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Hello Splinterlands friends and family! 👋

Today, as part of the Splinterlands Social Media Challenge, I’m going to share a guide for new players in the Splinterlands ecosystem. I'll show you how to make a profit by just playing the game and using the rental market to your advantage.

I’ll talk a bit about my own experience with my account, @Javiss01. I’ll also cover expectations and how much time and money you actually need to invest to make this strategy work. ⏳

This will be the first of 2 post since is really hard to fit all the information in one place.

Edit: if you want to check out part 2 of this guide you can do so here.

I. Why Am I Making This Guide Now? 🤔

When I started playing Splinterlands, the first thing I did was google for the best strategies to play the game. That led me to an article someone wrote back in 2021 in hive about renting cards on PeakMonsters and specifically which cards to rent. Back then, we didn’t have a rental market, so things were a bit messier, but I still managed to survive and thrive thanks to that guide.

I’ve been using the strategy I’m going to describe in this post with my alt account @javiss01 for over a year now, and the results speak for themselves. Over that time, I’ve earned more than 1M DEC and acquired many reward and Gladius cards that sit in my account.

This strategy is based on one core principle that needs to hold true when you’re reading this: playing with Chaos Legion (CL) cards in Modern is possible, and it’s still cheap to rent them. If this isn’t true when you’re reading this, the strategy won’t work.

II. Let’s Dive Into the Strategy 🏊‍♂️

So, lets delve on what I did to make this strategy work and how you can do the same.
Before we start, there are three important things to mention:

Profits won’t come right away. 🤑 This is a slow-building strategy that requires you to build up your Soulbound card collection first. You might even run at a loss until you’ve built the needed structure.
- If you’re an older player with a good Soulbound card collection, this strategy will work immediately.
- If you’re new in this game, you can still buy an account with Soulbound cards. The cards don’t need to be max level, but it would help if most were. Buying an existing account will jumpstart this entire process.

⚠️ NOTE: Buying accounts in Splinterlands is allowed but risky if you’re unsure how things work. If you choose to go this route, I recommend joining the official Splinterlands Discord to learn how to buy accounts safely.

This strategy won’t make you rich. It’s a safe strategy requiring little to no investment, so don’t expect huge earnings. The goal is to create a self-sustained account you can have fun with.
- If your goal is to make big profits, the only way is to invest significant amounts of money. While doable, it’s risky, I wouldn't recommend going that route if you are just getting started.

This strategy relies on you knowing a little bit about the game and how things work. If you JUST arrived I recommend you first get familiarized with the game and how things work. You can use one-click rentals for that or contact players like @brybro27 that will get you set up.

III. What Do I Need to Make This Strategy Work? 🛠️

First, I recommend getting a new account with a Spellbook ready to play and earn. Like I mentioned you can use an old account you’re not using, buy a spellbook, or buy an existing account.

Next, you’ll need around 5000 DEC or 5000 Credits to start. You can begin with less or more, but I like to stay organized and that’s enough to get you to your first payday.

Note: The initial amount of money required can vary depending on market conditions. You might need to put in another 5000 before the account is self-sustainable because unstaking SPS takes quite a while.

IV. The strategy: Core principles. 🤔

To start, we’re going to the market to rent every CL monster card we can at max level for cheap for only 2 days. Do not rent summoners yet.

The cards must be max level because the removal of leagues has made the game harder to play in lower leagues. Jumping straight to max levels is the only way to take advantage of this strategy. Right now, CL offers a unique opportunity to do this, but it won’t last, so build your Soulbound card collection as fast as you can.

⚠️ Important: We’re also going to rent the card Lux Vega at whatever price is available. Lux Vega is crucial and will be our go-to summoner. If at some point Lux Vega becomes extremely expensive this strategy won’t work either (right now you can rent Lux for 40 DEC a day).

I value two things the most: money and time. Since this is a guide for new players, I’ll explain every step in detail. If you’re not a new player, feel free to skip to the best parts.

Renting the cards:

To rent the cards, go to PeakMonsters.com, log in, and go directly to the Rent tab at the top of the page. Apply these filters:

From there, click on the icon for each card (it should turn from blue to red like in the screenshot). Don’t worry about rental prices yet—everything is cheap for now. This gives you a base set to play with.
If you’re not new and have some cards or funds, consider buying some of these cards. Many are near their burn value, so it’s practically risk-free. If you get bored or CL leaves Modern, you can burn the cards to recover your money and save on rental fees.

