Splinterlands Strategy | What Are The Best Survival Mode Cards?

This week for the Community Engagement Challenge in Splinterlands, it's all about strategies for this new game mode so here are some of what I believe are the best cards for this mode.

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My Survival Mode Strategy So Far

The mode has only been out for just over a week and I'm still testing things out. One of the issues that Splinterlands has been facing for a long time is that everything is about efficiency and trying to get the most out of it while at the same time it take a long time to grind each day manually and it really takes away from being able to sit down and play at times when you actually want to play. This creates an environment were 90% of the battles are played by bot. I actually had a lot of fun last week playing the survival mode manually and plan to continue my Journey tomorrow when I have some time.

I haven't fully thought about what the best way to go about things is when it comes down to depleting cards, getting energy to zero in Wild Mode and making sure it's also possible to play all the cards in the Brawls. I do however not worry too much about it. Last week because of Survival Mode, I made more SPS than usual and I probably will be able to ramp this up. This is what Splinterlands earns for having 2 accounts, a big collection of Max Level cards on 1 account and Level 3 Gold Cards on a second account occasionally playing manual modern battles on my alt account and doing the Brawls. Last week the Survival Mode was added to this.

If I would do a bit more effort, I could easily get around ~10$ of earnings weekly. However, this requires a lot of time, a rather big investment of cards, SPS and some land which I would estimate right now is worth about ~8000$. All of this while blogging about the game twice a week without a real investment needed roughly is expected to earn about 20$ makes it so that my blog surely is one of the factors that keeps me in Splinterlands.

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The Best Survival Mode Cards!

There are some facts to consider when looking at what the best Survival Mode Cards are. Looking at it right now, survival mode mainly requires Max Level cards unless you are running a bot somehow mostly with Soulbound Reward cards waiting to get matched up with other of those bots to get a chance at a win. I do expect this to increase a lot in the coming weeks/months while right now this is not really a major issue.

1. Card Prices: You basically want the cheaper affordable cards as it sucks to get expensive modern cards on Cooldown. So Chaos Legion tends to give the best value as there is such an oversupply while they don't get any kind of penalty when played.

2. Survivability: Basically you want to have cards or a deck where all cards survive both against Lower level opponents and against other Max Level Players. So I would say a combination of Taunt + Phase + Tank Heal + Speed / Blind / Dodge / Flywhich along with some others that dictate the play and keep monsters alive are the most valuable in Survival Mode

3. Cooldown Period: So the choice was made by the team to give Legenday Cards by far the lowest cooldown period I assume in an attempt to make them way more valuable. This while they only need 11 to get to max level while a common card needs 400 copies to get to Max level. So thus dynamic right now feels quite off. 5 Days for an expensive Max Level common cards just is a lot and I also think the cooldown periods are kept long on purpose just to make sure it's only possible in total to get a limited number of battles in while regeneration potions will have some actual value.

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Cheap Legendard Max Level Cards

So looking at just the max legendary cards for sale, the ones that feel like good value for Survival mode are

Djinn Oshannus: This generally is a strong tank with high speed that is protected against Magic attack and also only gets 1 damage from 5+ attacks. at just 6$ it's also a low risk buy as there is upside price potential while there is limited downside risk due to the DEC Burn value.

Uriel The Purifier: is also a card that generally is able to stay alive with high health and self heal.

Venator kinjo: is one of those cards useful to play in 2nd position as it has the deflect ability which protects it against Blast Damage

Chaos Dragon: this one I would say has mostly the Blind ability going for it

Best Survival Mode Summoner ?

The Summoner that I had most success with in Survival mode has been Lily Shieldpaw since it allows you to dictate the play toward the tank combining it with multiple heals and possible misses from the opponent to keep your entire deck alive. right now, a Max Level card goes for 36$ which actually feels really cheap and I'm kind of tempted to buy a 2nd copy of it mainly out of the belief that I won't get crushed on it and can get some good earnings along the way? There also are only 3 copies on the market for sale right now

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Other Solid Survival Cards

The Death Nightmare tank remains my favorite card in the game and also works very well in survival mode as you can make it that the play is dictated toward it while it's almost impossible to hit. However as a Common cards it's just way too painful to see it on cooldown while it's also not really possible to buy with no max level copies at a reasonable price available.

The Merdaali Guardian also is a really powerful card in Survival mode with both Tank Heal and Repaid while it gives all mosters 1 extra Health. However, once again it's too expensive compared to some of the Legendary Chaos Legion cards and the cooldown is pretty brutal.

Conclusion!

Lily Shieldpaw + Nightmare as Tank remains my favorite Survival Mode Combination. However, many of the legendary Chaos Legion cards right now feel very cheap compared to the utility they bring in Survival Mode the way things work right now. At the same time, I would not be surprised to see some major adjustments coming in how things work in the coming months.

Battle Link

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