Before I begin, I would like to thank the BDCommunity for hosting such an event and encouraging Splinterlands players to share their experience and hopefully convince new players to join in on the fun!

Introduction

To start this post off, I will be talking about how I found out about Splinterlands and when I joined this wonderful game. My journey starts off in a website called AltcoinFantasy (For those who don't know what it is, it is a cool trading simulation thing with prizes). There was an offer to join Splinterlands and buy the summoners spellbook to win a few points for a prize. I was first skeptical about the game but I decided to take it for a spin.
I think the spellbook screen looks familiar to you Splinterlands players:

I bought the Spellbook with Paypal since I was pretty new to the whole crypto thing. When I bought the Spellbook for a small $10, my greatest investment of my life set me on a journey where I will encounter a great community and a whole new level of knowledge about crypto that I never possessed before. The time was February 17th when I set my foot onto Splinterlands.

How I First Started

Right off the bat I bought 5 booster packs with Paypal. I did not know that buying with DEC was 4x cheaper since the price of DEC was $0.00025 at that time. It was one of the big blunders that I made when I just started. I do not recall what I got but I remember there were no legendary cards, just a Felexia General.

After I bought the packs, I began my first battle. I recall not knowing what to do and selecting randomly. I also remember that I thought speed was ranged attack and attack (whether ranged, magic, or melee) was the melee attack. The magic, ranged, and melee symbols I though were the rock paper scissors and the melee was effective against magic, magic against ranged, ranged against magic. I also skipped my battles a lot which did not help me learn from my mistakes. Eventually, after lots of losses and no idea why I lost them, I watched the battles and learned from them.
HUGE TIP TO NOOBIES: Don't skip your battles!
From experimenting and testing, I got to learn what each ability does and when best to use them.

Discovering the Market

During my battles, I noticed that people were using cards that I didn't have. I was confused as to why and so, I went to the market. At first, the prices stunned me, One legendary for 12000 DEC? That seemed like a lot to me since I was barely earning 1 DEC per battle. I browsed the market and eventually bought what would become my favorite summoner, Daria Dragonscale. She costed just $1 at the time I bought her which according to people, was expensive since the starting prices were around 25 cents. Either way, I was happy since she was one of the summoners that kept destroying me in battle.

I also did some window-shopping around Splinterlands' own pack store and I, for some weird reason, wanted to buy an orb. So I did another blunder and burned some of my gold untamed and reward cards that I got in the past few days and bought an orb. I opened it and to my dismay, there were only commons and a silvershield bard waiting for me. The Spirit Miner waiting for me the day after in a loot chest made up for it though.

First Season

If I recall correctly, I ended my first season in Gold League 1 or Diamond League 3. I had learned a lot from watching my battles and have perfected certain combos that would see my enemy in ruins. I got nothing good from the season rewards but I had no other season rewards to compare it to so I was satisfied.

Discovering the Best Community Ever: The SL Discord

As I was very new to this game, I was searching for a community that would provide me with tips and tricks and I winded up in the SL discord community. The moment I entered, @clove71 was there to greet me (To the SL wizards, whatever you are paying her, it isn't enough) and said that if I need any help, I could just ask the community. When she heard that I was a new player, she immediately asked what my username was and sent over some staple cards. I will never forget her kindness and remembering it is what keeps me playing Splinterlands even when the going gets tough and also helping others. A big thank you to clove71 for what you do.

Along with discovering tips and tricks, I discovered 2 new markets with their own pros and cons.

Monster Market

First let's talk about Monstermarket:
Monster Market gives players an instant 3% cashback immediately on their purchase. Now that may not seem like much but I have gotten more than 100k dec back as cashback in all the time I have been playing Splinterlands. The small amounts add up and the service Monstermarket provides to us players, cannot be underestimated.
They also sell packs at a discounted rate of 1800 DEC which is 200 DEC off if you buy in single packs which I find amazing.

Peakmonsters

I also discovered Peakmonsters:
Peakmonsters is a very good site for managing your account. I use it often and sometimes buy from their to support their site. I often use it to sell in bulk or to combine a specific number of cards at once, something that the Splinterlands website lacks. Peakmonsters hasa saved me a lot of time and I would like to thanks its creators @jarvie and @asgarth for creating such a beauty.

Fast Summary of the Rest of the Time

So as I progressed as a Splinterlands player, I eventually came more and more involved in the Splinterlands Discord. There I met wonderful people like @byzantinist, @raynie, and @carrieallen and many more. Those wonderful people made the Discord feel like a second home to me and I gradually came to know them better, I also met @apprentice001 there which was the start to what I am hoping is now a friendship. I also got my first and current guild there, Immortal Gods 3 run by Raynie. It saved me a bunch of dec on potions.

As time progressed and I became a much better player, Byzantinist offered me 2 delegated accounts, which I still play. I thank the kitty for doing that and it helped me discover a lot of good cards to level up and also gave me more insight as to how to play better.

Jacekw also recently referred me to gerber who then allowed me to play another delegated account which I now play competitively in tournaments and ranked, often playing near top 50 on the leaderboard and getting top 10s in tournaments.

Now I play 5 accounts (I made an alt) and constantly get into Champion. It is a wonder that I made it this far in just a couple of months. I have quadrupled my investment but that is not the reason I play Splinterlands. I play it for the fun!

My Advice to New players

Starting out as a new player in Splinterlands is hard. Everything is new and a helping hand would be very helpful. Thankfully there is a place where you can meet people who want to help you and a place to discuss things. The Splinterlands discord has been the center of my Splinterlands experience and all the great people there are eager to help new people join Splinterlands and help grow the game. So hop on in at:
https://discord.gg/gmws8Yr
We will be wait there for you 😀

Signed,
@cornavirus

P.S. Don't forget to use Monster Market and join their Discord! The Discord gives updates about super great deals and I buy the bulk of my cards there!

Thanks for reading my post guys and as always, BATTLE ON!