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, international diplomacy, 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: A few days late in getting this post out (due to health, geopolitical, and other issues -- more details below related to the latter). Working on getting back on track, as usual. I think we can all agree that this is a tense time right now. Shit happens. [ / DISCLAIMER ])
1 ) One of the (few) POSITIVE things this past week is that I am now opening ONLY the Untamed packs earned via quest reward dumps, and although I haven't yet hit any especially JUICY ones, ANY ONE of those five cards in each "milestone" pack which I open upon reaching each higher level of the season, can be a "power-card". The nice thing is knowing that I'm not essentially PAYING for the packs at this point, which will make hitting any JUICY ones even more of a bonus. Also, my number of earned potions (through reward dumps) is climbing quickly to the 100 legendary, 100 gold potions mark. I am ESTIMATING that I may be able to accumulate 75 - 100 of BOTH potions per month, and if this is an accurate estimate it would be reasonable to estimate that within SIX MONTHS I will have accumulated enough potions ( 550 to be exact ) to cover all of the cards of an additional 100 ( + 10 free ) Untamed, or Dice - or any other future edition - promo batch of cards. So let's just say, for the sake of being practical, that I expect that by August 2021 I will have accumulated enough potions to cover another 100 ( + 10 free ) promo batch. Let's see if my prediction comes to fruition. With this rough metric I will now focus, this week, on trying to figure out a way to start saving the necessary DEC to be able to purchase another 100 ( + 10 free ) promo batch IF I decide to go ahead with that in August. With the current editions, the total amount needed would be either 200,000 DEC ( Untamed) or 285,000 ( Dice) - although I would also have the option of the 20 ( + 1 free ) pack batch for the Dice packs ( 57,000 DEC ), if I fall short of the goal, and/or if I feel the urge to go in for some more Dice packs to use up some of the accumulated potions, instead of just letting those potions lie dormant for too long. It's always good to have alternative options.
2 ) I landed 22 non-gold and 1 gold "Beatrix Ironhand" Untamed airdrop cards in the most recent drop. The value of all of the cards on the day of the drop was $28.57 USD. The cost of one plot of land ( aka : one PLOT on Hive-Engine) was, at that time, $9.69 USD, and so $9.69 USD x 3 = $29.07. This means that I could TECHNICALLY offset the value of the airdropped cards against an additional 2 x PLOT tokens on Hive-Engine. But since I will NOT be selling/burning this new airdropped card, as it is an interesting card, and in my favorite splinter, what I will do is take a rain-check on those three "bonus" PLOT tokens and buy them within the next month or two, as I have enough DEC/Hive to cover the cost while also remaining in the "liquid" zone in terms of DEC on-hand (in my in-game wallet). The point here is that I now have gotten back three plots worth of value as a result of the accumulation of my current 1103 Untamed packs, which I bought progressively over the past year (starting with the first round of the pre-sale). Plus, the addition three plots I will buy may have some high-value structures (ex. castle or keep), and/or be able to produce some valuable resources into the perpetual future. So RE-INVESTING this airdropped value will pay dividends into the perpetual future.
[ UPDATE ] After listening to the most recent Splinterlands AMA I just went ahead and bought the 1st (of three) of the plots ( 1 PLOT ) on 
Get More Land Right Now
@nateaguila/get-more-land-right-now
For now, my schedule of continuing to buy land plots is on track.
[ / UPDATE ]
3 ) As mentioned in the previous post, I'm monitoring the general RATE at which the 65,000 main land sale plots are selling. When I bought my first $20 plot on January 4th, 2021 the number of remaining plots for sale was 63,573. At the time of the "Beatrix Ironhand" airdrop (on January 15th, 2021), which - as I stated above in section #2 - earned me $28.57 USD (or roughly three plots worth of land) of value, the number of land plots available was 63,460 plots. That's a difference of 113 plots. Considering the tendency for sale of ANY in-game assets to start slowly and then speed up in a non-linear fashion I am thinking that it would be REASONABLE to buy a SECOND plot of land (on Hive-Engine) each month going forward until the main sale ends. This decision considers that I ALREADY now have three plots worth of land cost (from the recent airdrop) sitting and ready to be spent (so that would be THREE months of a "second monthly plot", and then there are still FIVE remaining Untamed airdrops, as well as FOUR remaining Dice airdrops. I think it is SAFE to assume that the overall value of the remaining airdrops can cover the addition NINE monthly "second monthly" plots, and that by the end of the year I will have accumulated 24 additional plots of land (or 25% of the amount of my original plots (100 plots) I purchased as "one tract" in the pre-sale). I will continue monitoring the sale rate of the remaining plots, as well as DEC income received via rewards/season dumps, and may set a standard buy of the "second monthly plot" for the 15th of each month (whereas I will purchase the "one plot per month" from my Guild leader ( at 15k per plot) on the 1st of each month (starting February 1st, 2021). I think this strategy would be a good way to to make the airdrop earnings pay long-term dividends.
