"Splinterlands" Power Strategy Tips #62

As I have now been playing "Splinterlands" for over a year, I've wanted to contribute something of ACTIONABLE value to my fellow players (and FUTURE players) - but NOT just fill my #Hive feed with daily images of quest reward - or battle - SPAM (no offense to those doing so). Ultimately, Hive is about ADDING VALUE to the social experience - that is the magic of blockchain social media technology. So, after some serious pondering, I decided that a weekly "Splinterlands" player strategy diary" type series, with CONCISE and ACTIONABLE tips, would be of most value to my audience. Please let me know your thoughts (good and/or bad), and I hope that readers (now and into the future) will benefit from this series. If you gain a better understanding of blockchain, gaming, "blockchain gaming", marketing, psychology, forensics, addiction science, philosophy, ethic, investing, and/or any other area(s) of knowledge I end up exploring (voluntarily or involuntarily) as this series naturally progresses, then I will have done my "good deed" (of providing value) for the week - and have a little extra Hive to buy some more Splinterlands cards/packs (and/or Bitcoin). Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield.

@transcript-junky

[ DISCLAIMER ] Upon editorial suggestion from one of my "she-buddies" over at @splinterlands HQ (and no, I'm not referring to @aggroed ;->), PLUS several fans over the past few months (in the comments section of these posts), PLUS my desire to earn more #Hive to start converting $5.00 USD per week to swap.btc and re-build my BTC holdings back up ( at least to the magic number of 0.28 BTC)), PLUS the fact that each of these "one per week" posts are so damn long and CLUNKY, I have decided to at least ATTEMPT to bump up my output to TWO posts of this series per week. This will allow me a few advantages, including: adding MORE than the standard ""four main points/sections", which I have been limited to in the posts up until this point (excluding the fifth (diary) section). This is important because so much more is happening within, and related to, the game that "four issues per week" is no longer enough to properly cover everything. I think it is at least worth giving this a try. The main issue is whether I will have the time/energy to keep up with the pace. If it works, though, I think it will be a good thing. It will take a few weeks to iron out the logistics/editorial issues, but feel free to let me know if you prefer this new "two posts per week" schedule better than the "one post per week". That would be valuable feedback. Thanks. [ /DISCLAIMER ]

1 ) I've got my 850,000 DEC lined-up and ready for the land pre-sale, and have been consuming the recent AMA sessions with @splinterlands admin. I've decided against joining any of the pools to get a discount on the one tract of land I plan to buy. Even though the 100k DEC savings (which the pools offer) is attractive, I'd just rather have full control over my purchase, and the rewards (ex. raffle tickets, chance of hitting plots of land with a castle and/or keep, etc.) Maintaining that "agency" is more valuable to me than a 100k DEC discount. Also, though chatting with some of the pool coordinators I can see that organizing the pools is going to be a chaotic experience, and I simply don't have the energy for it. Speaking of chaos, I am also keeping a "healthy distance" on the official Splinterlands #Discord channel. Like any online public venue you get all sorts of "characters" in there, and there is enough chaos going on in the world right now that I just want to keep the "chaos factor" at a manageable level right now. So I am erring on the side of "lurker" in the Discord channel, checking in every few days (usually when I post my new posts in the various channels) to scan the conversation, and sticking with my original strategy of reading game-related POSTS. This is also one major reason why I believe that an in-game Splinterlands chat would NOT be ideal, at least for me personally. I just find myself wanting to keep a "healthy distance" from most Homo Sapiens these days. No offense, Homos.

