"Steem Monsters" + "Drug Wars" - Power Strategy Tips #25

As I have now been playing Steem Monsters and Drug Wars for several months, I've 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 Monsters + 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

[** DISLAIMER: This weekly update was a bit delayed due to the Steem hard fork chaos **]

1 ) After the conclusion of the most recent season I had a few observations, prompted by some of the strategy posts I read on the #steemmonsters hashtag pages this past week. Firstly, I found that immediately after the new season began the battle competition increased significantly, IN ADDITION to the fact that my intense play in the 24 hours leading up to the end of the season significantly diminished my DEC "capture rate" (to less than 50%). This means that I ended up with MUCH weaker momentum going into the new season. I spent a grueling afternoon just trying to complete the first quest AND with the goal of reaching 2,500 DEC so I could buy a "+5 reward card" potion to boost my reward cards for the first few quests of the season. After several hours of TORTURE I decided to try a new strategy of just completing the first quest as soon as possible, with my strongest decks, and before completing the quest, dip into my DEC savings (held on Steem-Engine) as a form of "short-term credit" to pay for the reward card potion (I actually only needed ~ 2,000 out of the 2,500 after the day's playing), knowing that within 24-48 hours my "capture rate" would go up while general competition would go down, thus allowing me to earn back the 2,000 DEC faster.

2 ) In the previous post in this series I mentioned that I had started experimenting with doing the new "jobs" which Drug Wars has rolled out. At first I tried doing several per day, but the main issue is that each completed job - even though it was giving me a nice return of assets and DWD (Drug Wars Dollars), was also eliminating a sizable number of my "Rowdy" and "Bouncer" units. So what I dedided to do is slow down my pace and do ONLY ONE job per day, and then use the part of the asset gains from the daily job to replenish lost battle units. In this way I amm always operating with relatively MAXIMUM fighting force, which is important when I perform the other daily task of attacking previous and new opponents which I discover by scouring the map for new prey, AND using my running list of "high booty" prey to try and attack daily ("the daily rounds"). I am also now working on upgrading my "training facility" and "operations center" so as to decrease the amount of time required to recuit new battle units. Perhaps if I can increase the speed of processing new recruits I could try working up to TWO jobs per day. That is what I will work on this week.

3 ) My ongoing task of "reading one post from each of the #steem... is paying off. There are more people posting more detailed and serious posts about both the #steemmonsters and #drugwars games, and I am also getting LOTS of helpful information, advice, and actual ASSISTANCE from my fellow guild members. I have been copiling a list of "most consistent and valuable posters" for each game, and refer to that BEFORE going through the hashtag pages, for the sake of not wasting time sifting through lower-quality posts (which there are a lot of). For instance, our guild leader has leased the members some valuable cards - especially gold cards - which we can use to earn EXTRA Dark Energy Tokens (DEC) per battle, since gold cards draw in more DEC per battle. I just learned this week that if you click the "circle with the "i" inside" button, next to your DEC earnings amount on the "Battle Results" page, you get a breakdown of the bonus DEC you've earned, based on your "capture rate" (%), "win streak" (+%), gold cards used in the battle (+%), "alpha/promo cards (+%), and guild (+% - based on the level of your guild's "Quest Lodge" (ours is currently at Level 5, so we are getting a +5% bonus of DEC per won battle). This is VERY valuable information, and since discovering this feature I have been using it to experiment in maximizing my per-battle DEC earning. For instance, as your "capture rate" goes down progressively with each battle (before "powering back up between battles") it is possible to compensate for the loss of DEC earning by using more gold cards. This newly-dsicovered fact that the gold cards enable you to earn more DEC per won battle has also lead me to the recommendation to the guild that ALL members start leasing each other unused gold cards (as most of my gold cards are at LOWER levels than my regular cards (of that same card), and so can't be used in regular battles. By doing this, OTHER guild members can use those gold cards to earn more DEC per battle, and that can be used to increase the contribution of DEC to the "Guild Hall" and "Quest Lodge", and so accelerate our rate of progress in moving up the levels. Here is the link to our guild for any SERIOUS players who may be interested in joining us. We are currently at the max of 19/19 members, but may likely move up to the next "Guild Hall" level THIS season, and so if that happens we will be looking for the 20th (out of 20 (max)) member. You can also hit up @nicole-st (guild leader) for more information.

DEC Hunters (Steem Monsters Guild)
https://steemmonsters.com/?p=guild&id=e0aacdadc6f8407c57c0db61568d877dc917ad04&tab=about

4 ) In relation to #3, after realizing that gold cards earn additional DEC per won battle I decided to divert the 2,000 DEC for each of my two weekly series posts (which are not part of THIS series) - so 4,000 DEC per week - into purchasing the "Alchemy" potions:

https://steemmonsters.com/?p=shop&tab=potions

which increase your chance of getting gold cards for each reward card you earn. Each of these potions is applied to 500 "charges" (that is, one chance per reward card), and the cost of the potions is: ~ 6,000 DEC for +25% chance, ~ 12,000 DEC for +50% chance, and ~ 24,000 DEC for +100% chance. Since these are significant costs I decided to try the +25% potion first, BOTH to see how many days/quests worth of chances the 6,000 will include, AND to see if there is a significant increase of gold cards earned during the run of 500 chances. Once I finish all 500 chances I will then be able to judge whether or not to try ANOTHER +25% potion, to bump it up to +50% potion, or to NOT purchase additional gold card potions. The issue comes down to budget. If I do land some seriously valuable gold cards as a result of the potions I will calculate the value of those gold cards (in terms of DEC) - INCLUDING the longer-term value of the gold cards, which results from their ability to earn bonus DEC per won battle - and decide how to proceed from there. These gold card potions are being used IN COMBINATION with the "+5 reward cards" potions I currently use, which work together to increase reward cards, which can then be converted/burned into DEC and used to contribute to the guild and/or buy more potions. So it is essentially a budgeting/accounting issue at this point. I will provide updates on this new strategy in the coming weeks.

5 ) With the new Steem hardfork I noticed that mt ACTUAL PAYOUT from my posts has gone down significanty - significantly enough for me to REVISIT my strategy of investing 2,000 DEC (Dark Energy Tokens) into the SteemMonsters bit-bot for each of my posts. The good news is that I noticed that my weekly posts of THIS SERIES had earned the additional benefit of hitting the trending page as a result of using the bid-bot, and so I am now going to try using the bid bot for ONLY the posts in this series, as it also draws in new followers, and new followers means wider exposure of my posts, and this may (hopefully) make up for the upvote loss due to the hard fork. As I have stated in the past, my target "per post" income is $3-4 USD, which I believe is justified based on the amount of effort which goes into writing these posts.

I hope you find some/any of these tips useful in increasing your understanding and/or skill level in the Steem Monsters (Splinterland) 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