It's been 12 days since I launched a brand new Splinterlands account to determine if Splinterlands can still be profitable for new players.
The answer has been an astounding YES, with this account turning a profit directly in game in 4 different leagues, bronze through diamond, with essentially only a Chaos deck.
While sitting with a max Chaos set in Diamond league feels like a nice sweet spot, it's time to push the envelope. There are many different directions to go, but I decided to dive into a hot topic:
Just how good is Eternal Tofu?
What will the addition of Eternal Tofu, a card that costs (550 DEC) more than the rest of my deck combined, do for both my rating and my profits?
I spent just barely over 3k DEC renting SPS and cards to find out!
The Results
Starting with 40 initial energy, I played the energy on the account down to zero 19 hours into my rentals. At this point I claimed my SPS, and using the Xbot liquidity tool converted it to 3266 DEC, for a 250 DEC profit!
I unfortunately got held up and did not get back to use the fresh energy that regenerated over the next 29 hours (or the energy gained from chests earned during that time!). This means there was a lot of DEC left on the table, although the energy I "wasted" is nearly equal to the banked energy I started with, so you could also say those cancel out and this was profitable without needing the energy exploit. I still have several days left on my SPS rentals as well, so there is plenty of excess value here.
After adding Tofu to the deck it was simply easy mode initially. I spiked up from 3440 rating to the edge of Diamond I/Champion III. I then spent most of my battles in Champ 3, typically earning 8+ SPS per win. I got a few wins away from Champ 2 at one point, and I believe I had a legit chance to finish in Champ 2 had I been able to finish off the season.
More Observations
In terms of instant profit this was very similar to my previous deck without Tofu. I would need a larger sample size to declare one superior. But there is a lot of extra value here that comes outside of pure ranked battle earnings, such as more reward cards, glint, and the ability to be more competitive in brawls and either perform better or even get accepted into a better guild. I definitely believe renting Tofu was worth it.
Speaking of guilds, I did join a guild, the Emerald Knights, and earned 42 SPS in my first guild brawl, going 4-0 in battles.
I wish I had tracked exact W/L percentages, but it certainly felt like I performed well any chance I could use Tofu and very poorly outside of that. I really did spam Tofu. At one point I was trying not to spam Tofu, thinking my opponents would easily counter it if they knew it was coming, but in general my opponents either weren't checking previous battles or simply didn't know how to counter Tofu well. Spamming Tofu was effective. In battles where I couldn't use Tofu, I was typically severely outmatched in terms of pure deck quality.
The skill level needed to run this actually felt LOWER with Tofu, even though I was playing at a higher rating. It's not that Tofu doesn't require skill, but learning how to play combos with 1 summoner in 2 elements is a lot easier than learning a wide range of summoner and monster combinations. I felt like I did make some high skill level wins to steal some wins without Tofu, but is was mostly just about using Tofu properly. Splinterlands should probably be adding more counter cards to help fight back against Tofu usage.
Up Next
After this test run I am completely convinced Tofu is worth the rental price. But is Tofu the only option here? Would it be better to pick up a mix of other Rebellion monsters and summoners and go with a more balanced approach as opposed to only a single, OP card?
Stay tuned, as I've built a new deck spending 550 DEC on other Rebellion cards to find out!
Disclaimer
Disclaimer: For transparency (and to make sure I'm not flagged for multi accounting), this is a fresh account being operated by Bulldog1205 taking on the role of a new player as a guide to help show how Splinterlands can still be lucrative even for new players on a tight budget.
To comply with the curation TOS prohibiting multiaccounting the social challenges I will not be submitting social challenges for curation rewards under my main account.
Please do not upvote this post if you were linked to it due to its association with any of Bulldog1205's content or are otherwise biased towards supporting Bulldog1205. I would like the upvote earnings to be representative of what a true new player might earn. Thank you!
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I usually hate facing Tofu since the earth element has Immortalis which makes it difficult to predict the opponent's team and which damage case to focus my team on, whether magic or melee damage, but seeing that it can help me get out of Champion III I will have to use it.
Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
