Today is different, this isn't going to be your run of the mill "hey look a battle I did and saved and now get to talk about. NOPE hard pass. Today is going to be a fun one.

We are going to talk about History.
We are going to talk about Sacrifice.
We are going to talk about FOMO.
We are going to talk about Hive.
...and we will probably talk a tiny bit about Splinterlands too

This Weeks Challenge

The premise for this week is fairly straight forward. Here is the guidelines for this week!

🔥 Share your story: 🔥

How did you discover Splinterlands?

What was your first card or most memorable early battle?

How has your strategy evolved since you started?

What are your goals in the game now?

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And since just going 1 of the 4 suggested topics is boring. I am going to do ALL 4! YUP you read that right! ALL 4!. So down the Rabbit Hole we go once more.

How Did You Discover Splinterlands?

Short Answer:

I discovered Splinterlands from someone posting about it on Publish0x years ago.

Long Answer:

Knowing me and knowing who my web3 friends were years ago, I am 99.99% sure that it was @pvmihalache who posted something about Splinterlands on Publish0x and it got me thinking. Than weeks go by and I read more posts from him about it and I finally decided to create a Hive Wallet and start playing this card game called Splinterlands.

Back then, I was not on Hive. I knew next to nothing about Hive blockchain. I was well versed in blockchain's in general and was already invested into the WAX blockchain. So it wasn't a huge leap into Hive but it was still a leap. I couldn't tell you the exact date I started playing but I can give a rough estimate based on the lookups I did.

For example.

I bought my first credits on January 9th, 2021.

And now if we look at $DEC...

December 20th, 2020 was the first time I earned DEC. Which I assume back them was from battles so I would guess I started playing Splinterlands on December 20th, 2020.

I mean who doesn't love an old Nostalgic look at games we play?

I wrote a post on Publish0x on January 24th, 2020 about Splinterlands and man it's fun to go back and read it now and see the old graphics.

If you care for a stroll down memory lane: https://www.publish0x.com/earning-that-crypto/splinterlands-blockchain-card-game-earn-deceth-xvlxmn

What was your first card or most memorable early battle?

This is tricky but because I documented my early journey on Splinterlands I can say that the first 2 cards I won from the quests were

Fire Spitter

and Undead Minotaur

yeah first 2 cards I won were an Epic and a Gold Foil. Looking at that now. I am not sure I appreciated how lucky I was hahaha.

And oh boy... to see me posting links to "SteemMonsters" is wild as well.

I don't remember any early battles and I didn't document them all that well so my first 2 cards I won will have to do I suppose 😉

How has your strategy evolved since you started?

Well to quote myself from January of 2020...

I only have 11.82 DEC because I started off just rushing games to try to win the 5 battles a day and not taking the time to really look at each cards abilities and put together a good team. It doesn't take long but you do need to pay attention to build a good team.

I think that sums me up pretty well even till today. I started to play Splinterlands because I thought, cocky as I am, that it would be easy to out strategize my opponents and just win game after game.

Well turns out I am not as good as I thought I would be. Even today I am not the best at strategy. Part of the reason is because I took a 2 year break and in that time so many new abilities and rulesets and modifiers were released and I struggled to learn them all while people already accustomed to them were destroying me. Also though, I lacked a bunch of the playable cards in Modern Format.

My strategy over the last month or so has drastically changed and then changed again.

2 Month ago Strategy

Was to try to pick up as many cards as I could that were playable in Modern Format

1 Month ago Strategy

This moved to trying to pick up cards that worked the best for the plots of land that I owned, not caring what set they were from.

My Strategy Now

Sure I still try to put together a good team for each battle. But I have started to focus my efforts. The Fire Element I have great cards and so I lean towards using that in battles when Melee is called upon.

Water Element is another one I am trying to pick up and get good card for as it keeps beating me.

With the Conclave Arcana set fast approaching, my strategy and changed so much in the last 2 months. Now I am trying to pick up Rebellion only cards and they have to fit into 1 of 3 categories.

1. I don't own it yet and its not stupid expensive
2. It's an extra card of one I already own but I use a lot so I want to level it up
3. It is a summoner card

I need better Summoners and also I need higher level cards. But there is no point in buying cards to level up cards I never use. So I try to get as many "cheapish" cards I can in the Rebellion set and then if I end up playing with that card a lot I then look to buy extra's so I can level it up.

What are your goals in the game now?

This is LOADED beyond loaded for me. And that is because in the last 2 months I already talked about how my strategy has changed so much but with that my goals in Splinterlands kept changing. I will list out each Goal and expand on them.

