Dragon Cave Tips.

[Ashleigh825]

So I thought I'd put together this thread partly to help myself and partly to help others who have notoriously bad luck in catching the eggs they want from the cave.

 

If you're lucky at catching what you want from the cave, can you offer any tips or suggestions to others as to how you do it? Maybe you only hunt at certain times or you have some kind of superstition that seems to work every time?

 

As for myself, I spent over five hours trying to catch a CB Vine last night. I saw one Vine in the cave in all that time and I wasn't fast enough to snatch it. I still haven't managed to get an unnamed CB Vine for my lineage project. My internet connection isn't the fastest, but it's not bad.

 

So what are your secrets to success, lucky cave hunters?

[pegasi1978]

I use firefox and turn off images and disable java script if I'm hunting from the main cave.

[dracoon]

Refreshing like ~Censor evasion removed~until you find an egg you want, then click.

 

It's as easy as pie.

Edited December 8, 2011 by _Z_

[Volcove]

Learning to recognize and react to key words / description lengths helps a fair bit when looking to catch something you need.

[WithLight]

In the cave: I am generally relaxed until I see an egg that I don't want, but is uncommon or rare. I don't click on unbreedables, stones, or vines, so if I see one, I'll refresh madly with my mouse on top of it until someone clicks it and the new egg is revealed. And if I want it I click.

 

The only thing I never have been able to catch in the cave is a metallic.

 

In the AP: I just hover on the egg with the lowest time and refresh. Generally something nice will pop up soon enough.

[Ryukotsusei]

I don't really do anything special. I'm in Firefox with the ads turn off, and I just refresh every second until I see something I want. I can usually get what I'm after that way as long as I don't grow impatient.

[Cavy]

Keep an eye out on the departure thread. And I use firefox. To be assured I'll get the egg, I go to tools, options, content, then uncheck "load images automatically" and "enable javascript". That way I DO get the egg in trade and when someone announces it.

[Swyen]

In The Ap I Just Press f5 really fast until i find the egg i want then i just keep pressing it (mostly Low Times)

And The Main Page I Do The Same

[kadoatie]

Breed metallics, trade, where with code on hand I very rarely miss ;')

On the cave - honestly, my opinion is worthless since I've caught very little over the last year, once the metal army hit a critical mass.

[Azure]

Practise.

 

Learning to recognize patterns of whatever it is you want to catch in a splitsecond is something that comes with experience. Just keep trying and keep practising. I used to be... pretty terrible when I started out.

[Ashleigh825]

Still looking for that CB Vine. I've put offers in the trade thread, but nothin'.

 

The cave has turned up zero vines in the last hour.

 

The most frustrating part is, I'm doing everything people are suggesting. Ah well... maybe I'm just cursed or something. *headscratch*

[blackdragonqueen]

Practice.

/\

|| THIS Took me forever to recognize descriptions via one key word or length.

[Barbayat]

CB vines are hard to come by - but sometimes you can get lucky on the AP. Yesterday, I caught one there (but decided not to keep it).

 

Otherwise, it is really just luck ... or gifts - my newest black cb was one for example.

[Trinketguu]

I use auto refresher and i turn off the ads I try to watch for key words and click as fast as I can when one i am after comes up

 

I have a list of what cb's I need and I try to focus on finding and catching them, now and then I can get lucky and catch a cb in the ap which to me the ap is far more easy to catch them then the ap

[Lunaeluu]

CB vines aren't too hard to get, just keep trying. Especially now that not many people will be hunting due to the egg release coming up (these times are always the best for hunting)

[Charu]

I use a Firefox with Java off. And stalk around with a Autorefresher on. Then I click and hope I get the egg I want.

[Ashleigh825]

Autorefresh sounds useful. Anyone know if Chrome has an autorefresh feature? *hates Firefox and IE*

[WithLight]

Autorefresh sounds useful. Anyone know if Chrome has an autorefresh feature? *hates Firefox and IE*

You can use PageReboot. It works for any browser, I think.

[Trope]

If you're good at cavehunting, you'll beat any autorefresher. They're not really allowed, either, I think...

 

Anyway, some tips:

 

* Optimise your internet speed. Cavehunting while torrenting/downloading/... = miss all rares and uncommons. Also, optimise your browser speed by turning off everything you don't need, and fiddling in your browser settings.

* Turn off images. It works miracles.

* Learn to recognise words in egg descriptions. Don't waste time reading them; by the time you're finished, someone has the egg in his/her scroll already. For example: if you're Magma hunting, focus on 'hot' and 'touch'.

* Practice refreshing, so that you can refresh quickly and efficiently. Use F5, not your mouse. I personally like to refresh on the beat of a song, it keeps the boredom away.

* Hover your mouse over the right egg, ready to click, as that's the spot where new eggs pop up.

* Take regular breaks. Cavehunting gets boring after a while, and the one second you're distracted, the egg you want will most likely pop up, and you'll miss 99% of the time.

* Practice. Practice. Practice.

Edited May 24, 2010 by Trope

[Xelfi]

For CB Vines, I have been just as successful in getting them from the cave as I have been in getting them from the AP. Of the six I have, I think I caught only two directly from the cave, two I caught myself on the AP, and the last two were gifts from my brother (and I'm pretty sure he got both of them from the AP as well.)

