AMA + GIVEAWAY - I MADE IT INTO CHAMPION - STARTED PLAYING DEC 2021!!

in #hive-133233 years ago

Hello Fellows Splinterlanders!✨

⚡️Your favourite Doctor is back here with a Special edition! Today I am here to share with you my personal experience after achieving Champion and Diamond 2 in the same season with 2 accounts. Important Note: I started playing this game on the 24th of November 2021, maybe for you, this is not a great deal but my only goal since I started this game is to become a Professional Player once it will reach a greater audience. You can't imagine how I felt once I broke into Champion 3 only after 2 months of playing!!⚡️

Champion AMA.gif

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🤑 Over these weeks I have received a lot of support from this community so I have decided to share a bit of happiness with you. This article will be an AMA where you can ask me anything related to game, strategy, deck, decision making, and bla bla.. in exchange, I wil select the three most interesting questions and I will award them with 3 prizes.

🤑

😁 Disclaimer at every 10 questions I will double these rewards 😁

- 1st - 1x Chaos Legion pack

- 2nd - 1x Epic 1x Rare cards

- 3rd - 3x Common 1x Rare cards

👉 Rules: to participate you just need ask a question about any of the arguments previously mentioned. I am against random stuff because I do not want to be accused of helping someone to win. I will select the three best question and show them in 7 days in my next post.👈

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So let's jump into it, I will start by answering some questions and tell you my story on how I got to Champion. Have a good read! Hope you will enjoy this 😝

👽 Who are you? Why did you start playing Splinterlands? 👽
I am a 27 yo player. I have been an avid gamer since I was 10, always playing on PC. Mom used to say that Playstation would have made me a robot, unfortunately, she did not know that PCs are even better to play games! Over the years I had to play less and less, you know at some point life starts becoming tougher and you need to get a job . So I had to let go of my competitive gamer side and move on with life...until I found Splinterlands! I guess that's the main reason why I love this game, be aware I am not saying that you can become a beast with few games per day but probably by investing 2 to 4hr per day, you could become one. (I will let you know once I peak in the top 100 Champion)

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😝 Sooo why Splinterlands? 😝
Recently, I used to play a lot of League of Legends. You know play with friends, former Diamond player but there has been always something missing in every game I was doing. And it is not about the #play2earn aspect of the thing. One key point I have been always missing in the gaming world it's the ownership of your goods. How many times you have spent 20/30/100$ on something that you could only use as a personal thing. You could not even exchange that thing you paid with money with a friend of yours. Or what if you wanted to quit after achieving your goals? Oh, right the company ScamGaming Ltd. is the only one who has the real property of the account, if you sell anything you will get banned from our Kingdom. Not here guys, not here at Splinterlands. That's why I love this game, I don't even care in a sense about DEC/SPS or whatever, only the fact that I am the owner of my goods makes me happy.

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💸 Did you start by whaling or renting? 💸
Actually, I am a big fan of F2P games. I have never been a whale, nor I am doing it here. But there is something I like.. money, time and knowledge. Especially the latter, remember knowledge cannot be bought in a store, it is something that you can build with time and personal investment. I am a Whale of Knowledge, the one I like to accumulate the most.

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⚡️ How did you manage to afford the ROI to go into Champion?!?!

It is so expensive to rent everything! ⚡️

Well here comes the trick. Splinterlands is not only an awesome strategy game, it has one of the best community I have ever seen (to me it is the best one) and the least toxic one. One of my guildmates noticed my love for this game, he saw me peaking Diamond 3 after only 4 weeks and he made me a proposal. He is an OG player and he has a full Modern Format deck and he conctacted me and told me: "hey, you. Why don't you show me where you can arrive with my deck? I do not have all cards, but you can train with a Full Modern Format Deck."
Trust me, diligence and perseverance pay off. That's how I managed to peak Champion this season. Plus I kept playing my account every now and then and managed to arrive in Diamond 2.
So to make it easier I am on a sort of Scholarship where I use the cards of this person and we share the earnings.

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✨ Do you think it is possible to find Scholarships around? ✨
Well, I would not make it so easy but I am sure that if you stay around the community, prove that you are worth an investment you could find another OG player willing to organize a sort of Long Term rental. I admit I have been more than lucky.

