Splinterlands: The Upcoming Play-to-Earn Blockchain Game
On the hunt for play-to-earn games…
I recently wrote about Axie Infinity shortly after its governance token, Axie Infinity Shards (AXS), made its first appearance on Coinbase.
I even spent over $800 to experience the game myself, buying three of my own Axies at $250-$300 each - a requirement to get started in the game.
Making a bad pick in my Axie starter team made the game unenjoyable and the cost of Axies made it too expensive for me to easily swap my bad Axie for a different, more powerful Axie. Additionally, since I only had the three Axies and their abilities never changed, even as they leveled, I found myself quickly growing bored of the game.
My Axie starter team - can you guess which one disappointed me…
It felt like nothing I did in the game really mattered - I had to use the same three Axies with the same 12 total abilities each and every game with no ability to change them - ever.
My Axie Infinity account sits at somewhere over 200 Smooth Love Potion (SLP, the in-game currency) several weeks later, worth a little more than $30 USD (with the ability to sell my initial Axie team as well and recoup my money).
While I’ll likely try to sell my bad Axie for a new one someday and keep going to grind for SLP, I can’t say I enjoy the game…
Arena matches, in fact, make me hate the whole experience - if your Axies are bad, you don’t stand a chance against players who invested far more than you did. It takes every ounce of my willpower to not just shut my laptop loss after loss and to actually complete the daily quest.
Most days, I don’t.
Looking for more
This experience, despite being disappointing in overall gameplay and starter cost, opened my eyes to the world of play-to-earn gaming.
It haunted me that I spent $850 on my Axie team, knowing 11 months ago I could have spent $60 for a full team. Had I got in early - I could have made some serious cash!
I began to search for other play-to-earn blockchain games that weren’t popular yet, which I judged by airdrops still happening or their lack of presence on major exchanges like Coinbase.
I added two new criteria to my list this time, though:
Must be fun
My actions in-game should matter - I should be able to learn and improve
I’ve found two so far: Splinterlands and Gods Unchained.
For the sake of this being a financial blog and seeing the most “get-in-early” potential for Splinterlands right now (as Gods Unchained’s airdropping is mostly over by this point), I’m going to give you an intro to Splinterlands, but I’d be happy to do another article on Gods Unchained and/or a comparison of the two if you’re interested.
Splinterlands
Splinterlands, according to their own FAQ, is “a digital, collectible card game built on blockchain technology”.
You’ll need to spend $10 on a “Summoner’s Spellbook” to play the game (which you can do after account setup and after you play the tutorial and decide if you like it). Ten dollars is MUCH more reasonable than Axie Infinity’s $850+ starting point and not unlike any other game you might buy and play from a site like, say, Steam.
It’s even easy to setup because, unlike Axie where you need to transfer ETH around to different wallets, you can buy the “Summoner’s Spellbook” via PayPal.
In Splinterlands, you’ll pick a character (called a “Summoner”) who has their own special set of cards. There are also common cards shared amongst all the “Summoners” that will always be available for you to use for free, which makes getting started in the game very easy and fair, as other new players will also start out with the same cards.
My quest details for today
You’ll receive a daily quest with a task like “Win 5 games with Death (a “Summoner”) or to win 5 games with a card that is marked with a certain ability (such as “Snipe” or “Sneak”). Each battle you win, you’ll earn Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) and increase your rank (higher ranks earn more DEC). Losing lowers you rank, but does not affect your DEC!
After you win the 5 battles for the quest, you get to open a reward chest.
This reward chest can contain many things: potions, cards, or DEC - I’ve received small amounts in some chests and hundreds of DEC in other chests.
The potions will help you either 1) earn extra loot chests for completing your daily quest, 2) improve the drop rate of legendary cards, or 3) improve the drop rate of gold foil cards.
DEC is worth approximately $0.007 USD currently and can be used to do many things like purchase in-game items like potions, rent and buy cards from other players, or transfer out to your HIVE wallet (account created for you on sign-up) to convert into USD. If it’s anything like SLP from Axie, it could be worth at least $0.14 in the future - that’s a 1900% increase!
Earning cards is beneficial, too.
You can combine duplicate cards to level up that card and increase its stats, destroy it to earn extra DEC, rent or sell it on the marketplace for DEC, or keep it for your own collection to use in battle - it counts towards your POWER, which lets you level up in rank and earn more reward chests at the end of the season.
The gameplay
If you’re willing to grind it out on any game for a profit - skip ahead to the next section on making money & why this is the best time to get in on Splinterlands!
But if you’re like me and need to find some entertainment in the daily grind… I’ll briefly describe the gameplay so that you can decide ahead of time if it’s something you want to try.
1 match won, 4 to go!
You’ll click on “Battle” and, when matched with another player, be given the player’s recent battle history (what cards they’ve played, what Summoners they’ve been using - shared so that you can build a team to counter them) as well as a “Mana cap”, which changes every match! I’ve played games with mana caps as low as 12 and as high as 99.
Based on that mana cap, you have to do your best to assemble a winning team using one “Summoner” (who also costs mana) and a deck of cards. The card options you’re presented with depend on what Summoner you’ve chosen.
There is a cap of 6 cards per game regardless of the mana cap, so choose wisely!
Each summoner has their own pros - one increases speed, making it more likely that you’ll go first, one decreases health of every enemy card on the field, and so on. You’re allotted 3 minutes to setup your team - after that it’s time to play, or rather, “Rumble”!
But…
You don’t actually do anything after you’ve setup your team.
Yep! The whole game is in the set-up. You can skip to see the results of the match, or watch the match at 1x, 2x, or 3x speed (which I recommend so that you can learn and improve for the next match) - but it really doesn’t matter if you watch or not.
