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.
1 ) I finally ran out of the remaining Dice packs from the previous 100 ( + 10 free ) promo batch I bought, and started opening only the Untamed packs earned through daily quest and season rewards dumps. I am now continuing to monitor the quantity and pace of accumulation of reward/season legendary and gold potions to get a sense of the amount of those potions ABOVE the 20 - 25 (4-5 packs worth of cards) required to apply to each of the 4-5 season milestone packs. So far, the amount of weekly accumulated potions APPEARS to be generally in the double digits, which means that I will now start EXTRAPOLATING some figures to see how long it will ROUGHLY take to accumulate 550 additional potions, which would be enough potions to apply to all of the cards in a 100 ( + 10 free ) promo batch of Untamed, Dice, and/or any other future editions of cards which will be released in the game. Once that timeframe is figured out I can then focus on where to potentially allocate such funds from via my various activities in the game ( ex. daily DEC earnings, sale of high-value reward cards, future potential income from land plots, etc.). By having a rough idea of the PACE at which I am earning the 550 of both legendary and gold potions I will then be able to sync the pace of (potential) funding of future 100 ( + 10 free ) promo batches. This is, of course, ESPECIALLY if there is no other way to use all of those accumulating potions. Of course, those potions have value, but only if they are ACTUALLY USED.
2 ) After reading some good posts on the issue of the long-term potential value of single land plots over time, at the price of $20 USD/plot (once the main sale starts) I decided to do a "one plot per month" land plot purchase until such time that the price of each plot grows out of the reach of my budget. The specific post which sold me on this was made by 
Get More Land Right Now
@nateaguila/get-more-land-right-now
Nate makes a great case for a few issues I have ALREADY considered - one main one being the long-term FUNDAMENTAL value of each land plot REGARDLESS of price. But Nate also adds some other good points, including that (as he also bought one tract ( 100 plots) as I did ) by continuing to buy single plots you will distribute the location of your additional plots to OTHER regions of the land expansion territory. If the #Prospectors game (which I played and wrote about last year) is a relevant example of how this may be important once the land goes active in Splinterlands, then there will be benefits to having higher physical promximity between YOUR OWN plots and those of other players who have (and/or are producing) resources which will be of value to you obtaining. After weighing out all of the positive points I decided to do a "one plot per month" purchase of land going forward. I did indeed make my first purchase for a $20 USD plot of land around the 1st of January. In then turns out that one of my buddies which I have done deals with in the game in the past offered to sell me some of HIS plots (which he got in the first round pre-sale (for $10 USD each) for 15k each. That would be a PROFIT of 5k/plot for HIM, and a SAVINGS of 5k/plot for me. We negotiated a one-year deal for 12 x 15k/plot land purchase by me from him for ONE YEAR, and that he would also hold an additional FOUR years worth of plots ( 12 x 4 = 48 plot) which would will then negotiate the price on on February 1st of each year (as the first plot I will buy from him for 15k will be on February 1st, 2021). This deal benefits ME because it LOCKS IN the price of the land plots at 15k each (instead of 20k each) for the next 12 months.
After I shook "digital hands" with my buddy on this deal
3 ) I have been joining as many of the 10 DEC tournaments as possible, for reasons I have stated in the past ( ex. additional battles to practice with new and seldom-used cards, additional battles to allow capture rate to increase faster throughout the day, the ability to earn DEC by placing in the tournaments, etc.). A few days ago I noticed that when I tried to register for this "Untamed Gold Encased Diamonds" tournament:
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=5d0568b2f2f72fbc738100c20f565137980e7080
I was just within 100,000 collection power on this one, and this case is a good example of the value of continuing my daily "one gold card" buy (using daily DEC earnings) so that into the future I may be able to "catch" some of these tournaments whose collection value requirement would have been "just a bit too high" one or two months before.
