2021-01-24 - January Dragon Release

[ShorahNagi]

My first incubated egg hatched - it's the red/black...so I'll have two of these by the end of the day.

 

This time tomorrow, I should have 2 blue, a pink. And an orange if the BSA color theory is right

[daba555]

5 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

They are still out there. You will probably have more luck with the 5 min. drops. At least I did when I went to pick up one this morning.

But if there's none or just one, I have no chance.  I work, and cannot sit and try every 5 minutes for hours on end, even if inclined.

 

It feels like these are going to be less common, usually even a couple of days after a release more show up.  I won't miss them, I am getting less and less enthusiastic.  And this was the first time in years I was going to breed to Valentine's Day, and so now don't even feel like that.  It shouldn't be this hard, and it's no longer fun, to be honest.

 

Adding:  Thank you though, for the positive thought.

Edited January 26, 2021 by daba555

[HeatherMarie]

So, I decided to get my 2 non-incubated eggs some views last night, and then fogged them overnight so they wouldn't get sick. Based on the info so far, I was going to leave one alone and Incubate then Precog the other, hopefully having it hatch blue. Problem: Apparently my eggs got enough views they already have large holes, I'm nervous if I Incubate it will hatch immediately before I can use Precog. And I don't want the black/red color. Ugh. This is too complicated.

[Laura-Borealis]

Glad I'm keeping a notebook on these. My brain can't do it alone.

 

Since Influence has been ruled out, the ones I thought would be pink will actually be Precog-blue. I'll just have to get another batch for base color pinks and Teleport oranges (Edit - or trade two with someone for oranges).

 

ETA This will all be worth it if the adult sprites are attractive... think of the possibilities for interesting lineages.

I feel a little bad for the hybrids! The color changers are getting all the attention. 😄

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Laura-Borealis

[Mnkn10]

3 of my eggs have hatched. Two were incubated, then precogged, and they both emerged blue. Which would confirm that the only BSA that matters is the last one you use.

 

The final one was incubated then influenced, and hatched red. I think it's safe to say influence doesn't affect colour.

[infiniteviking]

*finally gets back in here, checks cave* Oh no, is it an uncommon? The one time when I thought I could get away with catching two on release day and more later!  So far I'm still seeing a couple every other five-minute drop or so, though they disappear really fast. By contrast, I very seldom see an Aeon. Really hoping they settle down to being common or uncommon rather than actually rare. Big thanks to the Dragon Cave team for these cool critters, but also huge shoutout to @Shadowdrake and the Mad Science Lab for sacrificing time and scroll space to figure out how these babies work.

 

Rundown by color and BSA (let me know if I missed anything):

Spoiler

By color (applies to eggs only):

• Pink: don't incubate, teleport, or precog. (Thanks, Seriva Senkalora, for pointing out that pink hatchlings can be traded!)
• Orange: receive it through a teleport, don't incubate or precog.
• Red: incubate after any precogging or teleporting.
• Blue: precog after any teleporting or incubating.
• Breeding pairs: influence doesn't affect the color; do that whenever. 

 

By BSA:

• Earthquake, Ward, and Bite are not part of the color mechanic (and Stun obvs only works on hatchlings, by which time the colors are already established).
• Incubate: do last to get a red hatchie.
• Precog: do last to get a blue hatchie. (Once hatched, precog does not change the color.)
• Teleport: do last to get an orange hatchie. Only reliable if the egg was successfully transferred to/from another scroll. (Once an egg is hatched, teleporting does not change the color.)
• Influence is a free action; will not change the color even if done last.

 

Hypotheses:

• I'd guess that the basics of breeding will work similarly: bred eggs will hatch pink unless incubated, teleported, and/or precogged.
• Will abandoned eggs hatch pink, or does abandoning them reset only the actions already done to them but not the actions' colors?

 

By a stroke of luck, I didn't incubate my two from release night. They've now been influenced and precogged, so they should hatch blue.

