It turns that this was the final version of Survival Mode v1 in Splinterlands with the format getting an evaluation and some changes. I played around 300 manual battles last season and closely tracked my results and earnings...
Survival Mode Suffers From The Same Old Splinterlands Problems!
After what I believe are 4 or 5 seasons of Survival Mode in the initial form it is very clear (which was already the case before it took off) that it is suffering from the same issues.
1. Economic Choices Come at the Cost of Fun and Gameplay: Basically the way that Survival Mode was designed is in a way to give old cards more use case again with the gimmick that instead of energy, the cards themselves go on cooldown if their end up getting killed.
2. Choices are made to please existing players at the cost of New Players: When it comes down to Survival Mode, the bar pretty much was moved form having Max Level cards to multiple copies of Max Level cards. This is great for existing whales who get extra use case for the collection that they own but the entry barrier for new and less rich players became even bigger. Right from the start you start facing Max Level cards already and it's quite hard to grind your way up to Gold or higher without all the expensive new Meta cards. This makes it so that Splinterlands continues to be the most Pay2win game in existance.
3. Splinterlands has an Unrealistic Time Investment requirement: While it's possible to bot Survival Mode, it doesn't feel at least with Archmage that it's on point yet. So the only real way to be a Splinterlands players right now is to be a full time player who makes the game their life basically while it's almost impossible or at least impracticle to be a casual player. Having to play Daily for at least 1+ Hour is just an unrealistic requirement and Survival Mode I would say adds to this problem.
My Survival League Season!
The strategy I have for Survival Mode is to play some matches daily and once 2 or 3 of my main Summoners are on Cooldown I just come back the next day. If it's clear that I'm up against an opponent who most likely will beat me given the previous cards that they played I tend to surrender just playing 2 Level 1 cards or play a full Level 1 deck hoping the opponent thinks the same to still win the match. I started at Rank 260 as I turned on Archmage last season which played a lot of bad lineups and got me all the way down.
So I started at rank 260, managed to quickly climb my way up to rank 1000 with enough battles against low level players. After that it was a grind toward Level 1400 and at the end of the season against only Max Level Players and some key cards depleted I fell back to end at level 1020 after 299 battles. On the last day of the season I just didn't feel like playing and the last hour of the season I was left with a choice either to grind Splinterlands for 45-50 SPS extra or I could play some
Balatro for fun and I choose balatro leaving some more earnings on the side.
Day Results
My best day of the season was day 8 where I played 34 matches and Earned 339.813 SPS. I probably easily could have played 100 to 200 matches more on the season but just didnt' have the drive most of the time as it felt like a very low paying job. The earnings though for playing a game are good and they are also the most fun part of Survival mode as too few battles actually give some excitement.
So the earnings go up exponentially in survival mode along with your rank and it's a question how far it's favorable to surrender matches not taking the risk instead of playing far fewer matches always with your best possible lineup. You do get weaker with each loss though so I doubt taking unneeded risks when you almost know for sure you will lose is a good strategy.
In total over the season with my collection while alsm making sure I can keep playing WIld Competitively, I earned 1642 SPS which equals around ~18 $- 20$ at current values while this earns further staking rewards and helps to keep up earnings high. All this with a future expectation of being worth more.
Other Siatistics
From the 299 Battles I played, there were 95 of them which I more or less surrendered as the chance that I would lose the match was simply too big. At least a couple of those I did actually manage to win as my opponent either had a similar surrender strategy or just failed to get their lineup in. Ou of the first 68 battles 22 of them were played against MAX Level opponents. From rank 1000 or up it were around 150 Battls against MAX level opponents. Basically if you play against a lower level player you go all out and win easily while against Max Level players you need to really pick your spots and be cautios.
Conclusion
Over the course of the season I managed to earn 1642 SPS from 299 manual Survival league battles. The earnings themselves at over 5.5 SPS every single battle on average are the most fun part about Survival league as only a couple matches actually stood out when it came down to being fun and an honest challenge. I hope some major changes are made to improve this mode for v2 but at the same time I'm not making any illusions that the obvious existing problems will be fixed as they have been the same for many years in Splinterlands.
