Hello all splinter fans and welcome back to my splinterlands blog, I hope you are all doing well and wish you a great start of the weekend, it's a Saturday morning for me so it's time to make the second challenge post for this week and this weeks Splinterlands Community Engagement Challenge is about the land expansion, but, maybe when you're just new to splinterlands this is still an unknown part for you so let's talk about it!

But first, to found out how you can participate in this challenge yourself, check out the splinterlands post here.

So, a long time ago the sale of land launched, in fact, it was when I joined Splinterlands in the second half of 2021 land plots were still for sale, but as most things in splinterlands I didn't understand why this should be important so I didn't act on it, in the land pre sale the land plots were sold for $20 but you couldn't do anything with it just yet and well... to be honest, I think the whole community can agree the 'can't do anything with it' took waaay too long, but, after two years or so, owners could survey their land plots, basically open the land pack and see what they got, let's talk about the basics first!

Land basics

The smallest land unit in this system is a Plot, each one being a unique non-fungible token (NFT) represented by a card image that showcases its distinct features, including the type and level of any building currently on it. Every Plot has specific terrain, a category, and a rarity level.

The terrain type defines the nature of the land, the kinds of resources it can yield, and the Splinter magic types most effective on that terrain. There are fourteen terrain types, which include: Plains, Hills, Tundra, Swamp, Bog, Mountain, Canyon, Caldera, River, Lake, Forest, Jungle, Desert, and Badlands.

Each Plot also falls into one of three categories—Natural, Magical, or Occupied — which is noted at the top of the card. This categorization is similar to the "foil" quality on Monster and Summoner cards. Most Plots will be Natural lands, meaning they contain one of four resources—grain, wood, stone, or ore—that can be harvested or farmed. These resources are necessary for building, upgrading, and maintaining all types of buildings.

Each plot of land will also have a rarity level—Common, Rare, Epic, or Legendary — similar to the existing Monster and Summoner cards. This rarity level will influence the richness of natural or magical resources on the land or the number of monsters present on an Occupied plot.

The expansion introduces two brand-new types of cards to Splinterlands—Items and Spells—in addition to the existing Monster and Summoner cards. Currently, players select their Summoner and Monsters to form a team, after which the battle unfolds automatically with no further input to influence the outcome.

With the expansion, players will gain the ability to impact the battle’s progression even after selecting their team by deploying the new Item and Spell cards. After both players have chosen their teams, they will see both lineups on the battlefield. Before the battle starts, they’ll have a set amount of time and Mana to play Items and Spells.

A wide range of Item and Spell cards will be available, affecting nearly every aspect of combat. This extra step introduces a new layer of strategy, challenging players to quickly assess the battlefield, anticipate their opponent’s moves, and choose the best Items and Spells to shift the battle in their favor.

A crucial point about land value in Splinterlands is that Item and Spell cards will not be sold in booster packs like Monster and Summoner cards. Instead, they will be crafted exclusively by players using resources gathered from their land and through buildings constructed on it. Therefore, players who want to obtain Item and Spell cards for battles must either craft them themselves or purchase them from others who have crafted them. Splinterlands will never sell Item and Spell cards directly.

Of course, the're much more to land than this but let's not make it too complicated because a starting player might get overwhelmed, not understand it and lose interest, one step at a time!

Land at this point and my journey

At the moment, land plots are very cheap, I bought most of my common land plots around $40, now, they're as cheap as $12! land plots can be bought here.

Good to mention is, I'm only a small land holder, and this is actually better for starting players to relate to than for example a whale with hundreds of plots.

Since I was already investing a lot of time in this great game, I wanted a piece of this land pie too, just to experience this part of the game really, I watched some video's about land but much was unknown, and I bought my first common land plot which was now affordable due to the crypto winter and everything web3 related plummeted into a deep dark hole.

So, in June 2023 I bought myself a common land plot, with the little knowledge I did had I bought a plot that included the 'building in a box' to build a level 1 building for free when land 2.0 launches, DEC was still way under peg so I ended up paying 58K DEC for a $44 land plot, it was in Region 79.