2 ) In the last series post I mentioned that I was having a difficult time figuring out a way to JUSTIFY the expenditure of up to FIVE Dice packs per season (one new pack purchase when I reach each higher season level milestone - which is roughly 4-5 packs per season). The cost of 4-5 Dice packs would be roughly (with the current guild discount) : 2,850 DEC x 4 = 11,400 DEC, or 2,850 x 5 = 14,250 DEC per season. I have been trying to figure out ways to justify this expense AGAINST the "worst case scenario that EACH of those 4-5 packs are "duds" whereby the pack ends up being worth the least amount : 10 DEC + 10 DEC + 10 DEC + 10 DEC + 40 DEC = 80 DEC/pack against the 2,850 DEC cost of the pack (which would put me down 2,780 DEC per pack). I have considered seeing how many free Untamed packs I am getting in the daily rewards dumps, but as of writing this sentence only got one this week, and that had NO higher-level cards which I could burn for the 11,400 - 14,250 DEC necessary to buy the season Dice packs. A few other ways to justify the cost would be : ( a ) to calculate the value of the season rewards against this cost, ( b ) to use the 10% bonus earnings for using "gold" and "gold promo" cards in battles against this cost, ( c ) to use the 15% I will save by buying "one tract" of land during the upcoming land pre-sale ( so 150,000 DEC savings - 1,000,000 DEC - 15% ( 150,000 DEC) = 850,000 DEC)) to offset the cost of the packs, and/or ( d ) to just consider it a way of helping Splinterlands admin raise funds for the project (simply because it brings my life some much-needed daily joy) -- or perhaps a combination of all of the above. In fact, I spent so much time/energy stressing about this this week that I decided to just go ahead and buy the packs. In fact, I even went in for a 20 (+ 1 free) pack back for 57,000 DEC, which will cover the next FIVE seasons of season milestones. Here's some of the resulting cards from the packs I have opened so far:

I will spend the next five seasons calculating how much of the 57,000 DEC I have recouped (through rewards cards, DEC bonuses, etc.), AND this now bumps up my eligible Dice airdrops from 382 to 403 packs - ANY ONE of which can potentially land me a JUICY non-gold (or even GOLD) airdrop card - which I can then use to buy more and packs, and/or manually buy more Dice cards (or a combination of the two). Also, if/when I recoup the 57,000 DEC spent on this batch I will likely go in for another one. The main reason for this is that the ONLY way I'm really going to have a chance to hit more of the HIGH-VALUE Dice cards is by buying more packs. I can buy the cheaper ones on the market with my daily DEC earnings.

3 ) As y'all know, my first attempt (a few weeks ago) to convert $5.00 USD of DEC to Hive, and they buy $5.00 USD of #Bitcoin (to my #Coinbase wallet) was an utter train wreck. The fees gobbled up MOST of the $5.00 USD of BTC, and I even ended up having to abort the mission. However, one of the top players in Splinterlands Discord @mattclarke brought to my attention the ability to convert DEC to swap.btc - with essentially ZERO fee - and then hold that in @steem-engine into the future, until which time I want to cash out (or send the BTC to another wallet). He recommended holding up to $1,000 USD of BTC in Steem-Engine (in the form of swap.btc), but as I have explained in the past, based on an interesting article I read last month, the key amount of BTC I am shooting for is 0.28 BTC:

Could holding 0.28 BTC put you in the top 1% wealth bracket someday?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/could-holding-0-28-btc-could-put-you-in-the-1-wealth-bracket

So, even with this week's significant increase in the price of Bitcoin to ~ $13,000 USD/BTC that would work out to ~ 0.28 x $13,000 = $3,640 USD, which at $5.00 USD (of DEC earnings) per week would require 728 weeks, or (728 weeks / 52 weeks/year = 14 years) to reach. Actually, as the current value of my Splinterands collection is ~ $7,000 USD (plus ~ $1,000 USD of in-game DEC) I am ALREADY technically at the 0.28 BTC goal, but the whole point is to get my BTC holding back up to this "sweet spot" so that I can then focus mainly on the "play to earn" stuff. That being said, this week I intend to use the Hive income from the TWO weekly posts in this series to swap $5.00 USD of Hive to swap.btc to see if this eliminates the problems I had last time. If this works I will then also start considering alternative options to Coinbase for holding my BTC long-term (perhaps a paper wallet). To Coinbase's credit, they DID enable me to obtain crypto (through remote work earnings) at a time when Coinbase did not allow on-boarding or off-boarding in my location (SouthEast Asia), and that ability is the ONLY way in which I was ultimately able to obtain BTC (at ~ $200 - $300 USD/BTC back in 2013-2014), as then ultimately get involved with Splinterlands two years ago (using some of that initial BTC). But now we are moving into a new phase of the process, and so I am adjusting my strategy to adjust to the larger changes in the "space" so as to maximize gain and minimize risk. Let's see if this new attempt to start replenishing some BTC works. Fingers crossed.

