Hi everyone, here is the fourth installment of my #hivejourney series of posts. I am happy to write this on time as scheduled, 15 days since my last update.
Content
If you have read my previous update, I mentioned there that I joined a #educationdebate contest initiated by @homeedders. It was actually a good experience as I was able to express my thoughts about the whether a degree is still relevant or not.
A couple of weeks after, I saw another contest, this time the topic was about freedom of education. I also joined the contest and my topic touched on the issue of education being a privilege or a right of the people. I did not get the top prize but I am happy to be acknowledged and was awarded with 1HBD. It's not bad actually, as my education post also got around $6 rewards, to be split between me and of course, the kind people who curated my post.
I haven't done much in terms of other content, aside from occasional posting of my rewards in Splinterlands and activities in the Actifit app. There's so much work I need to finish in my job and it consumes my time away from publishing my ideas in Hive. At the moment, I have three sets of photos just waiting for the text narrative of my gardening hobby. Hopefully I can post them in the coming days.
Splinterlands
Another season of Splinterlands had passed and I was excited to have finished the season with flying colors, at least against my personal target. In my previous update, I mentioned that I finished Gold II league. This time, even to my own surprise, I reached the Diamond III level.
Here are my rewards below. Just a note, I was able to take a screenshot of the first 30 chests and I am missing the last 10 ones. One thing I don't like with the website is it shows another window when opening chests but the moment you click on the bottom window, that rewards layer disappears on the screen and you can't go back to claim the rest (if there's a way, I do not know). Actually, whatever is in those chests, it will still be added to your account, but you lose the excitement of opening them, and you have to figure out what's been added to your account so you'll know what's inside the rest of those chests that you missed opening.
That excitement after opening those chests became a disappointment when I visited Splinterlands' Discord Channel and learned a couple of developments in the game - the use of potions for reward cards and the collection power. While @splinterlands said the latter is subject to change, I find it unfair even just the idea of implementing it initially.
When I learned about Splinterlands the first time, I got excited. Because it allows players to enjoy the game and at the same time work your way up the ladder without spending much. You just need your strategy in playing the game and you can build your card portfolio over time through rewards. I myself bought some booster packs in the app and through my peers but for most users who don't have extra resources to boost their card holding, relying on rewards in the foremost option.
Initially, all rewards in Splinterlands are cards, which were great. It allows users to boost their decks just by acquiring as much rewards as they can. Then suddenly, the rewards were mixed with DEC tokens and potions which has both negative and positive effect. On the negative side, instead of the player having a card reward, he/she might just end up getting a few DEC tokens instead, which is not even enough to buy a decent card. On the positive note, by acquiring potions, the player can have greater chances to get Rare, Epic, or Legendary card to add to his/her collection.
Then... they stopped allowing users to use potion cards for rewards. So the only way to use them is for opening booster packs, which most of the time can be acquired by buying them. I got a booster pack as a season reward as shown in the image above, but getting them is very rare. So for me, this move favors those who have the money to buy booster packs. In short, it's an economic move.
I like reading the Pro-Tip at the start of a battle. In fact, I find them very helpful. The one I posted above reinforces my view about playing Splinterlands overall. I believe that while level of the cards is important in every match, it mostly boils down to strategy (e.g. card selection as per ruleset, card placement, etc). As we Filipinos say... nasa diskarte yan.
I say that because of the plan to requirements to advance to a season league based on the overall value of your cards. I said before that in this recently-concluded season, I finished Diamond III level. If the current plan begins to be implemented, I will be stuck in Silver III regardless of my performance in the season as the collective DEC value of my cards is 18,473 (as of this writing). If I want to reach my best finish last season (Diamond III), I need to have at least 250,000 collective card DEC, which is more than 10 times what I have at the moment. It will take a very long time before I reach that level using the collective DEC requirement, unless I purchase more booster packs to beef up my deck. Because relying on getting cards from rewards will take ages for my portfolio to grow. Remember, I am stuck at Silver III regardless of my performance, so my daily quest will probably give my just 3 or 4 (I forgot the exact number) rewards chest, which are most likely to contain potions (which I can't use as I've said unless I get a booster pack) or DEC, or a common card which has very little value. Again, this is an economic move for users to buy more booster packs.
Sorry this is so long, I just can help but vent my frustration about a game I love playing.
Hive Hodlings and 2022 Challenge
I mentioned in my last update that I will start my 2022 Challenge next month after my 40th birthday. I cannot wait anymore, I think it's better to start it now, hence, I am merging my 2022 Challenge with Hive Hodlings content.
I won't be presenting any progress graph in this post. Instead, I will just start by stating the targets I want to achieve at the start of 2022.
Here are my targets:
- 10,000 Hive Power
- 10,000 staked LEO tokens
- A reputation of 70
As you may have noticed, I included LEO tokens in my target. Aside from I like the token being a part of my name, I believe that LEO is one of the strongest tokens in Hive-Engine. @leofinance must have been doing a good job in having the token maintain a strong and stable price in Hive-Engine. I might add some more tokens soon as I always actively post in tribes by using their tags. But for now, I will just have LEO tokens as one of my targets.
Sources? I look at author and curation rewards as sources to build up my portfolio. I am also considering to maximize curation rewards by delegating to curation initiatives like @tipu. I also have a side hustle of selling plants and I plan to set aside a portion of my earnings to pump my account holdings.
For now, here are my stats in the last four updates.
| Resource | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hive | 5.749 | 7.898 | 0.083 | 0.083 |
| Hive Power | 1,577.568 | 1,613.007 | 1,805.529 | 1,870.634 |
That's all for now folks, I hope you got something from this post and I appreciate if you follow my account.
Thank you for reading my post and I appreciate your feedback by commenting below.
Hive Journey Updates
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Wow, nice targeted hive journey.