The Community Engagement Challenge this week is Conclave Arcana Rewards Set. The team has recently released what I would call the technical details related to the upcoming set. I call them technical since we've only seen the stats of the different drops and how the distribution of different foils will work but with only 10 days to go until the release (on the 21st) we are yet to see even one new card. Hopefully we will start seeing them soon since the question for the challenge is - what excites you the most about the new set. Well, since I'm first and foremost a player - what excites me the most are the new cards themselves and the impact they will surely have on the meta. The meta has definitely become a bit stale so a shake-up is definitely needed. Now that we know what excites me the most about the new set, let's go over the details we know about it so far.
So, as I have already pointed out, the Splinterlands team has announced a major overhaul to the ranked rewards system, introducing the Conclave Arcana Reward Set, a new 43-card reward collection featuring 12 Common, 12 Rare, 7 Epic, and 12 Legendary cards. This update comes with new mechanics for earning, trading, and unlocking cards, as well as a complete refresh of chests, glint rewards, and foil behavior.
The team made it clear that the system is experimental and parameters such as drop rates, costs, and rewards may be adjusted after initial seasons to correct imbalances.
You can read the full announcement HERE but I will provide a quick summary below and then share my overall thoughts on some of the new elements (or old elements brought back) to the way the systems work:
Card Types & Foils:
Standard Foils are soulbound, while Gold and Black Foils are tradable. Gold Foil cards have new print limits to preserve rarity.
Acquisition:
Cards can be earned through Ranked Battle Loot Chests, Glint Shop draws, and the new Weekly Fortune Draws.
Unbinding Scrolls:
Standard Foil cards can be unlocked for trading using new Unbinding Scrolls (one per rarity). These scrolls can be purchased with DEC, found in loot chests, crafted on land, or traded. Each has an Aura cost and expires 30 days after the set’s print run ends.
Loot Chests:
Loot Chests now offer revamped drop rates, higher-value contents, and new rewards like Unbinding Scrolls and Fortune Draw entries. Three tiers (Minor, Major, Ultimate) offer escalating costs and rewards, with higher-tier chests yielding better odds for Epic and Legendary cards.
Gold Foil Drop Mechanics:
A single unified card draw now includes a 1% base chance for Gold Foil cards, boosted by Alchemy Potions.
Black Foils & Fortune Draws:
The rarest cards—Black Foil and Arcane Variants—can only be obtained through the new Weekly Fortune Draw event. Each week, 76–78 ultra-rare cards will be distributed to winners over 53 weeks.
Fortune Draw Entry System:
Players can purchase a weekly pass for 125 DEC and earn entries by winning ranked matches, receiving them in chests, or buying them with Glint. The number of entries per batch depends on the player’s league and staked SPS, with higher stakes and leagues yielding more entries. Players with under 2,500 staked SPS cannot earn entries.
Energy & Glint Scaling:
The Glint cost for Energy increases with league rank, ranging from 50 at Bronze III to 10,000 at Champion I.
What I am most excited about with this new set is the reintroduction of unbound reward cards - the fact that the Gold foils and Black foils are tradable as soon as you get them is something which was sorely missed by a huge part of the community with the way the RB reward cards were handled. Getting a GF was more of a disappointment than something to look forward to cause you knew that if you wanted to sell that GF to grow your collection you had to pay a huge amount of DEC (for a GF Legendary for instance) and then earn like 5% on top of that if you have a buyer ready to pay such a large amount of DEC for the card. Moreover we also had GF draws which also made GFs a lot less exciting in general. And it's not about extracting value out of the system. Back in the day when I got a GF Oshannus and I sold it, I immediately invested the money I got back into my collection. That was very helpful and I am sure most people did the same. So, selling rarer cards in order to get money to grow your RF collection is why most people want to be able to obtain rare cards which can be sold directly back into the market.
Well this is for now, join me again next week for the next Community Challenge which will probably have to do with the actual new reward cards themselves. We'll see if that's the case... ;-)
Over and Out,
Referral
As a GF collector, I don't love that the guaranteed GF draws went away. I'm even more wary of the GF caps placed on each of the cards, although the way Yabapmatt spoke about it, they may be high enough that they are negligible.
Otherwise, most of the changes look like improvements to the reward card system. I never bothered with frontier mode, but I assume whatever reward card mechanics they used there were successful so they are coming to the rest of ranked. Great! Now I will need to re-educate myself about how the weekly raffles work and how to claim my daily chests. Looks like there's more prizes to be won.
I just wish we had some more info about what the future of survival mode looks like so I could make some more informed decisions with how I should proceed with my Rebellion reward collection. Do I burn all my RF for Glint for the new set since I already have a GF set for commons, rares, and epics? Will it be worth the bother to unlock these cards for 10x their burn rate when CA reward cards are half the price to unlock? How important is it to have the 2-power max copies of 1-mana legendaries compared to lots of 1 BCX copies to jam into survival lineups? I need answers!!!
Thanks for sharing! - @mango-juice
