Dar Gottem was never cut out for the forge. Other gnomes of New Wilhelmdale hammered steel into swords or armor; Dar hammered scraps into makeshift wings, plates, and a tail he swore would let him pass as a dragon. His obsession was plain to anyone who heard him roar from behind the smithy or saw him gnash his teeth at passersby.
It's been a long time since I've been able to post about Splinterlands because I moved back to the states from Laos. I figured I could get a cheap computer here or I'd get one for Christmas so I left my old piece of junk one there. I was right. I did get a new computer for Christmas and I'm using it to write this post now. (Thanks Mom!)
I haven't been back to the states since 2018 so I had a bit of reverse culture shock when I first arrived and had a hard time getting used to the fake ass food and cold weather, but it's alright now. I still can't believe how expensive everything is now. The only thing I drink now is water because of all the high prices so maybe that's a good thing.
This week's community challenge is to share about your Splinterlands story and how you rose up the ranks. If you are broke, new, or just want to earn from gameplay alone, then I'm the perfect person to listen to because I've quit the game three times and have started from scratch and climbed up to the Champion League during the Beta, Chaos, and current sets. Since I've been in Asia without any access to banking or PayPal I wasn't able to just ape in and pay to play like some people have. (There's no shame in that. It just wasn't an option for me.) Most of the cards I own have been won as reward cards or were converted from HIVE to DEC after posting here about Splinterlands every week.
My Splinterlands journey actually started back in the day on Steem. I saw dudes making like $700 a post on total shit-posts back in 2017 so I sold about $1,000 of my Bitcoin for Steem power and started blogging. I have yet to make a post earn over a hundred bucks, but it's been a good ride and I don't have any regrets. Posting every week has helped my writing skills improve and I've got a lot better at using the free and online Photoshop clone called Photopea.
I don't do anything that hard when using Photopea to create images for blog posts. I just create 1080 by 720 images and mostly use the magic eraser tool and layer image art I get from the game. Even if you've never used Photoshop before you could easily do what I do.
I do use Grammarly to correct my spelling and grammar and I also use the Read Aloud extension to have the AI voice read my post to me before I post because sometimes you miss mistakes when proofreading, but will catch them when you actually hear it read out loud. It also helps tune my writing to the tone I want. I NEVER use LLMs or AI to write my posts and neither should you because you won't earn anything because Hive uses AI to detect AI and you'll get put on a blacklist if you use AI to write for you. Besides, it's a scumbag lazy ass thing to do. No one wants to read that AI generated crap anyways. I think it's OK to use AI with your images, but don't use it to write. If you do, at least use it as a guide or suggestion and rewrite it in your OWN WORDS and not just be another copy-and-paste-from-AI-cunt.
If you are a total newbie to Splinterlands then there has never been a better time than now to start building because the new game mode really helps you get started. You can get a bunch of cards free just going through the Campaign Mode. Even if you are an OG like me you can still get a lot out of Frontier Mode because you can get even more Archons that you can use in Modern gameplay. It only took me a month to get EVERY card in Frontier Mode to MAX-level. That is not something I can say about any other mode in the game. You can also earn three packs a day once you make it to the Gold League which you can sell for DEC for more cards or a Wild Pass each season. You can also enter drawings for Black cards each week, but I haven't been so lucky yet. Actually I enjoy playing in Frontier Mode more than any other mode because it's limited to only the Foundations set of cards and there aren't so many options there are in other game modes which keeps the gameplay fun and simple like it was back in the Alpha and Beta days.
I suppose you could get along just fine in Splinterlands on just your starter, Foundations, and reward cards, but if you know how to use the market, you'll be way stronger over time. If I knew what I know now when I first started, I would probably be a whale today, but there wasn't any Youtubers talking about the game giving insights when I started and I also didn't know you had to be active on Discord to get the best info.
I must be a bad salesman because I've only been able to recruit one person to this game, but he did very well. He started with just the $10 starter pack and played the game relentlessly and constantly flipped cards on the market until his combined deck was worth about $14,000. I am only a passive player and can't remember how much I bought my cards for so I've never been a flipper, but he showed what is possible. I think he played 12 hours a day for years before he got there. You'd probably make more money just working another job, but he was working in a hotel in Laos and had tons of downtime to play and flip.
As I said before, I'm not interested in flipping cards, but I am a collector and love having as many MAX-level cards in my deck for my bot to play with in Wild and to look at while I pat myself on my back looking through my collection. You can MAX cards out slowly which is a grind or you can do what I did and wait for the FOMO to end, go to the market, and put the filters to be MAX-level and sort by cheapest first. As you can see from the screenshot above there are a bunch of MAX-level cards on the market for about $2. This is a sad story for those who dropped big money on these cards, but a good opportunity to get your Wild deck strong while we all linger in this prolonged alt-coin bear market. I usually earn about $12 a post here on hive which turns out to an actual $3 in DEC that I can spend on cards so I've been scrapping the bottom of the barrel picking up the cheapest MAX-level card I lacked and could afford each week. You may think the cards above are lame, but they are all useful in different situations and rulesets and having as many as possible helps the bot and YOU have more options. I'm not the smartest or most strategic guy in the world, but I have a large diversity of cards and I'm sure I've beat many people and bots smarter than I am simply because I have more cards than they did.
Splinterlands was designed so someone with a variety could beat someone with that one OP card, but nothing is perfect and some cards are simply way OP. There is always one card in each set that is a bit OP, but this new Dar 'Gottem' Gearnut is ridiculous. I mean a level one copy has 20 health? What the hell is that? If any card in the game needs to be nerfed, it's this one. Well now that I'm back in the states I've been getting my PayPal, and bank situation set up again and noticed that that class action lawsuit against Facebook was actually real and they sent me about $35 so I used it to buy Dar 'Gottem' Gearnut and Barashkukor for about $15 each. These cards are rare, but I would get totally wrecked anytime I came up against them so I'm glad they're finally in my deck. I honestly don't think I've lost a battle using Dar 'Gottem' Gearnut yet! I'm a bit sad he power creeped and even overshadowed my whale from Chaos, but happy to have him in my corner.
You and I are probably NOT going to make big bucks playing Splinterlands, but if we do it won't happen overnight. I actually like playing the game and consider myself more of a collector than a player so I won't be disappointed if I don't end up with a Lambo and if I do make it big, I'll just sell my cards for HBD, put it into savings and live off that sweet 15% APR before I buy any stupid shit, but let's be honest, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon so don't count on it, but if it does I hope this post helped you get there. They key things you need to remember are to be patient, don't FOMO, slowly build your card diversity, and just enjoy playing the game and the rest should fall in place. Thanks for reading my post today. I hope you all have a great 2026! The chase is real!
This week's Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge:
@splinterlands/splinterlands-community-engagement-challenge-paths-to-power
Amazing art by the Splinterlands community:
@splinterlands/splinterlands-art-contest-week-376
