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, addiction science, geopolitics, forensics, law, ethics, philosophy, accounting, investing, anger management, 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/upgrade some more Splinterlands cards and/or buy some more swap.btc (#Bitcoin). Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield.
1 ) I kept accurate notes of the leftover DEC after buying cards each day. My goal was set at 600 DEC per day, and I was indeed able to maintain that amount. I also won 2,000 in a gold tournament (which had a high collection value entry requirement), which enabled me to reach well beyond the weekly goal of the swap.btc buy (although I decided to use that DEC value to buy cards instead of risking losing some of that value in the conversion between DEC to Hive to swap.btc. But every bit of DEC and Hive income helps in achieving the larger objectives (whether via buying/upgrading cards, or buying swap.btc).
Nov 17th, 2020 - 520 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btcpurchase
Nov 18th, 2020 - 851 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc purchae
Nov 19th, 2020 - 691 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc purchase
Nov 20th, 2020 - 775 DEC leftover for weekly swap.hive purchase
Nov 21st, 2020 - 372 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc purchase
642 DEC - average over the five daily entries above.
In the end, I was able to put together roughly $3.00 USD worth of Hive to buy swap.btc this week. After several weeks of these swap.btc purchases I am finding that the amount of weekly Hive income quantity average, from my four weekly posts, which the average is gravitating comfortably towards is $3.00 USD. Although this is lower than original goal of $5.00 USD per week, it doesn't require the conversion of DEC to Hive (which seems to always result in a frustrating loss of value), and so for the sake of maintaining sanity/focus, and avoid having to deal with the hungers of those Homos (sapiense) who run 
Also, now that I am allocating a significant portion of my daily DEC earnings to the weekly swap.btc purchase, it is becoming more difficult to maintain the "buy one gold card per day" spending strategy I had been maintaining for several months, and so I am now experimenting with buying up some non-gold cards on those days when my DEC earnings are especially below the general "gold card" cost range (although SOME gold are quite cheap ( ~ $.0.50 range for the cheapest ones), and/or there are simply few/no desired gold cards available on the market within my budget. There ARE some important non-gold cards I have wanted to upgrade in the past few months ANYWAY, and so this IS a good backup strategy, although part of me really enjoys being able to close out each day one gold card richer. I will experiment with this to see what kind of results I can get. For instance, in the more immediate sense, it's better (for daily play success) to be able to buy a larger quantity of MORE USABLE non-gold cards, and level a card up to add extra abilities, then to simply add one more gold card (with several more required until the next level - which means DAYS before I get additional value from using the card) before bumping up the power of the cards. Let's see if this strategy tweak works. I DO have a handful of non-gold cards in line that I've been wanting to upgrade, so I will focus on those first. One of these is the following, which I have started upgrading in line with this strategy:
2 ) Without mentioning any specific figures here, a few weeks ago, when I made my final withdrawal of crypto from Coinbase into my Splinterlands in-game wallet (via buying Hive ( using 
U.S. law firm says IRS is coming after Coinbase users who evade taxes
https://cointelegraph.com/news/u-s-law-firm-says-irs-is-coming-after-coinbase-users-who-evade-taxes
and so it appears that my decision to get everything out of Coinbase was INDEED a sound decision. I mean, the original amount of BTC I acquired was low, in terms of quantity - I'm certainly not a whale by any means - but my main concern was the possibility of having my crypto frozen in Coinbase, for whatever reason, which of course would make it impossible to get that crypto out of there and into somewhere more under my control (like a dApp wallet). So, in the end, my move last month to move my remaining crypto out of Coinbase is appearing to be more sound with time.
3 ) In the most recent season rewards dump I hit a "Fire Spitter" (Gold - Level 3 - $17.00 USD - 15,000 DEC) card. Since the reward cards themselves are EARNED through performance, and since the "legendary" and "alchemy" potions are NO LONGER applied to the rewards loot chests, and since it MAY be the case that one of my +5 "quest" potions was responsible for landing this high-value "Fire Spitter" gold card, and since the cost of another 10 (+1 free) "quest" potion pack costs LESS THAN HALF of the 15,000 DEC burn value of this gold card, I think it is a sound decision to go ahead and buy a new batch of potions, offset by half the value of this card. I did this on Tuesday, November 17th, 2020. This will now also allow me 11 more days to further calculate the amount of BONUS ("gold", "guild", "promo") DEC I am earning per won battle to see if that amount is close enough to the 7,200 DEC required to purchase future 10 (+1) "quest" potion batches, which case I will do so under the same reasoning as my purchase of this most recent batch. The cost/output of the potions is probably one of the FEW exemptions to my current new policy.
