Breaking Down Another $1,600 Invested Into Splinterlands Assets

After a surprise $23K+ airdrop last week, nothing was going to stop me from diversifying some of those proceeds into Splinterlands. While it'd be a field day to put more in, I want to be disciplined. Compounding other defi yield vehicles is a critical first move outside of securing stable coins. After those priorities was addressed, I let myself spend a little for the sake of fun.

I chose to cap this wave of SPL investment at ~$1,600 to be level-headed. I was initially going to put all of this into Gold Legendaries, but plans changed as soon as I saw that land plots were selling under $370.

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Phase 1:

Without blinking, I went through the frustrating steps of trading x2, shipping, trading x2, shipping, trading x2 to finally get funds on Hive-Engine for the land. If only there were more practical onramps for those who don't have access to Hive on their primary exchanges, I'd have bought much more land and SPL stuff by now. However, this doesn't seem to be a priority for Hive leadership (unchanged for years). Some may wonder why more people don't onboard this amazing tech, and perhaps that's because the bridges are few, and there are no obvious signs that cross-chain protocols are being explored to open the doors. I wish Blocktrades would add more current pairings to catch up with the space a bit. It's been the same for years and probably costing them some decent business.

Self-therapy over, I set buy orders for 2 plots between the bid and ask, and they both went through for $385 each. I would've saved about $30 overall if I'd lowered my bid, but I was up all night swapping (among other things) to get here and didn't care. These prices were actually exceptional compared to my prior two at $616 and $593. This lowered my average total cost on 4 plots to $495. I can live with that price I suppose, but I feel that the odds are stacked against me to get better than common plots.

With land a huge question mark and gamble with limited info and progress spanning years now, I don't see myself getting more than 10 total. I will certainly get 1 more in the near term to round up to 5 total, and possibly 1-2 more over the upcoming months if prices stay calm. While there's maximum opportunity with high risk, I just don't like how the best news we have is to refer back to a blog post from a year or two ago for guidance. I don't want to toss too much on semi-blind faith that promises of wonderful digital prosperity from land will be delivered.

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Phase 2:

Despite initially wanting to put the remaining ~$785 all into gold foil legendary cards as intended, I opted to stay balanced. I bought 100 CL packs, using 3 vouchers to get 3 bonus packs. The ambition was to try to get lucky on a gold legendary or two that may have been one I wanted to buy separately, and raise my airdrop pack eligibility (at 403 now). I then had to fork over some more for 500 (+50) Legendary and Alchemy Potions each.

I then bulk opened everything with hopes of snagging something exciting.

The results...

...were very underwhelming.

I didn't do too well in this round, coming up about 30% in the red based on card market value. I got a few decent cards, but nothing too notable. Oh well. Sometimes the house wins.

Phase 3:

The next phase was to finally get the main gold legendary on my list, my second Quix The Devious. I'd landed one in a pack a while back and started realizing the value I'd get by leveling him up to 3. Since I'd somehow landed 2 Gold Lira The Darks in the airdrop (no regulars), I could also combine her and come up with a deadly Slow/Swiftness combo under the Death Splinter. Adding in a Creeping Ooze for another Slow affect would be absurd, so I sucked it up and bought Quix at $269. Despite the price being down to about $220 in recent weeks, the supply has been very thin, and there's no guarantee that it couldn't pop up again. I'd wanted to do this for weeks and wanted it behind me. Paid in Credits. Done. Finally.

After merging Quix, I started sniping gold foils and notable cards to build up levels for my shiny new level 3 Gold Legendary Summoner. I already had some cards that were unplayable before this since, so using them with their higher stats and new abilities is going to be a fun new frontier.

The individual buys from my log to level up some key cards:

-Gold Quix The Devious ($269)
-Gold General Sloan ($24.14)
-Gold Silent Sha-Vi ($1.98)
-3 Gold Silent Sha-Vi ($2, $2.39, $2.42)
-2 Gold Crypt Beetle ($0.97 Each)
-1 Gold Angelic Mandarin ($3.71)
-3 Magi Necrosi ($2.36, $2.37, $2.39)
-4 Gold Life Sapper ($3.56, $3.60 x3)
-4 Gold Crypt Beetle ($0.98 x2, $0.99 x2)
-2 Soul Stanglers ($0.14, $0.15)
-Nerisa Tridawn ($1.73)

As you can see, I tried to build up the Death Splinter to take full advantage of the Level 3 Gold Lira and Swiftness bonus. Nothing fancy here, but FYI. I almost bought my second gold Obsidian summoner to merge, but will wait for next time.

Valnamor was tempting at around $625, and the price has jumped rapidly to $999 since, but I'm not sure how much used I'd get out of him in the medium term.

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Results:

• 4 plots.
• Owned Collection Power is now 188,230. I went up about 35,000 points here.
• Over 20 SPS airdropped per day worth about $2.75.
• Gold League 2 is fairly easy now. I'm a little shy on Collection Power for Gold 1, but will rent a card tomorrow to finish the season off a notch higher.

Shopping List:

• Buy another GFL Baakjira, River Helondale and Chaos Dragon and combine to get them all to L3. The self-heal and blind abilities will be very helpful.
• Buy my first 2 GFL Djinn Oshannus cards and combine.
• Suck it up and get another 125 packs. I sort of dread this, but perhaps I just won't open them.
• 1 more land plot in the near term.
• 2 more Gold Quix cards to merge for max. GASP! I'm not relying on packs for this. I got lucky the first time and know that I need to pay up.

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Takeaways:

• I'm happy with the DEC payouts I'm getting from battles since I'm often using almost all gold cards and getting on decent streaks for bonuses.
• I don't know if it's worth opening more packs for a while. I don't enjoy the luck element and prefer buying outright to control my investments and guarantee the results I want.
• As I've only bought my SPL assets with defi yield and free airdropped funds, I want to keep it that way. I still have a decent amount from the airdrop above as I debate adding it to upcoming yield-generating pools, but will certainly not rush to pump more of those funds into SPL. I'd rather do this every couple of weeks as I assess my progress.

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Question of the day:

Is it better to buy only DEC and hold for the SPS airdrop, OR, is it better to be in the SPS/DEC pool? The double DEC airdrop weight is deceptive because most need to buy the other half of the pool (SPS) to offset the double weight.

How would you have spent these funds in SPL?

Thanks for reading,
@steemmatt