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, ergonomics, 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.
[ DISCLAIMER: I got a bit thrown-off this past week, by survival/health issues, and work overload, and so this update is SEVERAL days late. Part of the problem is IN my control, but a larger part if OUT of my control. In light of this possibility of future slightly-late posts I have decided to more firmly stick to my strategy of using ONLY the Hive income from these posts to make my weekly purchase of swap.btc. This will help incentivise me to try to keep the pace on posting, since if I don't post then I don't get to do the weekly swap.btc buy, which is important to me. [ /DISCLAIMER ]
1 ) As a result of successfully getting my originally-desired "one tract" (100 plots) of land, I have begun to take the methodical set of weekly steps to loosen my boycott (which was cutting my activity down to ONLY daily gameplay (with no spending in-game). I figured that since I now have my land it would be a prudent first step to start with getting back to listening to the (two per week) official 
Splinterlands AMA with aggroed and yabapmatt
From the above episode it sounds like things are in full-swing with the land expansion, and overall I'm glad the land situation sorted it out enough and that I have resumed listening to the AMAs. They also seem to be fast-tracked towards rolling out the guild wars, guild faction points, etc. system, which will have IMMEDIATE value to our guild. Also, one important added benefit of the AMAs is that while I'm listening to them they give me added motivation to play battles, as I get motivated by the development updates as I play an hour of battles while listening to generally one-hour-long episodes. This was just what I needed after a two-day battling slump this week (due to work overload and health issues -- too much sitting is destroying my back -- seriously).
2 ) I've gotten my SPT token staked holdings up to ~ 5,250 SPT. I've also discovered, this past week, that while my HIve-engine account does NOT display the amount of STAKED tokens I have, my Peakd wallet section DOES show this ( @transcript-junky/wallet ). I have grown more fond of some of the features provided by Peakd, especially the main beneficial feature of Peakd tending to be operational (so I can make posts and conduct other daily activity) if/when the main #Hive site goes down. I made this discovery around two or three months ago, when the main Hive site was intermittantly operational for SEVERAL DAYS, and one of the Homos (sapiens) in the Splinterlands #Discord channel recommended that I use Peakd. That good advice enabled me to make 2-3 of these series posts, at a time when that was impossible on the main Hive interface. There are quite a few other features which Peakd provides which is motivating me to spend more time using that interface for various reasons.
3 ) On a few occassions on the past month I've noticed that even though I placed BELOW the lowest rank eligible for the lowest tier prize in the tournaments, I got a payout ANYWAY. The most recent one was 120 DEC for literally only winning ONE battle (because I was too busy to actually play that tournament). I am beginning to wonder if the new "collection power" requirement of some of the tournaments may be the reason behind these mysterious payouts. I will be monitoring which of the tournaments are doing this, and if this is somehow related to the collection power requirements of these tournaments. Regardless, even the small 120 DEC is enough to pay the 10 DEC entry fee for 12 tournaments! So I think this is another reason to simply sign up for as many relevant tournaments as possible.
4 ) Even though I have stopped buying new packs for now (as a result of my boycott started last month, PLUS the fact that buying packs (without proper incentive - such as airdrop potential (as with the Untamed and Dice packs) simply make the ROI on pack cost generally not worth the risk, unless I land one or more especially high-value cards (which IS INDEED always possible) this past week my "pack addiction" was TESTED by the new "Blockchain Heroes" promo, where you get a free 30-card "Titan" pack (supposedly worth $30 USD) for buying 50 Untamed packs:
Blockchain Heroes Promotion
@splinterlands/blockchain-heroes-promotion
When I first saw the promotion I started to seriously consider that it would be worth taking the risk buying the additional 50 Untamed packs, for the dual reason of being able to use 250 of the gold and legendary potions which have been accumulating (unused) in my account since I have stopped buying packs. But then I had a look at the Blockchain Heroes web site, and I simply wasn't impressed:
Blockchain Heroes
https://blog.bcheroes.com
I thought about it for a few days, and also checked each day to monitor the increase in Untamed pack sales (which was significant - jumping up nearly 10,000 packs), and so I figured that since it was not super-important for me to get my hands on the "Titan" packs (compared to an in-game Splinterlands airdrop (like the "Halfling Alchemist" airdropped card we got for buying Untamed cards several months back), I would pass on this promo. There will be more promos in the future, and the good thing is that this one has accelerated the sale of packs, which means that the next airdrop will happen sooner. I'm cool with that. I'm sure there will be PLENTY more promos into the future, and this experience made me realize the importance of evaluating just how appropriate any specific promo actually is for me personally.
