start free, then add the Spellbook

Splinterlands is a free-to-start digital trading card game where you draft a team of up to six cards and the battle then plays out on its own in two or three minutes. You can learn it without spending anything, and the one purchase that changes what you can do is the Summoner’s Spellbook, a one-time $10 upgrade. This guide walks through how a new account works in October 2026, including the Modern bracket system that went live at the end of September.

Risk note: Splinterlands cards and tokens (DEC, SPS) are crypto assets whose prices can fall sharply. Play it because you enjoy it. Nothing here is financial advice, and you should not expect the game to pay you back what you put in.

What Splinterlands is

According to the official Splinterlands documentation, the game started in mid 2018 and every card is an NFT on the Hive blockchain. You can trade cards, hold them, combine copies to level them up, or burn them for Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) or Glint. The same page says the game is played in more than 100 countries and translated into nearly a dozen languages.

Splinterlands is an auto-battler, which surprises people coming from Hearthstone or our other card game pick, Gods Unchained. You make every decision before the fight starts. Once both teams are locked in, the game resolves the battle and you only watch the replay. Skill shows up in how you read the battle rules and build a team under a mana limit, not in reflexes or turn-by-turn play.

Starting for free

A free account begins in the Campaign, which is the official tutorial. It teaches team building, the mana cap and the battle rules, and it gives you your first cards from the Foundations set. After that, Frontier mode opens. The Spellbook page in the docs says that winning five Frontier battles a day earns daily rewards, either Foundations cards or Foundations packs depending on your league.

There is a catch. Without a Spellbook those rewards stay bound to your account, so you cannot sell or transfer them. Modern ranked play and tournaments also stay closed until you have either completed 100 Frontier battles or bought the Spellbook.

Our advice is to play the Campaign and a good number of Frontier games before paying anything. If drafting under a mana cap does not click for you after a week, the Spellbook will not change that.

Is the $10 Spellbook worth it?

For anyone who plans to keep playing, yes. When we visited the official docs on 8 October 2026, the Spellbook listed these benefits for its one-time $10 price:

• A verified Hive account, whose name becomes your username and wallet address and cannot be changed later.
• The right to trade, sell and transfer your cards and packs, including the ones earned in Frontier.
• Access to Modern, Wild and Survival ranked modes and to all tournaments (Wild also needs a Wild Pass each season).
• The ability to earn SPS from ranked wins.
• 3,000 Credits (3,500 with a referral), five Conclave Arcana starter packs and a 30-day boost to SPS battle rewards.

Pick the Hive account name carefully, because it is permanent. Store the keys Hive gives you somewhere offline before you do anything else. The docs recommend Hive Keychain, a browser extension, as the login method, and it is safer than pasting a private key into websites.

How a battle works

Every match comes with three constraints that you see before you build your team: a mana cap, the elements that are allowed and one or more rulesets that change how combat behaves. You have a timer to draft. The drafting guide explains the order.

First you pick the card that leads your team. Newer parts of the game and the docs call it the Archon, while older guides and many card pages still say Summoner, so expect both words. It decides which elements you can use and usually gives your side a buff or your opponent a debuff. Dragon summoners let you add a second element of your choice. Dual-element summoners from the Rebellion set give you two elements at once, and tactic summoners add an extra step where you see your opponent’s team and choose which of your units get a boost.

Then you add units one by one until you run out of mana or slots, and you set their order. The first slot takes most of the melee hits, so it usually goes to your toughest unit. Ranged and magic attackers sit further back. You do not have to spend the whole mana cap; a cheap team with the right abilities often beats an expensive one built against the wrong ruleset.

Watch your replays. The docs make the same point, and it is the fastest way to learn why a lineup lost.

Modern, Wild and the new brackets

There are two ranked formats. Wild allows every card ever printed, while Modern is limited to the two most recent sets. Modern is the better place for a new player, since you will not run into rare Alpha and Beta cards that cost a lot to buy.

Modern changed on 30 September 2026. When we visited the 2026 release notes the same day, they said that, after a governance vote, Modern now works with brackets similar to Survival mode:

• Six brackets (Novice, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond and Champion), each with limits on the card levels you can play.
• Nine divisions inside each bracket, from Division 9 at 0 rating up to Division 1 at 4,000, one step every 500 points.
• SPS prizes paid at the end of the season according to the reward points you won against others in your bracket, with the pool split 1% Novice, 3% Bronze, 6% Silver, 12% Gold, 25% Diamond and 53% Champion.
• Cards you play in a bracket are locked to your account until the season ends, so you cannot sell or trade them in the meantime.

Glint is still paid for every win. All Modern battles now use energy, and energy purchases were switched off for this first bracket season. A follow-up patch on 6 October lowered the rating at which win streaks stop counting from 3,700 to 3,000.

For a new account the practical upshot is simple. Start in Novice, do not reset your bracket once you are close to an advancement reward (a reset puts rating and reward shares back to zero), and remember the lock before you play a card you were planning to sell.

What you earn from ranked play

Each Modern or Wild win gives you Glint, rating points and staked SPS, according to the ranked rewards page. A win is worth +20 rating and a loss −20; wins inside a streak give +40, except in Champion league. Glint is spent in the in-game Rewards Shop. The SPS you earn arrives staked and has to be unstaked before you can do anything else with it.

Several factors change how much you get: the league you play in, how much SPS you have staked, win streaks, guild bonuses and bonuses for gold foil, Alpha, Beta and promo cards (the last three only in Wild). Modern pays 50% more Glint than Wild.

The detail that matters most for beginners concerns the free starter cards. They are only playable in Modern, and each one you use in a win cuts the reward shares that decide your SPS. A team made entirely of starter cards earns zero SPS, although it still earns Glint. That is the game nudging you toward renting or buying real cards.

Renting cards before you buy

You do not need to buy a deck to compete. Splinterlands has had on-site card rentals since mid 2021, priced per day or for a full season and paid in DEC or Credits. The card owner always receives DEC, and listing a card for rent or sale burns a fee of 1 DEC or 1 Credit. Daily rentals can be cancelled by either side once the first 48 hours have passed.

Renting a strong summoner and a few key units for a season is the cheapest way to find out whether you like the higher leagues. Buy the cards you keep reaching for only after that. Bear in mind the new bracket lock if you also rent your own cards out.

Who should play it, and who should not

Splinterlands suits players who like deck building and puzzles more than fast action. Its matches are short, a full game fits in a coffee break, and the free path is real enough to judge the game properly before paying.

Skip it if you want hands-on control during the fight, or if your main reason is income. The play-to-earn model that made games like Axie popular in 2021 struggled once rewards fell, as we explain in our piece on GameFi, and Splinterlands has had to adjust its own reward pools several times since then.

If you are still choosing a game, compare it with the other titles in our list of the best play-to-earn crypto games. If Splinterlands is the one, play the Campaign tonight, give Frontier a week, and only then decide on the Spellbook.