4 ) Since I started using the Hive earnings from all of my posts for around the past two months now, the recent MOONING of Bitcoin has basically TRIPPLED the value of my swap.btc. And earlier this week, before the $600 USD COVID (second) "stimulus" payment arrived in my bank account (via direct deposit) I was in a DIRE cash flow crisis, literally worried about not being able to pay for food and rent by the end of this month. This was the FIRST time I have ever descended into such deep "danger territory" (partly as a result of this nasty back problem which has been made worse by my overall living condition in a developing country. The good thing is that leaving the US (15 years ago) has actually at least made it POSSIBLE for that $600 USD stimulus (aka : "rescue") payment to properly bail me out for the next few months, especially as my productivity has taken a hit due to the health issue. The situation CAN be reversed, but it is going to take a while. The land purchases plus daily Splinterlands activity has now become ONE of a handful of "survival income" sources which I am divinely grateful to have right now. Splinterlands admin ( 
So, in consultation with my "DEC Hunters" guild leader we started discussing some possible ways for him to help me liquidate as much DEC as I would need to have survival cash while waiting for the stimulus check to arrive (which had not arrived when we first started discussing it). The good news is that the stimulus check arrived, and just in time. Whew! That was a SERIOUS close call. However, that stimulus money will only keep me in the "safe zone" for 2-3 months (even though I live VERY frugally), and so I have begun exploring some options for how to liquidate some of my DEC, and/or BTC (held in the form of swap.btc in 
The first experiment I did in this regard was to withdraw 0.00130874 BTC (the original amount of swap.btc in my Hive-Engine account, which I had accumulated in the past two months by converting my post payouts from Hive to swap.btc). Since I am no longer using Coinbase (as my strategy - starting last year and finalizing two months ago - was to get EVERYTHING out of Coinbase) that was not an option for a destination wallet of the 0.00130874 swap.btc. So, since BetFury.io now enables you to directly deposit funds in #Bitcoin form I decided to take the chance and simply use the BTC receiveing address on BetFury.io to send the 0.00130874 BTC (swap.btc ) to. I had made numerous deposits to BetFury in the past year, so I knew the basic transaction would be low risk. The good news is that it DID get there. The bad news is that a SIGNIFICANT CHUNK of it was eaten by fees (the swap.btc conversion to BTC is 1%, and then there is the Bitcoin transaction fee (usually higher for lower amounts of BTC), and then BetFury.io may have taken an additional "deposit" cut). In the end, by the time the original 0.00130874 BTC funds arrived in my BetFury in-game wallet the amount was 0.00116568 BTC. I was a bit concerned about the hit taken, but I had expected the whole experiment to be RISKY before I implemented it. So I went ahead and played some slots, CONSERVATIVELY, and it turns out that I won (basically DOUBLED the amount of BTC) within just an hour of play, and decided to withdraw it all. Since I was playing in BTC the payout was simply in BTC, which was convenient, and so I simply needed to click "withdraw BTC" in BetFury, and provide the "deposit BTC" address provided by Hive-Engine. The final withdrawal was in the amount of 0.00182211 BTC ( ~ $64.00 USD value ), and required just a few clicks, plus a small fee on the BetFury side (for the "slow" option, by which the funds arrived in my Hive-Engine account overnight), and by the next day I had 0.00180378 swap.btc in my Hive-Engine account. So, the ULTIMATE goal (of getting swap.btc (BTC) funds in and out of hive-Engine) was a success, and the BONUS was that I basically DOUBLED the amount of swap.btc in my account. I do NOT intend to do any more gambling on BetFury, but that dApp DID enable me to do this experiment, and so there is value in that. Now that I know how possible and easy it is to simply send BTC out of Hive-Engine I can begin to figure out a more legitimate wallet ( likely my Mycelium wallet ) to send any swap.btc (BTC) to in the future IF I get to a point where IMMEDIATE, bare-bones survival funds become necessary again. With this experiment now done it's good to know that it is possible and easy to liquidate those funds in an emergency. Of course, my LARGER goal is to HODL that swap.btc long-term, so hopefully I will NOT need to touch it.
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 : 93,026 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ xx.00%
Ending DEC - 93,832 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 77.45%
Balance = DEC Earning = 806 DEC = -> 6.288 HIVE x ~ $00.129 USD/Hive = ~ $0.81 USD
Spent :
1 x "Biceratops" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.58 USD - 606 DEC -- five (5) cards remaining to Level 9))
Daily Quest (yesterday's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 80 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 90 DEC
potions - 1 legendary potions, 4 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 50 DEC
Starting DEC : 93,226 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 90.25%
Ending DEC - 94,605 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 81.54%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,379 DEC = -> 10.335 HIVE x ~ $00.131 USD/Hive = ~ $1.35 USD
Spent :
2 x "Biceratops" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.16 USD - 1,256 DEC -- three (3) cards remaining to Level 9)
converted 0.449 HBD (from payout of below post) to 3.371 Hive
converted 3.373 Hive to 436.8 DEC
Daily Quest (yesterday's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 90 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 330 DEC
potions - 1 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 113 DEC
Starting DEC : 93,349 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 83.14%
Ending DEC - 95,295 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 88.22%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,946 DEC = -> 13.543 HIVE x ~ $00.116 USD/Hive = ~ $1.57 USD
Spent :
2 x "Biceratops" (Gold - Level 3 - $1.16 USD - 1,622 DEC -- one (1) card remaining to Level 9)
Daily Quest (yesterday's "dragon" quest)
keepers -
(+) 40 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 600 DEC
potions - 1 legendary potions, 7 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 32 DEC
Starting DEC : 93,650 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 95.84%
Ending DEC - 94,685 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 84.44%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,035 DEC = -> 6.861 HIVE x ~ $00.121 USD/Hive = ~ $0.83 USD
Spent :
1 x "Biceratops" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.57 USD - 711 DEC -- bumped up to Level 9 (to increase "health" from "+5" to "+6"))
5 x "Centuari Image" (non-gold - Level 1 - $0.21 USD - 257 DEC -- bumped up to Level 7 (to increase "speed" from "+3" to "+4"))
earned 731.998 DEC from sale of "Flame Monkey" (Gold) card gotten in yesterday's quest reward dump.
Daily Quest (yesterday's "fire" quest)
keepers -
(+) 10 80 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 10 30 15 DEC
potions - 1 legendary potions, 3 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 91 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "death" quest)
keepers -
(+) 130 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 210 DEC
potions - 4 legendary potions, 4 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 117 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