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# System prepended metadata

title: Welcome to Splinterlands Tower Defense

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# Welcome to Splinterlands Tower Defense
*Defend resting souls from endless waves of demonic enemies.*

Welcome to **Splinterlands Tower Defense (SPLTD)**, where you are the guardian of the underworld. Rising with her dark army, the Nightmare Queen is sending her hordes to breach the barriers and corrupt the souls of the underworld, and only you can stop her.

You will have a variety of resources to build a defense. Collect mighty towers, fantastic spells, and brave heroes to hold back the hordes as long as you can!

Unlike other Tower Defense games, at some point you will be overwhelmed by the endless hordes. The challenge is… how long can you hold out? How many heroic souls can you save? How many rewards can you earn? You can retreat at any time, but to the BRAVE and the BOLD go the greatest TREASURES!

## Gameplay

![Game Play Concept](https://i.imgur.com/l3WTHrn.jpg "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Concept Art - Game Play Concept")

SPLTD takes a page from the Splinterlands playbook as an auto-battler. You will make strategic choices, such as the placement, upgrading, and arrangement of your towers, spells, and heroes during the preparation phase. You will then commit your defensive strategy to the battle. You can then either watch the battle play out at various speeds or skip to the results.

The team is excited for these mechanics; they balance the needs of both new and veteran players. New players learn the strategic outcomes of their decisions, while more advanced players can skip to the final outcome. The gameplay portrays an exciting battle of fate as the Nightmare Queen’s hordes relentlessly assault your defenses, revealing the strength or weaknesses of your strategy.

### Towers

![Tower Examples](https://i.imgur.com/Cx051Zk.png "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Concept Art - Tower Examples")

To defend the underworld, you must strategically place towers along the horde’s paths. Some towers slow your enemies, some deal magic damage or poison, some target flying fiends, and more. You can also upgrade your towers along various tech-trees to customize your defense.

### Spells

![Spell Examples](https://i.imgur.com/ZaYdv7c.png "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Concept Art - Spell Examples")

Spells will further boost your towers. They add an extra element of attack and can be combined, upgraded, and carefully overlapped to create punch-packing combinations.

### Heros

![Hero Concept](https://i.imgur.com/LL8el7R.jpg "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Concept Art - Hero Concept")

Finally, unique and powerful heroes will bolster your defense. Heroes provide an additional layer of strategy, with formidable abilities to counter the Nightmare Queen’s hordes. Heros will have health and take damage as they battle their enemies, and once they run out of health, they will withdraw from the battlefield.

### Account-bound Progression

SPLTD will introduce the concept of account-bound progression, where each account will progress through each level of difficulty using account-bound ingredients. As you progress through levels, you will earn various ingredients which can be combined to progress to higher difficulties. This makes the time and effort of playing on a single account more valuable and moves the needle toward skill level determining progress through the game.

### Press Your Luck For More Rewards

![Victory Screen Concept](https://i.imgur.com/JDKEBuF.png "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Concept Art - Victory Screen Concept")

Lastly, we plan to introduce a new “Press Your Luck” gameplay mechanic. After each successfully completed wave in SPLTD, you will be offered a choice: retreat and take your rewards or “Press Your Luck” and risk your earnings trying to complete more waves and earn bigger rewards. Each wave can steal some of your rewards… or you could lose them all! This exciting mechanic lets you defend your rewards through skillful gameplay and strategically selected NFTs. Each time you “Press Your Luck,’’ the rewards get bigger… and the risk gets more intense.

## NFT Utility & Staking

![Tower Level Concept](https://i.imgur.com/95Q7iTw.png "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Concept Art - Tower Level Concept")

SPLTD follows the same core values and infrastructure as Splinterlands. Its card-based NFTs take the form of towers, spells, and heroes you can collect, trade, and level-up. Additionally, you can use your existing Splinterlands collection for a bonus in the game via staking mechanics.

Any Splinterlands cards, except for account-bound starter cards, can be staked into a tower to give it bonuses, such as improved stats, better ECR recharge rate, and more. Staked Splinterlands cards will not be available for sale, rent, or transfer until unstaked, which will take time. You can also spend Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) and, optionally, VOUCHERs (which provide discounts) to shorten the length of the unstaking process.

There will be new staking mechanisms for gameplay in SPLTD in comparison to Splinterlands. The tower, spell, and hero NFTs will need to be staked into the game to use them to play. Staking an NFT removes it from being sold, transferred, or rented. The unstaking process will be the same as with the Splinterlands cards in the previous paragraph.

