Big Steem Monsters news keep coming. They have begun a Kickstarter campaign both as a way to get development funds in fiat for things that don't accept crypto, and also to promote the game to people outside the crypto world. Here's their [post about the Kickstarter][qspost]. Additionally, they also started a [campaign through the Fundition platform][fpage] so that people can contribute using crypto too. The project description on the [Kickstarter page][kspage] has a very nice explanation of what the Steem Monsters game is, and what it aims to be! In only one week, the Kickstarter campaign already reached the main goal of 50,000 USD, and now is aiming for the stretch goals to add even more things to the game.

I'm excited to play this game, and am glad to say that I've finally gotten my Steem Monsters starter pack!

Since I don't have the funds to splurge on card packs, I've been trying to build my Steem Monsters collection through giveaways. Even though I had managed to get cards, I still didn't have the starter pack, which is a requirement to be eligible for battles once they begin, and I realized I would need to purchase at least that. In August, I had started an #upfundme campaign (gathering STEEM/SBD through upvotes on the campaign's posts) to help me buy the starter pack. I had stipulated a deadline of September because I had heard battles would start in September and the starter pack's price might increase, and then I extended the deadline to October when the Steem Monsters site updated and brought the information that the pre-sale would continue either until October or 300,000 alpha packs sold. I published four upfundme posts throughout August and the first week of September.

### The Upfundme Results

* Target: $5 USD ($5.283 SBD according to the price on the Steemmonsters.com website at the time of the purchase).
* [Post #001][upfundme001] earned $0.172 SBD.
* [Post #002][upfundme002] earned $0.202 SBD.
* [Post #003][upfundme003] earned $0.197 SBD.
* And [Post #004][upfundme004] earned $0.250 STEEM, which I didn't get to trade or use because.
* I was pleasantly surprised to receive an incredible and generous donation of $5 SBD from @charitybot (who is not a bot :P )! Basically the whole goal! I even had trouble believing it at first!
* So, total gathered: $5.571 SBD + $0.250 STEEM.

The STEEM/SBD prices had been looking good near the 1 USD mark last week, but they just had to plummet again right when I intended to purchase the pack. I waited a bit to try to trade the last post's earnings for SBD on the internal market, in hope that the prices would recover, but it didn't happen. When I read the news that there were only around 15k alpha packs left, I concluded I couldn't wait anymore and had to take the plunge. The starter pack ended up costing me $5.283 SBD. Thankfully, the 5 SBD donation plus the previous upfundme earnings were enough to cover it. Only a few hours after I got the starter pack, the last thousands of alpha packs were gone! If I had waited even a couple of hours, I wouldn't have been able to get the pack. As I write this post, the beta packs aren't for sale yet. Now, let's see if the beta pack's prices will change or not.

Thank you to everyone who upvoted my upfundme posts to help me get the starter pack! And @charitybot, thank you once again for the awesome donation! :)

### Upfundme Considerations

These are my observations about this first upfundme experiment, for future reference in case I decide to do upfundme campaigns again. If you'd rather only read about the starter pack, you may scroll to the next section.

This was the first time I did an upfundme campaign. It only succeeded thanks to the donation, which is something I can't count on in the future. So, if we don't consider the donation, the numbers show that the campaign didn't perform too well. The deadline and my post frequency (or rather, infrequency :P ) were the factors that weighted the most. If not for the deadline, I'd have continued for as much time as necessary no matter the gathered amounts. As for the post frequency, I see people publishing upfundme posts every day, but I decided against this because I didn't want to clog my followers' feeds with a lot of upfundme posts. I had considered increasing the frequency to twice a week, but didn't get to that in the end.

Out of curiosity, I tried to determine how many posts I'd have needed to reach the goal, based on the results from this campaign. I had been getting around $0.20 SBD per post. This would mean at least 25 posts to reach the goal of 5.00 without the donation! I would have needed six months (!) with only one post per week, around three months with two posts per week, or two months with three posts per week. Three posts per week is a frequency I'd be fine with, and would have been the most acceptable condition for this campaign in my opinion, though the campaign may still have fallen a little short of the goal because of the deadline of around one month and a half. Ah well, I'll keep this in mind for possible future campaigns! (and preferably without a deadline...)

### So, What's Inside the Starter Pack?

This is a good question, and has been a mystery to me ever since! I had found no information about this, except that the starter pack is a pre-determined set of 15 cards. The closest I got to finding something was from peering into [Peakmonsters' data explorer][pmexplorer], where - among other things - it's possible to check the latest packs everyone purchased. A few weeks ago, clicking on "View details" of a pack purchase showed some info and also the cards in the pack. Back then, I managed to find a pack that might have been a starter pack, because it was one pack with 15 cards. I took note of the cards' names, intent on comparing my results once I managed to get my starter pack.

