My Splinterlands Journey as a Scholar of Balthazar Guild

Hi! @saydie here, playing Splinterlands everyday!

Recently, I have made a post about my journey as a Splinterlands player, starting from the people and groups I'm associated with that have helped me to continue playing this game which is going for more than 2 years now and for this post, I want to share my Splinterlands journey as one of the scholar for Balthazar Guild in partnership with Side Door Ventures.

	My Splinterlands Journey to the Lands of Praetoria

Discovery of Balthazar

With only 4 months in the game, I was nothing more than a newbie and to be able to learn about the game's meta, I usually go and watch different SPL streamers on Youtube to watch them play which includes bulldog1205 and one of his steams comes to be a bit more special for it being a collaboration with the Balthazar Guild for an scholarship opportunity where they have purchased 1 Million USD worth of Chaos Legion packs. The initial goal was the onboarding 3000 scholars with Bronze cap deck and some gold cap deck. I was one of the many which got a Bronze cap deck with the ign of @bltzr-wizard-223.

^Source

Duration of Participation

I believe it was late March of 2021 when I became a scholar of Balthazar. Back then, ranked rewards was still paid on DEC and format was still not divided with Modern and Wild so we clearly have the disadvantage in terms of card options, matching against those with older card sets but despite it, I was still able to manage to make it to compete on silver league and at some point even manage to reach gold before the end of season. Daily, I would say that I was earning around 40-80 DEC which was priced at around $ 0.002 which was still above peg value but that would only constitute for around 3-4 $ per month with 70% of it split for the guild and the rest would depend upon the cards, packs and rewards we get from chest if we ever hope to increase it as they were bought to us by the guild at market value.

Given this conditions where earnings relies on luck, many of the scholars did not last very long together with the drooping price of tokens due to the bear market season but for us that continue and there was only very few of us left which continue with the program but for us that continue, more than the earnings, we play because we loved and enjoy the game then after a few months, a new scholarship offer was announced, offering Max Level Chaos Legion Deck Scholarship.

As one of the few people that have stayed long enough, I was able to received one of this scholarship offers, playing by the account of @bltzr-wizard-726 where aside of the last 3 airdrop summoner, the core Chaos legion Cards were all gold foils together with enough staked SPS delegated on each account in order for us to earn enough SPS and chest for the higher leagues.

In return to make it competitive to the higher leagues, I have delegated my rewards cards together with some of my Riftwatchers and Rebellion cards and this has definitely bring good results as each season, I may be earning between 1000- 1,500 SPS on ranked alone and with the new split of 50%, I am getting half of all the SPS that we earn including the chest and brawl rewards. Some scholars are even able to earn more for competing in the tournaments which is also something I also want to partake to when my schedule comes free.

Accomplishments

In Guild Competitions:

During the early days of the scholarship program, Balthazar also facilitates other programs to improve the skills of the players such as in individual and group tournaments that took place within the guild discord channel and some of the accomplishments that I got was ranking decently during the times that I entered and earning some prizes. This programs was then extended outside of the guild through SplinterlandsTV until it was ended just recently.

Leaderboard Achievements:

As a scholar with a max level Chaos Legion deck, the minimum requirement for us is to be able to reach Diamond 1 by the end of season in order not to drop on gold league so reaching champion 3 and above will be a good accomplishment aside from having champ season chest and which something I achieved most of the season but wherever that I didn't, it was because I was competing on the Diamond leaderboard which was able to rank 8x since the time I managed it.

And for the current season, with only less than 2 days remaining, I was currently placed at 39^th but given the rating from the previous season, mine was still at the risky position. Either way, I still need to grind for the next 2 days to maximize my earnings so there was still a chance that I can position myself on a higher rating for the remaining time. If lucky, the DEC that I will earn from the leaderboard will be sent all into me as the guild does not take a split on it as an incentive for our good performance.

Soul- Bound Reward Progression:

Another perks of staying on Diamond is that I can earn more daily and season chest which might not have the best value but increases the odds to get more SPS and cards so looking at the soul- bound cards, you can see that my scholar account has already maxed-out all the commons while the rares is also close to completion at 99%. Epics and Legendaries would still take a while to max but both of them were above 50% and individually, those card were already good enough to win me niche battles.

Future Goals

My main priority within the future was to max- out all my soul-bound reward cards just before they end up the distribution cycle so that I can have my full earnings whenever I played ranked battle specially on Champion league where I need max level cards in order to have no reduction within my SPS and Focus points. I also want to consistently placed within the leaderboard which is currently a lot of struggle since most players in the leaderboard camp with the last remaining days of the season. I hope that there will be a rating decay system that will make players on the leaderboard lose rating if they do not play for a certain amount of time which not only makes leaderboard more competitive but will also improve the match liquidity on modern. Finally, I also want to participate on tournaments just like the other scholars.

Advice for Beginners

In order to start earning in Splinterlands, it does not necessarily required for an individual to have his own Deck, there is a rental market where you can rent the cards and SPS that you need and there was also some guilds or communities that can allow you to play their accounts through scholarship then slowly use part of your earnings to build your deck.

And that was it for my Splinterlands Journey with Balthazar Guild. I hope you were able to learn something from my story and be able to be your guide as you take yours. Thank you and see you at the next post.