Splinterforge. Why SL players should play it & why SF Devs need to work on fundamentals

Hello everyone!
Today I would like to drop few words about new hero in the town.
I heard about Splinterforge few months ago.
I thought - another game on Hive blockchain? Sure! I jumped in and well... hm...
Game reminded me my first and not the last nightmare in p2e games.

Cryptoblades :D
I'm sure part of you remember that great XD game!
Oldshool graphic from "Eye of the Beholder", mindless clicks and lambo in dreams.
I thought - "well, I put my hand into fire once and it should be enough".

Some time later SF devs showed in Splinterlands AMA.
So it was some kind of sign that SF is not a scam. I decided to give it a second chance,
but well... "ranked, tournaments, brawl and brawl again" in Splinterlands and I just forgot about SF.

As I mentioned few times before - we have small polish nerds community on Discord.
We gather every few days on voice and talk for hours about all nerd stuff around Splinterlands.
My friend @maxmaka mentioned SF few times, but we were deaf on his calling.
I used to say - "You know Max, I can dig in my basement for my old Amiga 1200. I have few games like that, and I dont need to spend a penny"
But few weeks ago we said - "ok, ok lets give SF a chance".

I started carefully. I just bought few packs, got some gear and start battling.
I was FAR FAR from top 100 and Forge rewards. With main account and few alt I have I started to farm Forge token, change it to DEC, and buy cards in Splinterlands.
Meantime my other SL friend @atnazo went heavy into Splinterforge. He bought far more packs than me, traded on SF Discord to get better gear and fought for leaderboard. With success.
So thx to Atno's inspiration I followed his advices and made some investments into my equipment and cards.

Let me share some screenshots.

My actual gear.
This is nothing too crazy, but fair.
I started from few common/rare parts and slowly change to legendary/epic.
My gear is mainly for warrior, this is not maxed for Bronze Boss, and I lack diversity.
I mean I dont have good damage output for ranger/mage class.

This is what my warrior looks like.
As I said. Far from maxed, but the most important stat - dmg is 8/10 and low speed is buffed with Jacek and Kitty.

Here are examples of evolution in damage in battles.
From low gear with no key cards up to gear I shared above with cards which are must have.
Second picture shows I turned the counter.
There is cap for Forge token you can gain from battles.
And it shows in one picture two ways of playing Splinterforge.
You can just farm Forge from battles and fight for leaderboard for bigger rewards.
I will write about those two ways below.

Personally I play both. One on my main account, second on my alts.
Lets cover second one, first.

I think an environment to play like that have to change ASAP.
Why? Because there is a huge possibility for exploit.
We all know how bots hurt Splinterlands ecosystem. There are some arguments that bots in SL have some positive aspects, too. Bots farms rent those thousands of cards, provide battle liquidity and gave us chance to buy reward cards cheap.
So imagine bots in Splinterforge. They can print Forge token for almost 0 cost with nothing in return.
Here is an exemple.

This is my rental account.

My assets are worth around 900$ and I get 425 dec daily.
I rent in few key cards for farming Forge token and those cards are worth 45$.
It costs me less than 20 dec daily.
Those 20 dec worth cards plus ghost cards we have access from spellbook can farm 200-300 Forge daily, so around same DEC amount.
Look.
This is 2 days of mindless clicking in SF.
I have office work, so I can do it manually, just between loading pages for my work.
I had to invest almost 1k$ in Splinterlands cards to have same passive income.

There are two conclusions.

1. For players, especially low leagues, if you play SL you need to play SF as well.
   You can farm Forge token and change it to DEC for almost 1:1.
   There is no better way to earn with low cost and use those resources to level up your SL's deck in exemple
2. For SF devs - you need to change it. Bots can destroy your game.

Ok. So lets talk about second way to play Splinterforge.
Leaderboard.

There are two steps to be made. At least.
First - you need to invest in gear. I spent 50k Forge in trades, maybe a little more + few packs with medium drops.
Second - you need to rent/buy few key cards like Jacek, Kraken and most imortant - Kitty.
With my warrior build I could achieve top 150, so 1500 Forge every 2-3 days, not counting tokens from battles.
I set bid on Peakmonsters for Kitty and one day it got filled.
I think I will keep it forever, or until owner will cancel the deal, or when I will look for lvl 3.
I started to use her in silver tournaments and there is one thought I got -
This is some kind of masochism not to play with Kitty.

When I added Kitty to my build, with which I am able to reach the top 150, my results got a huge boost.
And suddenly I went from top 150 to top 50.
Of course, I don't know how it will end, but the change is fundamental. Because of only one card.

There is a spoonful of tar in a barrel of honey.
There's basically no fundamental difference between playing low tier just for battle rewards and playing "higher" with better gear and key cards.
When we find the right build for the rules of the boss, it is enough to repeat them indefinitely, or rather his death.
At some point, the game comes down to whether you have Kitty or Llama.

I would have a humble appeal to the developers of Splinterforge.
Take advantage of the Splinterlands experience.
Introduce more rules that exclude specific elements, legendary cards, etc. Anything that would require a change of strategy in every fight and having only a few key cards wasn't a sure win on the leaderboard.

To sum up.

Splinterforge proves to be much more than a Cryptoblades specter.
The fact that we can use resources from Splinterlands is great.
The fact that SF is on the Hive blockchain is a blessing.
Splinterforge has a chance to become a nice puzzle game and not just a free token farm where players only think about making ROI and cashing out.
The developers of the game face a serious task - they need to introduce more variables so that the gameplay is definitely less predictable.
If this happens - then playing this game will become something obvious for every Splinterlands player and will certainly give you reasons to be ready to invest more funds.
What do I wish for this game!

Image licence: ISTOCK
Edited with Canva
Fonts thx to: CoolText
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