Starting a Free 2 Play Splinterlands account!

Hello everyone and welcome back to another Splinterlands post, it's time to make my second post for today, I've just made my Social Media Challenge post for this week, and after another coffee, let's continue with this one because it's a really fun one!

This weeks Community Engagement Challenge post is about making a guide for a Free 2 Play splinterlands account, and it's been a LONG time since I made my account so let's discover how this has changed and I will show you step by step how this goes.
It's a pretty cool challenge because I didn't gave myself time to explore the free account just yet, but like how @shawnnft said a couple of weeks ago, I should try this too, and he was right so let's go!

To find out how you can participate in this challenge yourself, check out the Splinterlands post here.

I'm making this post with screenshots from my PC, but since the game is pretty similar nowadays for phone as well as PC, things should look pretty similar.

So, first things first, we need to visit the splinterlands main website

This brings you to the main screen, and it's awesome already because I'm getting on a part of the site I didn't see before and it's very true!

You can play and earn in every match you win, and even sell your in game assets when you ever decide you want to leave the game, imagine all these funds we have poured in to classic web2 gaming titles like World of Warcraft or Call of Duty, with all the DLC's I bought and now I don't even play them anymore, the money is gone!

So, first, click on the 'log in' icon at the top right, this brings you on a new screen where you have to register your account first.

Again, a new screen where you can fill in your account credentials, fill in your username and your email address, in the field below where you put your email address (indicated with the green arrow in the screen below) you can fill in your referral account, this is me and when you feel like it, you can leave 'nozem01' here, I will send whatever I get for your signup to your account to help you get started, and also when you let me know you're getting started, I will try my best to help you with personal guidance for any questions you might have.

When you can't come up with a cool user name just now, you can also auto generate a user name but keep in mind you can NEVER rename your account.

So, let's fill in your awesome user name, I'll just go for nozem02 for now and fill in my email address in the 'email' field as well as the 'confirm email' field.
Also, check the second box to accept the privacy policy and terms of service, that tells you the rules of the game and the things you are not allowed to do, such as using automated play (bots) or Battle Helpers anywhere outside of Wild League.
When you filled in everything, click on the 'create password' icon.

Now make a STRONG password, something you don't forget but can't be guessed easily, and also something you're not using on any other site with the same email address (considering data leaks and all you should never use the same password on different sites or accounts).
I left the email blank for this screenshot because I don't want to get emails from random peoples 😆

When you have filled in everything, click on the green 'register' icon.

You're now a Splinterlands player, welcome!! 😃

In the top right is your user name displayed followed by LITE, meaning you have a free 2 play account.

Good to know: whenever you upgrade your account with a spellbook, the 'LITE' will be gone.

The free to play version is perfect for exploring the game, you can do pretty much everything including earning glint you can use to buy chests or rewards cards with to start leveling up your account, the free 2 play version is basically the web2 version of Splinterlands.

You can join guilds to connect and play together with other players, and receive free card delegations from other players as well to help you in your battles, it also lets you earn reward chests whenever you increase your rating high enough to promote to the next league.

To start earning SPS and being able to sell the things you have earned, you have to upgrade your account and buy the $10 Spell Book.

Not saying you need to do that for now, in fact, first try out the game and see if it's something for you, I've got to warn you though... I had NEVER played a Trading Card Game before, and actually thought it would be boring, but well.. I'm still here over three years later and now Splinterlands has really became a part of my daily life with everything there is to do.

The tutorial is a bit out dated and is set to be overhauled soon, but still let's click on it so you get a general idea on how everything looks!
So click on the 'visit the Tutorial' GO icon.

Read everything and try to remember what you see, I'll run you trough it in this post as well after you're done with the tutorial.

I'll wait for you! 😀

Done? Ok, now let's get on to the cool part, battles!
Click on the 'battle' in the Play a Match screen.

As soon as you click it, a new screen appears 'Seeking Enemy'... exciting! Everything I'm showing you, you have already seen in the tutorial as well but this way you can easily go back and forth and have some extra advice from me.

The Match Begins screen shows you a number of things, the recently played teams your opponent played, showing he or she like the Life splinter a lot, of course for now you can't do a lot with this information but as you get more experience you will, when you hover over each icon you can see in more detail what cards your opponent has used in the previous battles.

Rules of combat, is for now just a standard ruleset, to start things easy, when you increase in ranking points you will see other rulesets too, I wrote more posts explaining the gameplay in more detail as well you can read, I'll share them when I'm done with this post.

The mana cap tells you, you have 48 mana for this match, every summoner and every card has it's own mana value, so you can't use more than 48 mana in total, which is a lot for a low level match so this is more than enough.

We have 3 minutes 15 seconds left to look at this screen and make a team in the next screen and hit BATTLE to go to the fight it self, in higher matches, you get 2 minutes and 30 seconds for this.

The team selection screen appears with different summoners to choose from, every splinter has it's own benefits, Fire being generally slower but with heavy damage, Water being fast and evasive, Earth being magic damage focused, Life being heavy on archery damage (called ranged damage in splinterlands) as well as focused on healing and preserving your team, and Death of course being the opposite of life, being focused on nerfing the other team and the standard summoner is a good counter to a magic team.

Considering our opponent was using the Life splinter mostly, I'm choosing to use the Earth splinter and go with a magic focused team.

When you use which cards requires more attention than this post, and you'll best read more posts explaining this, like I said before, I will share other explainer posts later in this post.

Some basics:

• Melee units (with the saw icon displaying how much attack it has) only can attack from the first position unless they have an ability like reach, sneak or opportunity.

• Magic units can fire from any position, magic goes straight past armor and directly hits the health points

• Ranged units can fire from any position EXCEPT not from the first position.

