Spellbook-Only Challenge: Day 90 - Report #5

As a Splinterlands player I try to use the whole HIVE ecosystem to my advantage. I can convert any tokens I gain using HIVE into DEC and thus using HIVE fits into a larger strategy for advancing in Splinterlands.

But with the change eliminating DEC rewards for bronze-III players, I became curious how difficult it would be to advance in Splinterlands using a spellbook alone. I decided to start an alt account to find out. Thus my spellbook-only challenge was born. My goal is to not bring any more funds into this account beyond the spellbook purchase. So, no tokens from blogging. No buying credits for expansion packs. The only way the account can add funds is by selling/swapping/renting out game assets that were gained by playing the game.

On day 67 of my challenge I reported that I was continuing to have great luck with my rewards, drawing many cards including lots of rares and even a gold-foil common. At the time of my last report I had accumulated 180 DEC and 21 cards with a total collection power of 315.

Speaking of my gold-foil common card, it is a Pelacor Conjurer. In my last report I mentioned that I looked forward to putting it to use in battle.

Although I never reported it, I had also accumulated a touch over 250 credits which I failed to mention because I failed to see their value. That has changed!

On day 76 of my challenge, 9 days after my last report, I was about ready to admit to myself that my reward-card luck had finally dried up. In the last 9 days I had received just one reward card, a mighty Venari Heatsmith, and my fourth one at that. But then…

Just when I thought the law of averages was catching up with me, my daily reward came up…

…and in the following two weeks…

So, in the span of 15 days I caught 5 reward cards, 2 common, 2 rare and 1 epic. Not bad at all while playing in the bronze II league! I guess lady luck isn't quite finished with me yet!

While contemplating how to best use my gold-foil Pelacor Conjurer, I came to a surprising conclusion. Really, this card didn’t have much value for me as a playable card. I don’t use the light splinter often, and when I do the Pelacor Conjurer doesn’t really fit in. The most value I could get from this card was from renting it out. So, that’s what I did.

Enter the epic. While I think the Lava Launcher would get more play than the Pelacor Conjurer, this card seems to really work best in very high mana matches. And since they don’t come up very often, and even when they do, fire doesn’t seem like the best splinter choice, even with the Lava Launcher. So off to the rental market went the Lava Launcher. Seeing a pattern here?

I made my original break into the bronze-II league when I caught a Venari Wavesmith as my first reward card. Before the Chaos Legion starter card switch, this was a powerful reward card. And, by renting it out I was quickly able to rent enough power to reach bronze II. Seems I'm returning to my roots, with a pair of cards helping to offset my rental costs.

I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t rent out the rest of my unused reward cards. But they just aren’t powerful enough to garner the 0.1 DEC minimum rental fee. But while I was poking around the market to rent out my cards, I noticed that the floor price for cards for sale was about 3 cents. And many of these cards were the very reward cards I couldn’t rent out. And so the idea hit me. I have 250 credits; that’s 25 cents. I have the funds to buy enough of these cheap cards to bring the power of some of my unused reward cards up to a rentable level!

So I went shopping. I had the most Venari Heatsmiths with 4. And after my shopping spree…

I was immediately able to combine these cards and rent out the higher powered card!

I still had more resources I was willing to spend (including a portion of my DEC), and I was able to combine my excess Pelacor Mercenaries up to a rentable level as well. With the Mercs I kept a 1 BCX card to play with as well, as I sometimes use this flier to good effect in earthquake matches.

Now I have 4 cards rented out, and they are covering about 40 percent of the cost of the cards I am renting to maintain my position in bronze II. With my unused cards now contributing by offsetting my rental costs, I am accumulating DEC at an appreciably quicker pace. So I believe I have hit upon my best route forward. As I am able, I will use my credits and DEC to bring all of my excess reward cards up to power levels at which they can be rented out. I can use the proceeds to offset costs elsewhere. And a big bonus to this approach is that it allows all of my reward cards to contribute immediately. If I catch another Heatsmith, I can always pull the one I'm renting-out back, add in the one I just received, and then rent out the now higher powered card for a slightly higher fee!

After implementing my new strategy by buying and combining a bunch of common reward cards, I now own 19 cards with 545 collection power.

I think I have done very well, considering that I have only bought a spellbook and played the game! In my first 3 months I have rented my way into bronze II and am over half way to owning enough power that I wouldn’t need to rent my way there, if I didn’t want to. Although I suspect it’s better to rent out the higher power cards I can’t use and rent more useful cards to actually use in play. I further expect with my newly increased income, I will progress more quickly in the future.

I will keep you posted, of course.

For now, I plan to keep playing in the bronze-II league. I will continue to implement my strategy of bringing my unused reward cards up to a rentable power level and then renting them out. When I have at least all of my common reward cards bringing in rental income, I will re-evaluate my position and decide how to best make the leap to the next league.

Thanks for stopping by. I will report further progress as soon as it’s appropriate. If you are interested in seeing how it goes, feel free to follow me. I will add the #tpbjustplay tag to any posts I make in regards to this challenge.