Documenting my Splinterlands Knowledge - Soulbound Reward Cards Update
Hello there.
We just finished another season of ranked in Splinterlands, and we have started a new one. For a lot of people, this might just be another regular season. But for those that read the Splinterlands discord, there is something big lined up. Apart from the 1 click rentals which I talked about last week, there is also a big change coming up directly after this season.
Some players might think that the current reward cards have been going on for quite some time now. The whales and high ranking players have probably maxed out their cards and have a lot of glint stored waiting for something to use it on. Others wonder when the next set of reward cards will come. More want to know when they can unlock their Soulbound cards.
Well the wait is over. As I was writing this post, the team has created the post talking about the new reward cards. You can read it to get all the details. I was initially going to compile all information scattered in the discord about the new reward cards, but since we already have an official post, I'll just go over my initial thoughts on the topic.
So first things first is the 'when'. The change will happen after the EOS maintenance on August 15. This means that CL reward cards will disappear from the glint shop, and will be replaced by these new Reb reward cards. This also means that the CL SB reward cards can now be unbound. So for those that are still missing some cards, this season will be their last chance to get the CL reward cards from the glint shop. I have heard that there are no summoners in the Rebellion reward cards coming up, so that can factor into your decisions.
The next big question is, what do we know about the new SB reward cards. Unfortunately, right now, very little. There will be 12 Common, 12 Rare, 7 Epic, and 12 Legendary cards. From the bits and pieces of info I've read in the discord, there won't be a summoner card in this set of reward cards. They didn't reveal any card in the post. From the discord, it seems that they are working with streamers and content creators to reveal the cards. So make sure to tune in and support the SPL streamers to get an early look at the cards; or you can just hang around the SPL discord and wait for the info to be shared there.
What the team provided though, was a list and description of new abilities coming in with this new set. There will be 4 new abilities, and 3 debilitations [debuffs applied by allies to its own team]. I'll share my thoughts about them below.
Mimic
At the beginning of round 2 and each following round, gain a random ability from the enemy team. 25% chance to gain a random ability from an attacker when hit. Dispel removes one mimicked ability in the order they were gained. Debilitations, Targeting abilities, Ambush, Weapons Training, Flank, Reach, Charge, and Taunt cannot be mimicked.
On paper, this already looks OP. There is no mention of the max number of abilities it can get. So in max level battles where monsters have a lot of abilities, the mimic can become a monster if not dealt with early on. Abilities like Heal, Tank Heal, Triage, Poison, Cripple, Halving, and even Bloodlust can be mimicked. The only downside is that they are reliant on the enemy team's abilities. So if they just go for a heavy Sneak/Opportunity team, then there is not much to mimic. I can see Dispel getting more popular because of this, and maybe Jacek for the Scattershot to apply the debuffs to a lot of enemies.
Corrupted Healing
Each round, restore 1/3 of max health to allied units, rounded down. Each time a unit is healed, its max health is reduced by 1.
This is an interesting ability. On one hand, it is pretty much Heal, Tank Heal, and Triage in one, so you can save on monster slot. On the other hand, the self cripple can be bad. I wonder if the self cripple will apply to Immune monsters, since the Cripple ability doesn't. I can see this being good in rulesets like Noxious Fumes and Earthquake. It can be good in Equalizer, Blast, and Scattershot rulesets as well. Team wise, I think this will empower sustain teams even more. I can see Taunt teams become even more popular. The 1 Max HP reduction is trivial if the backline is safe and the tanks are unkillable. The big thing to note in this ability is that a unit needs to be healed by Corrupted Healing first before its max health is reduced by 1. So if they aren't damaged, then no self cripple should happen.
Execute
If the target has 2 or less health after a successful attack, perform another attack against the same unit.
This one is a bit niche, since it feels like a weaker Double Strike. It does feel a bit similar to Trample though, where a certain condition needs to be met before it can activate. But speaking of those abilities, I wonder how it will work with Trample. There's nothing written that Execute can only trigger once. So what would happen if execute triggers and kills an enemy, then trample triggers and puts the next target to 2 or less health, will execute trigger again? And if there is a Stampede ruleset, can a full team wipe happen more often? So individually, it feels a bit weak, but with Trample, it can be OP.
Wingbreak
Always targets enemy units with Flying first regardless of abilities or rulesets. +2 damage if the target has Flying.
Initially I thought this was really good. I can target Flying monsters immediately, it overrides everything, and deals +2 damage as well. But I noticed that it doesn't improve the accuracy against Flying like Snare does. So with my bad luck against evasion abilities, I can get stuck with missing all my attacks against a Regal Peryton or War Pegasus. I can see it being useful in Earthquake ruleset, but very little outside of that. Sure it can target support units like Adelade, but it is basically just similar to other targeting abilities. Speaking of which, will this be affected by the lookout ability as well? I think it should.