 

What happens in the main cave is that there are people who reflexively click on anything with a 'long' description (3-4 lines of text; usually one of the unbreedable types), and Vines are included in that (and I assume this includes CB Whites as well, though I haven't started actively hunting them yet). However, when they realize that they picked up a Vine when they already have all the Vines they want and there's no chance of a CB Vine being an Alt, they're likely to abandon it 5 hours later or as soon as they can.

 

So, what I do when I'm hunting for a CB Vine is check the main cave for a while, and if I have no luck, I'll move to the AP and look for Vines there. I start clicking on Vine eggs and immediately look at their lineage. If it's a CB, awesome, but if it isn't, I make note of the code and throw it back so I can move onto checking the next Vine egg and avoid clicking on the codes I've already gone through. And even if you make a mistake and click the same egg twice, there seems to be some coding that prevents a person from picking up an egg that they've abandoned until someone else has picked up and abandoned it first, so you might just get the 'you cannot find the egg' message even if the egg hasn't left the AP.

 

Anyway, whether you choose to hunt the cave or AP, just keep trying and you'll definitely get those CB Vines!

[icare4u]

I see CB vines often, but I'm not looking for them...but I could probably catch them if I wanted...

[TPishek]

Autorefresh sounds useful. Anyone know if Chrome has an autorefresh feature? *hates Firefox and IE*

PM me and I can give you a script for one ;V I generally just use it for NDs and (occasionally) extended AP hunting, when hitting F5 over and over can get kinda tedious. Plus it's only really an advantage if you have images/Java turned off; otherwise it's usually laggier than just manually refreshing.

 

 

I use Chrome because I find it to be far faster than Firefox. When I'm Cave hunting, I turn off images and Javascript, and I plug in my Bamboo tablet-- using it to refresh for some reason seems to make the page load faster than using the F5 button on my keyboard, although I have no idea why. I try to focus on the words in the description/description length, as others have said. My biggest weakness is that I always end up reflex-clicking on unbreedables. Especially Dinos, which I don't even like. >3>; So I know I still need practice... never even seen a metallic in the Cave, lol.

 

You can also be surprised by what you find in the AP-- one of my two CB Vines came from a random click in the AP. When I AP hunt I turn off Javascript (but not images, lol ), and I usually hover over the top left corner and click fast when something good shows up.

[Wookieinmashoo]

* Take regular breaks. Cavehunting gets boring after a while, and the one second you're distracted, the egg you want will most likely pop up, and you'll miss 99% of the time.

This...so much. It always happens. Relax a little and a lovely egg will come by and you're not ready for it ._.

 

As other people said, turning java and images off help a lot. java only for the AP.

Teach yourself to recognize key words and hunt for specific eggs. Once you can do that and practice catching certain eggs based on certain words, you will be able to recognize them immediately.

 

So far the only eggs I haven't caught at the main cave are the silver, stripe, and I think green and purple dino...but I don't keep track of the dinos. My problem is is not catching, but not being there. But when you are there for that certain egg, make sure you're ready :3

 

As for vine catching, they aren't as rare as blacks...but slightly rarer than dinos in general. If you have trouble remembering key words, I would suggest just clicking on anything that has three lines of description text. There are three types with that characteristic: dinos, whites, and vines. If you don't get a vine, any one of those is worthy for trading for it.

Also another tip for cave hunting, even though I know it's not nice, is to pick up "holder" eggs from the AP .Have only one space for your main cave egg. This allows you to frantically click the egg you want, without worry of getting the egg that comes afterward in mid refresh. I usually pick up holder eggs I wouldn't mind keeping though, such as a magi or CB common so I don't always dump the eggs back on the AP to free up another spot...'^'

 

And if you still have trouble with your vines, I won't mind catching one for you. Sometimes I get them from impulse clicking.

 

Also, go for the hour drops. I usually don't bother with the non hourly drops unless something special is going on.

[RMMC]

Learning to recognize and react to key words / description lengths helps a fair bit when looking to catch something you need.

^ This. It's how I've caught most of the CBs on my scroll from commons on up. Pick one or two key words from the description and wait for it.

 

For metallics..you still get the OMG Factor, but if you go expecting it, the factor decreases dramatically.

 

Continual refreshing also helps. If it gets stuck (won't load after 2-4 seconds, I do a hard refresh (shift + reload) to clear out whatever's gumming up the works.

 

I'm less successful in AP grabbing, but go hunting with a certain breed in mind and don't let the other pretty shinys distract you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited because my brain isn't very linear some days.

Edited May 24, 2010 by RMMC

[hibini]

For me there are two types of hunting, crazy hunting, and calm hunting. In crazy hunting you click, click, and click some more. You just stare at the computer in frantic mode, when you see something rare you are shocked and just try to click in time as you are being crazy. Hard and frantic, the world rushes by for hours, while you catch eggies. The next kind is Calm hunting, very controlled, and you just watch the eggs peacefully go buy with thoughts in mind over what you want. Your chose, both work for me...