A fast and brief guide to play Splinterlands (for beginners)
This guide is for very beginners in the game, it explains how to start battling.
I hope it can help the new players to start playing Splinterlands, in fact, I have written this guide for my friends and as it became very useful for them I decided to post it here, the Spanish version will be posted very soon also.
Playing Splinterlands:
You have cards for 5 elements (Splinters), fire, water, earth, light, dragon and death, in each battle you will have limited time to select the cards for the battle, you will have about 2:30 mins.
You will see a number called mana cap, it indicates the sum of mana you can use in each battle, mana is shown on the upper left corner on each card, if mana cap in a battle is 27 you can use more cards that if it is 12 (watch on your deck how mana need any card, the better is the card the more mana it will need).
There are 2 kind of cards: Summoners and monsters, you can only select a summoner and so many monsters as mana allows you. So, when you start a battle, first select “ranked” button or “practice” button, obviously the second option it is just for practice so NO rewards, once the game find an enemy (another user to play) you will see this window (tutorial1),
tutorial1 image
you will see the mana cap, the rules of this battle (rules changes in every battle to make it more interesting, it can be “no healing”, only a special kind of cards, “no armour” and many others). You’ll see also the other user level and the recent cards he was using, just put the cursor on the small “element” icon and you will see which cards he used before, now click on “make team”, select a summoner/splinter, you can choose only one and then choose the monsters for the battle, always with an eye on the MANA CAP indicator below the “battle” button -upper left n the screen- (tutorial2 image)
tutorial2 image
if you’re over the mana cap you won’t be able to start the battle, and remember the time runs. You can choose 6 monsters maximum and depend of the mana cap sometimes you will use less than 6. It is important the order of the cards, there are monsters that have melee attack and others have ranged attack, an icon will show the kind on each card and the damage they can cause with a number (left-center on the card -tutorial3 image-), so it is recommendable put first melee attack, and ranged attack then, cause those cards do not attack in the first position unless the rules of the battle allows it.
melee attack
ranged attack
magic attack
You will see other monsters have a purple cloud, it is the magic attack, you can place them where you want, they cause damage always. Ranged attack cards can make damage when are in the 1st place so I do not recommend put ranged attack card first never (unless you have a strategy to do this) cause this card won’t cause any damage in this position. Under the “attack” icon on the card, you will find the “speed” indicator, it is a number that indicates the priority of the card in each round, the higher it is the best for the round, ie. a card with speed 5 will attack first/faster than other that has 2. In the right side-down the card a heart icon indicates the life the card has, ie. If it has 3 and other enemy card attacks with 3 will be “death”. I never place the low life level cards at the end, I try to place them in the middle, between other cards.
To finish this brief tutorial talk about abilities, there is an icon down-center in the card, if you put the cursor on, you will see a description of the ability, it is important to say, the cards with melee attack and sneak ability, can attack from any position, not only from the first place (when battling). See tutorial3 image for card basics.
tutorial3 image
- All images are from https://steemmonsters.com