Splinterlands Strategies: Keep Buyers, BEWARE!

So you want a Keep. How can you not like one of these shiny pieces of old, decaying brickwork complete with green dripping mould that doubles as a tax collector?

I was lucky and was handed one as part of my FIFTY-EIGHT plots of Celestine, Tract 6, during the initial opening of the land cards. I knew I had a 58% chance of bagging one and was lucky, and more so because the other plots that I don't own are mostly worked by other players.

...'a Keep in the middle of a Swamp for a snip at $950, but should you buy? read on'...

Meanwhile other players have not been so lucky but have the overwhelming desire to be a tax collector (of Grain, SPS and Research for now). I will be honest with you, owning a Keep in today's world is somewhat underwhelming and needs some work from the team.

Every 7 days, you spend 1000 Grain which is not a big deal if you have another bunch of grain-generating lands in the same tract, click 'Harvest' and then swear loudly if you don't get a Totem.

The last two times I have harvested, I got no Totem and that's down to my peon monsters that are poor, under-nourished and of a low social rank…. however…

...'Harvest time, not likely at 2% full. Fat chance of a Totem'...

Let's get back to the subject matter and the whole point of this article. Keeps are going for $750 upwards, some at more ridiculous prices.

...'Keeps are equal, but some Keeps are more equal than others'... - George Orwell.

I will say to you, BEWARE if you want to buy a Keep as you might be buying a big nothing. Several of those ‘cheap’ Keeps are owned by Land Mavericks who bought whole Regions and are offloading some of their Keeps to pull back some cash.

Why is this bad you might say? Well, these Tract owners can't fill the land with monsters so they belong to the Maverick, and if you buy the Keep, it could be a redundant keep and at the mercy of said Maverick!

...'Wolf is selling a lot of Keeps, but no BOGOFF sale. Don't know what means, try Google'...

Staking monsters is an expensive business, and if you have several hundred plots not doing anything, due to the DEC staking requirements, then why not flog a few Keeps?

Yeah,.. at the expense of the poor buyer who now has a non-productive Keep.

I know several other players who have bought Keeps blindly, and some have fallen foul of this trick which is not an act of malice by the seller, but… 'simply business'.

with open(filename, 'w') as file:
    for deed_id in range(start_id, end_id + 1):
        url = f"https://vapi.splinterlands.com/land/deeds/{deed_id}"
        response = requests.get(url)

        deed_data = response.json().get('data', {})
        region_uid = deed_data.get('region_uid')
        player = deed_data.get('player')
        worksite_type = deed_data.get('worksite_type')
        listed = deed_data.get('listed')
        listing_price = deed_data.get('listing_price')
        in_use = deed_data.get('in_use')
        UIDData = deed_data.get('deed_uid')
        output_line = ""

Intrigued by this, I wrote a script to check a tract and get the production data from it in the form of Grain, SPS and Research per hour. While the data is not 100% accurate it will let you know if you are buying a 'dodgy' Keep.

@abh12345 recently purchased the cheapest Keep on the marketplace at just over $700, but did he get a good deal or does his Keep yield fuck all every 7 days?

I worked with him on this, so he knew before buying that it was not a 'dud'. Not mentioning any names, but another player I know quite well got somewhat robbed some time ago with a terrible Keep due to 85% of the plots being dormant and belonging to the previous seller.

@abh12345 has some big Grain farmers and should thank @orrkis for placing such prestigious high PP monsters within the tract, thus generating a nice wad of tax for him.

The overall data for this tract is as follows:

Region: Osburg Tract: 03
Uncleared Land: 24
Cleared, but Not Used: 5
Total, Idle Land: 29
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 14156.08542002
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 3.61318624
Research Per Hour for Tract: 25.823764500000003

'Uncleared Land' is as is appears, it's full of clutter, weeds, old rusty implements, worn tyres, stinking used underwear with 'skidders' and needs attention.

'Cleared, but Not Used' means a monster gang has cleared it, and then bailed to clear another plot. It's a common tactic and Splinterlands encourages this.

I ran the same script against the Tract of which I am the Keep owner. It showed similar stats, being worse in Grain Production, but more yielding in both SPS and Research.

