We plan to implement the following updates on Tuesday, January 28th, around 10 am EST. There will be a short downtime during the release. We will send a notification to all players logged into the website 10 - 15 minutes before the downtime and we will not take the game down until all live tournaments are finished.
While we do not expect any issues, we recommend that all bots or other automated scripts which utilize the Splinterlands APIs be disabled during the downtime.
We plan to implement the following changes to the in-game tournament system on the date specified above:
The majority of Splinterlands-sponsored tournaments will have an entry fee of 10 DEC, even if you have reached the required league. Having the tournaments be free to enter has encouraged people to register as many accounts as possible in the off chance that they might end up getting a prize just by pure luck. We hope that a 10 DEC entry fee will be enough to deter that behavior while still being small enough to allow all serious players to participate. We will continue to monitor this and adjust as necessary. All fees collected this way will be burned.
The system will no longer allow accounts to enter Alpha or Gold Card Only tournaments if the account does not have the minimum amount of Alpha or Gold Cards respectively. Previously, this was only enforced through the game website, so it could be circumvented by broadcasting the enter_tournament transaction directly. Going forward the check will be implemented on the back end both when entering and when the tournament starts. The minimum requirement for entering these tournaments is at least 1 Alpha or Gold Summoner and at least 6 Alpha or Gold Monsters.
The players who receive a bye in the first qualifier round of tournaments will be selected randomly, rather than based on when they entered.
Lastly, it will now be possible to enter tournaments with a DEC entry fee using the posting authority for accounts that have the "Require Active Authority" setting enabled. This way players that are renting accounts will still be able to enter the Splinterlands sponsored tournaments with the new 10 DEC entry fee. Note that this only applies to entry fees in DEC.
Additionally, we are investigating whether there should be changes to Novice/Kobold tournaments to encourage newer players to participate and we welcome feedback and suggestions on what changes, if any, should be made.
We also have many other more involved changes to the tournament system in the works, including new "allowed cards" options, and new formats, and we will keep the community updated on our progress with those as they get closer to being ready for release.
The following are back-end / API changes to how potions will be handled in the game. There are no player-facing changes here so this section is only applicable to third-party developers and data analysts.
Previously, potions had been considered "items" which were somewhat like NFTs with a certain number of charges. We will be changing the potion charges to be fungible tokens and be handled through the "balances" API endpoints just like DEC and booster packs. Please note that potions will still be non-transferrable.
Going forward, the number of potion charges a player has can be found through the /players/balances API endpoint. The "token" name for the various potions will be: LEGENDARY, GOLD, QUEST, and MYSTERY.
All old "item"-related endpoints will be removed and should no longer be used. Players' potion charges will be automatically converted to the new balances system during the downtime when these changes are released.
The Gelatinous Cube reward card accidentally gets a Speed increase at level 8 which then goes away at level 9. This will also be fixed as part of this release so its Speed will be 1 at every level as originally intended.
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