When the new came land will launch at the beginning of December 2023, I decided I wanted another plot because one would need to produce grain for me to be self sufficient and the other plot could produce something else, to be determined later.

November 30, I bought my second common plot, for, looking back now, REALLY CHEAP only $28.50 and I read somewhere that your plots needed to be close to each other, or you would have to pay transportation fees, no plot were available at that time in region 79, so I bought a plot in region 78...
Yeah... that's not going to work... I found out later 🤣, you still need to pay the transportation fee that way.

Without plot available in my regions now, I needed to start over, that was not cool, I first waited a month to build my farm and I bought 30k grain peer to peer from a mav on discord to finish my buildings before I came to the conclusion the best thing for me to do is sell and start over again, but I locked my first plot for 30 days so I couldn't sell that right away, lucky for me, I forgot to lock the second plot, I looked at what a decent price would be at the time for that plot in my region and other regions around it, most common plots were listed at $65 - $75. But since I only paid $30 in total with the grain for it, I listed for $60 for a fast sale and announced it on the Buy / Sell channel in Splinterlands official discord where a player contacted me right away and bought my plot...

Wow, so I made a mistake - and I doubled my money with it 🤣

With some outside funds I had ready to fund my deck and earnings from blogging about Splinterlands, I bought two plots, in the same region this time 😇

1 rare plot that already had a finished grain farm, and 1 common plot I was planning to build a research hut on it, with the remaining funds I bought some Gold Foil rare and epic workers to put on to the land and start producing, and yes, finally, my first plot was up and running 😃

In the time I needed to build the research hut on the other plot, I could produce to 15K grain I needed to finish the building, so the waiting time wasn't that bad, I wasn't willing to buy the time crystals for this, since well... my funds are limited.

They reason why I'm telling you my journey? Well, so you won't make the same mistakes I did! 😋

Land owner bonusses

There's also another bonus to own land plots, you can get a bonus on EVERY ranked battle you win! It's the reason why I bought my fifth land plot, to get the lowest prefix title, so I bought my fifth plot and became a 'Warden' boosting my earnings 5%.
And while 5% doesn't seem like a lot, it's for ever so in time this adds up, every little drop counts!

Land 1.5

At this point, every 7 days we need to harvest the crops on our land and empty our production buildings, because they can only store for 7 days in production, after that they stop producing.

On the site Barons Toolbox you can have an overview of your land plots, mine look like this

So as you can see, most of my lands are around 5000 production points, which isn't a whole lot but well, I'm not a whale. 😅
My buildings are at 50% already again so let's harvest them so the 7 day time starts again, to harvest, you simply go to the plot's page by clicking on it in the overview (I bookmarked every plot I own in a separate splinterlands folder in my browser) and click on the 'harvest' icon.

To be able to claim, you have to feed your workers, and as you can see they produced 7915 grain, but they eat 3316 grain themselves, so this grain farm produces enough grain to support for this plot and my second plot in the same region. When you don't produce enough grain yourself, you have to buy grain from another player (DON'T buy it from the site, it's way too expensive this way, players sell it peer to peer for a lot cheaper)

I'm going past all my plots this way, I have three grain farms, one shard mine (producing SPS) and one research hut (researching the secret of praetoria, a mystical secret no one knows what it is but give great rewards it seems)

Land 1.75

With the splinterlands DAO now hiring Cryptomancer to develop land, we will hopefully see the next land phase called 1.75 up and running in 4 to 6 months, in Q1 of 2025.

With land 1.75, we'll see three new resources introduced, Moving forward, wood, stone, and ores are also going to be needed in order to produce SPS and Research .

Also, you won't be able to produce grain on just any terrain type but only on certain types (for example you can't produce grain in a desert, just like in real life.)

So the full development of land and for players so be able to use items and spells and include many more resources in land 2.0 will undoubtedly take a lot more time, it is what it is and I know cryptomancer is working his ass off to make this great but it's very complex.

Once the full potential of land can be seen by all players, cheap plots will be bought up fast so it could be wise to plan ahead of this, no financial advise! 😇

That's it for this week everyone, I hope you like it! Let's get back to my ranked battles again!

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Have a great day!