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 : 278,611 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 100.00%
Ending DEC - 283,024 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 94.42%
Balance = DEC Earning = 4,413 DEC = -> 26.15 HIVE x ~ $00.137 USD/Hive = ~ $03.58 USD
Notes: FINALLY completed the GNARLY "dragon" quests after like 3-4 days of failure (plus less-than-regular amount of daily play - due to illness and other projects). The next quest turned out to be "life" so it was probably best to just keep trying to complete the "dragon" quest, as I have no proper life deck. Was able to immediately cancel "life" quest for "water" (one of my most powerful).
Spent :
1 x "Sand Worm" (Gold- Level 3 - $0.94 USD - 1,167 DEC -- two (2) cards remaining to Level 8)
4 x "Flame Monkey" (Gold - Level 3 - $2.05 USD - 2,542 DEC -- bumped up to Level 9 (to increase "speed" from "+4" to "+5")
705 DEC leftover towards weekly swap.btc buy
Daily Quest (today's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 55 DEC
potions - 0 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 232 DEC
converted (4th of 13) 20.465 Hive power-down payout to 3,430 DEC to buy cards
Starting DEC : 279,315 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 100.00%
Ending DEC - 280,380 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 90.77%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,065 DEC = -> 6.212 HIVE x ~ $00.134 USD/Hive = ~ $00.83 USD
Spent:
5 x "Naga Windmaster" (non-gold - Level 1 - $0.37 USD - 474 DEC -- forty-four (44) cards remaining to Level 8 (max))
591 DEC leftover for weekly swap.btc purchase
Daily Quest (yesterday's "water" quest)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 370 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 33 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 34 DEC
Starting DEC : 279,885 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 100.00%
Ending DEC - 280,089 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 95.29%
Balance = DEC Earning = 213 DEC = -> 1.328 HIVE x ~ $00.129 USD/Hive = ~ $00.17 USD
Spent:
Notes: Had some important errands to do today, and so didn't have much time to play. No biggie to have a "light" day every now and then. I'll try to fight DOUBLE the amount of battles tomorrow.
213 DEC (full daily earning) used for weekly swap.btc buy
Starting DEC : 280,089 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 100.00%
Ending DEC - 280,366 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 98.00%
Balance = DEC Earning = 277 DEC = -> 1.604 HIVE x ~ $00.132 USD/Hive = ~ $00.21 USD
Spent:
Notes: I was not able to battle a lot today due to higher-than normal workload on my main work, as well as health issues with my back. I'm working on solutions to this so that I can keep up the pace.
converted 1.889 HBD (from payout on previous series post (link below) to 13.942 Hive
@transcript-junky/splinterlands-power-strategy-tips-68
used 31.92562 Hive to make weekly purchase of 0.000201 swamp.btc
Starting DEC : 280,366 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 100.00%
Ending DEC - 282,928 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 81.17%
Balance = DEC Earning = 2,562 DEC = -> 14.871 HIVE x ~ $00.130 USD/Hive = ~ $01.93 USD
Spent:
1 x "Sand Worm" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.10 USD - 1,460 DEC -- one (1) card remaining to Level 8)
1 x "Flame Monkey" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.54 USD - 717 DEC -- ten (10) cards remaining to Level 10 (max))
Daily Quest (yesterday's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 50 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 5 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 368 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "earth" quest)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 1060 DEC
potions - 2 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 1 packs
DEC - 268 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