Hi everyone!

I’ve been playing Splinterlands for a couple of years now, almost every day, and I’m still very much enjoying it, so I wanted to write this tutorial on how to get started.

Splinterlands is a blockchain card game.

Since it is on a blockchain, this means that you win tokens per game, and potentially cards or other rewards per day that can be exchanged for money. It’s a fun game, I’m right into the strategy of it, but the fact that you can sometimes win a card that’s worth quite a bit always gets the heart racing.

There are so many video games where you can buy cosmetic items to make your character look cool, or items that might help you win more frequently or win rewards faster… but once you delete that game, the money you spent is gone. Sure, that’s honestly no issue to most people because they enjoyed the time and entertainment they paid for… but with a blockchain game, you can sell the cards and tokens you have onto other players… and I’d guess that most people would sell for more than they put in.

You can definitely play Splinterlands for free. It’s definitely an ‘easy to play, tough to master‘ type game. Along with the normal matches, you can also sign up for tournaments to win much, much bigger prizes:

However, you won’t get rewards when you win until you purchase the $10 USD Spellbook…. but you don’t have to do that until you decide if you like the game or not.

So, let’s get started!

Step 1 : Go to Splinterlands.com

Step 2 : Create an account:

I’ve got 2 accounts (sometimes I like playing the uncomplicated levels for fun) so I’ll show you how to play with my low-level account.

There’s a lot to this game… but click on the Battle menu at the top:

There are a few different game modes, and I would absolutely suggest you going through the Learn and Practice sections, but in this tutorial we’ll be going through the Ranked battle because that’s where the rewards are”

Speaking of rewards, there are two types:

There is Season rewards… and you earn Season Reward chests for the overall games that you win.

There is also Daily rewards, and you earn Daily Reward chests for only the games you win of the Focus type:

My Focus splinter is Fire… and I’ve got just under 24 hours to earn some reward chests by winning games using the Fire summoners.

The reward chests contain various types of rewards:

Credits – credits allow you to purchase cards and items but cannot be used outside of the game.

Cards – the more cards you have, the more options you have in choosing a deck to play with.

DEC – this currency allows you to purchase cards, but you can also sell it in cryptocurrency markets.

Packs – each pack of cards has 5 cards in it, so these are super exciting to win.

Alright, so let’s play a game!

In the Battle screen, I choose Ranked Battle.

This brings me to the battle information screen:

Here you can see some details that are important for the game.

The Rules of Combat show me that there are no special rules for this particular battle… however, these rules change the battles spectacularly, so you have to have a wide range of strategies to be successful. You can’t just choose one unbeatable deck and win every game without changing it.

The Mana Cap is 15. Each card has a Mana score, which is the card value. This means I could pick 2 cards worth 3 Mana and 12 Mana, or I could pick 7 cards of 2 Mana each, or anything in between.

The Active Elements are the Splinters, so in this battle they are all available, but sometimes you’ll get games where some aren’t available, which means you’ll have to have good cards in all the Splinters. In the Daily Rewards you can see that my Focus is the Fire Splinter. So I can pick any Splinter and a win will contribute to my Season Rewards… or I can pick Fire (the first red icon Active Element) and a win will contribute to my Season Rewards and my Daily Rewards.

So… on this screen I click on Create Team.

The first thing I have to pick is the Summoner. The Summoners represent the Active Elements… so the red Summoners in the screen above are the Fire Summoners. I have 3 available to me.. the first 2 which are worth 3 Mana, and the Tarsa card in the middle that is worth 4 Mana.

Each Summoner brings a different attribute or skill to the whole team (or denies your opponent a skill or attribute).

Since I only have 15 Mana for this battle, I choose the very first Summoner, “Malric Inferno” who will add +1 to any Melee cards that I have.

Choosing my Malric Inferno summoner then allows me to choose Fire cards to build my deck with.

I have 15 Mana to play with… so I pick 4 cards for my deck worth 4 mana, 3 mana, 2 mana and 3 mana.

