Catching up with the Splinterlands Updates and News

Hello there.

A lot has been happening in the game, and the updates keep on coming. It's been a while since I've talked about these generally, so I'm excited to it again. The first one is the ongoing Auction event. 15 cards have been bought and it is encouraging to see that there have been different winners for all of them. What's even better is that the price of the cards seem to be increasing, and the last two have been sold for 1.4M DEC. This seems to be the current max, and there have been three cards sold at this price. I still do think that the latter part of the auction is where the cards will be cheaper as most of the whales have gotten their copy.

In four days, we will have the first GF Heloise up for auction. If the RF are going for 1.4M DEC, it will be exciting to see how much the first GF will reach. There will only be a max of 5, so not only will it be very exclusive, but there is a level of prestige to owning one. The only ones that seem rarer are the GF Archmage Arius [3 copies] and GF Mighty Dricken [1 copy]. The most expensive card for sale right now is Selenia Sky which is for sale for 12k USD which I think is a just for fun price since it is just 1BCX. The GF Lux Vega though which is a natural max level card like Heloise is at 5k USD, or 6.1M DEC.

There is an argument that Lux Vega is a Neutral Summoner that can be use in almost all battles and works with almost all teams, but the counter argument is that there are 63 copies of Lux Vega compared to Heloise's 5. The cheapest RF of Lux Vega is around 205k DEC [so GF is around 29.75x]. Since the cheapest Heloise is currently at 1M DEC for a RF copy, it is crazy to think that the GF can go to 29.75M DEC if we use the Lux Vega as a reference. That is double the price of the GF Selenia Sky that I said was just for fun price. At this point, I honestly have no idea what the price could be. The GF Selenia Sky has 22 total copies. I think the GF Heloise can realistically reach 20M DEC. Not only will it be good for the game, but also for the playerbase as a whole.

The next thing I want to talk about are the new Hall of Legend cards. I think these two are really powerful. Meriput Mossmender is the ultimate support monster, since not only does it provide good support abilities like Repair and Cleanse, but it also makes the other support monsters better because of its Echo ability. Echo makes heals, repair, and cleanse activate twice. So Taunt and support teams will be significantly better and harder to kill.

Nephket on the other hand is a glass cannon, one man army. It has two attack types, and its abilities work well with each other. Its Sneak lets it attack from the back and target the backline so it can take the opponent by surprise. Stun and Knock Out is a natural combo. Since the Range attack usually goes first [except during reverse speed ruleset] if it can apply the stun, the high melee attack can be buffed by the Knock Out. The Pierce works well with the buffed up Knockout attack too so that armor don't provide much safety. The Divine Shield might be out of place at first, but with Nephket's low HP, it can serve as its only survivability.

A recent update that the team released is the new battle screen. It definitely looks more modern compared to the previous one. But it did come with a lot of problems early on. There were a lot of complaints on both the PC and Mobile users, but it is a good thing that the team were able to improve it quickly. It was initially unwatchable for me, but after the fixes and enabling the "Use graphics acceleration when able" of Chrome, things are looking good.

Finally, there is the upcoming Survival Mode which is a new Ranked format. From my understanding it is like the Wild format where all cards can be used, but will not have any pass to play in. A big difference from the current formats is that Survival will not have energy. Players can play to their heart's content. The only limiting factor is their collection, skill, and luck. Once their monsters die, those can no longer be used in ANY battle for a specific cooldown. Any battle includes other ranked formats, brawls, and tournaments, so there is a lot of risk involved.

I think this is very interesting. I have a few cards that aren't being rented and can't be used in Modern. Survival mode can bring new life to these cards that are just collecting dust. I will avoid using my Modern cards since I will still play that format mostly, but I hope to win a few battles in Survival since it will have its own pool of rewards.

My excitement was deflated when I read that bots and battle helpers will be allowed. In this higher stakes battle where monsters dying results in a cooldown, players using battle helpers will be at a huge advantage. We were able to return the competitive integrity with Modern, so it feels like we are moving backwards with this. To make matters worse, bots are allowed. So all those bot farms that didn't want to buy Wild passes and are currently idle/sleeping can suddenly go back and start earning/extracting again. Sure there will be cooldowns, but we are talking about thousands of bots that can stagger their games to maximize when the pools are replenished. It is a bit funny when you read the tagline of "Format for the fearless". This is true, bots don't experience fear, and it will be their format if nothing changes.

From previous discussions I thought the team and the players were in agreement that the bot farms extracting so much SPS and reward cards really hurt the game. That is why there were multiple anti bot changes done over the years. But when we were slowly clawing our way back from the damage done, it seems the team wants to empower them again. Not only will bots put a large influx of SPS into the market, but they will again take a large piece of rewards from the actual players. Bots already have the Wild format, I do hope the team changes their mind and don't allow bots before release.

That is it for my overview of the recent updates and news. What do you think of the Survival Mode? Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, and if you have suggestions for improvement.

And as always, these are Not Financial Advice, and Do Your Own Research.

If you want to start playing Splinterlands, you can use my link:
Splinterlands Referral Link