My Affordable Low Mana Golden Trio Light Core

Edited in Canva

Thanks to "The -in depth- Guide to Making Wood Nymph Emote", I got some bonus funds to spend on Splinterlands. I'm really saving up for The Kraken waiting for its price to go down.

I bought a few cards to slowly complete my starters while looking for some low-cost golds that would be good as a core while giving me some collection power as well.

Here's my Low Cost Golden Trio for Life Element.

I would be skipping the card lores for this time as it would take a lot of space if I include all three. Instead, these are the links from the Splinterlands Website for the respective card:

Gargoya Scrapper Lore | Chaos Knight | Venari Crystalsmith

Lore can be found on Splinterlands Card Lore Page.

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

These three costs a little bit above $2.50. A good advantage of this is that it's a really good combo especially on lower mana fights. Chaos Knight, General Sloan, and Venari Crystalsmith costs 14 mana only and the combination of Venari Crystalsmith's Tank Heal and Chaos Knight's Shield are a good partner. General Sloan adds damage to Venari Crystalsmith's range damage giving her a total of 2 damage instead of 1.

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

It's quite astonishing to see that while Venari Crystalsmith is the most expensive among the three when you buy them, she is the least expensive when you rent.

If you want to feel them out first, renting all three only costs you 2.16 DEC per day. That's quite cheap compared to buying it. However, I don't advise this as not only the rentals can be canceled anytime, you'll also lose the opportunity to sell the cards at a higher price in the future.

Since these are gold cards, their price will surely increase as you can also use this for the collection power, which is one of the factors for getting higher league rank for better rewards.

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

Gargoya Scrapper's advantage for Gold cards is the quick access to Void ability. Since the Gold counterpart of Gargoya Scrapper starts at level 3, he gains the void ability, which halves all magic damage he takes. One big advantage of this ability is that, if the magic damage is already 1 before he halves it, the damage becomes 0. That means he can take more attacks before getting eliminated

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

Venari Crystalsmith has been chosen because of her flexibility as a support. Not only she has an amazing Tank Heal ability capable of restoring 1/3 of the max health of the monster on the first position, she also has a range damage which is compatible with General Sloan and the rest of the Life Elements.

Unlike the other two, Venari Crystalsmith only gets to level 2 initially in her golden foil. The extra level gives her an extra speed which is not really useful, in my opinion. However, you still get the 500 collection power and the bonus rewards per win.

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

Chaos Knight is also at level 3 when you purchase the gold counterpart. She doesn't gain any extra abilities but gets an extra damage and speed. This is also good as she can use that extra damage by attacking earlier than most.

The Shield ability also halves all melee and range damage. Any 1 damage before the effect is automatically negated and changed to 0, With Golden Gargoya Scrapper and Chaos Knight, you takes care of all the damage types in the game making it an efficient core.

Gargoya Scrapper's Void Ability halves all the magic damage he takes. Any damage already at 1 before the effect takes place is turned to 0 and he won't take damage from that attack. Since he's only 1 mana, that kind of ability is really good as it allows him to survive some of the attacks that would otherwise kill him.

Chaos Knight's Shield ability halves all melee and range damage she takes. This is 2 out of 3 damage types and can certainly be a good ability at every occassion. If the damage is already at 1, the damage is negated and turns to 0 allowing Chaos Knight to not take any damage on that attack.

This effect also halves the damage of Earthquake from Earthquake Rule of Combat making Chaos Knight a viable option for that battle.

At Level 5, Chaos Knight gains the Giant Killer ability which doubles the damage to any monster that costs 10 or more mana. This is a good ability to burst down strong monsters such as The Kraken or The Vigilator. However, the ability is very situational as only few monsters have 10 or more mana cost.

At level 9, Chaos Knight gets Inspire Ability which increases all of your team's melee damage including her own. While this looks good, it's not that beneficial if you're going to use a General Sloan Range build as the team would not benefit. A build with full melees though is a different matter.

Tank Heal is one of the strongest ability in Splinterlands allowing you to heal your main tank by minimum of 2. This allows your front line to stay healthy and absorb more damage before falling down.

At level 6, Venari Crystalsmith gains Dispel Ability. Dispel removes all positive effects from the attack target. This sounds good and all but honestly, not that useful. The effects that are affected by dispel are very few and these are mostly effects that increase one's stats. Abilities such as Thorns or Shield are not affected.

Abilities described above are from Splinterland using my account.

Click the link below to see the full battle:

https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_d0c0867c9e8e2989afdca81ae05c569f&ref=konaqua122

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

13 Mana Cap. The total mana cost of all monsters for each team is 13.

Standard Rule of Combat. No changes on the mechanics or rules of the current battle.

All elements unlocked. All elements are available to use.

Abilities used in this battle are from Splinterland using my account.

Those in BLACK font are mine.

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

1. Chaos Knight's attack kills
   Cursed Windeku.

Photo from my Splinterlands account.

1. Chaos Knight's attack kills
   Death Elemental.

I do like them all as a core because it's not a situational composition. You can use them with other cards and they would compliment. You can also use them on their own as you both have a tank, damage, and support giving you a balanced team.

Summoner: Mother Khala: Gives +1 health to all ally units. Good substitute for General Sloan if you need the extra mana.

1. Chaos Knight: Versatile front line with mid mana cost and Shield Ability.
2. Venari Crystalsmith: Has tank heal to restore the health of the main tank while providing damage with his range attack.

Yes. Chaos Knight's defense worked flawlessly with Venari Crystalmith as her support. Venari Crystalsmith almost died from Death Elemental's Snipe attacks but even if that happened, due to Venari Crystalsmith's tank heals, Chaos Knight was healthy enough to win that game, nevertheless.

In addition to that, not only Mother Khala negated Thaddeus Brood's decreased health but also, the Shield ability halves all the Thorns damage which allowed Venari Crystalsmith to heal all Cursed Windeku's damage throughout the game

Adding Gargoya Scrapper at the back of Chaos Knight is a good idea and it would get me extra rewards on that game. Unfortunately, there's very little mana to work with that I need to cut my costs quite a bit.

• This post is an entry for Splinterland's Social Media Challenge contest.
• Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos. Photos and drawings without cited sources are mine and made for this post.

If you're interested in playing the game, support me by registering using my referral link here

Good luck and keep grinding!