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😈 How did it feel to break into Champion in your first 3 months of the game? 😈
Honestly, I never expected it. I know about the money gap you need to arrive there, over these 3 months I always limited my self to G1/D2. I could not be bothered to imagine ruining the ROI because someone would cancel my rent. But the day I arrived into it, reading Champion Rank, do you want to advance?!? I was like SIGN ME IN! Fun fact the account was sort of inactive and I made Gold 3 Gold 1 in less than 24 hr, then trust me I have been stuck there for one week. Those low mana games, with strict level ruleset can be scary. Then I passed it with a lttle help of a good friend, and again Diamond 3 to Diamond 1? 24hrs, max 36 not joking.

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Okay, I think I have talked enough for today and I do not want to bother you anymore. I will wait for your questions down below, feel free to share your thought and I cannot wait to send your award next week. The giveaway will be done after 7 days after I have been publishing this. Remember to participate in the giveaway you must participate to the discussion, priority to the best questions!

Dr. Estiqaatsi

*My Links if you wanna reach out or help!
My Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/DrEstiqaatsi
My Referral: https://splinterlands.com?ref=estiqaatsi

Sort:  

Congratulations :)
It seems you have some great friends. Can I be your friend? :)
Cheers,
@jonacau

Hello @jonacau thanks for your comment! I got lucky! Why not? Wish you the best in the game!!

Many people are whining about botting. What´s your experience with it, especially in higher leagues? Do you think, botting is good for gameplay and / or the economy?

Also nice achievement, to reach such high ratings. I was capped between 2900 and 2950 last season, but I´m only playing with cards from Chaos Legion and the new rewards. :-)

Ahhhhh @eledain you touched a really controversial subject. I'll try to make this easy..

  1. botting is fine it would be against the concept of freedom and you will always find someone looking for hidden spots to gain advantages
  2. should it be limited? Yes. It makes me a bit crazy to know that in leaderboards it's plenty of both
  3. I think we should have a format just for bots where they can drop just fewer stuff
  4. in dia champion if you meet a bot is free win most of the time. I would say bronze to gold is the kingdom of bots.

Ps congrats on your achievements. CL is a great set of cards.

How has this game affected your life?

@amaillo thank you for your support. Honestly? This has became a sorta of second job. I invest kind of 2 to 4 hr per day, especially on weekend more than 4hrs.

Get back from work, rank cook eat rank, some workout rinse and repeat. Mostly try to enjoy my time off on weekend. I don't mind this, I see this as an opportunity to build a side thing.

I only wish I had more stuff to invest in here.

!PIZZA

Food for your thoughts 😛

Do you think they could make a cool cartoon or TV show out of this card game?

@bigbarger well, it would be interesting. Probably they are doing something since they work a lot on the lore and artworks! who knows

@azircon big shout out to you, made me learn a lot about battling. Thank you for your work!

Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121

Hello, my question for you Is: you Say you want to become a professional player (i Guess reach the top of champion 1), arent you afraid to lose motivation and interest once you reach your achievement and rather stop play and put everything on rent? Its the human nature put effort to reach a goal and once reached, feel like empty...It happended to me on an other competitive game, so i want see your tought

Hi @davideownzall thank you for your question. I feel like you took a good point about being competitive in a game, but this is another reason why this game is really really worth it. If that would ever happen or if you need a break this is something you can have here, and honestly this is freaking amazing. Do you need a break? You got bored of SL? Just rent and go for your holidays or sell and stop thinking about your investment.

Regarding my goals: I am waiting for modern format to tryhard. At the moment I mostly play modern on dia ACC e only modern in champion, trying to get ready for the new update. I'm sure that initially I cannot be in top 10 neither top 100. Maybe one year? Maybe 9 months?

Motivation will mostly come from rewards accumulation + tournaments. I see splinterlands as a possible second way of income and that's what it's going to drive my determination.
Also an important point at a certain level game is mostly based on playing a perfect game for the ruleset + predicting your enemy. Luck can play a huge element towards getting top player, especially if you pick same cards 😂.

I'll try my best but I strongly hope there will be more player around because we need more brains to be challenged!!

One question I always asking myself: When do I need to level up cards. I am playing high Silver / low Gold and usually I am good with playing with Level 1 cards. I guess at Diamond and above you need to get closer to the level caps of the respective league.

Question: When do I level cards and how big of an impact is it?

Cheers,
@andy-plays

!gif thank you

Hi @andy-plays you want to start leveling up your cards after you have raised up your summoner. Always check your summoner limit and follow it. Being said this do not rush into upgrading cards unless you are sure you want to keep them for yourself. It would be way easier to sell them as a single card rather than multiples.