• Both Melee and Ranged units will need to get trough a enemy unit's armor first, if it has any.

Oops! I made a mistake in positioning my cards... I've put a ranged monster in the second position, once he gets to the first position he won't be able to fire!

When we're done, click the green BATTLE icon to go to the battlefield.

Click on the 'play' icon in the top center, marked by the green circle in my screenshot and adjust the speed with the icon marked by the green arrow.

I don't want to make this post over complicated but I do want to share some basic info, so here is a quick explainer about why I chose this team...

So, as expected my opponent went for the life splinter, the basic summoner gives all ranged units 1 extra attack damage, so to counter normal attacks (both melee and ranged) I picked my first card (called a tank) because it has the 'shield' ability, halving all normal attacks against it, rounded up, so when a unit does three damage against my shielded tank three, halved is 1.5 rounded up is two.

Good to know 'Shield' is an ability, 'Armor' is a stat that some units have on top of their health points, they are NOT the same.

My Line-Up:

• Summoner: Obsidian - reason: Boost magic damage because the life splinter has a lot of armor, magic goes straight past armor, killing them quickly.
• First position: Mycelic Infantry - reason: It's Shield ability makes this a great tank for this battle.
• Second position: Supply Runner - reason: A ranged unit with nice damage, this was supposed to be in the 5th position but I made a mistake!
• Third position: Mycelic Slipspawn - reason: It's Taunt ability forces all enemy units except the one in the first position to attack this unit first, basically being a meat shield, this prevents small units in my team to quickly be killed.
• Fourth position: Goblin Psychic - reason: It's Tank Heal ability heals the tank Health Point every round.
• Fifth position: Venari Spellsmith - reason: Just a low mana exta attack card without a real purpose in this battle.
• Sixth position: Regal Peryton - reason: It's fast and flying, being very evasive, making this a perfect back line protection against enemy sneak units who attacks the back of our team.

This of course was a very easy fight, when the battle is done there's a new screen with the battle results

You can watch the battle for yourself here if you're interested how it went in detail.

So, this screen shows I have won the fight, I got 33 glint as a reward, glint can be used to buy rewards with in the store, more on that later.

the 'copy link to this battle' let's you share the link like I did for this post, this way you can talk about a certain battle with other players, or maybe share your awesome victory on social media.
Also use this to share a battle with more experienced players to understand what you can do better or fail to see why you lost.

The 'spellbook required' text is in the place where for spellbook owners is displayed how much SPS they have earned for this battle, SPS is the games native gaming token, called 'SPlinterlands Shards'.

When we click on the 'Close' icon, this returns us to the main screen.

This screen now shows we completed the 'play a match' quest, and it also shows the total glint earned, now 33.
for every battle you get a certain amount of glint now, showed in 'my glint balance' as well as the same amount in 'Season end loot' that unlocks at the end of every two week season.
So basically you earn every glint amount twice, I always save up all glint I earn for the entire season to better plan what I want to buy for it all at once.

To continue to the next fight, click the big 'BATTLE' button... you want to do another one together to get you started? Why not!?

Again, standard ruleset, with only 13 mana to spend, that's considered very low, the lowest is 12!
The enemy likes to play water and fire, but with this low mana and only the standard cards to be chosen there aren't a lot of options...

When you play longer, you will start remembering the strengths of each splinter and what cards have certain abilities, I chose the Death splinter for this fight because the basic tank is only 6 mana and has the Thorns ability, doing 2 damage against melee units that attack it.

With only 3 extra mana left, the options are very limited, you can use the filters to quickly see what options you have, for example I selected the filter '3' to only show units with 3 mana. Of course using a card with 2 mana and other one with 1 mana would also be an option, when you have more cards at your disposal you have more options, and more options than your opponent is always a good thing!

We both went for the Death splinter, this shows looking at what this opponent played in it's previous matches (mainly water and fire) is a guarantee this is also the fact for the upcoming match.

The second card my opponent has chosen isn't able to attack before it gets to the first position, it's a melee attacker without any abilities.
My second card is a magic card, so I'll probably win this one as well.
These first battles are meant to be easy of course, to get you adjusted to the gameplay, it's not fun to get your ass kicked right from the start! 😅

So another victory, earning 33 more glint!

You can watch the battle here.

From here, just play more battles and get better at understanding how everything works, this takes time, I remember my performance got a lot better after two or three weeks, because you just need to learn everything about the game and how it works.

Also when you have time, watch video's on YouTube about the game, or read explainer posts like the ones I make, I made an overview about different topics for starting players, it's a lot to read!

You can find the overview here.

So, I hope this helps in getting you started, as a starting player you have a lot to learn, don't get overwhelmed and ask advice from experienced players, many of us in this community are here to help new players with extra card delegations and advice.

Hop in the Splinterlands Discord server to meet other players and ask your questions here.

If this is to crowded for you, you can also join my guilds discord server here. and say hi in the #splinterlands channel (tag me @nozem there)

You can join a guild in the Guilds Section:

But a better way to look for active guilds with people that want to guide you as a starting player is to look for recruitment messages in the 'Guild Recruitment' section in the Splinterlands Discord, and if you can't find any just post your own message there that you're looking for a guild, be sure to add your user name or IGN (In Game Name) in the message so players can invite you.

Also good to know, you can quickly rent a starter deck in the market section in the top left.
And when you decide you like the game, you can consider buying the spellbook to be able to experience the full game!

Let me know if you require any help or advice, have fun!

Thank you for reading!!!

If you haven't made an account already, please consider using my referral link to sign up, I'll happily send the amount I get for your signup back to you in DEC or SPS to help you start.

Also, when you require any help to get you started, also let me know, I'm here to advice and guide new players and maybe I can help you with card delegations too!

Have a great day!