[ UPDATE : Due to unforeseen issues which occured AFTER writing section 3 (above) I will now be BOYCOTTING Hive-Engine (more info below, in sections 4a and 4b) and buying any additional plots (likely) through my guild leader (subject to confirmation, which I will update you on in the next post in this series) [ / UPDATE ]
4a ) Around an hour before the start of the "The Wealthy Gambit" tournament (link below) I had to SERIOUSLY contemplate if it would be worth RISKING the entry cost of 5,000 DEC to participate in that event. I took me over an hour to consider the risks and benefits of joining, and the PROS of joining this tournament which I concluded were : ( 1 ) the good news is that I was ELIGIBLE for this tournament, due primarily to my daily purchase of "one gold card per day" for the past several months, which has resulted in a "high enough" collection power to be eligible ( 2 ) there were only 37 players registered, and the lowest place was 32nd, with a nice prize of 15,000 DEC, ( 3 ) I am now saving 5,000 DEC per month on my "one (of two) land plot per month" purchase (getting the nice discount of 5,000 DEC ( 15,000 DEC per plot (discounted from 20,000 DEC per plot )) from my guild leader. All things considered, I concluded it was REASONABLY worth the 5,000 DEC risk to join this tournament, and I also decided to make the main goal being that if I placed at ANY level I would use the difference between the prize and the entry cost ( of 5,000 DEC ) to purchase an addition "bonus" plot of land (on
"The Wealthy Gambit"
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=tournament&id=d03b33c729ca19916e3b97044c0b188a17f6278d
4b ) Okay, related to section 4a (above) there is bad news, worse news, and "less worse"" news. The "bad" news is that I lost the "The Wealth Gambit" tournament, and DID NOT get one of the "extra" ("below lowest rank") payout, as I have in a few of the previous higher-level tournaments. This means that I lost the full 5,000 DEC, although I placed JUST ONE place (33rd instead of lowest place (32nd) - which would have paid out 15,000 DEC and been a feasible risk). To be completely honest with myself, I DID weigh all the risks of paying the significant entry fee of 5,000 DEC (which I outlined in detail in section 4a, above). But in all honesty, when I finally realized I had lost 5,000 DEC just by ENTERING a tournament I was quite a bit pissed off. I didn't properly account for how pissed off I would be, and I ALSO did not SERIOUSLY ENOUGH consider what my PROACTIVE reaction would be once I realized the loss. In an effort of diplomacy I will simply lay out the FACTS of the events which followed me realizing that I lost that 5,000 DEC entry fee, and the decisions I have now made moving forward. In addition, I will first make it CRYSTAL CLEAR that from this point on I REFUSE to pay ANY amount of DEC entry fee above the standard 10 DEC, which is charged with the reasoning that it keeps bots out of the tournaments, and thus makes the tournaments more legit. That is a reasonable charge. This is now a conscious ETHICAL decision. Anything above 10 DEC moves into the "pay for play" model, and as I have mentioned in the past, I am strongly against such model, as in my experience it ALMOST ALWAYS leads to problems. To me, Splinterlands is a "free to play"" game, and any time I - and/or the game - cross over to "pay for play" I experience catastrophe, as evidenced in the most recent debacle, detailed as follows.
First, the facts are simply that I went ahead and CHASED the 5,000 DEC loss by transferring 15,000 DEC to BetFury.io (taking the usual RAPING on the conversion from DEC to Tron on TronTrade). I then lost ALL of that 15,000 DEC by playing slots - conservatively - over several hours of play. The original plan was to simply EARN BACK the 5,000 DEC I had lost, and then transfer it all back to my in-game Splinterlands wallet, and everything would have been fine. What happened next was both TRAGIC and ENLIGHTENING in the larger scheme of things. I chased the 15,000 DEC with another 40,000 DEC (basically cleaning out my in-game wallet EXCEPT for the 15,000 DEC I have agreed to pay my guild leader for the first "one plot of land per month at 15,000 DEC" which he and I agreed to last week). So I DO have the 15,000 DEC on hand now to buy the February land plot. It was good that I had the self-control to do that. What happened next was BAD, but here's the objective facts. I decided to chase the 55,000 DEC ( 15k + 40k ) by doing the SAME swap.btc deposit to BetFury.io which I did SUCCESSFULLY ) as the test run last week (and wrote about in the previous post of this series). What happened THIS time, however, was that - UNLIKE last time, where I was EASILY able to simply withdraw my ~ 0.0013 swap.btc to BetFury.io using the BTC "deposit" address provided by BetFury - THIS time Hive-Engine gave me a "BTC address invalid" message when I entered the BetFury BTC address. I checked to make sure the BTC address was correct SEVERAL times, and each time got the same error. I am NOT sure if the issue was on the Hive-Engine end or the BetFury end, but ultimately this obstacle prevented me from being able to get the Bitcoin into BetFury and take the chance of recouping the lost DEC value by playing BetFury slots with BTC. Keep in mind that I made ALL of the decisions in this chain of events (including the decision to pay the 5,000 DEC tournament entry fee) based on the ASSUMPTION (gained through the test-run last week) that it would be possible to get the BTC (in swap.btc form) from Hive-Engine over to my BetFury BTC in-game wallet with just a few standard clicks - if I decided that that became necessary.
