"Steem Monsters" + "Drug Wars" - Power Strategy Tips #22

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

1 ) I made some good progress on getting up to speed with the major new upgrades to the Drug Wars game. Most of this progress occured through reading various posts from the #drugwars hashtag (especially the ones from the official @drugwars Steemit account. Since the changes are a bit complicated, AND one of the effects of the changes is that it now takes more time to find battle opponents via the new territory "map" (as well as a dereased chance of easily finding opponents who have smaller armies and resources over their storage amounts), I decided to spend most of my limited time just exploring the map, and when I DID find an opponent who I could properly defeat and loot I added the coordinates of their base to my running .txt file log of "valid opponents". My hope is that this will minimize the extra time required to find proper opponents now.

2 ) Following on from #1, towards the end of the week (one day before posting this) DrugWars did release the "Occupation Troup" unit on the "Bootcamp" page. To ease into the expansion of my empire I DID manage toset up a new base, and then begin the gradual process of sending some troops, and some small increments of assets (the ammount is based on your capacity levels for each asset) and beginning the process of building up the new base. I will likely spend the next few weeks STRATEGICALLY choosing the addition three bases (your maximu limit is five), as I want to see if there are any advantages to choosen different base locations (territories). It's taking a significant amount of work to upgrade the new base, and so I plan to simply SECURE the five locations, and then work on upgrading one at a time (likely one per month).

3 ) My strategy of reading one post per day from both the #drugwars and #steemmonsters Steemit hashtags has been achieved this past week, and has been very helpful in getting me up to speed on the major changes to both games.

4 ) Since my Drug Wars activity was relatively sluggish this week I decided to go full-force with SteemMonsters. Last week I mentioned that I had bumped my "per post" investment of DEC into the @steemmonsters "bid bot", up to 2,500 per post, and this indeed increased my upvote from SteemMonsters to over $4.00 per post, which when included with some of the other regular upvotes I get from some "well-endowed" Steemians, has brought my income per post up to around the $5.00 level, which is right where I want to be. I think my posts are justifiably worth $5.00 each, based on the amount of effort I put in.

5 ) In addition to the increase from 2,000 DEC to 2,500 DEC bid-bot investment per post I also found that I was able to earn a LOT more DEC by playing the game full-force. And, since I have been hearing that the "Dark Energy Tokens" are projected to increase in value over time, I decided to start saving a weekly amount of DEC from my game play. Based on a rough estimate of the actual DEC I earned this season I decided to start saving 1,500 DEC per week (500 DEC for each post I make). However, I will need to re-evaluate and adjust this amount based on how much of the game I am actually able to play into the future. Since my playing fluctuates, due to factors such as: being busy on other projects, exhaustion with the active play, etc. it may turn out to be best to set the amount of weekly savings of DEC to a PERCENTAGE instead of a set amount.

6 ) I have come to the realization that, over time, my core Steemit activity has centered around gaming, and posting about gaming. And since I believe that Steem has been rather stagnant for most of the past year I think it is best to focus on allocating MOST of my income from the posts into SteemMonsters. I believe that the cards will have a significantly higher long-term appreciation of value than if I simply leave my Steem in my Steemit wallet. What I will likely do is invest 50% of my post earning into card upgrades. I can always sell the cards to liquidate the Steem into the future.

7 ) Steemit member @fairbet did a quite informative evaluation of the @kryptogames algorithm this week (in line with the function of his profile ("to protect the player"):

Delving into Fairness: Kryptogamers.com
https://steemit.com/gambling/@fairbet/delving-into-fairness-kryptogamers-com

but as you can see from the comments section, some of us are still not convinced of the validity of that operation. I commend @fairbet's effort, but he is only ONE person, and has no official accreditation within the "online gambling" regulatory industry. So myself and another player have decided to continue the process of gathering evidence (via screenshot of active game play (which the other guy will do), and I will continue researching some additional options for reporting the Kryptogames operation to some reputable "online gambling" forums and web sites (which are intended to support online gamblers) in an attempt to put pressure on the Kyrptogames admin from the wider internet. At this point it seems that the options for taking effective action agains #kryptogames from within Steemit will not be as effective as consulting with more proper organizations online which are dedicated the monitoring online gambling sites. For instance, if the grievance were with a brick and mortar casino in Las Vegas, we could file a report with the "Nevada Gaming Control Board gaming Commission) https://gaming.nv.gov , which holds legal jurisdiction over gaming operations in Nevada. I have found a few similar organizations which are focused on "online gambling" and will attempt to pursue filing reports if/when we can gather proper evidence. I will provide additional updates on this endeavor as it evolves. One positive thing which has come out of my recent debacle with Kryptogames is that the 5,000 Steem that I lost (~1,300 Steem on Kryptogames, plus the ~3,700 equalivalent (in BTC and BCH) with which I attempted to chase the loss on another, more reputable (in my opinion) online casino)) has motivated to me to put more effort into earning back the 5,000 via my SteemMonsters and Drug Wars activity. This may likely have been the "kick in the ass" that I needed to "up my games" and make more progress in this larger endeavor.

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