So I have been playing splinterlands for a few months and have put about 100USD in the game. I do not play the game but like a hour a day during the week if that, just enough to get the daily quest done. It is a fun strategy game that you can play with the deck supplied and make it to silver league with the rental of a few gold foil cards. You do not make money this way but it can be fun just to play the game. I did buy a few gold foil cards just so i do not have to keep renting for the first two bronze levels. Only because you need to be in bronze II in order to collect DEC. Plus i like the gold foil cards.
Seems like if you are doing it for the money you would need to put in a few thousand dollars to be able to rent out cards and be able to collect vouchers and buy packs to claim airdrop points in SPS. SPS is what is needed to to collect the vouchers in the game and it takes around a few thousand dollars to be able to collect voucher airdrops.
The community on twitch is a good place but only a hand full of them actually talk about the game and strategy. The rest play other things and do give things away but still dont really talk about the strategy of the game and how the placement of the cards affect the each card. I think that is what is fun about it though trying to look over the opponents last few games and figuring out what they will play to beat them.
Then there is trying to buy the hive dollar in order to get the vouchers in the hive market. Trying to get the hive dollar is something I have not figured out yet. I would think they would have instructions on how to get the hive into the market but I have not found anything yet if you are not in the US it seems easy but being in the US it is not that easy.