I had been happy learning the ropes and battling away in Novice and Bronze leagues since I purchased a spell book for $10USD about a year ago. I was not making much head way but was picking rewards and recourses almost daily.
Still learning all things crypt, hive and blockchain it was taking me a while to workout a strategy for advancing up and through the leagues. In the end it was a combination of getting a bit bored in Bronze and last years major Splinterlands update meant battling and being at the lowest level learning was not that enjoyable or rewarding anymore.
So eventually I bit the bullet and after asking around I went with my gut feeling and started upgrading the Summoners I was using the most and seemed like best value for my Hive.
I felt I needed at least one L2 summoner for each splinter that I was getting with my daily Focus battles. This upgrade ended up costing approximately $43USD as I needed to combine 5 of each card, which at the time seemed slightly cheaper than buying a straight level 2 card.
At the time of writing the cost break downs would been somethings like this
Tarsa 5 x $1.89 = $ 9.45
Kelya Frendul 5 x $2.15 = $10.75
Obsidian 5 x $1.38 = $ 6.90
General Sloan 5 x $1.01 = $ 5.05
Thaddius Broad 5 x $2.18 = $10.90
Total $43.05
My costs might have been slightly different as I did one Summoner Splinter at a time over a number days so I could test them out and make sure I was on the right track.
Once I had the Level 2 Summoners ready to go I needed a few Level 2 cards to go with them.
First up was a Neutral monster I used regularly as it can battle with any summoner and I made sure I had all my cheapest monster cards in each splinter up to level 2. This was quite cheap as I had been collecting lots of common cards in reward chests, give away's and on the market place when ever I had some spare Dec, SPS or hive.
As an example Uraeus pictured above to Level 2 was only 4 cards x10 cents.
Note. I have since upgraded Uraeus and General Sloan to Level 3 but that is another story.
Anyway to wrap it up, Breaking out of Bronze was easy after these few simple upgrades, I doubt I could have done it with skill alone. The level 2 summoners allowed the L2 monsters to take some higher speed or health numbers into match ups and gave me the extra wins to slowly climb the leagues and into silver.