Rebellion is about to be launched and I wanted to get an important text heavy article out. It something I have been thinking about for a while. If you are willing to read a slightly technical article without memes or ~cool pictures~/videos, you are at the right place. I will try to make this a fun read as much as I can.

Castles + Keeps Contain Most of The Value

A small number of Gold Foil Legendary, Gold Foil Epic and Regular Foil Legendary Cards contain the most of the value found in Booster Packs. Take a look on the official website and see the prices for yourself. If you willing to explore other markets for @splinterlands NFT, you may find better deals with cashback rewards.

If you analyze Land Whitepaper, you will come to realize how important Castles and Keeps are going to be. It was @ecoinstant who brought to my attention the full extent of the value gap and as he predicted, the prices of low rarity Plots plummeted. Feel free to do you own research and compare the prices of surveyed Plots being sold vs PLOT Tokens on DEXs.

Improve Odds Through The Power of Statistical Analysis

I postponed writing about this because the concept is harder to explain without an interactive proof. That would require some programming skills. I have tried out few basics, but I cannot create an app that I can be proud to release to the world. You will have to manage with the text based description without the interactivity. The randomness cannot be predicted without superhuman clairvoyance. Statistics are a way to manage operating with randomness; not a way to conquer it. What I share could stack odds in your favour. That is the maximum it can do.

Scenarios for "Luck" (Descending Order)

Assume the Survey begin at the first Plot of a brand new Region. Different starting potions and existing Surveyed Plots can make your odds better or worse.

• Survey the 1st Plot and it is a Castle
• Survey the 1st Plot and it is a Keep
  .
  .
  .
• Survey the 100th Plot and it is a Castle
• Survey the 100th Plot and it is a Keep
  .
  .
  .
• Survey the 1000th Plot and it is a Castle
• Survey the 1000th Plot and it is a Keep

Imagine you were to Claim an entire Region and Survey Plots one after the other. We know that there is 1 Keep or 1 Castle in a Tract and only 1 Castle in an entire Region. If you were to guess whether each Plot would be a Castle or Keep, you success rate would be as following.

• 1st Plot being a Castle = 0.1%
• 1st Plot being a Keep = 1%
• 100th Plot being a Castle = 10%
• 100th Plot being a Keep = 100%
• 1000th Plot being a Castle = 0.1%
• 1000th Plot being a Keep = 1%

If first 99 Plots of a Tract were not of Mythical rarity, you can be certain that the 100th is a Mythical Plot. 10% of Mythical Plots are Castles. I hope you can follow my reasoning so far.

Achieve Better Odds Than Mere Mortals

If you bought the entire Region and you were lucky enough to be among the 0.1% who Surveyed their first Plot to receive a Castle, you missed out on a lot of potential value. Plots 2 - 100 have little value compared to your Castle. If you Claim and Survey 99 Plots in a brand new Region, you will have 99% chance to receive a Keep and a 9.9% chance to receive another Castle.

There is a theoretically correct way of Claiming and Surveying in Praetoria.

1. Claim a Plot and Survey.
2. If it isn't Mythical, move to the next Plot.
3. If it is Mythical, move to next Region/Tract.
4. Repeat the process until you run out of Plots.

There are some practical challenges (and some blessings) that happen when it comes to real world application of this theoretical knowledge.

Partially Surveyed Tracts and Regions

If you were the only person Surveying, there is a 50% chance you will find your Mythical Plot among the first 50 Plots and 50% chance to find it among the last 50 Plots. This zero sum situation change if there is someone else Surveying Plots that turns out to not be Mythical Plots. If you find a Tract with 50 Plots Surveyed with no Mythical Plots, You have a 100% chance in finding a Mythical Plot in the remaining 50 Plots. These are 2X better odds.

Monitoring and Automation is Key

If you though there is an exploit I have discovered while analyzing stats, I'm disappointing about your lack of trust in @splinterlands developers. Such issues will not get passed their brains over the 2 years of building. Statistics are there to inform you. Only tech savvy and resourceful investors are going to be able to get improved odds at finding better value in Praetoria.

PLOT is Better Than Tract and REGION

Imagine you had 1000 PLOT instead of 1 REGION Token and there was a Region in Praetoria with 500 Claimed and Surveyed Plots. You can get 1 Castle + 4 Keeps by Claiming the renaming 500 Plots. If you could repeat the process in another Region, you will have 2 Castles + 8 Keeps.

How realistic is this scenario? 50% of the Regions have their Castle among the last 500 Plots. 50% of Tracts have their Keep among the last 50 Plots.

I will let you do what you can with that information. I tried to spread my Plots across Praetoria for this reason and ended up with above average "Luck". I don't have the resources to monitor the blockchain and snipe for some good opportunities where odds are in my favour. There is very little I could do with 57 Plots (only 56 Claimed). I don't have the tools to monitor @splinterlands activity. It would be amazing if developers like @tehox could make such a tool. But that will only bring chaos and such developers are better off keeping the tool for themselves to gain a competitive advantage.

PS: I added some artwork from Land Whitepaper to keep the article pretty as it seem very important this day and age.

Happy Investing! VONAK!