I wanted to test Splinterlands new rental system, especially peakmonsters interface. So I started with account @sm-skynet with only spellbook cards (beta + untamed) and tried to figure out what I should rent. At first, I wanted to rent a couple of really cheap cards like Sea Monsters, Creeping Ooze but then I realized that I need Collection Power too, so renting only regular commons / rares may not be the best idea. For Bronze I league I needed 5000 POWER. I compared the prices, I was thinking about which cards would be the most useful.
My idea was:
- spend as little DEC as possible
- get useful cards first, instead of renting only for POWER
I decided I will rent only 5 Untamed / Reward legendary cards, which will give me 5000 POWER, just to reach Bronze I.
So I tried to answer the question "Which legendary cards are the strongest in Bronze league". And I rented level 1 Scarred LLama, Kron, Yodin Zaku, Magnor and Ruler of the Seas. I decided to rent also Sea Monster to have a strong tank for Water Splinter. I was surprised that these legendary cards were relatively cheap, at first I was afraid that it won't be a good idea to rent legendary cards because rental fees will be too high, but it turned out that was not true.
I paid around 40 DEC for all these 6 cards:
And yeah, Magnor's price was really low!
After playing 2-3 battles I realized that I am missing the most important cards: Furious Chicken and Creeping Ooze.
These are level 1 regular cards so really cheap.
After 30 battles I had enough points to reach Silver league, but I was missing POWER.
I spent 40.798 DEC so far and I earned 42.313 DEC from ranked battles, so I already made a ... 1.5 DEC profit.
These are stats for last battles in Bronze league:
As I needed more POWER I decided I will try to rent some cheap Gold Foil cards. After doing some research I decided to rent GF Ferexia General, GF Pyromaniac and GF Mitica Headhunter. These 3 cards not only gave me 30000 POWER more, but they were really useful for summoners that I had (Yodin Zaku and Scarred Llama).
To figure out which cards will be the cheapest you can use (sortable!) Low Price/Level column:
Est. yROA-B%** column is less useful for renters (if you care about cheap POWER) because it depends on card price too. This value is really low for Mitica Headhunter (1.82%), but the rental price is not the lowest. Just Mitica Headhunter is more expensive than other GF untamed epics!
If you are interested in the cheapest e.g level 2 GF Goblin Firemage, you are looking for the first level 2 on the list, this one:
My initial plan was to reach Silver III on the first day, and then rent new cards on the second day and try to reach Gold III. But I decided to try to reach next league playing the same 1 BCX cards. Level 1 Llama + Kron or level 1 Yodin Zaku is still really strong and you can use it in Silver league too.
After playing a couple of battles I decided to rent Sandworm, cheap but really useful card.
I was still missing POWER to reach Silver I, so when I had enough rating points I decided to rent some additional cards to get more POWER. But of course I wanted useful cards so I rented: GF War Chaang, GF Tortisian Chef, GF Kretch Tallevor and GF Sporcerer. Why I rented Kretch Tallevor instead of Daria Dragonscale? Because it was cheaper, but it really didn't make that much difference for battles.
Now I had around 75k POWER, so enough for Silver I. After 69 battles I reached 1900+, so I had enough points for Gold III league, but I was missing 25k POWER. So far I spent only 74 DEC. I decided to advance immediately and I rented 3 cheap gold foil epics: Goblin Firemage. I know that it would have been probably better to rent 3 different cards, but I just wanted to achieve the goal of reaching Gold III league. And to play competitively in Gold league I will need to rent higher level of cards (so far I was using only 1BCX cards)
All the cards I rented:
Renting level 1 Scarred LLama, Kron and Yodin Zaku turned out to be a really good idea. Magnor was not necessary, but it was really cheap. Ruler of the Seas also was not necessary because I played almost only Earth and Fire splinter. Not renting Ruler of the Seas could have reduced rental costs by 10 DEC.
Overall I spent 84.724 DEC on 1 day rental contracts and I earned 203.181 DEC from battles. So I already covered all rental costs. I could have earned more but I played 69 battles in a single day so my ECR was 54% after last battle.
I thought I will need to rent more cards, but turned out that to advance to Gold league you don't need that many. Of course it's end of season so it's easier now.
What could I have done better?
- I could have spent more time on comparing prices
- I didn't really need Ruler of the Seas, that could have saved me 10 DEC
- I think it was possible to "rent POWER" cheaper, I didn't check Beta/Alpha/old Rewards I just focused on Untamed
So I think I could have reduced rental fees to 60-70 DEC if I spent more time on analyzing / researching. On the other hand I wanted to reach the goal as fast as possible too.
What's next?
The next step would be to reach Diamond III. I will need more cards and higher levels. I will try to spend as little DEC as possible to achieve that goal too. Final goal would be to reach Champion III and then I will stop playing. And of course the main goal is to test the new rental system and learn how to use it effectively.