Debilitations
These abilities damage or debuff the allied team instead of the enemy. According to the description, they should have higher stats for the mana cost to compensate for the negatives. I wonder if they are exempted from it. But even if they're not, I can already see them be used in low mana battles with their high stats getting the win early.
Incendiary
Reapplies Burning at the beginning of each round. Burning has a 33% chance to spread to adjacent units at the beginning of each round, then all Burning units lose 2 health. Burning can be cleansed.
This looks like a stronger version of Poison since it can spread, but the first sentence is interesting. "Reapplies Burning", does this mean that burning disappears at the start/end of a round? But that would make the last sentence a bit irrelevant. So maybe it applies burning to a new target, or the same target if it was cleansed. I can already see corrupted healing working well to counter this damage.
Electrified
Deals 1 damage to all allied units at the beginning of each round.
Pretty straightforward 1 damage to all allies. I don't think corrupted healing is good here because it is possible that there is effectively no healing happening. If a monster starts at 10 HP, takes 1 damage from electrified, goes to 9, heals 1 from corrupted healing and goes back to 10, but then goes back down to 9 because of the self cripple. Of course those damaged by attacks can be healed more, but if there aren't, then lowering the max HP can be bad for monsters with high HP. One could be better of just going with Lily or a Triage monster instead.
Weary
Each round, Weary units have a 10% chance to become Exhausted. This chance increases by 10% every round, up to a maximum of 80%. Exhausted units skip their turn and cannot Retaliate.
I'm assuming the Exhaustion chance goes back down after being exhausted. If not, then that would make this really bad. From the last line, it seems most if not all of them will have Retaliate as well. Since they will skip their turn, I guess that means it is similar to stun where they wont Heal. I think Jacek's will work well with these monsters since the added speed can make sure their attacks aren't wasted, and the pierce can take advantage of their high stats and retaliate.
There are a lot of unknowns for now. There is the damage type question. Is Incendiary similar to Poison where it deals damage directly to the HP, going through even Divine Shield? As for Electrified, is it similar to Redemption that damages armor first. I don't think we have a detailed entry in the support page for these yet. So until we do, we'll just have to do the old fashioned trial and error, and rely on experiences.
Unbinding Reward Cards
This is the topic that a lot are excited about. They might want to sell their extras, or buy cards that are missing from their collection. Unfortunately the team made it a complicated and costly to do so. To unbind, they use a formula of Power x BCX x Multiplier. The power seems to be CP, and I'll discuss the multiplier later on. I didn't know max level cards get a bonus in power, but the team said this bonus won't come into play when unbinding. It will just be power-per-BCX. Here is an example that the team gave: a max-level regular-foil Drybone Raider will cost 55,000 DEC (11 BCX * 500 power * 10) to unbind.
Here are other examples:
If you're thinking that a max level Drybone Raider costs too much at 55k DEC, then you're not alone. A lot were disappointed with the cost. I checked the market for CL cards, and only Immortalis and Lily cost more than 55k DEC at max RF. Baakjira is the highest RF monster and it is less than half the cost at 24k DEC. For a card that many already has a copy of, this is very high. The singles of the Legendary Cards might see some unbind, and they would probably cost more than the unbind cost in the market.
Now if you think that was already high, there is still the multiplier. For the first 29 days after the change, the multiplier is 'just' 10. After every 30 days, it increases by 1 [11, 12, etc], until 179 days. After 180 days, the cards can't be unbound, and will remain soulbound permanently. So if you have any plans of unbinding your cards, doing it so earlier would be better. Anything after the first 29 days is already less efficient.
The team mentioned that the pricing are comparable to the current Rebellion card prices. This was done to prevent flooding the market with cheap cards, and for them to retain their value. In the end, I think this is the solution that the team decided to go with to make everyone 'happy'. Card owners want to be able to unbind their cards and do with it what they want. Anti bot people don't want them dumping their assets for cheap like what happened in CL and previous reward cards. You can't please everyone, and with this, they delivered on what they said about SB cards being unbound. We just didn't expect it to cost this much.
That is it for my first impressions on the upcoming reward cards. I plan on making another one once we get more info on the upcoming cards. What are your thoughts on the abilities and unlocking? Will you save up your glint for the next set or buy now in hopes of completing your set? Do you plan on unbinding any cards? Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for improvement.
And as always, these are Not Financial Advice, and Do Your Own Research.
If you want to start playing Splinterlands, you can use my link:
Splinterlands Referral Link