Prologue
So, here I am, reading through TheJedo and Azircon and all the other amazing land calculations, and every few weeks I feel motivated to see if I actually can make it work. I mean, they're big, I know that, and they make way more resources than I do - but scaling down, it should still work out somehow. Let me write through my process of calculations, and maybe you can help me see if I made a mistake. Or not.
Some data is taken out of Azircons posts, mainly this one: What a Chart
Setting up a plot - primary Investment.
Let's assume I'm just starting out, so in order to produce any resource, I first need grain. So I go for a grain plot - the cheapest one is offered by clayboyn himself, for 30$.
No building yet. So, I have to clear the plot and build the worksite. I have to buy workers - 5 nice and beautiful monsters. Beta Rare card are currently the best for that, even though there are not many available. Around 0,30$ per BCX, so around 35$ per maxed card, $175 in total, plus 50k DEC staked. 5$ for the Energy Crystal, and I'll ignore the grain for the construction for now.
So we're at: $210 spent, $50 staked.
Harvest Math
My total production points, including the 10% bonus because I bought the cards that fit my plot, will be 27,500 PP.
Production Rates Per Production Point Per Hour:
Grain – 0.02
Wood – 0.005
Stone – 0.002
Iron – 0.0005
So, I will be producing 550 Grain per hour - but wait. Small detail, my folks will eat quite a bit of that. And that dang Castle/Keep will want their share, too. My workers eat 0.01 Grain per hour - leaving me with
275 Grain per hour.
Since we're in kind of a medieval setting, the Castle/Keep will not tax what is actually left, but obviously what was produced. Income tax, not profit tax, but the rate is the same.
275 - 55 = 220 Grain per hour
Nice. 220 Grain per hour, that should be worth something, shouldn't it?
Not really.
1.83 DEC per hour. That sounds very, very little at first glance. But let's keep going.
43,92 DEC per day.
16,030 DEC per year.
We spent $210, and have to have $50 staked in order to produce that, so we have a total of 260,000 DEC invested (assuming DEC at peg).
The 16,030 DEC per year are a return of 6,16%.
That's not bad at all. Now, let's go further and see if we can extract more value from it by adding value with - stone.
Let's get stoned.
Don't stone me for that pun, it would be expensive. Stone is momentarily so scarce that Az mentions the scarcity in each and every post about land, and you can read his despair between the lines.
1000 grain = 8.93 DEC today
1000 wood = 32.76 DEC today
1000 stone = 106.47 DEC today
1000 iron = 348.97 DEC today
That's what AZ posted. As you can see, the factors do not align with the PP/resource scale :
Grain - Wood - Stone - Iron
Should be: 1 - 4 - 10 - 40
But in the cost comparison it's
1 - 3.66 - 11.92 - 39,07
Meaning that stone is over peg (please go to Azircons blog for a metric ton of information about that).
So, we want to make the most money, we go for stone. Of course, we knew that from the beginning and sought out a region that has both grain and stone plots for sale, at decent prices. I did not look it up in the region where Clayboyn is selling, but $20 is something we can work with.
We can't do the same amount of workers, as we have to pay the oppressor 10% of our grain harvest, so we get one worker less. Total investment:
$20 (Plot) + $140 (4 cards) + $5 (Crystal) + $40 (Staked DEC) = $205 for 22,000 PP, eating exactly 220 Grain per hour. Coincidence? Barely. Math.
With 22,000 PP, we produce 44 Stone per hour. Of course, that fat leech in the castle wants their 10%, so we're left with 39,6 Stone - but no grain.
Now look at this:
6,57 DEC per hour! That looks better than 1,83 DEC, doesn't it? Now we only have to see how our ROI looks like.
$260 (Plot 1) + $205 (Plot 2) = $465 aka 465,000 DEC
DEC: 6.57 per hour = 157.68 per day = 57,553 per year
ROI: 57,533 / 465,000 = 12,3%
That's better than the S&P500.
What if I buy extra grain for extra stone?
If I want to have my 5th card as well on the stone plot, I'd have to buy 55 grain per hour. Let's say that's 0,6 DEC per hour.
27,500 PP = 55 Stone - 10% (I'm so gonna burn that castle...) = 49,5 Stone = 8.213 DEC - 0.6 DEC = 7,613 DEC/hour = 182,712 DEC/day = 66,690 DEC / year
Investment: $510
ROI: 66,690/510,000 = 13,07%
So, yes, it's a good deal to buy the grain and the extra worker and stake the extra 10k DEC, giving you an extra 0,7% of ROI.
Conclusion
Of course I can make it work. If the big boys are in, there must be something to be made. And yes, you can scale that down - most of the cost is the workers and the staked DEC. There are only 2 fix costs, the plot and the energy crystal, which make up around 15% of the investment in my case. You can use less BCX and staked DEC and still get decent returns. See below for the calculations.
There is the problem of card scarcity, though. Prices have gone up quite a bit due to the recent development on land - but on top, I'm sure that they will only go up from here. After the pre-sale is done, there will be a lot of buying pressure (from me, for example) to get BCX and plots ready.
Also, if everyone goes into stone now, the price will come down as well. But the price of grain might go up as more and more people need it to produce stone. In the end, it's an entire market system. And there is much more to come.
So, yes, I think TheJedo and Azircon and all the others are right to go into land heavily. I will put my future HIVE-rewards into it, too.
Just one more thing...
As comparison, ROI on Wood and Iron with the self-sufficient set-up ($465 investment):
Wood: 99 Wood / hour = 3,15 DEC / hour = 27,600/year = 5,9%
Iron: 9,9 Iron / hour = 3,96 DEC / hour = 34,690/year = 7,46%
Just one more one more thing...
