Published via Ecency

Hello Splinterfans!

It is hard to believe that I have been playing Splinterlands for around 1 year and 5 months already! Although I feel like an experienced player, there is often times that I still feel like that newbie who wrote about their first day on Splinterlands on the 17th June 2022.

< My First Splinterlands Post >

Since then, I decided that I would try to make regular posts to track my progress and also to help me learn the game better. I also found it a good way to keep in contact with some of the Splinterlands community and by reading the posts of others, learn the game better too.

Before I started playing Splinterlands though, I first remember discovering a complicated looking card game and seeing people blog about it. Inquisitive, I joined a few streams and watched people playing. I was still totally confused about it still though.

However, after a few months of procrastination, I decided to jump in head first and did the tutorial first and then made my first post about the experience. Therefore, now looking back, I think having an onboarding process for new players is really important.

The great thing about Splinterlands is the community and it was really helpful for me that there is so many helpful people around to help with any queries and give playing tips. I still remember trying to navigate PeakMonsters for the first time and being totally confused but also excited at the same time. It was my real first experience making some practical uses of NFTs.

After completing the tutorials and getting some tips from other players, I focused on building my earth deck and using Mylor Crowling as my main summoner. Soon though, I found myself building up my water deck too and loved the speed and melee attack of water. However, the magic attack of my earth deck was my strongest deck for quite some time.

I remember some of my first achievements as reaching the gold league and unlocking new abilities of the monsters that for a beginner were too tough to understand. As time went by though, being able to play with these extra abilities was more fun and I strived to climb higher and remember reaching the Diamond league for the first time. I was really chuffed with this achievement as my deck was not able to be competitive in this league, but it was cool to reach it in the last days of the season.

However, after doing that a few times, I found that my home and favorite league to play in is the gold league and I am very satisfied to play here. It is not so competitive as the diamond league but it is also tough enough and with good variation to keep things interesting. It also does not require you to max out all your cards which is good for your budget 😀.

I was intensively playing Splinterlands everyday for over a year and a half but finally bought myself a bot recently to keep playing whilst I didn't have the time. I am still regularly playing most days in modern, but when I miss a day, the bot would then usually kick in. Although I have now got a bot, I am looking forward to the new gameplay that will make it harder for bots to play and I am sure at somepoint the game will be made so that bots are unable to play. I think this is a good move as playing against bots is not so much fun.

I really like collecting the cards and am not so much of a renter. I like to get some new leveled up cards each month. Some of my recent cards are Axemaster which I absolutely love to play with his 3 attack and double strike. My most recent purchase was a level 6 Bortus that I had my eye on for some time. He really is perfect for those magic only games where you need to play Djinn Oshannus as your tank.

I also play as part of the Special Ops guild and there I also enjoy to play the gold league level caps. I think joining a guild is a great way to add another element to meet others in the community and share tips and have some fun too.

< My Current Beta Collection >

At the moment, as well as building my gold level deck, I like to collect the beta cards and enjoy looking for bargains here. I love to see the older cards compared to the newer ones now.

When I look back in the last year, I think it has been a fun but sometimes tough journey. The team have made some great decisions that have brought Splinterlands to a good place where we are now and I think there could be lots of opportunity going forward. Let me explain how, but first lets look at where we have come from.

First the team implemented the new modern league to make it more attractive for human players and then SPS staking killed off lots of the bot farms which were just a leech on the ecosystem. Since then they have been making more and more things in the game easier and human-friendly such as the daily rewards timer.

< My Runi >

What I love about Splinterlands also is the game has so many of the basics right such as leveling up cards, transfering assets or tokens is free (except Runi) on Hive and other games on other chains just fall down with many of these basic things.

One of my best buys in Splinterlands was to get a Runi as it gives lots of good usage opportunities in the game and also it has gone up quite a bit in value too due to it being quite limited. I was at first unsure to get it or not, but now I am very happy with it and can't imagine playing without one.

I think with the bear market past us, we now have a great future ahead with a great new card set coming, changes to the gameplay to make more human interaction required and possibly lower bot usage. The tokenomics are looking good with DEC hitting peg and the flywheel kicking in for the first time recently which could send the value of SPS up which in turn could draw new players into the game.

My plan for the future is to keep stacking SPS and buying and upgrading cards to keep my deck competitive. I then hope to see the value of my assets growing again and that sure would be nice.

If you are new to Splinterlands, I think it is a great time to join as we are at the very bottom of the market and you can get cards and SPS very cheap now and there has been no better time to play the game! From a play2earn perspective, I think there are no better opportunities out there, especially ones that don't take your earnings in gas fees straight off the bat!

Thanks for reading.