The order you put them in is super important. I’ve picked Cerebius which is a Melee card (it attacks the opponents directly in front of them), then I picked a magic card (they blast the opponents), then another Melee card (but this one has the sneak skill which means it attacks the back of my opponents deck) and then a ranged card (these cards can fire from any position, except for the front).

As your cards are defeated, they are removed from your deck. The player whose cards all get defeated loses.

You only ever have 6 slots to build your deck with, and you can see I’ve only used 4 slots. You can use 1, or all 6 or anything in between, as long as you have enough Mana. I could have used less than 15 Mana if I wanted to, but you can never use more.

Once you’ve got your team, click the Battle button in the top left hand corner.

Alright, now I can see my opponent… their summoner and the cards in their deck. They’ve chosen a Summoner from the Water splinter (which is why his main card is blue).

My opponent’s Summoner provides +1 Armor and +2 Speed to both the cards in his deck. My summoner provides +1 Melee, but only 2 of the cards in my deck are Melee cards, so only my first card and 3rd card will benefit.

The lineups go from the middle outwards… so their card with the 6 armour, 7 health, 2 melee and 4 speed is first and in direct opposition with my first card that has no armour, 7 health, 2 melee and 3 speed.

The speed dictates which cards strike first… the armour is like an additional health and both melee and ranged cards must destroy the armour before they reduce the opponents health. Magic cards ignore armour. The melee, ranged or magic number shows how much armour or health will be reduced with a successful hit.

At this point you’ve made all the decisions you can… so now you can sit back and watch it all unfold by clicking the Rumble button.

You can watch the battle yourself by clicking on this link.

His big melee card hit mine first… taking off 2 health… mine struck back taking off 3 armour (my card has a Melee value of 3 since my Summoner added +1 to Melee). My Melee card with the sneak skill killed off his second card… so now it’s 4 cards versus 1 very strong card.

My first Melee card also has the self-heal skill… so I was able to just keep healing while my 4 cards keep peppering away until we reduced it’s armour and health down to zero…

It took 6 rounds but we got there…

So I won! For winning this battle I won +0.001 DEC (the tradable currency), my rank went up by +2 and I earned +4 reward points.

So now I’ve got 6 out of 300 Season Reward points (at 300 I’ll get my first loot chest) and 4 out of 300 for my Daily Reward since I used my Fire Summoner.

Admittedly 6 out of 300 and 4 out of 300 isn’t much… but I’m in the lowest league and as you rise up the leagues and get more powerful you acquire way more points per win.

In my higher-level account this is about what I usually get for a win :

So, ah, obviously a lot more DEC and Reward Points…. but the rewards also require more points, so, y’know.

I’ve played a 315 games with this account…

… and so I’ve won 482 DEC.

DEC (Dark Energy Crystals) can be used to either cash out of the game, or to buy extra cards that make your account more powerful.

You can buy cards (that you then own and can sell or rent to others) or you can rent cards which means you use them for the time that you’re renting them, but do not own them.

Click on Market in the top menu and make sure Card Sales is the section you’re in:

I’ll buy the very first card to bolster my Fire splinter. You do have lots of free Starter cards to play with… but you earn more rewards and you can upgrade the cards when you own them.

So I’ll click on the Venari Heatsmith (the very first card) that is being sold by other players for around $0.01USD.

The first two options to buy are $2USD for 200 cards… I only want 1 card so I’ll select the 3 option for sale.

This one card is worth $0.01USD, but with the current exchange rate of DEC to USD is currently $0.0008 then this one card will cost me about 11 DEC.

So I’ll click the Buy button:

So this will cost me 11.374 DEC of my 482.765 DEC. I’ll click OK.

If I click on the Cards tab, I can see that I know own it…

If I click on my Cards collection tab and choose Owned from the drop down I can see it in my card collection (as well as my DEC amount minus 11 DEC):

So next time I play with the Fire splinter I’ll have this new card to bust out. Exciting.

This ends my tutorial on getting started with Splinterlands. There is so much more to this game so I’ll keep writing new tutorials to expand.

Please feel free to ask any questions in the comments!

Thanks for reading!