It all started when I woke up early this morning (couldn't go back to sleep) and saw a Coingecko notification on my phone...

It was at that moment I knew today was going to be a crazy day for me. And not because I was going to make a crap ton of crypto or because work was going to be extra busy (which it turned out to be actually). But because I knew that because ETH was at a new ATH that means I had more "funny money" to play with.

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The first thing I did was what any degenerate 3D printer person would do in my situation. I bought 5 rolls of PLA filament!

Now usually I always just get FlashForge branded Filament since I got my FlashForge printer about a month ago now. But after working through various issues and troubleshooting and reading way to much on Reddit. I deduced that all crappy/normal/'basic' PLA is the same regardless of where you get it from. Now certain people have their own opinions on brands and types but the heck with that. So I decided to purchase 5 rolls of "eSUN" PLA Basic filament.

I needed more Black and Green for a specific project (that will be posted down the road when it's done), I already have 1.5kg of Blue still but hey you can never have enough. The "Pink" and "Grey" were picked up because I didn't have those colors yet and I am quickly learning that in order to print better shit I need more colors.

Note: that "pink" looks like a light Orange/Red mixture thing but whatever. And the "Grey" looks like Light Blue to me but it's close enough.

I did buy a few articles of clothing as well for the wifey but we won't show those here...... 😇😉

I spent over $200 of ETH this morning on those things and I thought that was the end of it.

If you want to see how I buy real world "IRL" items with crypto read about it here

But boy was I wrong...

And here we go...

Now for context though. Earlier this week I withdrew $25 from FreeCash (Shameless plug for my FreeCash Article) and I was talking it through on my Discord Server about how to spend that $25 in Splinterlands. @nozem01 The Legend that he is, gave me some serious advice.

(at that time I really wanted to max out my 2 Wagons for Conflicts, that was before I did the math and realized that I would need $2,022.48 worth of Yaba's Pickles to get a guaranteed promo card from Conflicts)

This was what I offered up for debate/advice:

And because Nozem01 is the GOAT, the advice was either buy SPS and stake it (passive income is never a bad thing) or buy cards for LAND so I can fill out my LAND slots with more powerful cards to be more efficient.

What I ended up doing was spending about 20,000 DEC on buying up a couple single cards to stake and also staking about 5,000 DEC to power those guys as well. I was left with somewhere around 10,000 DEC that I told myself I was going to keep for WILD passes or a rainy day.

But then today happened!

The Beginning of the End

I was going through my normal routine today and checking out various things on Hive and Splinterlands and decided to check up on my LAND plots and for reference here are my plots.

But for more context here is my Production page:

Yeah it's not great. My first goal months ago was to just buy plots of land. I needed something to work with so I buy un-surveyed plots and basically got Jungle or Forest every time. The Plains I bought on secondary and I think the Swamps were from me surveying (can't remember now)

So I decided to start building a Logging Camp, then use the rest of my stupid Wood plots for all the other things like SPS and Research Mine. And that is what I did.

So as of this writing I have:

• 1 Grain Farm
• 1 Logging Camp
• 1 Research Hut
• 1 Shard Mine
• 2 unused plots of land

What I really really want is a Iron and Stone plots but in Dryae Tor.. there are none of those for sale. So what can a man do?

Well he can then remember today is ETH ATH day and he should make rash decisions that he may or may not regret later.

Sooo this happened:

Because I wanted to buy this bad boy!

So I did! And I know what you are thinking.. but Cherokee4Life a Bog is a Grain plot and not Iron or Stone. And I know that silly goose.

The reason I wanted it was because it has a +100% boost to production for Research and Aura!

And I know after I get a Iron and Stone Production I will need a Aura land as well. Sooo why not buy what I think is a cheap land that can produce Aura (and Grain if I ever change my mind). And yes Aura Labs can be built on ANY land type but this has the 100% boost and also is a Grain Farm as a backup. But enough of that back to my bad decisions today.

So far I spent 43,089.161 DEC

And I am going to spend another 5,000 on a Power Core.

I am just going to throw some guy at this land for now but will revisit that in a bit..

Then we pick the Aura Lab, obviously!

But this is where I get humbled and also I start to see the errors of having these bad decisions.

I knew you needed a Aura Permit and it costs 10,000 Research Points. But for some reason I figured you didn't need it to start the building just when the building finished.

I checked Time Crystals and that's a hard pass.

Up until this point I have spent 48,089.161 DEC on a plot of land I can't even use yet so that's cool. But hey YOLO let's move on to more decisions I make today :)

I need to do 1 of 2 things next. I either need to buy more LAND plots or severely boost my Grain production.