4 ) Since a major part of my new "less proactive" strategy includes NOT buying packs (specifically Dice packs), and I will run out of the most recent pack batch I bought a few weeks ago (after the next 10 season milestones - so probably by the end of this month) I have been considering ways to continue the "open one pack upon reaching each season milestone" strategy, but WITHOUT spending additional DEC on packs. One idea I came up with related to this is to simply HOLD any Untamed packs I get in daily quests, and/or season rewards, and open them in line with the "one pack per season milestone". I can then burn or sell any of the cards in those packs and buy more cards manually. This would not require me to spend additional DEC on packs. In addition, if I hit any high-value cards in the free ****Untamed*** packs I could then choose to either buy additional Untamed or Dice packs to top-up the number of packs I have to open for each season milestone. In this way, the free Untamed reward packs fund the "milestone packs" into the future, WITHOUT me breaking my current protocol of not spending additional DEC on packs. I will monitor the number of free Untamed packs I get in rewards over the next few weeks to get a more accurate estimate of the number of free packs I am getting.
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...
Starting DEC : 1,176,660 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 99.61%
Ending DEC - 1,177,820 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 86.33%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,160 DEC = -> 8.463 HIVE x ~ $00.124 USD/Hive = ~ $01.05 USD
Spent :
520 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc buy
1 x "Flame Monkey" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.59 USD - 640 DEC -- bumped up to Level 7 (to increase "speed" from "+3" to "'+4")
1 x (10 (+1 free)) "quest"potion batch - 7,200 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 40 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 5 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 61 DEC
Starting DEC : 1,169,979 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 97.00%
Ending DEC - 1,171,485 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 84.35%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,506 DEC = -> 11.128 HIVE x ~ $00.116 USD/Hive = ~ $01.29 USD
Spent :'
1 x "Flame Monkey" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.58 USD - 655 DEC -- five (5) cards remaining to Level 8)
851 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc buy
Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 240 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 10 DEC
potions - 4 legendary potions, 4 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 98 DEC
Dice (season milestone Dice pack for reaching "Diamond I" season level -> + 10 loot chests --> + 60 season loot chests )
keepers -
(+) 60 DEC
non-keepers -
(+) 20 DEC (total DEC = 80 DEC)
Starting DEC : 1,170,830 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 95.87%
Ending DEC - 1,174,239 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 82.84%
Balance = DEC Earning = 3,409 DEC = -> 26.193 HIVE x ~ $00.118 USD/Hive = ~ $03.09 USD
Spent :'
2 x "Minotaur Warrior" (Gold - Level 4 - $1.85 USD - 2,095 DEC -- bumped up to Level 6 (to increase "speed" from "+3" to "+4" -- with three (3) cards to Level 7)
1 x "Flame Monkey" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.55 USD - 623 DEC -- four (4) cards remaining to Level 8)
691 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc purchase
converted 20.438 Hive (power-down) to 2,653 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "water" quest)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 50 DEC
potions - 4 legendary potions, 5 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 84 DEC
Starting DEC : 1,171,806 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 92.00%
Ending DEC - 1,172,581 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 81.13%
Balance = DEC Earning = 775 DEC = -> 5.78 HIVE x ~ $00.122 USD/Hive = ~ $00.70 USD
Spent : No spending on cards today, since DEC income was so low, because battling was especially difficult for some unknown reason
775 DEC leftover for weely swap.hive purchase
converted 0.417 HBD to 3.308 Hive to 442 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "water" quest)
keepers -
(+) 80 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 40 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 4 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 48 DEC
Starting DEC : 1,172,581 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 88.00%
Ending DEC - 1,175,397 DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ 80.00%
Balance = DEC Earning = 2,816 DEC = -> 20.784 HIVE x ~ $00.130 USD/Hive = ~ $02.49 USD
Spent :
Notes: Today I started the experiment to include non-gold cards in the daily purchase. I went a little over-budget today, but it evens out considering the extra DEC saved in the previous days.
11 x "Naga Windmaster" (non-gold - Level 1 - $0.88 USD - 927 DEC -- bumped up to Level 7 (to increase "speed" from "+3" to "+4")
372 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc purchase
earned 2,000 DEC from splacing 33rd in the "The Wealthy Gambit" gold tournament (amount added to TOMORROW'S record (for card-purchasing)
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=d9b77a1a398d9acd029c5317b2d14204cd8f7c6d
Note: The important thing here is that my high collection value enabled me to be eligible for a spot in this tournament which only had 39 players, and I only one 1 battle bit still placed. So that's kinda of like free ( or easy" DEC ), made possible by my large investment in the game (both in terms of crypto and daily play) over time.
Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest)
Notes; wasn't able to finish quest today. Complete 2 of 5 battles)
Starting DEC : 1,175,397 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ xx.00%
Ending DEC - x,xxx,xxx DEC
Ending Capture rate : ~ xx.xx%
Balance = DEC Earning = x,xxx DEC = -> x.xxx HIVE x ~ $00.xxx USD/Hive = ~ $0x.xx USD
2,000 DEC earned from tournament yesterday
converted 1.177 HBD (from previous post payout) to 8.591 Hive
Spent :
Daily Quest (yesterday's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) xx DEC
potions - legendary potions, alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 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