Day 2 and 3 of the experiment in which I start playing Steemmonsters with only a starter deck. I want to experience first hand what it is like to join the game at the start of season 6.
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Meanwhile
I didn't plan to skip a day, but I've been so busy that it happened before I realized it.
I don't have a truckload of time right now either (it's almost 1.30 am while I'm writing this), I will try to give you an update of what has happened since I wrote my first post.
Resource Credits
One of the first comments on my previous post asked me about Resource Credits. I thought it was a good question, because I didn't even think of my RC when playing the 13 games I needed to complete my Daily Quest.
At the time, I had 2.7 SP, which I got when I created the account. Apparently, that was just enough to struggle my way through the first DQ.
It was only after I published the post that I ran out. It was a little annoying, because I had spelled a name wrong and wanted to change it, but the system wouldn't let me.
I know that in the early days, when you ran out of RC during a game, you could simply refresh the page and @steemmonsters would automatically delegate 10SP to your account. If it happened again, you got another 10 SP.
I wasn't playing at the time, and it simply didn't occur to me that I could wait an hour or so, then fight a couple of battles until I ran out of RC again, just to see if those delegations are still sent out.
Performing experiments is obviously not one of my best qualities.
Instead - impatient as I am - I delegated 20 SP from my main account to this one. It's just another way to say that I messed up the experiment. Most new users don't have 20 SP lying around to delegate to themselves.
So I goofed and can't tell you whether the delegation system of @steemmonsters still exists or not.
It would be great if someone could actually let me know.
Learning Something New
Starting over again appeared to be not such a bad idea. When you don't have a full deck of cards, you need to be creative, especially during high mana battles.
It was during such a high mana battle that I found out I had missed an update that was made only recently.
I did read the post about the updates for season 6, but it's obvious I missed the specific passage:
'Grumpy Dwarf, Minotaur Warrior, Giant Roc, Silvershield Warrior, Spineback Wolf - Each of these under-utilized cards will be gaining a new ability called "Reach" which allows them to use Melee attack from the second position on the team. Some of their other stats will be adjusted downwards to compensate for the new ability.'
In other words, all the cards with the 'green hand' in their list of abailities can also attack from 2nd place. I hadn't noticed before, when I was playing my higher decks, but with the starter deck, it turned out to be a very useful change.
Yet another thing learned... :0)
Once I had that figured out, winning the DQ was a lot easier. I managed to complete the DQ in only 10 games, which took me 20 minutes in total.
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I was making progression!
Yesterday, it only took me only 7 games and 15 minutes to finish the DQ. It seemed like I was getting used to play with an incomplete level 1 deck again.
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Again, I want to stress that I've been playing for months already. I'm not the best player around, but I'm pretty familiar with how the game works and what I can expect from most of the abilities.
This is not the case for new players. They will probably spend a lot more time to get that 1 reward card.
Reward Cards
The gold foil Wood Nymph I received the first day, wasn't very beneficial for the 'real world'-factor of my experiment either.
Everyone who has been playing this season knows that the chance that your first, single reward card is a gold foil is incredibly small.
On top of that, after more than a year on SteemIt, I have my network, and it didn't take long before it was bought by my good friend, mentor and coach @davemccoy.
I had priced the card a couple of cents cheaper than the one with the lowest price on the market, to make sure it woud sell quickly. And thanks to Dave, it did.
All of a sudden, I had more than 2 steem in my wallet, which I could spend on the market, buying extra cards for my deck.
The reward cards I pulled the second and the third day were both the Creeping Ooze. Current market value: $0.06.
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When I pulled the first one, I decided to keep it. A 1 mana card can be very useful every once in a while. But I did't really need a second one. And it feels so silly to put it up for sale for 5 cents. But that's exactly what I need to do, so I can save to buy more cards.
Going Wild!
Earlier today, I found some time to visit the marketplace and get myself some more monsters. You can't imagine how rich I felt, having that 2 Steem in my pocket, lol.
It didn't take me long to decide which monsters I was going to buy - after all, I know which cards are more valuable to my personal way of playing than other.
Again, a big difference with a new player. If you only just start to play the game, and have 2 steem to spend, I can imagine the number of monsters for sale will make it quite difficult to choose. Not only because there are so many of them (alpha, beta, promo ánd reward series 1 and 2), but also because you don't have a clue which monsters are useful, and which aren't.
I'll show you my new arrivals in a second, but first I want to make clear I regret spending all of the Steem. I should have kept part of it aside to save up for the more expensive cards.
But I asume there's no use crying over spilled milk...
It's just something to remember in case it happens again.
My Expanded Deck
This 2 Steem allowed me to buy quite a couple of monsters of which I'm pretty sure they will make my next Daily Quests a little easier. Of course I could only by the cheaper cards, mostly commons - but also a couple of rare one. Most of them I use daily when playing my other accounts.
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I thought it could be important to add both some healing cards and some weakening cards to the collection.
And since I don't really like the spineback turtle at the lower levels, I thought the water splinter, of which I think it is still one of the stronger splinters at level 1, could use a decent tank.
Medusa... what can I say.. I think she's irresistable. As soon as I get enough money to buy myself a Mischievous Mermaid I will, because together they are almost invincible.
And the Twisted Jester... he's simply one of my all-time favorite cards. Whenever I play the Death splinter, I make sure there is some room left for him. Same goes for Earth Elemental. It is still weak at this level, but I have a lot of trust in him.
To be honest, I never would have thought I would be able to buy no less than 10 cards for 2 steem. Even they are only commons and rares.
I'm pretty sure my next DQ's will be a lot easier now I have called in the troops.
I'll let you now about that in my next update!
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