However, as I purchased my pack, I didn't get an option to open it. The cards got automatically mixed with the other cards in my collection, and I was unable to know what was in the set! I could only tell that my total number of cards had increased. Then, I went to the Peakmonsters site to look at my purchase's data, but it doesn't seem to be showing cards in pack purchases anymore! I only got [the Steemd link][sdlink] showing that my transfer of $5.283 SBD for the purchase was recorded in the blockchain (in case anyone needs proof... and if the Steemd site isn't giving errors :P ), but no info on the cards. I'm able to check other people's booster packs' cards if I use the "Open Packs" filter, but once again, the starter pack can't be opened, and doesn't show up there.

Then, I found something I wasn't expecting, from the Steemmonsters.com API. The details for all the 59 cards gathered in one place! Since my visual impairment and some accessibility issues on the Steem Monsters site [prevent me from reading my cards' stats][statspost], I was very glad to find this! All the data, straight from the source!

https://steemmonsters.com/cards/get_details

The data is in JSON format, so it's more for developers than for normal users. But it contains every info I could have wanted, including type, element, Mana cost, stats at each level, etc., and also an "is_starter" field, which indicates if the card is part of the starter pack or not! I created a Perl script to parse the file and checked which cards have this field set to "true," and... the results are different from the list I had taken notes from the Peakmonsters site weeks ago! Now I'm not sure if the list I had wasn't from a starter pack, or if the starter pack's contents change from time to time. But from the info from the Steem Monsters API, the cards included in the starter pack, at least for the alpha edition cards at the moment of this writing, are the following ones:

<center>![starters-montage.png](https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmQFyqjWV7CbEJRgcixxzHRGqtUsXt1rhoUeeqo5Mfmg41)<br />
**Image source: a montage using the corresponding 15 cards' images gotten from [Steemmonsters.com][smhp], laid out on an HTML table and rendered as a single image.**</center>

Or, as text: 

Element | Card 1 | Card 2 | Card 3 | Card 4 | Card 5
|-|-|-|-|-|-|
Fire | Giant Roc | Kobold Miner | Fire Beetle | Malric Inferno | Pit Ogre
Earth | Flesh Golem | Goblin Sorcerer | Minotaur Warrior | Lyanna Natura | Stonesplitter Orc
Life | Feral Spirit | Silvershield Knight | Silvershield Warrior | Tyrus Paladium | Peacebringer

Three sets of different elements with five cards each, including a Summoner (card 4 of every row in the above table) for each element. Normally, each team can only have cards of the same element, and needs a Summoner of that element to summon the Monsters. This means it's possible to have three different teams using these cards. So, the set seems to fulfill its purpose of being a good base to get players started.

### What Now?

It was a crazy ride from August until the second week of September, but I'm officially in the game! Now that I managed to make my purchase, I can finally stop getting worked-up over the STEEM/SBD price dips :P . The next steps for me are to format that card details data from the Steem Monsters API in a more readable way, think about my possible teams for battles, and probably participate in more contests to try to get cards I still don't have.

PS: after the purchase, thanks to the donation, I was still left with $0.288 SBD and $0.250 STEEM from the upfundme earnings. Maybe I should use these in the Steem Monsters market to get some cards I don't have?


[qspost]: https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@steemmonsters/steem-monsters-kickstarter-project-is-now-live-200-sbd-contest
[kspage]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/526764488/steem-monsters-a-digital-role-playing-trading-card
[fpage]: https://fundition.io/#!/@sm-fundition/723t98xv5
[upfundme001]: https://steemit.com/upfundme/@aiyumi/trying-to-buy-a-steem-monsters-starter-pack-upfundme-post-001
[upfundme002]: https://steemit.com/upfundme/@aiyumi/trying-to-buy-a-steem-monsters-starter-pack-upfundme-post-002
[upfundme003]: https://steemit.com/upfundme/@aiyumi/trying-to-buy-a-steem-monsters-starter-pack-upfundme-post-003
[upfundme004]: https://steemit.com/upfundme/@aiyumi/trying-to-buy-a-steem-monsters-starter-pack-upfundme-post-004
[pmexplorer]: https://peakmonsters.com/explorer
[statspost]: https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@aiyumi/steem-monsters-struggling-to-read-my-cards-stats
[sdlink]: https://steemd.com/tx/414a24451de5bfb8870afe276f1208bc0eeb4792
[smhp]: https://steemmonsters.com/