What happened INSTEAD is that I ended up having to spend a good HOUR converting the swap.btc to Hive (along with the RAPING that accompanies that), and then an additional RAPING converting the Hive to DEC (which required like 15-20 individual transactions, since the liquidity for the amount I was converting was significant ( ~ $80 USD worth of swap.btc), AND THEN the standard (third) ADDITIONAL raping resulting from trading DEC for Tron on TronTrade. All of this waste of time, energy, and value could have been COMPLETELY AVOIDED if I were simply able to do the EXACT SAME THING I did last week (successfully), which was simply withdraw swap.btc out of Hive-Engine directly over to BetFury.io in one simple, standard Bitcoin transaction. By the time I finally got all of the BTC value converted to Tron and into BetFury.io I was barely able to stay awake, or sit up (due to my back issues), and did a "Hail Mary" and lost everything within an hour. So I ended up losing 55,000 DEC + all of the swap.bitcoin I had been saving up weekly for the past two months ( around 100,000k DEC) - or $125 USD of value overall ). Those are the cold, hard FACTS of what actually happened.
As a result of this catastrophe, THIS TIME - instead of getting angry - I am going to simply "get pro-active" and begin my full BOYCOTT of Hive-Engine. Nearly ALL of my activity on hive-Engine in the past year-plus has been CLUNKY and resulted in losing a significant amount of the original value of my intended transactions. That swp.btc was "survival funds" which I was counting on to withdraw if the SHTF due to all of this geopolitical chaos going on. Now that is gone. And so my response is to simply boycott Hive-Engine from this point forward. Again, I am not getting ANGRY, but simply getting PRO-ACTIVE. What I intend to do now is use Hive-Engine ONLY when it is the ONLY option. For instance, when I need to convert DEC to Hive so that I can then use 
Amen.
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 : 76,683 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 76.17%
Ending DEC - 77,450 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 60.06%
Balance = DEC Earning = 767 DEC -> 5.041 HIVE x ~ $00.131 USD/Hive = ~ $0.66 USD
Spent :
1 x "Giant Scorpion" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.72 USD - 828 DEC -- six (6) cards remaining to Level 9)
Daily Quest (today's "fire" quest)
Notes: finished four out of five won battles. Will finish tomorrow.
Starting DEC : 76,622 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 73.06%
Ending DEC - 14,935 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 77.38%
Balance = DEC Earning = N/A DEC -> N/A HIVE ~ N/A USD/Hive = ~ N/A USD
Notes: Had a catastrophe today, related to my 5,000 DEC loss in the "The Wealth Gambit" tournament. I've explained the situation in full detail in sections 4a and 4b of the main post (above).
Spent :
1 x "Giant Scorpion" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.63 USD - 714 DEC -- five (5) cards remaining to Level 9)
Lost 15,000 DEC + 55,000 DEC + ~ 0.0018 BTC as a result of "tournament + Hive-Engine debacle" detailed in Sections 4a and 4B (above).
7,125 DEC - paid for 10 ( + 1 free ) "quest" potion batch
Daily Quest (yesterday's "fire" quest)
keepers -
(+) 80 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 40 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 52 DEC
Starting DEC : 14,219 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 88.77%
Ending DEC - 15,851 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 75.19%
Balance = DEC Earning = 1,632 DEC -> 10.322 HIVE x ~ $00.137 USD/Hive = ~ $1.41 USD
Spent :
1 x "Giant Scorpion" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.60 USD - 665 DEC -- four (4) cards remaining to Level 9)
Daily Quest (yesterday's "neutral" quest)
keepers -
(+) 20 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 50 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 1 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 156 DEC
Daily Quest (today's "earth" quest)
keepers -
(+) 340 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 20 DEC
potions - 3 legendary potions, 2 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 664 DEC
Starting DEC : 15,186 DEC
Starting Capture Rate : ~ 86.54%
Ending DEC - 15,883 DEC
Ending Capture rate : 78.19%
Balance = DEC Earning = 697 DEC -> 4.444 HIVE x ~ $00.136 USD/Hive = ~ $0.60 USD
Spent :
1 x "Giant Scorpion" (Gold - Level 3 - $0.60 USD - 708 DEC -- three (3) cards remaining to Level 9)
converted 1.700 HBD from previous series post payout (link below) to 12.440 Hive, which will now be held in my Hive wallet as I wait to accumulate enough to buy $5.00 of Bitcoin (via
Daily Quest (today's "earth" quest)
keepers -
(+) 00 DEC
nonkeepers -
(+) 40 DEC
potions - 4 legendary potions, 1 alchemy/gold potions
Untamed - 0 packs
DEC - 74 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