The Perfect Storm in Splinterlands Rental Card Market!

As you are probably aware a couple things happened recently:

1. Introduction of Survival Mode
2. End of Daily Card Rentals

What did these events do to the prices in the Splinterlands rental card market? From my observations prices have x10 to x20 per day!

For example the weakest Chaos Legion summoners used to go for 2.2 DEC to 2.3 DEC per day. Here are the prices:

But those prices are no longer available! The cheapest Tarsa you can rent now is 35 DEC per day!

The changes are particularly pronounced in rental prices as availability of summoners and some of the key cards. I have noticed that if you watch the card market really closely some cards pop up at old prices, but they are quickly snatched up for the rest of the season.

Another trend that I noticed is that sometimes it is possible to get a gold foil card for cheaper than the regular foil equivalent. This could be also due to the fact that some cards that pop up in the gold foil version are easier to get as people don't rent them quite a quickly.

So which cards are the hardest to rent at good prices? First of all all of the modern summoners, particularly the rare set:

Surprisingly these summoners that used to rent for almost nothing are really hard to get, as you can see that even at the elevated prices there are only a few available. Not surprisingly Kelya is the least available summoner with only three copies available. And General Sloan is the most available summoner with ten copies available for rent.

Tarsa is not a great summoner and it has only nine copies with rental prices ranging from 44 to 100 DEC per day!:

Tarsa used to be always available for rent at around two DEC so the price jump is around 20 times to 50 times in terms of rental cost!
These are insane numbers. But the cost increases and rental availability is not limited to just the summoners. The following cards are almost impossible to acquire via the rental market right now: Merdaali Guardian, Mycelic Slipspawn, Xenith Monk and somewhat surprisingly Angelic Mandarin.

What do these cards have in common? First of all they are all great cards to play in any mode, but particularly useful in the new Survival mode. Mycelic Slipspawn is a great taunt and support card so it dies frequently and people must be renting multiple copies of it for the Survival mode. Merdaali Guardian and Xenith Monk are also pretty amazing cards that have healing, Angelic Mandarin might not be a tank or self heal card but it heals taunt tanks in the back of the card lineup via triage. It also reduces magic damage of the opponent.

Another thing that these particular cards have in common is their rarity. They are all rare cards and as such have a pretty long cooldown from survival mode. These cards used to be available for around 1 DEC per day for rent:

Those prices are no longer available and they are now at fifteen to twenty six DEC per day!:

That is a fifteen to twenty times the rental cost for Angelic Mandarin which hasn't been known to be a super meta card.

Common rarity cards have even longer cooldown at five days as opposed to four days for the rare cards. So it is not surprising that the key common rarity cards are also very costly and hard to acquire!

According to my observations the following common rarity cards are the hardest to rent at reasonable prices that we saw in the past:

Chaos Agent, this card is a very strong card for ranked, brawls as well as survival play. This is also a neutral card so it could be used in many more survival lineups which results in it dying more quickly and driving the rental demand for this card.

Supply Runner is another Chaos legion card that was rentable for only one DEC in the past and now there is only one level ten card available on the market and it is thirty DEC! That is a x30 increase in rental price! This card is also a neutral card so it is more frequently played and would die more frequently in the survival mode and it will not be available for five days for ranked play or brawls.

Goblin Psychic is not a neutral card, but it is still a great card that keeps the tank alive with a tank heal in addition to reducing enemy magic damage and having dispel and affliction abilities. This card is really hard to rent at max level and it also at least x15 in rental price. There are only two copies available on the market:

While these rental price increases are great for people with multiple sets of cards, they might push out some of the players who were previously renting their decks to play. I am already seeing people no longer playing in ranked and hear from guild members who are saying that they will sit out next Brawl.

While this may encourage people to invest in cards, this could further reduce the number of players in Splinterlands. The switch to season only rentals combined with a Survival mode might have gone a bit too far...

We certainly see a significant improvement in Chaos Legion set price from recent lows of just under $600 to a peak price of over a $1,000 for the set of Chaos Legion regular foil maxed out cards and back down to a still much higher price of $894 compared to the recent Chaos Legion set prices.

This might be temporary situation and with higher rental prices the rental market might actually balance itself out as more people come in and offer their card for rent or open Chaos Legion packs, but right now the rental market is very thin and very expensive compared to the last season.

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