Once you have your base deck, you can start climbing the ranks. Aim for a rating between 2700 and 3200. If your account is unranked, spend the first day or two getting there. With Lux Vega and a max-level CL set, you’ll reach high Gold quickly.

At that point you should make around 7-10 SPS per fight.

Keep in mind that even if your cards are at max level you wont be able to reach the top of the rankings no matter how good a player you are, but that's ok, that's not the point of this guide anyway. Once we reach a certain point we are going to start losing a lot of matches. That's completely normal. The idea is that eventually you will find a balance where you lose and win 50% of your matches.

NOTE: as a special note I would like to mention that USING peakmonsters.com is SAFE (this was one of my main concerns when I started). We all have to thank @jarvie and @asgarth for making such a good and complete site that works as a Marketplace and a asset management tool. If you are new in this ecosystem try to get familiarized with peakmonsters because you will be using it a lot in the future.

Renting SPS 🏦

In Splinterlands, you don’t just need cards to earn (owned or rented)—you also need SPS token staked.

SPS is the governance token, and besides voting, it determines how much you can earn depending on how much you have staked. The more SPS you have staked, the higher your earnings multiplier.
If you have a new/fresh account, @Splinterlands and the @sps.dao will delegate some SPS to you to get started, but it won’t be much.

This raises two Questions:

How do I rent SPS?
Renting SPS is easy. You can do it directly from the game platform in the sps tab at the top of your screen,

then go to manage

then go to the Market tab,

and lastly, hit the Request SPS button.

By doing this you will pay upfront for the sps and place a bid at 0.002 that another player will soon fill.

How much SPS should I rent?
As of now, SPS is renting for 0.002. I would rent 100,000 to start with. Don’t get tempted by the 0.001 offers—SPS isn’t renting at that price except for rare exceptions.

V. What’s Next? 🚀

Like I explained previously, this strategy is focused on saving you time and money. One thing you’ll need to do daily is, of course, play the game. As time goes by, you’ll get better at it, and that's another important aspect of this strategy. For this strategy to work, you need to be decent at the game—this is not for casual players.

So, once you’re set up, you’ll need to follow a daily routine:

Play the game. You get 24 Energy per day, so aim to play 24 battles daily. This might take you longer at first, but with time, you’ll improve.
- Keep in mind this strategy requires you to be decent at the game and play EVERY DAY, no EXCEPTIONS. Remember, this is not for casual players. If you don’t play daily, you will lose money.

Keep track of your rentals. People will cancel your rentals over time, so it’s important to refresh them daily. Go to PeakMonsters to re-rent your cards and ensure you always have SPS staked before playing.
- What I do is at the start of each day, I enter PeakMonsters and refresh all the rentals with less than 24 hours left for 3 days and check if any card got unrented. Eventually, this will become part of your routine and you will do it in less than 5 minutes. I do want to go deeper in this section but the post is getting quite long already so Ill save this part for a future post, keep tuned!

VI. Frequently asked questions: Should I Play Tournaments and Brawls? 🎯

Tournaments:

Since the recent changes to tournament entry fees, playing tournaments can be risky. Only join if you’re confident in your skills. Look for tournaments from Novice to Diamond—sometimes fewer people enter than the available prize spots, guaranteeing rewards unless you lose every match, which is unlikely.

Brawls:

Definitely play brawls. There are no entry fees, and you only need to join a guild. Many guilds just ask that you show up and play. Brawls reward you with SPS, and some guilds don’t require big contributions. You can find free guilds or join one like mine (Team Posible Hackers—here’s the link to the Team Posible Discord).

VII. Summary 📋

This post is already getting quite long, and I still have a lot of things to discuss, but I don’t want to confuse you guys with all the information at once. So next week, I’m going to make a follow-up post where I will be discussing these subjects:

How to improve this strategy using Rental bids in PeakMonsters
What chests to buy
Refreshing rentals and finding the best deals
Monetizing your earnings and reinvesting

I deliberately left one of the most important parts out of this post, and that’s a topic I’ll cover later: how to convert your earnings into DEC to keep your account running and even make a profit! but honestly that part deserves an entire new post so Ill leave it for next week. After I posted it I will link it here.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this guide helps some of you get started! 🙏

See you next week!

*If you liked this post, feel free to upvote, comment, and share your experience! I would love to know if anyone is already using this strategy or if you start because of this post.

Direct link to part 2 already available!! Click on the image below!

You can also check out more of my content here.* 😊

Ultimate New Player's Guide: How to Make a Profit in the Splinterlands Ecosystem 1/2