For Hivers that are not familar with Splinterland's Land Plots Expansions I will be giving a brief overview of what they are and why maybe they are currently worth slightly north of $600 per a plot. We can verify on Hive-Engine.com:
My educated guess as to why this is the case are the following reasons. In no particular order of importance:
Land will be a expansion game related to Splinterlands. There was a set of times for pre-sale of the lands in late 2020. The lands have all but sold out in current in game market, however players who are willing to pay a hefty premium can purchase tokens for the right to claim a plot through Hive-Engine.
The lands are broken into three parts, M.G. Exploration Co, TunnelWorks Ventures, and Gobson Wagontech. A more detail breakdown from creators of Splinterlands below:
The smallest unit of land is a Plot, and each Plot will be a unique non-fungible token (NFT) represented by a card graphic that displays all of its unique properties as well as indicate what type and level of building is currently built on it. Each plot of land will have a terrain type, a category, and a rarity.
The terrain type indicates what sort of land it is, what types of resources it can have, and what types of Splinter magic are best suited to that land. There are planned to be fourteen different terrain types in total: Plains, Hills, Tundra, Swamp, Bog, Mountain, Canyon, Caldera, River, Lake, Forest, Jungle, Desert, and Badlands.
In addition to the terrain type, each plot of land will also be in one of three categories - Natural, Magical, or Occupied. The category of land is similar to the "foil" of the existing Monster and Summoner cards and is indicated at the top of the card graphic. The majority of the land plots will be Natural lands, which means that they contain one of four natural resources (grain, wood, stone, and ore) which can be farmed or harvested from the land and will be required to build, upgrade, and maintain all of the various buildings that can be constructed.
It is worth noting as of now although all lands have been sold there is no information as of what type of land, rarity or any other properties of land are known at this time. All there is is for players who bought Tracts and Regions earns additional benefits as listed below:
The whole premises of land is for players to mint new cards that are not available in stores. In fact players who own lands will be the only ones able to mint new and unique Splinterland cards. The cards will be either Item or Spell cards. These cards will be supplemented to a players' summoner and monsters collections.
Supplement because the Item and Spell cards intended use is to help the player's overall battle formation. So in short a player setups their formation like any other typical battle, but after formation is setup they get to see their opponent's lineup and add either Item or Spell cards to support or reinforce their formations.
There will be many variables in determining what kind of cards players can mint. Some of these variables includes the quality of building they have setup on their plot. Players need to maintain their plot and build up the plot with buildings in order to increase their chances of minting cards.
Along the sides of land plots rising in price are also totems that have soared. Totems with their own rarity are limited in quantities and only exists in a lottery given to players who bought land during the pre-sale. Afterwards no additional Totems to ever be created.
Currently there are Common, Rare, Epic, and Legend Totems. Higher rarity provides stronger benefits to players who hold them. Interesting though the actually benefits are unknown to the Totem holders as of now. This is because they only hold tickets that can claim them a specific rarity totem. What totem benefits they own will not be known until the land expansion is released and players can use the totems.
Splinterland's developers anticipate a roll out of lands expansion in full sometime in quarter 4 of 2021. It is less than a week from September at the time of this post. We still want to see new cards be introduced as there are more players today than ever before. While all that is going on one can assume land expansion debut may dragged out a little.
In any case the potentials for land expansions are huge. This is because lands allows players to create cards that would never had existed if not for it to be minted. This is a path where players create in game cards and not just the developers. A decentralized approach in making in game assets.
The complexity and odds of minting unique cards also has huge potential. There are so many configurations of lands, buildings, and totems that makes it appear likely that when unique cards are minted they will be highly sought after.
For readers who wish to read further details about the Splinterlands Land Expansion please see the following links. These links were also used as resources in creating this post.
Splinterlands' White Paper on Land
Splinterlands Land Expansion Details
Until next time thanks for reading!!!
If you are interested to learn more about Splinterlands please go through some of my other posts. Order is from newest to oldest posts:
All You Want To Know About Reward Chests
Helpful Links for New and Veteran Players
Splinterlands Good Cards To Own
Splinterlands Rentals from a Lender Perspective
I have plenty of other cards for rent! Just go on peakmonsters and check out the market place and if you are curious what I offer here is a link:
