Crystalize Eggs BSA

[High Lord November]

Some of the eggs on here have gorgeous sprites and I find myself wanting to collect them. I was thinking it would be great to have a BSA that would effectively "freeze eggs". 

 

Here's how I think it would work:

• You can only use the BSA on an intact egg, i.e. no cracks in it.
• The BSA would be associated with a dragon who is highly magical and has some connection to the earth/crystals. Another suggestion is for a frost-based dragon (such as the Frostbite dragon). Or, it might need to be a new breed.
• There could be a chance that the BSA: a) succeeds, resulting in a crystallized egg, b) fails, resulting in a dead egg, c) fails and nothing happens. A crystallized egg would look like the normal egg, but with the addition of a base with small crystals, and would be treated like a frozen hatchling. 

Any thoughts or comments?
 

Why the failure? Most dragon BSAs have some chance of failure, and the unrestricted nature of being able to hoard BSAs would allow a user to either a) go through CB eggs very fast, or b) nuke AP eggs. I can see the former as being an issue and might need a restriction on it to prevent it from happening, but the latter might be fine. Ultimately this decision would be up to the people who control game balance.

 

The other option is to make it a human-action as opposed to a BSA, where it would have an unavoidable restriction on how often you can do it, but a 100% chance of success, just like freezing a hatchling.

Edited March 2, 2019 by High Lord November

[olympe]

Why would you want to have a double chance of failure? I've never heard of Freeze failing, either - and this is pretty much the same feature for a different stage.

I also don't like that there should be a crystal base for the "frozen" egg - wouldn't a snowflake symbol (like for frozen hatchlings) be enough to distinguish it from growing eggs? Creating such a base for all eggs - or at the very least, all custom eggs - might not only be a lot of work, but also clash with artist interest. It only takes one artist to say no to bust this...

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

I agree with Olympe that the eggs should just have the frozen symbol instead of a custom sprite to differentiate it from the rest. As well, I don't see the need for a fail rate honestly, since hatchling freezing doesn't need it!

 

I actually really like this idea - perhaps it could be done by Frostbite Dragons?

 

"In the depths of winter, they cover the world in blankets of snow and are believed to be responsible for the glittering frost that creeps over everything. Although they appear cold and distant, they are actually rather mischievous"

 

It makes sense to me that they'd be mischievous enough to enjoy coating an egg in a layer of frost cold enough to kill whatever was growing inside and keep it an egg forever (  )

[purplehaze]

There have been a number of suggestions in the past regarding ways to freeze an egg because there are so many pretty designs. The main objection I have seen to all of those is "but what happens to the baby dragon inside the egg?"

 

I like this idea, but neither the Firegem or the Geode are noted to have any magic ability.

[High Lord November]

1 hour ago, olympe said:

Why would you want to have a double chance of failure? I've never heard of Freeze failing, either - and this is pretty much the same feature for a different stage.

I also don't like that there should be a crystal base for the "frozen" egg - wouldn't a snowflake symbol (like for frozen hatchlings) be enough to distinguish it from growing eggs? Creating such a base for all eggs - or at the very least, all custom eggs - might not only be a lot of work, but also clash with artist interest. It only takes one artist to say no to bust this...

 

I thought of it more like a vampire bite since if it's a BSA, it would be dragon-induced (as opposed to a human spell), which is why I included the failure in it. Human actions have a mandatory cooldown and there's no way to get around it. Here, you could hoard as many BSA dragons as you want and crystallize-nuke the AP if you wanted to. Or, you could try and crystallize CB eggs to run through them quickly. There would have to be some sort of restriction on CB eggs if there's no chance of failure IMO. 

 

The other option is to just have it be a human action and get rid of the BSA/Dragon aspect to it, which is fine too. I just want to be able to hoard Xenowyrm eggs!
That's fair about the crystal base. I'll remove that from the OP.

 

33 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

There have been a number of suggestions in the past regarding ways to freeze an egg because there are so many pretty designs. The main objection I have seen to all of those is "but what happens to the baby dragon inside the egg?"

 

I like this idea, but neither the Firegem or the Geode are noted to have any magic ability.

 

In regards to what happens to the developing hatchling, it is crystallized too. I figured we can already kill eggs and dragons (inc. hatchlings), try to use magic to revive them for the purpose of zombies, bite eggs to turn them into vampires, try to force them out of their egg early, and neglect them so they grow up sick and weak. Crystallizing an undeveloped dragon is pretty tame compared to some of those, particularly if the egg is so undeveloped that it doesn't have any cracks in it.

 

And you're right on the Firegem/Geode. I was more thinking dragon characteristics than magic lore, forgive me! I could see Frost dragons having that BSA. "*Insert name* exhales, freezing the egg solid". 

Edited March 2, 2019 by High Lord November

[Imzadi]

If this happens, it could have a time restriction on it, just as freezing a hatchie.  It would depend on trophy level, so for platinum trophy you could freeze 18 in a 2 week span.  That would take care of using it to clear the AP etc.  You wouldn't need a failure rate then  And then, you would need a cooldown on whatever dragon is used...maybe a week per dragon.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Imzadi

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

34 minutes ago, High Lord November said:

I thought of it more like a vampire bite since if it's a BSA, it would be dragon-induced (as opposed to a human spell), which is why I included the failure in it. Human actions have a mandatory cooldown and there's no way to get around it. Here, you could hoard as many BSA dragons as you want and crystallize-nuke the AP if you wanted to. Or, you could try and crystallize CB eggs to run through them quickly. There would have to be some sort of restriction on CB eggs if there's no chance of failure IMO.

 

This is a good point.

 

Perhaps, in order to Crystallise/Frostburn an egg, you need to have it for a certain amount of time. I think we need to have CB eggs for 5 hours before we can abandon them/trade them, so perhaps the same time would be needed before we can freeze them to prevent people from just grabbing eggs, freezing them so they don't count towards your egg limits, and immediately grabbing more to cycle through biome eggs.

 

Similarly, in order to prevent people from hoarding AP eggs just to freeze them and get rid of a wall, I'd opt for either 1) only being able to freeze a capped amount of eggs of every species, e.g. three like GoNs, or 2) only being able to freeze a certain amount of eggs per day. I'm leaning way more towards option 1 though, because I don't really understand why people would want hundreds of eggs to showcase, and I feel like it's a bit fairer.

[Imzadi posted while I was typing this so I also think the Freezing restrictions should apply to these eggs, although I still kinda vote for capping the egg limit:]

"Usage Limitations: Can be performed 14 (10 + 2 per trophy level) times per 2 weeks."

 

Also, would GoN eggs count towards your GoN limit? Like if you summoned two GoN eggs and froze them, would you still be able to get three adults, or only one more, because you technically already have two in your possession? Maybe the egg wouldn't be freezable at all? (Idk how it works with GoN hatchies) Worth thinking about though!

Edited March 2, 2019 by RealWilliamShakespeare

[TerraAnne]

I've been admiring all of the eggs for a long time and I would love to be able to freeze or crystallize eggs. It might be nice to showcase each egg in each egg cracking stage though so maybe raise that limit Gray suggested to include each egg cracking stage as well as a perfect untouched egg. If something like this went through I would be very happy as I've been wanting to collect at least one egg of each species for a long time now. I never really understood why the freeze option could only be used on hatchies and not eggs as well.

[HeatherMarie]

24 minutes ago, RealWilliamShakespeare said:

 

Similarly, in order to prevent people from hoarding AP eggs just to freeze them and get rid of a wall, I'd opt for either 1) only being able to freeze a capped amount of eggs of every species, e.g. three like GoNs, or 2) only being able to freeze a certain amount of eggs per day. I'm leaning way more towards option 1 though, because I don't really understand why people would want hundreds of eggs to showcase, and I feel like it's a bit fairer.

 

Why do people want hundreds of the exact same adult sprites on their scroll? Or hundreds of frozen hatchlings? This is a collecting game. If we are going to be able to collect eggs, we should be able to *collect* them, without some arbitrary limit on how many per species. 

 

I've been supporting some sort of 'egg freeze' option for *years*, literally as long as I've been playing. The main reason against that I've seen is the whole 'but the dragons will be trapped inside the egg forever omg no!' type of argument, which I honestly don't really 'get' as a reason against since we can already do way more horrible things then that to our dragons. If you don't want the dragon to be 'trapped in the egg', then don't use the action. Just like if you don't want to kill a dragon, you don't have to use that action. 

 

I honestly think this would work best if it were as close to hatchling freezing as possible... I mean, does it really need to be a BSA? We already have magic strong enough to 'freeze' hatchlings, we already have cooldowns/limits in place for freezing hatchlings, why not just do the same thing for eggs? Seems a lot simpler to me.

[BrazenChase]

I'd love this. Just make it work like freezing, no need to over-complicate things.

[Shadowdrake]

If you *really* want to limit people, either by morality or by preventing ap loss whatever, just have the action lock up your slot for 24 hours. If you want to be looser with it but still restricted have it only lock up a growing slot instead of an egg slot. Thus, people can't freeze instantly and grab another, it resembles killing and vamping in that egg "death" results in you being forced to wait, and you still have to spend some time "growing" it. Lorewise eggs could be fragile and need extended care to prevent shattering before the spell fully sets in, or whatever. Or you could just up the total freeze slots and freeze eggs with the same slots as hatchies, with the same caveat as teleport (cannot freeze/tp eggs that are too young).

Edited March 3, 2019 by Shadowdrake

[HeatherMarie]

I honestly don't think 'omg people will empty the AP out!' would actually be much of an issue... Even with a Platinum trophy you can only freeze 18 hatchlings every 2 weeks. That's not even enough to freeze every egg currently showing in the AP, there are 30 eggs there. I see no reason to make complicated restrictions on egg-freezing just because some people might have moral objections to an action they don't even have to use. If we have the magic ability to 'freeze' hatchlings, I see no reason why the same can't be done for eggs, with the same restrictions and such. We already have a freezing mechanic in place, no need to make tons of new rules just because it's eggs.