There are no good plots of land to buy in my region so pass of that. So now we head to Monster Market.

I need cards that are either Life or Dragon and since we are flush with DEC we search for Legendary and Gold cards only. And these are our options.

Desert Dragon starts at level 2 and has a Production of 2,500 which is freakin AWESOME!

And I almost bought it right then and there for $26.. But then the little Noze01 guy on my shoulder whispered to me to just check Epic cards too just in case because although I feel like a whale today.. I won't be tomorrow.

So Gold + Epic + Life/Death cards are as follows:

And looking at Djinn Renova specifically that is a $4.702 card (for 1BCX that is).

And a level 4 card would only cost me $18.959 (20905.281 DEC). And since I have roughly 64k DEC left over I figured why not!

So I bought that card(s) now too!

I have spent 68,994.442 DEC so far today and I am just getting started!

So now we combine our 4 cards into 1 SUPER PREMIUM ULTRA ALT ART SECRET RARE (Read: level 4 Gold card)!

And now we go put her to good use!

Also I just realized how terrible it was for me to buy crappy common cards to get them to max level to stake. I was cheap and it worked then but my gosh, just swapping the 1 card out makes a massive difference. Yeah it has a Production of 2,904 instead of the 550. But I am not making almost DOUBLE the Grain per hour!

OH and it required 6,000 less Energy/DEC? UM okay yes please!

So since that is such a great strategy let's do it again! But since I bought the 4 lowest priced Djinn Renova cards, now the lowest priced card is Dax Paragon..

So we buy 4 of those guys because YOLO!

He costs $19.722 (21,739.417 DEC) which brings my grand total today up to 90,733.859 DEC spent!

We need to upgrade him to Ultra Instinct Super Rare (just lvl 4) as well!

We put him to work now too!

I started the day with a Grain production of 69.388 Grain per Hour. (before taxes)

Now I am at 163.548 Grain per Hour. Which is crazy to me. (before taxes)

This was me this morning:

And this is me now.

And I also have 12,000 DEC/Dark Energy unused that I can now use on other plots of land.

But enough about that! More bad decisions!

FOMO

Nozem01 did another thing and posted this in my discord today, and I really liked him but then I saw what he cost and was like "nope".

But that was before I was a "Whale for a Day".

But I think we need to stick to a Regular Card and not Gold lol

Another $8.25 down the drain! (9,091.91 DEC)

Our running today for today is at 99,825.769 DEC!

But we still have over 12,000 DEC to spend (I should keep 2,000 DEC for next WILD season pass but I doubt that will happen)

So back to MonsterMarket I suppose, and just out of curiosity I decided to spice things up and change my Search Filters...

I have Regular cards and I have Gold cards. Do you know which cards I do NOT have?

I was pleasantly surprised to see how cheap Black Foil cards were. Soo bad decisions again.

Now the one thing I don't like about Monster Market (and other sites too....) is how they show the price. I wish there was a Minnow/Whale toggle on the site where it would change to show you the cheapest price of 1 card being sold or the cheapest per BCX value being sold. Looking at the Conclave Tracker it shows $3.101 over its head so I thought I could pick one up for $3.101

But that is the $/BCX cost. SO annoying.

Today I learned that all Black Foil cards are Level 4. When you search on Splinterlands it shows you the actual price which is nice.

And I know what you are thinking... "But Cherokee4Life you just gotta change the sort field to 'Price (ASC)' and not 'Price/BCX (ASC)' silly goose"

Yeah? Well I guess I found a bug then 😟

But you live and learn.

Buying up Gold Cards I don't have

So my new strategy is just going to be search on Monster Market for cards that are Gold and Chaos Legion (they are the cheapest usually) and then cross reference if I own them already or not.

And once I got about 14 of the Gold cards from Chaos Legion I just started selecting other sets and finding cheap cards there too to pick up.

And this is what we end up with...

$9.276 worth of Gold Foil cards (16 of them) and then also the cheapest 9 Archons/Summoners I could find that I didn't already own.

That brings the grand total of spending today to 110,042.753 DEC

And with that I now have a Splinterlands Card Collection of 528 cards with a total Power of 90,270. Is that a lot? Not when compared to the whales. But compared to me 7 months ago it is a lot and I am happy with it.

Also let's not forget my $40 mistake of a land purchase I can't use until I get more Research Points to buy a Aura Permit to then have to build said Aura Lab to then work and produce Aura to use it for... something I don't even know what honestly lol

I hoped you liked my ramble of a post today. It's been a while since I posted regularly and that is because real life work has been bonkers crazy. So me spending $$ on Splinterlands is a good way to get back into the mayhem that is HIVE!