My suggestion would be: check your games and see when you lose if few hp would have granted you a win. In that case start consider it.

From my experience I managed to close d3 with a Lorna level 4 and monsters not capped. Ofc as soon as you reach higher ranks you will need higher lvl but mostly for the new skills. Level are not the greatest asset until gold 1.

In every case not a financial advisor

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, that makes sense. So far I was renting summoners if I wanted to play them.

I will keep track of my performance and have a look.

Cheers,
@andy-plays

Do not underestimate CL summoners, they can do great. I see a lot of potential in Bortus Kelya and Life +1 archers. Cheap but effective

I really like them and use them, but so far didn't want to invest that much, after my last big investment (=Djinn Oshannus) was a complete money sink.. Lost a lot of money on that guy. But I am probably going to invest in the CL summoners.

What are your favourite cards of each rarity? (usually people only say legendaries but this way commons and rares get some love)

Hello @brojustaverage and thank you for your question...this is really hard.

Summoner Lorna. Not expensive and can help you a lot in low to mid mana games (plus I love life)

Common: Pelacor Conjurer. This card is ridiculous, I cannot still understand why it's so cheap. At lvl 10 4 skills + antimage is a nobraino.
Pelacor Deceiver: most underrated card of the game. A beast at max level, probably one of those card you won't appreciate until you peak diamond.

Rare: Meerdali Guardian, overall one of the best support I have seen around. It's complete and for its mana it feels like investing in bitcoin in 2017
Diemonshark: he is the husband of Meerdali they walk together just to make sure to win every mid mana game

Epic: mmmmm this is hard but I think.... Dax paragon because I love Pelacor Conjurer & then Onyx Sentinel. Onyx is a beast in low speed games I just love him.

Legendary: Almo Cambio. This guy is so funny..if there is a game with Enrage it just tilts your enemy. Whatever they pick they are screwed (most of the time you go for mage vs Enrage)
Just to show some love to CL: Uriel, this card is just amazing. Go with Chanseus and Shieldbreaker in last position and he will solo kill whole enemy team

Its kinda cool to see the progression since I only am able currently to play with cards at level 1 so ones that aren't always so useful for me become way better as you level them up along with others. Thanks for the response.
I like the wide variety of favourites you have! I still have alot to learn about the cards that were released before chaos and untamed before I can solidify my top faves.

@brojustaverage I strongly suggest to join a guild as soon as possible, sometimes people are willing to help you reaching that power to scale to another league

Yeah I am in a guild I have gotten lots of help and its why I am able to win a lot even in silver leagues, just I use level 1 cards but i have been helped a ton and im so grateful for it!

How many decks and which decks do you must often play with in diamond or champion ?
And since later on there will be wild and standard, which mode will choose to you challenge?

Thanks

@henruc

I will be playing modern format only (standard). To arrive in diamond i'm ok with 2 decks only. Life & Dragon, then I rent something for quest. I made diamond 2 season in a row and champion only last season

What do you think about the Chaos Legion patch? It seems to me there were far more legendaries this time and the CL cards are generally more OP than existing ones. Soon enough there will be games where all monsters are legendaries at this rate. It does tip the balance against previous OP cards like LLama + Kron, etc. But the new cards bested many of the old cards and I just find it all too fast-paced. @myeong

For those of us who don't have a ton of money or friends with powerful decks, what do you suggest in terms of an investment strategy? Powering up commons first? Building one or two strong decks with a higher level summoner? Renting a deck to progress with? I'm also curious what your initial investment was to make it to Diamond to be noticed by your guild mate. If you don't mind sharing. I have never invested so much in a game before and I am still shy of Gold.
Thanks. @squishna

How do you think of Splinterlands as an Esport? Unless all participants are given fully levelled "ghost" cards for tourney play, I don't see how an average player beats whales at all. Even in in-game novice and bronze tournaments, there are players with 50k+ power from top guilds among the real low level players and its a bit disheartening to see.

@zerold I can see 2 methods: format based or prepick and bans

Format based is easy to imagine.
Prepick and bans means you are allowed to ban 1 splinter maybe and pick 5/6 summoner you would play on that game. In every case you need to have access to your personal cards.

A good way to incentivize player could be if you win a satellite game you can be awarded and play a particular tournament for rookies to find sponsor and play with cards given from @splinterlands team.

Here me out here @splinterlands @steem-monsters

Question: if you where going for renting, what range would you think has the best DEC return? what is the most profitable range in your opinion?, for example in diamond obviously you are earning a lot more DEC than in gold but it will cost you a lot more specially the level up cards going to be very expensive to rent.

