Splinterlands: a Legendary journey unfolding.

Hey fellow Splinterlands fans, today it's time to make my second splinterlands blog post for this weeks to funds my deck, because well... there's so much cool things in the splinterverse to do and participate in and so many ways to go, there's never enough funds no matter how much you have, so we always have to make choices.

the second post in the week is always Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge, which is the coolest of the two most of the times because it always has a unique topic to make a post about.

This weeks challenge:

Challenge Theme: Legends in the Making – Share Your Splinterlands Origin Story 🧙‍♂️
This week’s theme invites you to reflect on your beginnings, milestones, and what keeps you coming back to the battlefield.
🔥 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?

To find out how you can participate in the challenge yourself, check out the Splinterlands post here.

When it all started...

I became interested in cryptocurrency, like many others during the bull run in 2017, Bitcoin, reached a new all time high and many millionaires were born, but for the people who didn't take profit, they saw their newly acquired wealth vanish as fast at arrived in the crash after the peak.
I bought my first BTC in May 2019, just €20 to try it out, and before I knew it my 20 doubled in value to €40... wow that's was easy!
No such thing as easy money but I learned that later....

Web3 gaming

As kids we all dreamed about making money playing games, and I spent sooo much hours on games like Railroad Tycoon and later Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, now with crypto this was really possible, I found my first Web3 game in 2020, and it wasn't Splinterlands, it was League of Kingdoms, just a fairly simple game building your village and leveling up everything, when I started I didn't knew how this simple game I just started for fun, would be very lucrative!

I started 100% free to play and when I leveled up my accounts I started to sell resources, making about $1500 in total in the next two years (yeah this is a bit off-topic but I'm getting there..)
I looked at Splinterlands without a lot of attention in 2020, and I didn't understand much of it, I never played a Trading Card Game before, and I decided to skip <-- poor decision on hindsight!

Fast forward, since I made quite a bit of money with League of Kingdoms I wanted something else, the game was full of bugs and it was getting boring to play, I did made some nice friends and joined a Web3 Gaming Guild, Non Fungible Gaming and the news about great rewards in Splinterlands got my attention again, so I put a little more effort in it, watched some tutorials on YouTube and decided to give it a go!

My fresh start in Splinterlands

It was August 2021 when I made my first account @nozem with some funds from League of Kingdoms, and started my ranked battles, back then we earned DEC for the battles we won, and the cards we could find in chests were pretty valuable, and not soulbound like they are now.
I remember pulling a Legendary card worth $40 in my first week with my $10 account 🤑 it was Ancient Lich.

With such great rewards, I decided to open a second account and be my own referral to earn even more rewards, so I made this account and put some more funds in to this account as well, rewards were crazy and I was able to make a lot of DEC with playing my two accounts back to back, and pulled some more nice reward cards like Axe Master, I still use in my battles.

With some other players in my Guild we started a Splinterlands Guild and I managed it (and still do) giving an extra layer to a great game already - a nice community.

Back then, I didn't knew the importance of the different set releases and all that, Untamed almost sold out, and later Dice also, but I was still learning everything so I did buy some separate cards but no packs.

Of course, when the rewards are this high it gets to a point where it's no longer sustainable and people find ways to exploit this and ruin it for everyone, and the bot farms arrived leeching funds from the Splinterlands economy into their own pockets, taking profit is never wrong but there's a difference in taking profit and leeching.

So the nerfs started, they NEEDED to start for the game to survive, there's always a delicate line between earnings and sustainability in the long run, and I was loving every aspect of the game so I was fine with it, I just kept on grinding and growing my deck.

When Chaos Legion launched, it was the time for me to finally get some affordable summoners and level my deck up to Silver League, where I remained for most of my Splinterlands time.

With the collaboration with the Wasder app two years ago, we had an inflow of new players so we decided to start a second Splinterlands guild, funded by Non Fungible Gaming, to help and guide new players earn more together and with two new members joined recently after a long inactive status we finally started brawling again.

I'm glad the core team in our main guild just grinded on, we did lose some players there too unfortunately, every person has to make their own choices, and we only know if it was a good choice when we look back at it over time.

Splinterlands in my daily life

So over the years, Splinterlands has became a part of my life really, with all the things to do besides playing I mentioned before such as making blogs like this, I got a side hobby to fund my deck a little extra by collecting cans and bottles from the streets for the deposit money.
I'm also the guilds leader for both splinterlands guilds, managing this and guiding players is fun too.

I do my ranked battles every day, I'm manually playing both of my accounts, the only time I don't is in the summer when I'm abroad with my family on holiday, family time is important too of course 😍.

Looking at my main account profile I'm closing in on a whopping 29.000 battles in both leagues combined!

The Survival part is just starting for me and probably will stay small since I have a large collection of level 1 cards, I don't expect the bot to get very far with this but it's free and effortless, and this way all these cards at least get to do something.

When you're a new player and want some help, our guild is definitely the right place for you, I wrote tons of explainer articles for new players before.

Stepping up the game

So, about two years ago, I was just grinding my battles and playing other games on a slower pace, attending the Splinterlands X / Twitter community every now and then when Dejota asked me if I didn't felt the need to upgrade higher into the leagues, and of course I would like to but it seemed out of reach because, well.. it's not a cheap game!

Card prices kept falling and I got a really nice airdrop on the Solana chain worth $123 op JUP tokens, which I immediately sold and because I didn't knew why I got the airdrop I looked to this as a sign, and used it to start upgrading my deck to Gold level, starting with my Chaos Legion summoners, first Kelya and the rest of the water team with it, next Obsidian with the earth team and slowly but surely my whole deck including the CL Legendary Summoners, the fall of card prices didn't stop and my blogging earnings started to pick up, so in Q1 of 2024, I decided to upgrade my account to max level summoners and cards - and because it was cheaper to buy all new max level summoners than just add a few cards to my existing ones, I now had Gold level summoners and cards for my alt account!

I never expected leveling up would bring more fun, but it really did! All these new abilities, it's so cool, I really felt like a kid in a candy store for the next weeks, learning the new cool things about my deck, same cards but with extra's!

Light at the end of the tunnel

Surviving the bearishness in the cold, dark and miserable crypto winter wasn't always easy, but the dedication of the team and seeing what splinterlands could become, together with every day fun after so long was enough for me to keep believing, diamond hands!

After the summer of 2024, things started to shift a little again and a lot of changes were made, the longer it took, the more positive things were done and launched, and finally, finally... Praetoria could see the sun shining again!

I'm really excited and also proud to be part of this journey with all fellow battlemages, and I think it's cool to make friends in the space to just talk about the game but also learn from each other, not only Splinterlands related but so much more.

My future goals

Well... to be fair I fulfilled my future goals by being able to battle with max level cards but this won't stay like this with the arrival of the new set Conclave Arcana, I will be a Silver level player again, which is perfectly fine, it's less complex and more technical maybe and I am actually looking forward to see where this new era in Splinterlands will bring us.

With Land 1.75 just launched, I'm planning to buy more land plots in the future, I've more than doubled my monthly personal investment in to the game so I can buy more of the cool stuff, so slowly expanding everything!

My advice to new players

Watch YouTube tutorials, read explainer blogs (I wrote many of them and I'm not the only one) and learn the rulesets and abilities, memorize the cards in the game, their abilities and their mana value, watch EVERY battle, don't just skip, learn from your mistakes, adopt strategies that kicked your ass, see what cards you need and if you don't know why you lost, research and ask other players.

Find a nice community to help you get started, and while you're at it, just join my guild, I'll be happy to personally guide you! 😁

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Have a great day!