules to the battle system. Some of these I want to mention here. Like I said before, monsters in the first position can only attack other monsters in the first position. Range attack monsters can only attack from the backline. If they end up in the first position they are useless and can not attack anymore. Magic monsters can attack from any position you desire. These are the basic rules, but then there are special cases where monsters are attacking the las position monster if they have the Sneak ability. Depending on the monster’s ability the strategy, use and position of the card will change. This is why this game is so fun to play and people can always discover new strategies that will bring you victory.
Talking about victory, I want to mention the reward system. With every win the players are getting a battle reward. This rewards are starting at Bronze 2 division and get higher the higher your division is. Furthermore, there are end of season rewards that are getting better the higher your division is at the end of the season. Additionally, your daily quest rewards are also getting better the higher you division is. So how do you get into a higher division? There are two big components to that. The first one being your ranking points. The more you win the more ranking points you get, it is that easy. The second component took me a bit to understand. If you are a new player you do not own any cards. That is why your Collection Power is 0. With each card that you are accumulating, whether it is being by buying packs or buying the card itself you are getting collection power that is dependent on the card. The rarer the card the higher your collection power increases.
What is also important to know when you start the game is that there are three different currencies in the game. The firs tone being Credits. This currency can be used to buy and rent cards as well as to buy packs. This is the currency you can get if you are paying over PayPal which makes this basically a in-game token that is only used for in game transactions. The next currency is actually a crypto currency by the name of Dark Energy Crystals. This is the currency that you get for winning battles and can also be used to buy and rent cards. What is important here, is that for every battle you play your capture rate goes down by about 1%. The lower your capture rate the lower your battle win reward will get. The rate also restores by 1% within every hour. So it is very much recommended to battle to around 75% capture rate and just battle the next day again to get the maximum reward. The third and final crypto currency are SPS. This currency has currently not so many use cases. It is being airdropped and can be staked to earn rewards. Other than that the developer team is working on more use cases for this currency and it will play a major role as we saw in the Chaos Legion Presale. In this case players with a lot of SPS were able to receive vouchers which could have been used to buy Pre Sale chaos Legion Packs.
As for some advice to people that are just starting off I want to suggest the following. If you are able to spend some money, do not waste it on packs. Play the game for a few days until you understand which cards and Elements suits you the best. After that you can just buy and develop these cards to progress as further in the divisions as you can. It is important to get out of the Bronze Divisions as quickly as possible, to get better rewards. Furthermore, it is always a good advice to only focus on one or two elements as this will guarantee you a better quality deck rather than a quantity deck. Another tip is to rent cards to get to a higher Collection Power and hence to a higher Division. This way you are getting better rewards on a budget.
To conclude this article I want to mention that this game is not that complex but it has its perks. So do not get discouraged if you do not see results straight away. The most important thing though is to threat this game as a GAME and not as an investment opportunity. While I agree that this game can have some upsides, the main reason why people should play this game is because it is fun and in my opinion the numerous strategies makes it one of the most fun experiences out there. With that being said, I am very certain that I did not cover the whole game in detail as this article is supposed to be a quick intro for beginners and everybody that are hesitating to join. I hope this article was helpful and I would like to see you in the game!
Published by ga38jem on
LeoFinance
On 14th January 2022