4 ) I've decided to power-down my ~ 270 Hive (part of which has been the second half of the payouts from the posts in this series ) to buy more cards, and also enable me to try the "$5.00 USD of BTC conversion of Hive to swamp.hive". My usual weekly payouts of ~ 13 Hive ( x 0.140 USD = ~ $1.85 USD ) ALONE have not been enough to do the $5.00 USD of BTC per week buy. My plan is to see if the extra, second weekly post in this series can bump me up to the $5.00 USD per week level, and if not I will use some of the power-down Hive to top-up while I explore other ways to hit the $5.00 USD of HIve per week goal.

5 ) Okay. As I did in the last post in this series, the highly-detailed "diary" of my daily #splinterlands activity is laid out in the last part of this post, for those of you who are inclined to follow, more closely, what I am doing. It occurred to me that this "diary" section is JUST THAT - a highly detailed record of my daily activity in the game, with some JUICY "play-by-play" analysis notes, and commentary, on what works, what doesn't, and some suggestions for further tweaking and experimentation. So, with this in mind, I hope some/any of you will enjoy this information. If not, you are under no pressure to read it fully, and are free to SKIM, or even IGNORE, any parts, or ALL parts, completely - at your discretion. I lay this out because it also HELPS ME to document my progress in the game over time, and may help some people NOW, and into the perpetual future...

Also, since I am now attempting to put out TWO posts per week in this series I will limit the entries to 3-4 per post.

October 17th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,235,753 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 89.38%
Ending DEC - 1,236,873 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 95.00%
Balance = DEC Earning = I had another windfall of DEC and bought a bunch more card today, so I will skip the total for this entry and pick up tomorrow.

Spent:

Untamed (Pack #1 : reward pack + celebration pack for reaching "Diamond II" season level + 50 season loot chests)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers-
(+) 80 DEC

Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest) - [Note: wasn't able to finish this "dragon" quest today, and so instead of getting STUCK on it, and messing up all the record-keeping) I will AT LEAST try to complete it, and enter it as a new (duplicate) record tomorrow. If I can't finish it tomorrow I will cancel the quest.]
keepers -
(+) DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) DEC
potions - legendary potions, alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - DEC

October 18th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,235,873 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 99.02%
Ending DEC - 1,236,509 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 90.00%
Balance = DEC Earning = 636 DEC = -> 3.74 HIVE x ~ $00.149 USD/Hive = ~ $0.56 USD

Spent: No spending today.

Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 25 DEC
potions - 5 legendary potions, 1 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 66 DEC

October 19th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,236,509 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 95.00%
Ending DEC - 1,237,962 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 85.17%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,453 DEC = -> 8.544 HIVE x ~ $00.149 USD/Hive = ~ $1.27 USD

Spent:

2 x "Goblin Dartling" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.33 USD - 1,453 DEC -- two (2) cards remaining to Level 9)

Daily Quest (today's "neutral" quest)
keepers -
(+) 80 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 35 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 1 packs
DEC - 351 DEC

Untamed (Pack #1 : reward pack)
keepers -
(+) 240 DEC
nonkeepers-
(+) 60 DEC

October 20th, 2020

Starting DEC : 1,236,009 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 90.00%
Ending DEC - 1,237,360 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 89.95%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,351 DEC = -> 8.256 HIVE x ~ $00.149 USD/Hive = ~ $1.23 USD

Spent:

2 x "Goblin Dartling" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.57 USD - 1,689 DEC -- bumped up to Level 9 (to increase "speed" from +4" to +5")

Daily Quest (today's "neutral" quest)
keepers -
(+) 90 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 85 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 1 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 119 DEC

Whew! These posts are growing dense - but that's okay. Take what resonates with you,and leave the rest. I hope you find some/any of these tips useful in increasing your understanding and/or skill level in the Splinterlands and/or any other game(s) - and the " blockchain gaming " industry as whole - which I end up exploring as this series evolves. More JUICY tips to come with each weekly update, as I dig deeper into this whole REVOLUTIONARY PHENOMENON, and become more experienced and successful in the game(s).

See you on the battlefield...

@transcript-junky