As of 21th of October 2021 there was a Splinterlands Dev Update.
The Update focuce on few key points. In this post we will cover the most conserning one to new players - the DEC Battle Rewards Update.
Battle Devs vs Bots continues and for new players that come after the changes go live it's gonna be harsh... If only you come before the changes go into servers, or come informed and prepared!
Quotes from the original post:
Within the next few days we will be removing DEC rewards from ranked battles for players in Bronze III and Novice league, and changing the reward shares calculation which determines the portion of the reward pool allocated for each win to use the cube of the player's rating instead of the square as it was previously
This means that in order to start earning DEC battle rewards (and in the near future SPS rewards) players will need to get enough rating and collection power in their account to at least get into Bronze II league, and that the rewards will be skewed more towards higher rated players in order to provide additional incentive to players to increase their rating
So the answer to the topic title is - Today with only 10$ investment you can start earning DEC and afford renting card power and few usefull cards that will help you to jump some ranks.
The idea is to get out of Bronze 3, ideally get to Silver 3 so that you have the most chance of getting a card from daily reward chests and get rid of credits rewards from those chests.
Even thou new players could start after the updete, it'll require at least buying credits for 1$ or gather credits from daily reward chests (which are given in so small amounts that to afford rent of Venari Wavesmith and 1k card power it'll cost around 130 credits) and you only get 1 reward chest in Bronze.