"Steem Monsters" + "Drug Wars" - Power Strategy Tips #17

As I have now been playing Steem Monsters and Drug Wars for several months now, I have wanted to contribute something of ACTIONABLE value to my fellow players (and FUTURE players) - but NOT just fill my Steemit feed with daily images of quest reward - or battle - SPAM, (no offense to those doing so). Ultimately, Steemit is about ADDING VALUE to the social experience - that is the magic of blockchain technology. So, after some serious pondering, I decided that a weekly "Steem Monster + Drugs Wars player strategy diary" type series, with CONCISE and ACTIONABLE tips, would be of most value to my audience. Please let me know your thoughts (good and/or bad), and I hope that readers (now and into the future) will benefit from this series. If you gain a better understanding of blockchain, gaming, "blockchain gaming", marketing, and/or any other area of knowledge I end up exploring as this series naturally progresses, then I will have done my "good deed" (of providing value) for the week. Also, feel free to hit me up on the battlefield...

@transcript-junky

1 ) The Dark Energy Crystal (DEC) points I have been earning from won battles, combined with the small stream of daily DEC from my 100 SP delegation, has been producing some very nice upvotes via the Steemmonsters "bid bot" (where you send DEC to @splinterlands, with your Steemmit post in the memo section). This is a great way to: monetize my active SteemMonsters playing activity, convert a steady trickle of Steem out of my Steemonsters account and into my Steemit wallet, and the NEW benefit I discovered this week is that those nice upvotes from SteemMonsters have boosted my post onto the trending page of the #steemmonsters hashtag pages (at least this past week). Being on the trending page, of course, increases the visibility of your posts, and so using the bid-bot actually has some significant post-boosting potential. That was something I wasn't expecting, and so I'm glad I decided to experiment with it.

2 ) The ability to new earn DEC tokens from winning battles and by my delegation has BOTH incentived me to play more (as I will usually do a bunch of battles before I make one of my 2-3 weekly Steemit posts, and then follow that up with a nice 1,000+ "bid bot" deposit, which is now giving me a nice $2+ upvote on my posts. I am now striving to increase each "bid bot" deposit by 100-200 DEC per week, and have successfully done that this week with 1,200 DEC deposit. I can also try liquidate some of the old cards and/or new reward cards I don't want, to increase the amount of DEC I can invest in the bid bots. It was a good decision on the part of the @steemonsters team to add the DEC token earning capabity to the game, Speaking for myself only, it HAS motivated me to increase my game play, and so if that is the case for other players who had been dealing with "SteemMonsters burnout" then that is certainly a step forward. After all, ALL good business endeavors require LIQUIDITY (either in terms of capital, repeat purchases, etc.) Having people play in the long term of, logically, better for the whole game.

3 ) As I have been playing around more with attacking those players who have very small armies, and a significant amount of resources over their storage capacities, this has given me more motivation to focus more on building my army. The goal is to be able to attack opponents with progressively larger armies, and be able to win a significant amount of booty WITHOUT a serious loss of my army. Before I choose to attack I use the now more nicely streamlined simulator to make a judgement as to whether it is worth it to attack an opponent based on the amount of booty I will walk away with, AND/OR the amount of FUTURE tokens earned from killing his defenders, AND/OR the amount of time it will take to replace the lost attackers. At this point I am sticking with battles which only cost me the lower cost recruits (ex. "rowdy") as these can be MOST EASILY replaced via the increased production capacity I have been building (primarily weapons and alcohol) via battling. The MAIN limiting factor is then the TIME it takes to replenish the recruits. I am thinking that focusing on upgrading my training building may make the recruiting process faster, and then it will be less risky to initiate more risky battles, and thus recover from them. I also experimenting with upgrading my training levels to see if that decreases my losses (which I can get feedback on via the simulator, which is now very user friendly and efficient). I will try that this week and report on the results in the next update.

4 ) I am continuing to upvote as many #drugswars and/or #steemmonsters posts DAILY via SteemFollower. The way SteemFollower works is that when you upvote other posts within SteemFollower you earn points within their system, and that then increases the display of your posts for OTHER SteemFollower members to upvote. You can also increase your level setting so that the person who upvotes you EARNS MORE points (and you thus SPEND MORE points for each upvote). My experience after using this service for nearly two years is that you ultimately EARN MORE in upvotes then you spend, and it is a good way to build a strong network on Steemit, make some friends, and support each others' efforts. You may be discovered by some of the more prominent Steemians, and this can (as I have experienced) turn into regular LARGER upvote from those people. You can also buy more points with SBD, and so (although I usually earn enough by upvoting to keep my points at a high enough level to meet my "per post" earning objective (~ $2-3 USD per post) there is always the option to allocate some of the SBD income from these posts to bump things up on SteemFollower. Feel free to join SteemFollower via my referral link : https://old.steemfollower.com/?r=4088 if you want to support the posts in this series in a MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL manner.

5 ) As I mentioned in a past post, I have found that if I do heists any time BEFORE one hour (or less) before payout (which is 6 am where I live) the amount of the heist ends up progressively (and significantly) diminishing leading up to payout. Once this week I did an 800k (drugs) heist at around 3 pm here, and by 6 am the next morning most of the 90+ FUTURE token heist payout was GONE. Therefore, what I have decided to do is put more focus on increasing my weapons and alcohol production, primarily because the constant building of my army through the day PRIMARILY depletes my weapons and alcohol, and so my drug levels end up climbing FASTER than I can spend the drugs on capacity-building. Then I often don't wake up before 6 am and end up losing out on the maximum daily payout, by doing a major heist at like 5:50 am. This new strategy will allow me to keep that drug level low throughout the day, and then allow it to accumulate overnight so that if I DO manage to wake up before 6 am I can do the MAXIMUM heist. If I DON'T wake up I will at least NOT go over my max capacity, AND my weapons and alcohol levels will be climbing rapidly enough to make it easy to pick right back up and most efficiently increase my buildings, recruits, and/or assets. The key is the RATIO between drugs, weapons, and alcohol production levels.

I hope you find some/any of these tips useful in increasing your understanding and/or skill level in the Steem Monsters (Splinterlands) and/or Drug Wars game(s). More JUICY tips to come with each weekly update, as I become more experienced and successful in the game.

See you on the battlefield...

@transcript-junky