Land

I got lucky and got some extra crypto I was able to invest into Splinterlands. So I bought some land plots and started to develop them slowly. Because of that, LAND is a goal of mine.

I was not the brightest when I bought my land plots and all were the same type so now that I understand LAND and more importantly Land 1.75 and what will be Land 2.0 I know I need to change that up. I have 5 plots of land in the same Region currently.

1. Common Forest - Currently building a SPS Mine and is almost done, I know I know but I started it before Land 1.75 and before I understood what I should and shouldn't do. Once the SPS Mine is built though I will unstake my cards from it.
2. Common Plains - Currently constructing a Grain Farm. Once my SPS Mine is done most of those heavy hitter cards will be moved over to this plot to speed him up. And again, once complete will not start working on it.
3. Rare Forest - This is a Rare plot so I think this will be the one I construct a Wood Farm on to produce me my wood down the road
4. Common Forest - I will eventually sell this one I think or maybe cut my losses and just hold onto it IDK.
5. Common Jungle - Jungles also produce Wood resource so I am not sure what I will do with it to be honest.

So yeah, I still have a lot of work to figure out my end goal with my current plot of lands. But I do know that I want to get my Land setup in a way well I am producing at least each resource so I can be self sufficient. When Land 2.0 and further updates are released I want to be able to play a key role in the games ecosystem.

Well okay maybe not a "key" role as I am no whale. But I do want to play a role in it and be self-sufficient at the VERY least.

I have said this before but I got into LAND in Splinterlands because I FOMO'd at the exact moment I came into some crypto. It was the perfect storm but I don't regret it!

Leagues

However another goal of mine though is getting into Silver 1 league in Modern. I can make it to Silver 3 now and yeah I am happy about that and super stoked with myself, I also know I can do better. So I am striving to be able to get into Silver 1 League pretty regularly in each season.

Sure I want to get up into Diamond or whatever but I know that is unrealistic.

I also eventually want to have good enough cards where I can compete in the WILD format but I think that is a ways off and I rather focus my efforts on getting better in Modern and focusing on LAND.

Cards

Cards Cards Cards is another goal. I already touched on this in 2 other goals but I want to acquire more cards.

I am not looking to have max sets or to have a complete set (A Master Set if you will), but I do need and want more cards for a few reasons.

1. I need more Rebellion cards to compete in the Modern format. And that can be either just picking up cards I don't own yet, or levelling up cards I already have and use regulary.
2. I don't need them today but I will need more levelled up older cards to stake at my plots of LAND. Right now I am doing okay with having 2 plots building something currently. But once I have all my plots built out I will need to staff them ALL with good cards to get a better return. This is something I am actively pursuing but only really on WAX and trying to pick up older cards that are cheap that I know have good bonuses for my plots of lands.
3. Conclave Arcana, I am planning on hitting the ground running HARD when these packs get released and I want to start off the new set with a lot of the new cards so I can learn their strategies early on and hopefully pull great cards as well!

Guides & Articles

I want to keep posting quality content on Hive about Splinterlands. I think I have done an okay job so far but I really want to push myself to not just post to post but to post to bring something to the table. For example these weekly social media challenge posts I have stopped doing every one I could because it just felt disingenuine. When this one was posted it was different and I thought I could post something with my own flair to it and maybe give my perspective that may help other newer players.

So that is what I want and what is my goal. I plan to post less often then I started the year off with but also post better quality articles with better quality graphics and design and overall UI. I am working on this but you have my promise they will get better!

SPS and Passive Earning

SPS is KING. You need SPS to earn better rewards from battles full stop. But Staking that SPS also earns you passively which is so so nice. I have roughly 2,600 SPS staked now and by the end of the year I am hoping to have 5,000 if not 10,000 SPS staked.

I need that much so that when I do progress to later Leagues I can earn greater rewards but also so that I keep earning even more and more SPS and Vouchers. Maybe one day I will earn enough Vouchers to actually buy one of those fancy cards without having to buy Vouchers on secondary :)

Also though it's not just SPS staking to earn passively. My whole goal in HIVE is not to earn $$ so that I can cash it out and buy a new car or whatever. All my HIVE is funny money to me. It's play money. And because of that I can be a little more loose with it but that doesn't mean I want to piss it all away. No, I want to play smart. I want to put my Hive and Hive tokens to work so that I can earn from that so that I can do more things on Hive.

Reward Pools are my other area to earn passively.

Currently I only have SPS-Swap.Hive staked but as I grow I am starting to look to get into DEC staking as well. Time will tell though how much I can stake and earn this way.

And that is it. Congrats! You made it to the end well done.