Splinterlands Social Media Challenge!
(Edited)
In this week's Social Media Challenge I won't feature a battle. I've decided just to write a few lines about the important events which have happened this week and I am also probably gonna talk a bit about how my adventures in Frontier are going across my main and the two alts that I am playing. I will begin with what's most important to me right now and it has to do with the maintenance we had yesterday and the introduction of a new "feature" in the settings menu of the game.
Yes, as you've probably already figured it out I am talking about the fact that with yesterday's maintenance we have finally been given the option to opt out of playing against bots in Modern. Hurray!
All you need to do is go to the settings then navigate to the Battles section and slide the "No Liquidity Bot Matches" slider from Off to On and voilla, no more pesky computers in your lists of opponents. This has been a major point of contention for some time (for the past 3 seasons basically), and I am really happy it's finally been resolved. If people want to bang their heads against the optimized bot line-ups they are more than welcome to do so but I personally prefer to lose to actual people because that's a lot less triggering for me, and I prefer sparing my nervous system as much as possible.
Next on the list is another fun addition which can also be counted as marketing and that is the fact that now we can earn Splinterlands drops while watching our favorite SPL creators on Twitch. In order to participate you need to go to the Socials submenu in the Settings menu and link your Twitch account:
It literally takes 30 seconds to do so there's no excuse not to do it. After that you head over to Twitch and you can follow your progress there:
You have to click on your profile then on "Drops and Rewards":
As you can see we currently have 5 Drops - 4 Glint drops for watching 3,6,9 and 12 hours and the final reward 1 CC of the new card specifically made for the occasion - Arena Fanatic - for watching for 15 hours. In order to max it you'll have to get 115 CCs of it as it is a rare cards but I think the future twitch drop events will speed things up, as this first event is also aiming at ironing out potential issues and identifying potential avenues for exploits (we can't do anything new without people attempting to game the system - we all know that).
Next on the list is something much more impactful for the game than the previous two pieces of news, namely - a proposal for a Conclave Arcana Mini Set is now up for voting in the pre-proposal section.
I am currently voting against it because it will consist of 43 cards and I personally think that 43 cards are not really a "mini" set. I think half of that would be an ideal number where each card could be made with a purpose and avoid filler cards. I am 101% sure we'll have at least a few dud cards out of these 43 as is expected in ever new set release. Anyway, apart from the number of cards, another interesting point around is the financial aspect of the "mini" set and the pricing of the packs. SPL the company is asking from the DAO to pay 1.2B DEC upfront for the development of the "mini" set, however, all proceeds from the sale of packs are going to go to the DAO (opposed to the usual deal where the company and the DAO split 50/50). In addition to that, the packs are priced with a heavy SPS discount in mind (depending on the value of SPS). Here are the details:
As you can see from the prices above - the pricing assumes a price of SPS of at least 1.4 Cents per SPS, while the currently price is 0.85 cents per SPS (it has gone up in price by about 10-12% since yesterday's "mini" set announcement). So if you have funds lying around right now and you want to participate in the presale of the "mini" set maybe it's a good idea to buy SPS now and not wait until December (when the "mini" set is supposed to be launched).
Okay, finally, let's have a look at how my Frontier accounts are doing. Beginning with my main account:
I was close to 4,200 rating but took a beating the past couple of days since I didn't really have most of the non-standard cards not only maxed but I didn't have them at all. So I had to begin acquiring them.
Fist I got a maxed A'lan Musketeer - that was the first maxed non-standard card I bought a few days ago. Next I saw a discounted maxed Mystic Scaleweaver, so I had to pick that one up as well since it's basically the best card in the set. Then yesterday I picked up 1 CC of a GF Asel Alagosdil, and earlier today I picked up 2 CCs of GF Saltwater Mage and 2 CCs of GF Lenore Nevermore. Why GF you may ask? Well it's pretty simple. I got them in GF because it was cheaper than getting the required amount of RFs to max the card in its RF version. Some people don't really pay attention to the prices of RFs when they try to sell their GFs ASAP and that's great for those looking for deals.
As you can see from the first screenshot in the section, I'm still struggling a bit at this level and I could only get 2 out of 3 packs for the day. I'm pointing this out because I'll compare this deck above to the deck of my alt nr. 1 which is in Gold 2 at 1500 less rating:
As you can see I've managed to get 3 packs on it today and I even have energy to spare, however, the deck I have on it is a lot less impressive:
My Fire, Earth and Life decks are at Archon level 3 as well as the Neutral cards, however, Water is at level 2 and Death is still at level 1, nevertheless, I get a lot more "beatable" opponents at this rating level so farming packs is a lot easier and more efficient. This is definitely a bit counterintuitive but it turns out it's more beneficial to hang around 2000 rating where the opponents rarely have maxed decks or even level 3 decks and just get your dailies done there. The more you advance your deck, the harder it gets for you to sustain a high enough WR, and the more money you will have to put into special cards in order to be able to put up a fight.
Finally, account nr. 3 (alt nr.2):
It's currently in Silver I and it's feeling pretty good there. I've been managing to get 12 cards per day with a good consistency and I'm not that far away from Gold III (currently just 80 rating away), so I might be actually be earning packs on this account as well pretty soon. Let's have a look at its deck now:
As you can see on the screenshot above this account has level 2 Fire, Earth and Life and level 1 Water and Death. It does not have any non-base set cards, but it is still basically about to earn the same rewards as my main and alt nr. 1. And it will probably be easier for me to win on it than on my kind of stacked main. This is interesting but not surprising since the leagues do not reset (apart from Gold I), the rating inflation naturally pushes lower accounts up a league or two where they can earn disproportionate rewards to what their deck is supposed to earn but of course that's not a problem of the players doing it but of the way the system works.
Well, this is for now.
Over and Out,
Referral
Thanks for sharing! - @libertycrypto27
Nice report on the news
Your critical point on the proposed release of the mini-set is also interesting