After years of regret, having lost my keys like some boomer, I finally decided to pony up the $3 that it costs to set up a second Steemit account. Justin Sun acquiring the Steemit ecosystem was the kick in the ass that I needed to set me down that road. I set up a Steemit wallet, threw my $3 on the table, and got access to the Steemit community.

Ladies and gentlemen, Steem and Tron are legitimate organizations, trust me, your assets are safe.

I must admit, that while the actual social side of Steemit is just as worthwhile as Publish0x (but why not both), the biggest draw for me was the top ranked DApp, and first ranked game, on https://www.stateofthedapps.com/rankings, Splinterlands. I’ve been reading posts about this game for a little over a year and the only thing stopping me from joining in was a missing Steemit account. Enough was enough, I bit the bullet, and I joined in on the action.

After one or two free to play practice rounds of this game,already knowing that I was interested, I wanted to become the owner of my Splinterlands keys, gain access to ranked matches, begin collecting cards, trade on the Splinterlands market, and start doing daily quests. In order to do these things, you have to buy their starter set for $10, which you can pay for in a variety of ways (i chose Ethereum which was a lot cheaper yesterday since Eth’s price has since plummeted). By the way, the starter set does not come with any cards, you are essentially just buying full access to the game.

Actually completing my starter set transaction was where I encountered my problem. I would click buy, then payment sent, and wait at this screen for about an hour, when it says it should take no more than 20 minutes.

I jumped into the Splinterlands discord, went to the tech support tab, and informed them of my problem. At this point, I begin to be continually surprised by how great the people at Splinterlands are, and by how friendly this community can be.

The tech support guy on the discord server, who, from what I could tell, does a lot more customer engagement than just troubleshooting problems, got in touch with me in a matter of minutes, and began looking over my transaction. He informs me that my transaction failed, and that there is no record of my transfer of funds on Etherscan. He tells me that he is going to send my problem to the lead developer of Splinterlands so that he can get to it in the morning, but I tell him that this interaction was enough for me to realize my own error. Turns out I am spoiled by other DApps, and I am used to my MetaMask wallet being linked to an whatever account from which I am making a purchase. Usually I just press a button, enter an amount, and wait for the blockchain to catch up. Splinterlands required me to actually put their address into my MetaMask to perform the transaction manually. I’m not sure, but it looks like clicking “payment sent” on their website is just way for them to know approximately when you sent your transaction, so that they can check Etherscan, confirm that it was you that sent the transaction, and then unlock the rest of the game for your account.

My point here is that this fellow was going to make sure we got to the bottom of things. If he couldn't get me my starter pack, then he was going to send the problem along to someone who can.

While the quick response and resolution of my problem was appreciated, it was a stupid error on my part, and I pretty much fixed the problem myself once tech support pointed out that he had a record of a failed transaction. So, this wasn't really the main reason for why I'm writing a blog post about Splinterlands tech support. Sure, it was a good experience, but it wasn't the end of my interaction. The truly unique part of my experience was what happened after my issue was resolved.

While I waited for my Splinterlands account to be unlocked, my tech support friend asked me a pretty simple, "How and when did you hear about Splinterlands?" To which I replied with a lengthy story of my multi-year journey of becoming interested in crypto, setting up a Steemit account, losing my keys, hearing about Splinterlands, procrastinating, delving into other blockchain games, reading blog posts, and eventually hearing about Tron's Steem aquisition, which led to me setting up a new account. His reply was to tell me of his own entry into blockchain gaming when he sunk a great deal of time into cryptokitties in 2007. This really was a short conversation, but any kind of interaction beyond just robotic trouble-shooting can really make a customer feel appreciated. Though, this dude did not stop with a bit of chatting.

Next, he points out the "how to play" section of the website to help me get started (which I didn't learn anything new from) and proceeds to tell me about his guild, Immortal Gods, which is top ranked. Apparently, this guy is going to ask his guild-mates to send me a few cards to get me started. I'm a bit skeptical, reply with a thank you, and I just kind of assume this won't really happen.

I spend about 3 or 4 hours playing ranked matches, its about 2 o'clock in the morning, I've pretty much forgotten about tech support dude, I'm about to go to bed, when all of the sudden, gifts start rolling in. About 40 cards, or something around there, suddenly start flooding into my wallet. Honestly, I'm kind of shocked. It's not like these are crazy rare cards or anything, but to be given anything was just flat out crazy. There are like 5 cards in a pack which costs $2, so I was gifted like $16 dollars worth of cards. Again, maybe these packs would have had rarer cards, but I've been given a lot of useful cards that made my start in Splinterlands easier and more fun. Not to mention the fact that plenty of these gifts were multiples of the same cards. I was able to immediately level up like 5 or 6 cards on my first day playing this game.

Soon I hear my discord pinging at me, I check my messages and tech support guy is telling me that he going to help me out by getting me into one of his guild's affiliate, or farming guilds. Now sure, I could have joined some other guild, there are plenty of open guilds that don't require invites, but it just felt good to see that the staff at Splinterlands is so connected to their community.

Long story short, don't be afraid to reach out for help when you encounter problems in the world of crypto. Make sure you are going through the right channels so that you avoid scammers, but I think that you will find a very vibrant community that is working hard to build a better world, be it in fintech, gaming, music, or blogging. People in blockchain are excited to talk about blockchain. A lot of folks will call you crazy if you try to drop the word Bitcoin into a conversation, so even the people that are working in the industry will likely appreciate you simply for expressing your interest in the technology that they are helping to create.

Obligatory Topical Referral Link: https://splinterlands.io?ref=lankyhat