Region: Celestine Tract: 06
Uncleared Land: 10
Cleared, but Not Used: 14
Total, Idle Land: 24
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 8787.83844
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 4.0647946600000004
Research Per Hour for Tract: 38.359507900000004

Thank you @extraball for working so hard on your Reseach Hut and giving me a decent tax return. @lordfrost has some idle plots that are for sale, but at the prices listed I will wait until he gets a little more desperate.

It’s not ALL my Tract but I am the majority holder and while Research seems like vapourware, that’s my strongest generator.

Which one would you prefer? I would say @abh12345 has the edge.

Before I share the code so you can save yourself pain, let me show you what the cheapest Keeps on sale will net you.

$728 is now the cheapest one, and what rings my alarm bells right away is one seller trying to offload THEE Keeps. Is that seller a Region owner, let's have a look.

As well as these Tracts, he wants to offload the Region Castle for Val De Lun; a warning signal.

One manual step you will need to perform if you want to use this script is figuring out the start and end plot numbers for a tract. I will end up adding all this data into the script eventually but for now, it’s something to work your brain.

To get the data for Val De Lun, Tract 7, open the plot and check the URL.

See the number, 96807? That means the Keep is Plot 7 in this tract, but we need the range. In this case it's, 96801 – 96900. Not too tough to figure out unless you are a mindless moron.

Add it here in the script…

region = "Val De Lun"
tract = "07"
start_id = 96801
end_id = 96900

This Keep is not bad at all, mostly due to @vugtis running some of the Grain fields but otherwise is mostly unused.

Region: Val De Lun Tract: 07
Uncleared Land: 71
Cleared, but Not Used: 13
Total, Idle Land: 84
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 8384.16
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 4.4
Research Per Hour for Tract: 7.3149999999999995

What you need to look at is if there are any of the other Plots for sale. If @vugtis decides to pull his monsters, then you are clawing at next to no tax.

This post is getting overly long, but let me show you one last Keep, and one you should avoid. The $950 Briarwood, Tract 3. While Briarwood is a desirable region with leafy forests, and bounding squirrels jumping everywhere, this Keep should not be bought. Let me show you the data.

Region: Briarwood Tract: 3
Uncleared Land: 99
Cleared, but Not Used: 1
Total, Idle Land: 100
Grain Per Hour for Tract: 0
SPS Per Hour for Tract: 0
Research Per Hour for Tract: 0

This is every buyer’s nightmare. All the plots are owned by someone else, and you have a crappy Keep that will generate nothing for you.

I don’t need to share the script in too much depth as there is a link at the bottom of this article, so you can grab it yourself, change some things (there is some redundant code in there), and get more attributes.

def fetch_yield_data(UID, region_UID, plot, total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield, worksite_type):
    url = f"https://vapi.splinterlands.com/land/stake/deeds/{UID}/assets"
    response = requests.get(url)

    data = response.json()
    monsters = data.get('data', {}).get('cards', [])
    total_production_per_hour = 0

    for monster in monsters:
        production_per_hour = float(monster.get('work_per_hour', 0))
        total_production_per_hour += production_per_hour

    if worksite_type == "Grain Farm":
        print(bcolors.GREEN + f" {region_UID}-{plot} (GRAIN - Combined Production Per Hour: {total_production_per_hour})" + bcolors.END)
        total_grain_yield += total_production_per_hour
    elif worksite_type == "Shard Mine":
        print(bcolors.RED + f" {region_UID}-{plot} (SHARD MINE - Combined SPS Per Hour: {total_production_per_hour})" + bcolors.END)
        total_shard_yield += total_production_per_hour
    elif worksite_type == "Research Hut":
        print(bcolors.CYAN + f" {region_UID}-{plot} (RESEARCH - Combined Research Per Hour: {total_production_per_hour})" + bcolors.END)
        total_research_yield += total_production_per_hour

    return total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield

This will need to be modified once 'Wood', 'Stone' and 'Ore' become commodities, but even a non-coder can see what needs to be done…., or maybe not.

Python can be a little cryptic at times, calling a function and getting back many results can give you a line like this.

total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield = fetch_yield_data(UIDData, region_uid, plot, total_grain_yield, total_shard_yield, total_research_yield, worksite_type)

I find the ability to send back more than one result from a function refreshing after working with other languages that only allow one and force me to send back an array.

I would love the @peak-monsters guys to pick up on this, adapt it to Javascript and add this functionality to PeakMonsters. It's not that tough, needs some tweaking but easy for a wizard such as @asgarth.

You can download this script from my GitHub Repository here.

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