The Power "Wall"
This I didn’t consider. As I got a few more battles (and wins) in, my Rating got to 743, therefore making me eligible for Bronze I.
Too bad I did not realize that I also needed my cards to have 5,000 Power… I am currently sitting at only 2,830 since many of my daily rentals expired and the only cards I own are the following:
These four guys account of a total of 85 DEC (Power is the total DEC value off all playable cards, including those rented and owned and excluded those rented out or listed for sale in the market).
To get to the 5,000 Power required for Bronze I, I will need an extra 4,915 (5,000 – 85) DEC value once the last of my current rental expire. That begs the question: how many and which cards will get me there with the minimum cost? I have found this helpful chart on Discord, that can be used to do that math:
Doing the Math
Since I need 4,915 DEC, I could either get a combination of these card types or one that’s high enough.
After checking the market and playing around with the filters, I did find a Frozen Soldier (Rare, Alpha Gold version = 6,000 DEC) I could rent for $0.1319/day (approximately 23 DEC). A relatively small price to pay to advance in league so I went with it.
Boom baby! Once I met the Power requirement, I got my Tier Advancement notification and my season reward got updated:
Now, it seems that I will get bumped if at season’s end I do not meet the requirements for Bronze I, therefore I will likely look to rent as we get close to that date, but at least now that I have done some testing I can be prepared. I expect rental prices to go up significantly in the next few days as I assume many players will follow the same strategy to get their Loot Chests.
I feel like natural progression will take a lot of time because of these Power requirements. Cards are expensive at the moment (the cheapest Rare Alpha/Promo Gold card for sale in the market at the time I am writing is Silvershield Bard, which will set you back $68 or approximately 12,000 DEC).
That’s a lot of grinding before being able to accumulate that much DEC, considering that I seem to be averaging 4-5 DEC per win without use of special cards that give boosts.
Final Thoughts
I’m sure there are ways to accelerate the progress without breaking the bank, after all I’m trying to navigate this game on a budget as I feel like that is the true potential for play-to-earn games.
Most players do not have thousands of dollars to invest in the early stages, and anyway where is the fun in buying your way up the leagues? 😉
Spending a bunch of money on cards to progress faster is basically back to the pay-to-win concept that game developers have imposed on us for years, and projects like Splinterlands have the potential to subvert that status quo if given the chance.
THANK YOU for reading this, let me know if you have found best practices or good strategies to progress in the game!