I've been an enthusiast of cryptocurrency for a long time now but I never have any interest in blockchain game, simple because, honestly, most of the games are boring and it doesn't require much effort or skills to win. Plus, the result of your game in each battle or fight, has already been determined the moment you click the "battle" or "fight" button. Any visual you see after that, is just a replay. As an avid gamer, it doesn't trigger my interest.
Last week I stumbled upon a video in YouTube about blockchain and NFT-based games. One game in particular caught my attention was Splinterlands. I'm a big fan of card game, especially the online digital collectible card games such as Hearthstone. Splinterlands has triggered my interest all because of that.
I know it is kind of late for me to get into this game but, I don't really mind and I gave it a try. I don't think I need to explain in depth about this game as there are many resources available online on that. But what I want to explain is how fun this game can be.
As a warning, getting into this game is not free although it is said to be free-to-play. You can play the game without spending any money but you will not get into the core of this game that is cryptocurrency and NFT. Also, you won't be able to earn DEC or Dark Energy Crystals, which, is the in-game currency token for Splinterlands. DEC is a digital token that you can trade like other cryptocurrency. So in a way, you can play this game and earn some income, probably. To start and unlock the NFT and crypto side of the game you need $10 to buy an item called Spellbook. This will unlock everything and every feature of the game.
After that, you will be going straight into battle. If you're familiar with any card game or if you're not, just know that card game looks simple to play but it can be very tricky, confusing and frustrating. It might not require much skills like other video games but it will make you think hard and praying for some luck to be on your side.
The battle in this game is fun. You get to choose what cards you want to bring into the battle but the most tricky part is how you want to bring a team with the limited mana count. The maximum mana for each battle might be different and random. Sometime you'll get 12 mana, sometime you'll get 99. Each card will have its own mana required to be played.
I guess I've explained enough about the gameplay in short. Now the part where it make this game different from the normal card game is that you get to earn the DEC. But, you cannot earn it straight away, you need to be in the Bronze 2 league to start to earn it. To get there you need to battle your way there and win many times. It will make you grind a lot! Then, after you reached 400 rating points, this is when things got real. You need to spend some real money to collect some cards to accumulate 1000 power, which is another requirement to unlocked Bronze 2 tier, apart from the rating points.
This is the point where most people will give up, I assumed. To buy cards you need DEC but you can't earn DEC yet as you're not in the Bronze 2 league yet. The worst part is, buying the card with common rarity from the market doesn't give you much power. Most of them in the range of 10 to 20. So you need to buy a lot of cards to meet the 1000 power requirement. I read somewhere that this was not the case before the developer made the change last year. Before that, player can earn DEC from the start and from the first battle in the lowest rank.
But, good news for us who are already here in Hive, you don't have to spend real money on this game as you can use your Hive to buy DEC or Credits (to buy card packs) to get you started. If you've been here for some times, you might have accumulate some Hive. This game is built on Hive blockchain so your wallet for the game is actually your Hive wallet and for all the transaction you do in this game, using Hive, it will be deducted directly from your wallet. So you don't have to create another wallet.
The best thing about this game is that the real objective is to collect the cards and make money from it. Yup, you can. The cards you collected can be sold in the market. You can even list it to rent it out to other players. I haven't been able to do that yet as I don't have much of high value cards yet but this is the part that make this game interesting, really.
How to earn money from this game? I guess that will be a story for another day as I'm still new in this game. I will share my experience once I get further and managed to explore more.
Till next post!
