Splinterlands Sunday!: Guilds are Now Live!

The end of the prior Season was, as expected, pretty intense as the battle for Top 50 becomes harder and harder given the amount of players continuing to build their collections into competitive teams. We even saw what seemed to be the introduction of more sophisticated bots which were actively pushing it to the Top 50 to gain Booster Packs as their reward. While I somewhat struggled early on, after spending the weekend grinding ranked battles, I was finally able to achieve Champion Division I for the season.

I was happy to get 150 Reward Edition Cards as my reward. While I did not achieve Top 50 another season, it did make me realize the need to continue to build the strength of my teams. However, this is becoming much more difficult because not only our card values going up but Steem prices are going down. Therefore, it is costing an immense amount of capital and resources to build a strong team. Even though the cost/benefit is there, it leads me to consider the decision twice. I have made a list of cards that I must maximize in order to improve my competition levels. I will be carefully watching the markets to determine my max step next steps in the coming days. In the meantime, these Reward Cards have gotten more of my Collection up to maximum level.

As if collecting cards and leveling them up while competing wasn’t enough to keep us busy, Guilds have been released providing an even deeper experience for players to engage. Guilds are forms to create clans or teams in the game that will expand the way we play in the near future. What is exciting about this experience, is that really anybody can start their own Guild and build a team that can engage right from the website as they play. There are already dozens of Guilds with different purposes which I feel will take the game and its experience to the whole another level in the near future. All it takes is the use of the in-game currency Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) to form and build a team.

This is also adding another level to the Sprinterlands Economy as the burning of the currency makes it more valuable. We have seen this already in the market as there has been millions of Dark Energy Crystals already burned for the purpose of Guild building. I am sure that is what the developers had in mind to foster the continued growth and value of the in-game currency for the long term. It has made the DEC come into even more demand as if it wasn’t already enough with the options previously available at its disposal. Now, you can buy an upvote, new cards, potions, and now build your Guilds with the DEC.

They have also aligned very well the benefits of being part of a Guild as well. As Guilds level up, its members will now be able to use their DEC more efficiently. They will also be able to gain bonuses on our earned DEC through ranked battles on the playlist. Lastly, there are some cosmetic changes to the Guild pages when leveled up. The castle they build becomes larger and more detailed as the level increases. While this may not interest everyone, bragging rights have always been a featured of games and those that somehow incorporate team-based features.

However, I think that what makes the launch of Guilds even more exciting is the additional potential it brings to improve engagement even more. Within Guilds we can currently challenge teammates to pratice battles without entering their name. The chat function serves for a great way to get news out and plan strategies which will come in handy when the feature of Guild battle comes to reality. While details are still limited, it will be a way for team to organize battles amongst each other in a league type fashion. It is a great way to expand the engagement across the community!

In addition to all the potential its brings to the Splinterlands community, it all continues to demonstrate the potential capabilities and flexibility the Steem protocol has to build upon. The combination of community and innovative developers has been a great experience to see develop before our eyes as the amount of value being created within the ecosystem continues to build. For me, it demonstrates how undervalued Steem currently is and why I still feel that the best is yet to come for us!