[Confused Cat]

I would prefer an option that doesn't trap an imaginary pixel dragon in its pixel egg. E.g. replace "you attempt to breed the two dragons but no egg is produced" with "you attempt to breed the two dragons, but the resulting egg is not fertilized" and two buttons "keep egg shard" and "leave egg shard to be eaten by tortoises", with the latter automatically being applied after 30 minutes or so (similar to the multiclutch mechanism).

 

Anyway if we have to use an action on an existing egg that would otherwise hatch into a dragon, then I think the same limit as for freezing would make sense. Plus a 5 hour wait time for eggs from the cave, so "crystallize" it would only be available when "abandon" is available. That should be enough to prevent any kind of abuse.

[Haloclimb]

Yes, I'd love an option to collect eggs. And please, no limits on how many we can collect! If I want to collect and army of Albino eggs, or Batuta eggs, or whatever eggs I like, then I would very much like to do that.

If people want limits, then just do what has been suggested- must hold the egg for x number of hours, and have a set number of slots per week. Simple!

[Dubious]

I would LOVE this option. I think that if it went by the process that happens when you kill an egg and counts as a killed egg, then that would solve all the problems.

 

1) It would place a limit of 5 eggs in two weeks. So there is no possibility of abuse for AP clearing. It also means that it takes time to build up a collection of frozen eggs and becomes something to work for over time. The option to 'cyrstalize' would be just like 'kill'...

 

Crystalize the egg. (You can use this action 5 more times before you must wait for a few weeks)

 

.

2) It has the same sort of message that killing an egg has and so it would solve the issue where people are worried about what happened to the growing dragon. So maybe...

 

'You cast a spell to crystalize the egg, killing the baby dragon inside.'

 

I really wish this could finally happen, we have all wanted this option for years. I would adore some Holly eggs. If it went with the 'kill' process then I could probably only get 5 Christmas eggs a year, but that would make it something to look forward to getting every Christmas.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Dubious

[blah]

Since we've been having this conversation for literally 10 years, there have been some suggestions that do not kill the hatchie. I still prefer piecing the shells back together.

Edit: and we used to have no freezing limit at all and I still don't get why we do have to have one.

Edited March 3, 2019 by blah

[Fuzzbucket]

20 minutes ago, blah said:

 

Edit: and we used to have no freezing limit at all and I still don't get why we do have to have one.

 

Because otherwise there are people who would empty the AP by freezing the lot. Which would annoy me, if not you !

[blah]

39 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

 

Because otherwise there are people who would empty the AP by freezing the lot. Which would annoy me, if not you !

 

The beauty of different playing styles. 😄 I would prefer the AP moved a little (or a lot) faster but that's not the point of this topic. Ultimately I'm absolutely fine with any way of egg sprite collecting as long as there is a way.

[Fuzzbucket]

I think it would be very sad to see the AP empty a whole lot. And there ARE people who would do that. Moving faster - sure. BALANCE

[High Lord November]

So since the discussion has been happening for ages, what needs to be done to have it considered as an implemented mechanic? At the end of the day I don't really care if it's a BSA or a human action, I just want to be able to hoard frozen eggs!

Edited March 3, 2019 by High Lord November

[olympe]

Personally, I think it's best to implement egg freezing to work the same way as freezing hatchlings. The only thing I'd consider changing is to delete a frozen egg's lineage to avoid drama from people who get upset because someone "killed their unborn baby dragon" or some such.

[Fuzzbucket]

Anyone who is going to be like that about it can "do the other thing"....

 

I agree - work the same way as freezing, if this were to happen.

[HeatherMarie]

Definite no to erasing the lineage! Some people deliberately freeze hatchlings *because* of their lineage, I'm sure it would be the same with eggs. I really really don't think the game should cater to people who might get upset about what someone else does with their own eggs! The game already has a history of 'if it's not on your scroll you have no say in what happens'. We can already freeze hatchlings and even outright kill dragons with 'pretty' lineages. There is *NO* reason to erase lineages on frozen eggs beyond 'oh no, someone might not like what I'm doing with my own eggs!' which.... Isn't really a good reason.

[Fuzzbucket]

45 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

Definite no to erasing the lineage! Some people deliberately freeze hatchlings *because* of their lineage, I'm sure it would be the same with eggs. I really really don't think the game should cater to people who might get upset about what someone else does with their own eggs! The game already has a history of 'if it's not on your scroll you have no say in what happens'. We can already freeze hatchlings and even outright kill dragons with 'pretty' lineages. There is *NO* reason to erase lineages on frozen eggs beyond 'oh no, someone might not like what I'm doing with my own eggs!' which.... Isn't really a good reason.

 

She said it better than I did

[JavaTigress]

3 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Anyone who is going to be like that about it can "do the other thing"....

 

I agree - work the same way as freezing, if this were to happen.

This is sort of how I see it, too.

 

AS it stands right now, a person can freeze whatever hatchies they like and the person who bred them has no say.

I see no good reason for this to be different.