## DEC & VOUCHER Utility

The Splinterlands Team is excited to announce that we plan for DEC and VOUCHER tokens to play a significant role in SPLTD. First, DEC and credits will be accepted as payment for the SPLTD packs at a fixed rate of 1,000 DEC equalling $1.00 USD, while VOUCHERs will give a discount on pack purchases.

Second, we plan to offer ways to recharge the energy of towers, spells, and heroes by spending DEC. Again, VOUCHERs will offer a discount on these purchases.

Third, a new ingredients store will offer a small and time-limited offer of ingredients that you can purchase via DEC (with VOUCHER discounts). This allows you to utilize DEC and VOUCHERs to move your progression forward. The amount and availability of ingredients for sale will be limited in each rotation, with the majority earned through gameplay.

## Token Distribution & Earning

SPLTD will introduce a new Splintershard (SPS) reward pool, distributing 1 Million SPS per month. To earn from this pool, players must stake SPS. Additionally, the higher the player’s level, the more rewards they are entitled to… but at these higher levels, they must also stake more SPS in order to unlock the maximum rewards.

SPLTD will be moving energy capture rate (ECR), which dictates a player’s earning potential, from account level to tower/spell/hero level to align ownership and earnings. This means that, for each game played, these NFTs will now be drained of ECR instead of the account. The more cards you rent or own, the more games you can play and the more rewards you can earn. You can also recharge the ECR on tower, spell, and hero cards by using DEC and, optionally, VOUCHERs to receive a 50% discount.

## Pack Sale

The SPLTD pack sale is planned to be two phases: 1) Pre-Sale and 2) General Sale. There will be 2,000,000 packs available for the first edition. The cost per pack will be $8. Players can purchase packs using credits or DEC and can receive discounts using Vouchers. Each pack purchased with a VOUCHER will reduce the price of a pack by $3. Like other products purchasable in DEC, Splinterlands will accept DEC payments and treat them as if 1,000 DEC = $1. So, players can purchase a pack with 5,000 DEC and a VOUCHER. If DEC is trading below 1,000 DEC = $1 on external markets, then the market is allowing players to purchase these packs at a discount.

### Pack Pre-Sale

The SPLTD pack pre-sale will be limited to 250,000 packs and is planned to start on September 20, 2022. It will end either when its sold out or when the date reaches October 18, 2022.

Each pack purchased in the pre-sale will also require a VOUCHER. The VOUCHER tokens are exclusive to the Splinterlands ecosystem and reward long-term stakers of the SPS token and holders of node licenses. The net cost of pre-sale packs with VOUCHERs will be $5 a pack.

Special to the Pre-Sale will be the first airdrop card of a Promo Hero playable in the game. The Promo Hero will be exclusive to the pre-sale and will not be available again after the pre-sale.

All purchasers of any pre-sale packs will have the following benefits:

* Every Pack has a 0.2% chance to receive the Promo Hero

All purchasers of at least 500 pre-sale packs will have the following benefits:

* Guaranteed Promo Hero
* Limited Edition Title
* Limited Edition Avatar
* Closed Beta Access

### General Sale

The general sale for SPLTD will begin as soon as the pre-sale ends and will have 1,750,000 packs available for purchase. The general sale packs will cost $8/pack and, optionally, a VOUCHER can be used to reduce the cost by $3/pack.

These packs will remain available for sale until July 1, 2023 at which time any remaining unsold packs will be removed from sale.

All bulk purchases of 500 packs or more will get bonus packs.

The general sale will also offer special airdrops as the sale sells out.

1. 250,000 packs - Promo Hero
2. 750,000 packs - Tower
3. 1,250,000 packs - Spell
4. 1,750,000 packs - Tower

All purchasers of packs prior to each airdrop will have a chance of being awarded the airdrop. After the airdrop, the tower or spell card will have a small chance of dropping when opening packs.

Purchases of 500 packs will receive a guaranteed airdrop. Each airdrop will increase the 500 minimum packs required for guaranteed by 50 packs.

## More To Come 

![Roadmap](https://i.imgur.com/xQ4cROx.png "Splinterlands Tower Defense - Roadmap")

SPLTD announcements will continue to be released over the next couple of weeks, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled. We are working closely with the team and community to build a game that is fun, challenging, and adds a new level to the Splinterlands universe.