CAUTION!, this might be a lengthy read with plenty of words, as I delve into my roller coaster relationship with Splinterlands. I suspect many people like me from the Philippines have similar stories on how we got started in the world of blockchain and crypto.

Let me tell you a story. It's February 2021 and I've lost my job due to COVID-19. For the past four months, I've been living with my parents and it's not a great feeling when you are in your mid-twenties and a freeloader. I had so much free time that I spent it playing games(DOTA2, CS:GO & VALORANT), reading Non-Fiction books and being unproductive. I stopped working out and gained weight, but I still knew in the back of my mind that I should be doing something more productive, so then I researched how to earn money at home. Fast forward to August 2022, and I heard about NFTs, particularly Axie. My friends were making a lot of money just by playing games, and I read news stories about people quitting their jobs and even buying new houses just by playing the game. That's when I began to research blockchain and crypto games.

Axie was too expensive for me at the time. It cost around 60K-70K PHP (1K USD) to get a competitive team, which I couldn't afford. So I looked for other games and discovered Crypto Blades and Splinterlands. I started playing both games casually, but my brother urged me to invest and focus on Crypto Blades. It was an easy game where you just buy characters and swords, and click the "fight" button to earn their token that can be converted into real money. I decided to invest 30,000 PHP ($500) into the game, but unfortunately, after a few weeks, my investment turned to dust. That's when I learned the harsh reality of the world of crypto.

After the Crypto Blades token crashed, I still held on to the hope that it could recover. While waiting, I continued playing Crypto Blades casually and checked on Splinterlands again. But since I lost a lot of money, I limit myself to spending on Crypto but still, I decided to play Splinterlands casually, buying an account for $10, and just played the game for a few minutes to finish daily quests and get the daily rewards.

After playing for a month without investing anything, I got bored using the same monsters every day. So, I decided to do some research on how to win in the game. That's when I stumbled upon the YouTube channels of Bulldog and Infidel, as well as the Splinterlands Facebook group. I followed some of their advice and bought my very first card - Venari Wavesmith and Djinn Oshannus.

Taken from FB group Splitnerlands PH, credits to Wolf.

Soon after, I did the Alric + Magic monster spam, and winning became addictive. Every time I lost a game using this lineup, I checked their cards and copied their strategy. That's when I became hooked on Splinterlands, and started buying a lot of assets like Cards, SPS, and DEC in the game. I studied the game intensively and was able to reach the top 5 in the Bronze/Silver league rankings in early 2022. However, with no income, my budget was limited, which made me find a job to stay competitive in the game and at the same time stop being a freeloader.

In late December 2021, I also discovered the Splinterlands bots and started using them in January. This piqued my interest in relearning programming to understand how these BOTs and maybe create my own BOT in the future, which is why I went back to college and finished all the remaining requirements/projects that I need to submit and at the age of 27 I am finally a Computer Engineer.

My previous guild master (@pogier) introduced me to Hive Blogging where I discovered that I could earn money by writing blogs. Additionally, Splinterlands had a weekly challenge that they upvoted twice a week. Despite my lack of writing experience and poor English, I started writing a blog, which I kept in my draft for a month because I was afraid to post it. Eventually, I convinced myself to take the risk and clicked the submit button and hoped that the Splinterlands curation team would notice my post and prayed to god that I would not get wrecked in the comments.

But all good things must come to an end, and unfortunately, my focus on playing Splinterlands has waned due to my demanding workload from college projects and my 8-5 job, leaving me with little time to play the game and write blogs. Therefore, Splinterlands is no longer at the top of my priority list.

Fast forward to the present time. I am still playing the game casually. Still haven't gotten any Legendary Cards from Rift Watchers packs nor any LGF from the Chaos Legion packs that I opened. However, I have been promoted from my job! lost 10 kg in the last 7 months and met a fellow Splinterlands player and guildmate the BOOTY LICKERS addict @mochiclub who introduced me to the TeamPH Community. The TeamPH community passionate duo @leveluplifeph and @Mangomayhem helped me get my Fire(Passion) for the game back, they are also kind enough to delegate $1000 worth of cards to multiple Filipinos and helped us Filipino Splinterlands players to be competitive.

AFTERWORDS

I did not become the best player in the game nor became rich from the packs/rewards, but this game motivated me to get a job, helped me finish my studies, start writing blogs, and most importantly helped me live my life.

I realized that "when you have all the time in the world, you don't appreciate it and when you start getting busy, you will do everything just to get that time back desperately".

You can join the TeamPH discord group here.
And if you want to get the new updates from the TeamPH community you can follow their page here.

All of the images are owned by splinterlands.
The cover photo was made in canva.
The GIF was made in Lunapic
If you are not playing splinterlands yet. You can use my referral here.
Credits to HivePH for the divider.

P.S.
Still waiting for the Crypto Blades token to increase.