Splinterlands - Beginner's Guide - Splinter Overview & Rating

Are you new to Splinterlands and searching for some advice, then you found the correct series! In this Beginner’s Guide Series, we are discussing things that new players of Splinterlands should know or try to learn. In this specific episode I want to highlight the different Splinters We will talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each element as well as the different potentials. I will also rank them in my favorite order and will name arguments why I have the specific order. If this article motivated you to start playing this amazing game, then feel free to join the fun over the following link:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=ga38jem

Earth

We start with my favorite Splinter in the game: Earth. I think this is Splinter can be named as fan favorite and the developers did a great job to keep it that way. Prior to the Chaos Legion expansion this element was very often used with Mylor as he gave every card the Thorns Ability. This was very powerful in Melee match ups. After the expansion and the new Chaos Legion summoners Earth is still one of the best elements in the game, thanks to Obsidian. This Earth Summoner has the Ability to increase all Magic damage by one and while Earth was a true Melee Element prior to the expansion, with high health and good amount of damage, the Splinter changed into a Magic Splinter with high health and very good amount of Magic Damage. In my opinion this element gives you the best price-performance ratio as the summoner is only around 3.20 USD at the time of writing. The selection of monsters is incredible: It has the best legendary and epic monster out of the Chaos Legion expansion and has several combinations of strategies to make you come up as the winner of your next match up!

Water

Next up on the list is water. To be honest with you, I was debating very long whether water or Earth is the best Element at the moment. I must admit that Water also has a summoner that gives an extra Magic attack, not only that but the Chaos Legion Summoner Kelya is a true powerhose as she grants our team an extra speed as well as an extra armor. Furthermore, this element has probably the best well rounded monster in the game currently. With Djinn Oshannus, Nerissa Tridawn or Serpent of Eld, this element has great magic attackers as well as very powerful melee attackers. -my most favorite build with this team is without a doubt the “Can’t Touch This” where we put the Seprent of Eld in Front and make it dodge as many attacks as possible while at the same time defeating our opponent with our magic attackers Can’t Touch This – Water strategy. The only reason why this element is not on the first place but a very close second, is the pricing. Unfortunately, both summoners, Kelya and Alric are on the expensive side. While Kelya only costs around 4.4 USD at the time of writing, Alric is in the price range of 78 USD which is not depletable a very high price for every beginner.

Fire

In place number three we have The Fire Element. Since I am playing Splinterlands this element was always about Speed and Melee attackers. This is why this Splinter seems to have the best and interesting Melee attackers in the whole game. My absolute favorites are the Living Lava as well as The Chosen One. Admittedly both of them are not the fastest but bring certainly the best attributes to be a tank. While one has the Shield Ability and therefore is very hard to come by, the other one is resistant to poison which makes it a very valuable choice during a poison match up. Complementary, the summoners which Fire has to offer are very Melee based. My current favorite is without a doubt Tarsa. She grants our monsters an extra Melee Damage as well as an extra Health and is with 2.80 USD very affordable. This makes our monsters very robust. My most played strategy with this element is the Sneak Strategy. Because most monsters with the Sneak ability are Melee attackers, the extra attack comes a long way. The only downside with this element is the lack of alternatives. Whenever you play the fire Splinter, you almost always are locked into playing some sort of Melee strategy. This makes you very calculatable and therefore easily countered. Nevertheless, because of its powerful monsters and affordable summoner, this splinter gets into third place.

Life

Moving into the bottom half of our list, we start of with life. For some of you this might come as a surprise but I absolutely prefer the Life element before the other two remaining. The main reason is that I always wanted a Ranged attacking team. Since the Chaos Legion expansion this is possible due to the Life Summoner General Sloan as she grants us an extra Ranged damage. With a price of only 2.25 USD it is currently the cheapest life summoner. In addition to that, Life has a very good taunt monster in the person of Shield Bearer. With a complementary Tank heal and Repair monster this tank has the potential of surviving every battle. The problem with the life splinter is a very similar as with the fire splinter. Because we are fixed on only one attacking style we are very easily countered. Although the Life Splinter has some decent Magic and Melee attackers the biggest downside is that Ranged attacker can not attack from the first position. This makes us choose between sacrificing Ranged attackers in order to still be able to attack from the first position once our tank goes or being vulnerable but have a great ranged attacking force which can destroy our enemies. Both cases are not optimal balanced which puts the Life Splinter in position four out of six.

Dragons

The second to last place is filled by the Dragon Splinter. Now if we look at this element there are only amazing things to say about it. All monsters can be combined with another Splinter. The Dragon monster themselves are very powerful and hard to beat. The summoners give pretty cool buffs and they even have a summoner who is able to buff magic attackers. Why the hell is this Element so far down the list, you might ask? There are two reasons why I do not like playing Dragons. The first one being, the mana cost of the cards. Because we are often bonded to certain mana restrictions the high mana cost of the cards can cost us valuable attacking slots. I would always prefer a full board as we can attack more frequently rather than having one big monster which is the target of all attacks without back up. The second reason is the high monetary costs of the cards. The current Chaos Legion summoner is costing around 26 USD which is truly not what you want to pay as a player who wants to learn the game first.

Death

Last but not least, we have the death Splinter. When getting new daily quests I am always changing them up if I am getting the Death Quest. It is not like the team has nothing to offer: The summoner is very cool which deducts one magic attack and one health off of our opponent’s minions. Furthermore, this element has some pretty cool monsters like the cursed Widneku with the Thorns ability or Venari Bonesmith with its Life Leech ability. All in all, the monsters and the summoner are pretty powerful as standalone. Unfortunately, I was not able to find a good strategy to play them together yet. Every time I think I found a perfect strategy to use, I will get demolished by the next opponent. Out of my perspective it just looks like other elements have greater potential and can be played more efficiently. I want to point out that the death Splinter is certainly not bad and if you fancy playing this element you have every reason to do so, it is just that for me it is not clicking yet, but I will certainly keep on trying to figure it out!