What if you don't want to spend this big? Let's calculate with less cards.
Grain - 2 maxed cards. Total cost: $30 (plot) + $5 (crystal) + $70 (2 cards) + $20 (DEC staked) = $125 --> 11,000 PP = 88 Grain per hour (after harvest/tax).
Stone - 1 maxed card. Total cost: $20 (plot) + $5 (crystal) + $35 (1 card) + $10 (DEC staked) = $70 --> 5,500 PP = 9,9 Stone per hour = 1.661 DEC/hour
Grain left: 33/hour = 0,275 DEC + 1,661 = 1,936/h = 16,960 / year
ROI: 16,960 / 195,000 = 8,7%
It's still okay, and you can re-invest all your earned DEC to make more Grain to make more stone to make more DEC to buy more cards to make more grain....
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)
First of all, thank you very much for putting my name next to one of the biggest names in this community. It's such an honor!
Second, you made me do the math myself! A little bit of brain exercise haha!
At first, I was wondering why you wouldn't fully populate the sample Stone plot until I realized you only have enough net Grain to feed 4 of these Stone harvesters.
Also, this is funny!
Anyway! There's plenty of different ways on how to approach Land.
There was a time I was min-maxing the workers to get the most bang for my buck. Price of GF cards kept dropping so I ended up getting a bunch of Rares and Epics from CL.
It's great that we can somewhat compute for some return now but one thing I think a lot of people are not factoring in is the potential increase in value of the land plots once more developments to the game have been applied.
It's like buying a acres/hectares of land in a province away from the city. You buy it for cheap. And then next thing you know, the government starts building roads and amenities near that area and then neighboring parcels of land increase in value.
This is how I see Splinterlands Land. The plots right now are the provincial plots. The future amenities / infrastructure are the forthcoming updates in the game (and we know Mancer is working on this!)
You already know things will be built in the future. Get on it early while people are still sleeping. Secure your property now before you get priced out of Land!
I know some players are hoarding resources. For me, I'd like to acquire more land. Unlimited resources vs a hard cap of 150,000 plots. What's the real scarcity play here? 😉
I agree. There is so much to talk about it, but I am going to show a simple deal of common land plots that I made a few months back.
$10 a piece. For stone plots.
I will let you check the market now. I rest my case.
Good stuff! I had bought a bunch of mine for $9 sometime last year but I unfortunately don't have a screenshot of the bigger purchase.
I have a record of it on my transactions list, though.
I don't think we'll see prices this low again...
Yes, the space is limited!
I got most of my plots between 10 and 15$. I think the last land plot was 20$, but that's it. Just by buying blindly, following my guild leader's recommendation, I already made some profit.
Absolutely agree! That's why I'm probably going for land before I'll go for rebellion set. What I wanted to show is that right now you can also get a decent return, not taking into account the future value of what you're owning.
I did! And it made the ROI raise by 0,7%, buying extra grain. I got it covered :-) That article was fun to write, I really like math. As long as it's simple. The rest I leave for azircon to plot.
Oh, the slogans!
Everybody can go for splinters. Go for Land.
Don't wait until there's only splinters left. Go for Land now.
Pre-Sale is now. Land is the future.
Don't let the Chaos splinter your home. Unite your region under your banner. Buy Land now.
Okay... let me show you a magic trick :)
These are called RUNI :)
Research them a bit. If you one of them in a plot, you don't need any staked DEC :)
Plus, they give you tremendous boost...like insane boosts..
like this :)
No Shit! eh?
Only problem is, they are a bit expensive :)
$500 or so...
But it pays off in a month of two.
Runi are awesome!
Such a big boost to land production.
Indeed!
that is a termendous boost indeed. I'm a bit disappointed though, no plot scale to show me when exactly in my scenarios a Runi will make itself worth the investment? Are you okay? 😝
Nice sharing on the detailed math
!PIZZA
!LOLZ
!BBH
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He kept looking at me kinda sideways.
Credit: reddit
@beelzael, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of houhou
(3/10)
Farm LOLZ tokens when you Delegate Hive or Hive Tokens.
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Glad you enjoyed it! Took me a while... but once the first calculation order is done, the rest is just replacing numbers :-)
Wow, thanks for the detailed calculation
You're most welcome! I hope it serves right! It's actually quite easy, once you get the first round done :-)
Detailed post, lots of great information, I have 10 plots but nowhere near fully operational, need to think about how I operate them and try and be more efficient
!BBH
I have 5 plots and it is quite difficult indeed... Hence I try to have my excel up to date and do all the calculations right. Still, one has to think about many aspects by now. And it's only getting more complicated - and with that, more rewarding 😉
Thanks for sharing! - @azircon
Thank you for curating!
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@houhou(3/10) tipped @beelzael
Come get MOONed!
Excellent.
Thank you for stopping by!
$30 for a grain plot is VERY expensive!
Lucky dog @clayboyn !
You owe this nice and naive gentleman some reward, and if nothing else some guidance!
I did not buy it - that was just for an example :-D I got my last grain plot for 20$ I think. Not sure though, I guess you'll get the data faster than I :-D
That's the right spirit!
You got to read a lot, and talk to a lot of people!
Reading and talking is not conquering! I'll build an army and CONQUERRRRRRRR! THIS IS BAXDOOOOOON! No seriously, I'll see where I can get plots later. The transport through the pools works fine for now, but I'd like to focus on one region. We'll see which one it'll be.