Community Engagement Challenge: Survival Mode - The More The Merrier

Prelude
Hi all, good day to all of you. It's time again for Community Engagement Challenge. Today's challenge topic is on the new survival mode that had been released during the last update which happened earlier this week. So let's get right on to understand more on survival mode.

Survival Mode

And here it is, after all the hype that was mentioned earlier, the newest game mode in Splinterlands has finally arrived - Survival Mode.

This will no longer be your grindy style play to climb the ladder and trying to go into a higher league. Losing a match now has its consequences as cards that are knocked out will need to sit out for a cooldown time before it is available again for use and take note, it is not just in survival mode, it will be not available even normal wild/modern rank battles.

How Does This Mode Works?

Card Availability:
First things first, every card you have is available for use , yes you hear it correctly, even your beastly Gladiators are all available for use in this mode.

What Happens When A Card Gets Knocked Out:
When a card gets knocked out in a match in survival mode, the card will undergo a cooldown before it can be used again. Cooldowns for each card will be based on the card's rarity, level, and whether it is a gold foil or not, and will be calculated based on the following formula:

base_cd - (base_cd - max_cd) * bcx / max_bcx

Base_cd is the base cooldown time for a 1 BCX card of that rarity and while Max_cd is the cooldown time for a max level card of that rarity. No matter how, it will be a long wait before a card that is knocked out be available again. And here is a summary of how the cooldown looks:

Rewards:
If you prefer just SPS, survival mode is the one for you as they only have SPS rewards at the moment. There is no Glint or league chest for this mode. To also note, reward pool for survival mode is based on Modern format’s RSHARE calculations, so give it a little time for the rewards to stabilize.

Lack of cards? Season Rental is your best friend:
Short term rental is a no go for this ruleset, if you need more cards to boost your collection, it has to be at the start of the season with a season rental.

Card usage prevention from using in survival mode

This is the important part of this post. If you haven't setup your cards accordingly, I suggest you not to start playing survival mode. This is because you might just end up sending your main deck into cooldown and you will be unable to use cards properly in normal wild/modern rank battles.

So before embarking on survival mode be sure to work on your card setup and make sure the lighted up icon in the screenshot below is unchecked, which ensures that the card will be disabled from survival mode.

Am I Ready? Are You Ready?

At this current moment, I don't think I am because bulk of the cards that I have that are duplicates cannot make up a proper lineup and probably end up on cooldown.

To be ready, I believe one needs to have an array of cards that is prepared for the different role requirement of the lineup such as tank, taunt, attackers from all 3 attack types, sufficient neutral cards etc. Alot of cards to prepare.

I would think people whom have bought loads of chaos legion packs and opened them will stand a good chance on the game mode. I might consider using my wild cards to take card with all the duplicates that I had in my possession to see how far I can go. Though I will not be surprised if I get wiped out really quickly due to my small collection.

Wrap Up
I personally think that this game mode is brilliant for players to play cards that they have in excess. Instead of lying there and without them getting rented out, this is a good way to play them. There are people with loads of reward cards and this is time for them to be used and battle it out to help their owners earn some SPS.

This mode is also exciting because you no longer see those regular lineup that you will normally see. But what you will see if crazy lineup made up of all variant to fill and might even trample through you when you have depleted collection. For now, I might try it out later in the season when things are more stable and also to study what kind of excess card do I actually have and how much I can setup. Should be something fun to try and maybe if it turn out well, continue build up extra cards for this mode. Thank you to the developers to come up with this play mode and let's see how creative everyone is putting the cards you have to good use.

See you on the battlefield!

I am currently part of PIZZA, an active gaming and creative arts crypto community on the HIVE blockchain and part of PIZZA guild. Popular cryto games such as SPLINTERLANDS, RISING STAR and HASHKINGS are actively discussed in this community.

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Till my next battle sharing, take care, stay safe and happy battling!

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