IGN: @caimanx

Hi!
I'm a beginer player in Splinterlands but I am doing my best to learn as much as possible about the game and get to the highest level possible. In my third season I reached the diamond league but the rental market is a pain. What advice can you give for end of season rentals?
I'd like to ask one more. What do you think, how much you should spend on renting for 1 day in different leagues to close at profit?

With regards,
@csabesz07

Keep track of your rentals every season. Sometimes the cheapest card is not the best. Look for ppl who don't cancel rent and renew the card on a daily basis.

To me the best profit come from gold 3 to 1 in terms of investment. This is mostly based on how much you can afford but I would say closing G2 it's a good balance to avoid bots at the start of the season.

@csabesz07 best wishes on the game

I didn't find out who won. Please show the winners.

Hey my question would be what's your favourite splinter/element, or the ones which you tend to use the most? And why?

@relf87 Life. Definetely Life. Big counter of Yodin in Diamond, no need for Mage which is countered most of the games and big dmg over all.

Best to play it in middle to high mana

PIZZA! PIZZA!

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Lets say you are casual bronze player, like most of us, what will be your strategy to progress without spending lots of money? Will it be to invest on 1 strong deck and play only with that with minor changes or to invest in 2 or more decks (or even cover all elements?) that are "weaker" because you cant buy all the best cards for each element? And 1 follow up question, if first strategy is better, what element would you recommend to focus on? Long story short - 1 strong deck or 2,3+ weaker decks?

Cheers!
@shomy

If you have a tight budget do the following:

Cl cards with Kelya and Death sum -1 mage -1 hp, cheap cards in general. Trying to bring sum to level 3 4 and rent or buy the cards you need. Slowly accumulate power. After 7/9 months you could be able to have power for higher silver.

Most important side if you are on a tight budget. Write on hive, get around the community, share your experiences. Participate at the weekly events of @splinterlands they do a weekly challenge where they treat you with some dollars. Buy low sell high if you can and keep accumulating.

Nfa. Estiqaatsi

asking the real question here

First of all, getting into diamond with your own account so fast is already great. And getting into champ we all know is a lot about money, but you certainly know what you're doing.
At higher levels, do you think is there an element stronger than others or the game is balanced? I hear a lot about Fire because Yodin Zaku, but would like to hear you.

And a bonus question! Right now I just finished this season at Bronze I for the first time. Don't have much money to invest into it, but would like to know, what cards do you think I should BUY and what are better RENTING?
I had to rent 4.5k power on the last day to get into Bronze I and don't have any deck good enough to call main.

Hey @colonors thank you for your question and your observations.

In terms of investment the first things I would do in your position is to start collecting some summoners: Kelya (water) and Thaddius (death) both of them are sitting at 3$. Slowly you should be able to make them lvl 3-4 all the monster from common rare of these splinter can be rented for few Dec and you should be able to reach Silver 2-1 with a good water deck. Try to make a good excel and stay in the rent price.

Look for a guild, find somehelp for some ppl 75k power is nothing at end of season.

In terms of any element stronger... I would say nah. Every splinter is different with different rules. To some extent Yodin is strong, like Kitty is or even Chanseus. It all depends on rules and comps! I easily beat all Yodin players. So easy lul xd

Nice post, bro!!

I'm also a beginner, just arrived in gold I with lvl 1 cards, closed EOS in 2630... Did a post about it, rents and strategies... Brazilian here.

So, my question is (a personal one):

I'm thinking at trying to accumulate more dec (since almost all my dec is farming sps airdrop on pools) to start to rent lvl 4 summoners and cards in a safe way, without break my dec bankroll for rents, thoses cards are expansive somehow, I would like to know if break evens are also easier or even possible on higher leagues? I have no idea.

I don't think I would like to play with others accounts...

Edit: Sorry, bro. I just saw your other post about renting for diamond. Many thanks for the info!! (It might be better with direct bids, Im also testing others decks now, like mylor crowling + queen mycelia, or legionnaire alvar + resurrect against magic...). But yeah, might be better taking gold I rewards for a while, dec pool on silver I on early season is also good enough). You don't need to answer this question above.

@dstampede

Very nice job you have done!!

!PIZZA

@dstampede thank you for your support! Happy that you found my articles interesting.

Btw yes I confirm g1 g2 is best league for instant return.. but if you can break in diamond for those packs would be good!

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