SteemMonsters speedrun - from 0 to top30 with 30 STEEM in the pocket + rental market observations

Introduction

For the last 3 days of the season, I did not play SteemMonsters on my main account @jacekw because I just had the 1st spot and there was no point in playing. That's why I decided to make a small experiment and try to get the best place with the second account (@pomocnik), on which I did not have any cards at the beginning. I only rented the cards from the market. I spent about 30 STEEM, but this value could be much smaller, because I made several mistakes along the way:

• I first rented a lower level of the card, but then I decided that I needed the max level
• I left too little funds after the first day and 3 delegations contracts were broken, so I had to rent these cards again from someone else, unfortunately at much worse prices
• I could also limit the time of the experiment to 1 day instead of 3 days, further playing did not improve my position anymore.

So I could reduce costs to about 15 STEEM.

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What I achieved

• 31st position on the leaderboard (the best position I had during the game was 22th, but I was not able to keep it, because most players had much better cards)
• top50 = 10 beta packs (it's hard for me to determine their value, because I opened them using the main account, but I assume that was about $15)
• champion I = 150 reward cards for season (worth about $5, could be better as you can see)
• 3x quest = 60 reward cards (worth about $7)
• 10k DEC = $10

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Balance:

• rental costs: $12.5 (could be reduced to $6)
• value of rewards: $15 + $7 + $5 + $10
• result: +$24.5 (could be +$31)

Cards

Unfortunately, I did not have all the cards at my disposal because I wanted to reduce costs. The other thing is that some of the cards were not max level because they were simply not available, or they were too expensive.

The strongest color was Red, I had here all 3 summoners, including Plado Emberstorm.

The second in order was the Green splinter. Unfortunately, I did not have summoner Prince Rennyn, because it simply was not available for rent. The lack of this one card makes it pretty hard to fight for high position.

I also had some cards from Blue splinter:

Dragon splinter was pretty good:

Neutral cards were a weak point of my collection:

I did not have any White or Black cards at all.

Gameplay:

I played Novice and Bronze using only the Blue splinter (strong magic with Ruler of the Sea, Mermaid, Magi Sphinx, Medusa):

I went through the Silver using mainly Plado + Red splinter:

At Gold, Diamond and Champion level, I used mainly combinations:

• Plado + Red
• Selenia + Green
• Selenia + Blue

Unfortunately, as I wrote above, the lack of Summoner Prince Rennyn made the fight at the highest level very difficult. Not to mention the fact that some of my cards were not at the maximum level and I did not have a White and Black splinter at all.

Delegation market observation

• the delegation market is very shallow for some cards
• it is especially difficult to rent neutral cards and legendary summoners
• on the other hand, rare and epic summoners are easily available and at good prices
• at the end of the season, the demand for card rental is certainly greater

Summary

• you can enter champion I, even up to the top 50 without having any own cards, only by renting from the market
• although the whole experiment brought about $25 profit, let's not forget that it took a few hours to play
• the biggest obstacle was lack of cards, especially the lack of summoner Prince Rennyn
• the experiment was done mainly for fun and to see how much you can get from an account with no cards and limited time and resources available

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_{Experiment is over and all rental contracts will be discontinued today.}