A Glimpse Into the Next Splinterlands Expansion

The Splinterlands team has been starting to plan and design the next major expansion for the game. It's going to be a big one that will take the gameplay and skill component to an entirely new level while also offering new ways for all types of players to participate and earn. We wanted to share the high level plan with the community now, even though it's still in a very early stage, so that everyone has an opportunity to contribute ideas, plan ahead, and hopefully get really excited for what is coming.

Please keep in mind that we are still in the early planning and design stages, so everything here is subject to change before the expansion is released.

Items & Spells

The expansion will introduce two entirely new types of cards into the game - Items and Spells. The way we envision these cards working is that at the beginning of a battle players will be assigned two pools of mana. One for Summoner/Monster selection, and one for Items and Spells. After both players have chosen their teams, and you see both teams laid out on the battlefield, both players will have a chance to equip their Monsters with Item cards and/or cast Spell cards using the second pool of mana. After the Items and Spells have been chosen by both teams, the battle begins.

This will add a huge amount of additional depth and skill to the game as players will have to quickly analyze the battlefield and choose what Items & Spells to use in order to turn the battle in their favor, as well as try to anticipate what Items & Spells their opponents might use to do the same.

Items & Spells can have all sorts of different effects on the battle, such as increasing or decreasing Monsters' stats, removing or adding abilities, switching Monsters' positions, and much, much more. The possibilities are endless.

We plan for the Item and Spell cards to be able to be combined together to level them up, just like the current Monster and Summoner cards, and in addition to their effects many of them will also have a "durability" or "duration" stat that determines how long they last during the battle.

Crafting

As awesome as the new Item & Spell cards will be for gameplay, we feel that the mechanism for creating the new cards is potentially even more exciting. Instead of being sold through booster packs like the existing cards, the new Item and Spell cards will be created exclusively through a new crafting system that will be added into the game.

There will be a base set of "phantom" level 1 items and spells available for all players to use, just like we currently do with Monster and Summoner cards for new players, but anyone who wants to obtain these new cards beyond that will need to either craft them or buy them on the market from another player.

Splinterlands will not be selling these new Item and Spell cards directly, instead it will be entirely up to the players to create them. This will allow players to effectively set up businesses within the game to produce certain types of Items and Spell cards to sell to other players.

Land

In order to be able to craft the Item & Spell cards, you will need to have land on which you can build a variety of different buildings. Splinterlands will be holding a land sale (more on that later) which will distribute plots of land on which the owners can build buildings with the goal of crafting cards.

We envision many different types of land which are suited to different types of buildings or production. There may be land that is rich in certain resources which can be mined, gathered, farmed, or maybe even summoned, basic land that is well suited for item factories or spell production, and even land that is overrun with monsters that can be hunted for valuable loot.

Individual plots of land may also have unique bonus attributes which make them more or less desirable. For example, one plot may have a 50% bonus to the production of a certain resource while another may give a 20% cost reduction for building construction and maintenance.

The deeds to the plots of land will be transferrable NFTs that can be traded, bought, and sold on the market, just like the current Splinterlands cards, and the various resources that can be found or produced will be transferrable, fungible tokens just like Dark Energy Crystals (DEC).

Buildings

The purpose of owning a plot of land is to build a building on it. The buildings will require specific resources and time to construct, upgrade, and maintain. We plan for buildings to start small and be able to be upgraded which will give various benefits based on the building type, such as increased production, reduced costs, or higher chances of producing more rare Items and Spells.

Buildings cannot be moved from the plot of land they are built on, though they can be destroyed, which will likely recoup some resources. When a plot of land is sold, it will include any building that is built on it (just as when a plot of land is sold in real life), so buildings can be thought of as improvements or upgrades to land plots which can increase their value.

Additionally, we envision players being able to rent the use of their buildings out for a fee. For example, if you have a high level building that can create certain types of Items or Spell cards, you can allow someone else who has the resources to craft the Items or Spells to use your building to do their crafting for a fee. Items and Spells will take time to craft, so we envision a marketplace where players can see what buildings are available to use and at what prices.

Shards

While the buildings in which the new Item and Spell cards can be crafted will require land and the new resources to build, the actual crafting of the cards will require a new type of item that we are tentatively calling "Shards".

The plan is that Shards will come from battling. These battles may include regular ranked season play, boss fights, guild wars, and also battling monsters in new player and/or game controlled dungeons that exist in certain land areas. Shards will also be available as a prize in the quest and season reward loot chests. Having Shards be gained through battling will allow players who aren't interested in the land ownership and building part of the expansion to still participate in the crafting economy.

We envision that Shards will have the same rarity levels as the current cards and also have Gold Foil versions. The different rarities and foils of Shards can then be used to craft Items & Spells and they'll heavily influence the rarity and foil of crafted cards.

We plan for the use of Gold Foil or older edition (alpha/beta/promo) cards in ranked battles to award more shards and/or increased chances of higher rarity and gold foil shards. This is intended to provide added value and utility to Gold Foil cards and cards from older editions beyond to the DEC bonuses provided currently.

Land Sale

As we mentioned above, we plan to do a pre-sale of the in-game plots of land which will likely occur sometime in the second quarter of this year. The pre-sale will happen well before the expansion actually goes live and the proceeds will be used to fund the development of everything described above.

The number of land plots available during the pre-sale will be limited, and will likely be at a significant price discount to land that may be sold in the future and/or have better or more frequent bonus attributes to incentivize and reward players for buying early.

Just as with booster packs and other items in the in-game shop currently, DEC will be able to be used to purchase land plots and will be valued at a minimum of $0.001, or 1000 DEC per $1 USD.