After team set-up, you can kick back, relax, and watch the game! Or skip to results…
At first, I found this kind of… deflating.
What was the point if I didn’t have to use any strategy? It took me a day or two to appreciate the strategy being in the setup of the team itself.
I came to enjoy how quick the games went (compared to Gods Unchained, which plays like Hearthstone and where a single match could take 15+ minutes).
From a perspective of trying to make the most amount of money - the quicker games (3 minutes or less) were definitely a plus. The daily quest was easy to complete, compared to Axie Infinity where it took me hours to grind through 10 adventure levels and 5 arena wins.
You can also play on your phone, which makes it easy to complete the quests anytime, anywhere - though I have had a few glitches on mobile where I couldn’t pick my cards, costing me two games and lowering my rankings before I gave up on mobile for that day.
The tutorial for this game is a LOT of reading but DON’T skip it - it’s crucial to understanding how to play (and winning… and thereby earning money).
Earnings & Airdrops
If you’re wondering what an airdrop is - it’s when the creators of the game reward people who have been playing from the early days of the game with some of its tokens, which are usually used to vote on future gameplay decisions. In the airdrop process, they’ll usually state what these tokens are for.
In determining who qualifies for an airdrop, game creators will usually “snapshot” your account - i.e., take inventory of all the digital game assets you own - and assign a value to these digital assets in terms of how many tokens you should earn for holding those assets.
For Splinterlands, the token they’re airdropping to players is called Splintershards (SPS) - which will be used as a governance token to “govern”/vote on future gameplay.
The equivalent of Splintershards is the Axie token that I mentioned at the beginning of this article, which went live on Coinbase for over $60 and is now trading above $76.02.
I am currently holding 0.421 SPS, at an estimated value of $0.17 USD. If this went live on Coinbase and reached the same value as the Axie token, you start to understand how earning these pre-launch on major exchanges might turn out to be a great investment in the future… $0.4051 USD for one SPS to $76.02 is a 18,665.7% increase.
A lot of us crypto gamers are looking for the next big game that we can get in on early and make a large profit, so I know you’re wondering…
Am I too late?
NO! You are NOT too late!
Proof of the airdrop day!
Today is August 29, 2021 and the Splinterlands Airdrop is on day 34 of… 365!!!!!
Depending on when you’re reading this (and if you are late by now, SUBSCRIBE to my newsletter and don’t be late again!), you have 331 more days of Airdrops to be earning SPS.
I’ve been playing for about two weeks and I’m holding 407.994 DEC and 0.421 SPS. Each day that I earn more DEC, my SPS earnings from the daily airdrop increase. Currently, I’m earning around 0.069 SPS per day from the airdrop alone.
Pre-staking screenshot of the airdrop points and APR
Additionally, you can stake your SPS at 159.06% APR (this is a slightly decreased APR from what the game said one week ago). The staking rewards are posted almost daily, which you can then also stake to earn even more - kind of like reinvesting your dividends in the stock market.
Here’s a list of ways to make money on Splinterlands - which is not at all comprehensive - just the ways that are easily accessible and obvious to all new players during this Airdrop period.
10 EASY WAYS TO MAKE MONEY ON SPLINTERLANDS
Play matches, win, earn DEC
NOTE: The higher your rank, the more you earn
Daily quest
Earn DEC from the quest reward chest
Earn potions from the quest reward chest which improve your chance at getting a more valuable card (which can then be sold or rented on the marketplace) or that lets you get more rewards for each daily quest
Earn DEC from matches completing the quest
Earn cards from the reward chest, which can be sold, rented, or destroyed for DEC
Earn loot chests at the end of the season based on your ranking
Rewards are similar to that of the daily quest loot/reward chest
Earn SPS from the airdrop
Holding in-game items and currency, like DEC, lets you earn more SPS every day
Stake your SPS for a percentage return
Stake your earnings from staking (just like re-investing dividends in the stock market)
Rent your cards on the marketplace
Sell your cards on the marketplace
Destroy your cards for DEC
Play arena, win, earn USD
NOTE: I haven’t done this but they mention prize pools for novices of around $13!
As a side-note of earnings not fully related to the game itself: Splinterlands encourages you to play in the Brave browser, which earns you Basic Attention Token (BAT). One BAT is currently worth $0.818698 and I’ve earned 0.637 BAT, or $0.52 USD since beginning to use it to play Splinterlands.
The Future
The future is NFTs - agree?
My hope is that the value of these tokens and in-game currency will reach the same value of existing, popular play-to-earn games that have already appeared on Coinbase, such as Axie Infinity.
In the future, I hope to see Splintershards rival the 2021 value of Axie Infinity Shards ($0.4051 to $76.02) and the in-game currency DEC become equivalent to Axie’s in-game currency’s 2021 price ($0.00788138 to $0.141135).
I also believe that as the game earns more positive press and more players join the ecosystem, the cards themselves that are earned in game will also go up in value, allowing players to trade them on the marketplace for more money.
Some of my cards, two of which are listed on the marketplace
By playing early on in the airdrop, rewards will continue compounding day after day and hopefully make for a sweet pay-off one to two years from now.
I have really no research-backed reason to believe these value increases besides the fact that it’s a quick earning game like Axie Infinity but it’s WAY more fun (sorry, Axie).
I see Splinterlands having a strong future with dedicated players interacting with the marketplace and battling it out in tournaments vs. the slow-grind of repetitive Axie Infinity gameplay.
If Axie can do it, with users playing the same Axies, the same 12 cards, the same levels, over and over again - why can’t Splinterlands do even better with its fantastic gameplay, quick earnings, and bustling community?
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!
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