Splinterlands The Digital Collectible Card Game

About Splinterlands

Splinterlands is a digital collectible card game that runs on blockchain technology. It is built on the Steem blockchain and is one of the most popular decentralized applications (dApps) on the Steem platform. Players collect and trade cards featuring fantastical creatures in the game and engage in strategic battles against each other using those cards. The game has a vibrant community of players and is known for its unique gameplay and innovative use of blockchain technology.

Buying and selling cards on Splinterlands can be profitable if the players have experience trading cards. The game is free to play, but if a player wants to earn real money, they need to purchase the Summoner’s Spellbook with $10 and rent cards to claim rewards. Players can also spend time in Practice Mode to hone their skills and develop strategies to win the game. DEC and SPS token holders can also enjoy additional benefits by holding coins in the Splinterlands account.

The ranking

The leagues offered by Splinterlands range from Novice to Champion. Each league ensures that players can find opponents of the same card collection and skill. The Splinterlands leagues include:

• Novice
  The novice league is attained by every new player, including those with inactive accounts. Novice league battles are generally fought against players of the same level.
• Bronze
  The Bronze league implements certain Power limitations and rule sets where players get an opportunity to win Bronze Chests that offer a probability of 0.2% of having the Legendary cards and a probability of 0.5% of having a Gold Foil card.
• Silver
  According to this Splinterlands Silver League guide, the competition begins at this level, and the requirements for Collection Power also increase. Additionally, this league offers a double boost for all DCE tokens in the Reward Chest.
• Gold
  According to this Splinterlands Gold League guide, this level can be quite challenging even for those with the maximum level of decks, as they cannot use the cards to their fullest potential. Apart from standing a chance to win Gold Chests, players can enjoy DEC boosts of 8x for all DEC tokens in the rewards' chest.
• Diamond
  The Diamond league separates the pros from the skilled Splintlanders. All card types can be played in this league, and the lower-level cards get tough competition. In addition, the Diamond League offers a DEC boost of 16 times for all DEC tokens in the rewards' chest.
• Champion
  Lastly, the Champions League has three levels that decide the best of the best players. Between each Champion level, there is a gap of 500 points instead of the standard 300-point gap. In this case, the DEC boosts 48 times for all DEC tokens in the rewards' chest.

Activity and ecosystem

New players

In my opinion, the most vital metric to keep track of is the number of new Summoner's Spellbooks purchased, as this reflects the true number of new players entering the game.

(January 16-01 to 29–01 stats)

Signups (Total) 6,361

Spellbooks (Total) 326

Signups (Daily Avg.) 293

Spellbooks (Daily Avg.) 16

• Out of the 2,055 new accounts created last week, only 112 new accounts (5.45%) bought Summoner's Spellbook.
• In 2023, there were 6,361 new accounts created, but only 326 Summoner's Spellbooks were purchased, which is only a 5.12% conversion rate. So in my mind, only 326 new players have entered Splinterlands for the year.

Daily activity

Below is the average daily number of players, battles, and transactions in Splinterlands.

(January 16-01 to 29–01 stats)

Active Players 225,165

Battles 4,744,095

Transactions 4,258,768

• On average, every Splinterlands account that was active last week battled 21 times and made 19 transactions per day.
• The peak number of active players for last week was 240,148, which was on Thursday, 26th of January.
• In 2023, the peak number of active players was 271,118 on Monday, the 16th of January.

Economy

Below is the total amount and volume of Splinterlands cards purchased, the high and low for SPS, and the average DEC price.

Cards Purchased (Amount) 1,409,131

Cards Purchased (Volume) $970,000

Closing thoughts

Splinterlands, currently, probably has the most innovative deck-building mechanism and battlefield structure in the blockchain card game genre. However, the game is tough to grasp at the start since you are just thrown into it with a limited selection of cards at your disposal. The gameplay factor could have been more engaging instead of the current hands-off simulation style of cards bashing into each other until someone wins.

It takes a lot of time and effort to evolve as a player in Splinterlands, which is incredibly rewarding. The game can be seen as pay-to-win from a particular perspective, considering you can jumpstart your journey by researching and buying the strong cards in the current meta. However, Splinterlands’ renting mechanism assists in countering this matter, allowing new players to rank up faster using more powerful cards while not spending as much.

“Be a part of the Flagship community revolutionizing the economy; our captains are the mapmakers.”