Unlimited Sinks for DEC

In addition to being able to be used to purchase land during the pre-sale, DEC will be a key component throughout the entire building and crafting system in addition to the new resource tokens that will be added. We plan utility for DEC in nearly every part of the crafting process. It will do things like speed up building upgrade or crafting times, pay for building maintenance, maintain the "condition" of items and spells, and more, so we expect this to create significant, ongoing demand and value for the token.

Get DEC at a Discount!

Once again we want to remind everyone that DEC is currently selling at a significant discount to our peg at $0.001 price on both the Steem Engine and TronTrade markets, so anyone who is interested in participating in the land pre-sale may want to pick up and hodl some cheap DEC now in order to get their land at a huge discount to the listed price once the pre-sale begins.


Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!

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This is awesome news.

Getting at least 1 land plot, if not 2 would be a worthwhile investment. Just being able to craft the items, to be able to sell them later if you desire with a higher level building on the land and making profit while someone is able to make their own items based on your land and building, would be great.

A huge expansion this will be and it shows both how active the Splinterlands team is and how much they care about bringing the community an evolving but solid game to enjoy and make some extra money on through hard work and being a part of the game.

I strongly think this is a very bad idea and will break the game as we know it. I also think it will help rich users that bot well. I explained my thoughts better found in this link.

thank you.

https://steempeak.com/splinterlands/@j6969/the-incoherent-ravings-of-a-mad-man

In my new building I will brew a philter for my monsters which has the same effect on them like Getafix's magic potion on Asterix. :)

ha, i fell in the cauldron as a child

I gotta echo the sentiments of @j6969 and say this sounds a bit of like a cash grab to me... seems like an unpopular opinion here given the vast positivity but it's just like... seems like never ending investment required to do what you're saying (i.e. 'maintenance') even if creating some buying pressure for dec... Splinterlands is great but dang, the capital requirements are a bit insane and thats gonna stonewall a lot of people out of it and create even more of a 'rich mans playground' than it already is... unless you're happy to chill at the lowest ranks. I guess it is what it is.

I like it all but I don't like the idea of maintenance. It makes me think if I don't create serious long term spending plans I will lose my stuff... doesn't sound like a game to me, sounds like my mortgage

I like this a lot... Looking forward to it becoming reality!

I have to say, it's quite amazing what you guys are doing considering how you started on Steem and compared to GU and the size of their investments and hype. I don't say this easily cause I hold a lot of cards on GU and traded most of my SL cards for Steem but either you guys are really good at this or it goes to show the advantage people get when building on Steem with the community connected to it in so many ways or both.

Anyway, great job.

I agree I always knew this would grow into something amazing, and that’s why I am hodling Splinterlands cards for the long haul!!

Remember me when you're earning more from leasing SL cards than I am from curation. :') xD

i will remember you acidyo. I finally decided to play splinterlands due to your promotion of GU lol.

Bought a heap of GU cards after reading your blogs. Found the game didn't suit me, so decided to give splinterlands a'real' go. Now have son involved with a younger daughter wanting in also :)

That’s really cool! My 9 year old daughter has her own account and has been playing since December 2018.

:D

hodl those gu cards just in case though, i will too, mainly cause i can't dump them atm lol

I'll never forget the OGs 🤘

The difference is passion. Aggroed and Matt are passionate about SL, they created it and they are intimately involved in everything. The GU team are just hired devs that are clocking in and working a job. That's the main difference I've noticed from being in both discord servers. I still like both games, but this was one of the 1st things that struck me when I joined the GU community.

Yup. It's the combination of passion, creativity, ability to find good talent and manage that talent. The fundamentals here are extremely bullish. In fact, I started a methodical power-down of Steem, triggered by the partnership of Steemit with Tron, because I've been evaluating the Tron dApps, and it's just all gambling, primarily. So my first power-down payout this past week was 192 Steem. I originally intended to hold the 192 in Steem in my Steemit wallet, but as part of my ongoing research on the fundamentals of Tron (as to whether or not Justin Sun deserves to use my 2,600 stake of Steem) I converted HALF of the 192 into Tron (which I've basically just been holding onto and using to mine in the BetFury slots), and seeing that be in limbo, I decided to do an "A/B" test, and - especially after reading this post - went ahead and converted the other 96 Steem into DEC where it sits i my @steem-engine wallet. I want to compare the ROI on the DEC versus the Tron. Both uses of the Steem are productive for my current purposes, including the ongoing development of my weekly series related to the game. Here's the most recent one (which I share here only to illustrate that I have been writing about "Drug Wars" and "Prospectors" games, and how those are "good tries, but don't seem to have really "hit the sweet spot" on that genre of game :

"Splinterlands" + "Drug Wars" -- Power Strategy Tips #43
https://steemit.com/splinterlands/@transcript-junky/splinterlands-drug-wars-power-strategy-tips-43

In section #2 of the above post I talk about "Prospectors", and how I really WANT to continue playing that game, but they don't make it easy. This is why I am so happy to see that the #Splinterlands folks are going this route. In relation to your comment, these guys have the ABILITY to pull off the merger of these two powerful game genres. Since my weekly series gets 100% upvote from the @splinterlands account, and I know they read (or perhaps more accurately, "torture themselves reading" the posts) my hope is that my input on this issue ( along with, likely, similar input from other players) has been a catalyst for moving the game in this direction. I am now FULLY commited to Splinterlands, and am even willing to completely power-downmy Steemit and put some/most/all of my Steem into DEC. One thing I'm waiting for, before I do that, is to see if there will be some sort of "airdrop" of the new "Tron Steem" token for those of us who hold Steem (since that value can be put into DEC as well). Anyways, this is really good news!

Quite overwhelming. I will need to get my hands on the new update before I can actually get my head around it. Seems like the cards will eventually become 3D at one point with amazing animations.