By contrast, the hybrids are amazingly simple. It also feels like a good time to massbreed Pinks, Reds, Magis, and especially Aeons for those who need more BSAs. Rip my scroll space (especially since my goals include at least one pair of each variant in each available biome), and condolences to anyone else who was starting to prepare for Valentine's Day. This will take some time!

Edited January 26, 2021 by infiniteviking

[trystan]

can confirm (again, for the zillionth time, i'm sure), the eggs i just incubated so they hatched right away are red/black.

 

i think at midnight tonight we'll see a zillion hatchies as well

[Seriva Senkalora]

3 hours ago, Cowfish249 said:

Want to trade back and fourth with me to to see if it'll remove the incibation affect? I have egg room :]

though that might give you orange for teleport of the theory stands lmao.

Thank you for your offer, but I will keep the eggs the way they are now.

If theories are correct I should get two red/black, two blue, one orange and one pink.

 

  

13 hours ago, Diggie said:

If pink is the default and influence doesn't reset it to pink, there's no way to trade for pinks... which would be suboptimal for those who breed with specific colors

You can simply trade for pink hatchlings, can't you?

As far as I have read here, the color-change on hatchlings has been a bug and is now fixed.

So they should stay pink when traded?

Edited January 26, 2021 by Seriva Senkalora

[Seriva Senkalora]

Sorry doubleposting by accident!

Edited January 26, 2021 by Seriva Senkalora

[hazeh]

Huzzah! I absolutely love the different colored hatchies. I'm thrilled that there's a puzzle involved, I think it adds an element of surprise and strategy to the game and makes it more interesting 😁 

 

....and now I'm getting ideas.... 🤔

 

also I'm glad my hybrids got their unique s1 description finally 😆

[Paintra]

Yeah, I have to agree with the person earlier who said this is treading into the "annoying" territory. It seemed alright for a moment, when it seemed like it was only the last BSA used that affected the color. Especially considering the release was right before Valentine's, I'm starting to wish this release happened later rather than now. That's not to say I don't love the art nor the work the spriters have done, but figuring out the mechanic is supremely irritating.

[Toyo]

Just here to say, I influenced, precogged, incubated, and then precogged again. It hatched blue. 

 

(I always forget that one can use precog over and over, unlike other bsas. But I was able to undo my "oh dang I wasn't supposed to incubate that one" mistake.)

 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Toyo

[kerrikins]

4 minutes ago, Toyo said:

Just here to say, I influenced, precogged, incubated, and then precogged again. It hatched blue. 

 

(I always forget that one can use precog over and over, unlike other bsas. But I was able to undo my "oh dang I wasn't supposed to incubate that one" mistake.)

 

 

This is good to know, as not being able to incubate without losing the colour permanently would be annoying! 

[Magellan]

They are all adoreable (ofc that includes the hybrids, though they are more fierce looking. As soon as I have some space, I'll try to get a few! love hybrids! )

 

The s2 of chirpie reminds me a bit of Lugia and when I read chirp... well, I think of little chicks so that's kinda my soft spot^^'
I also really like the mechanics, that's really creative! The idea of making a dragon influencible by the last "parent" dragon's mana it came into contact with is really cool, even though without this thread I would prolly have figured it out months later With that mechanic, we have rarity added to the breed that doesn't involve luck in the cave hunt or searching/stalking one single biome.
Whoever thought of that: Thanks!
And with the market added to the game, everyone wil get the chance to get every color eventually. No need to stress out I guess
 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Magellan
me being a clutz

[RainDear]

Since I can't trade with myself, and seldom get offers on my trades, it looks like I can forget getting orange. Disappointment.

[purplehaze]

While I do find the mechanics of this somewhat annoying I would like to thank the creators of this dragon anyway. Agree that right before Valentines may not have been the best release time, but hey, they are permanent so we can play with them after Valentines just as well.

 

And thanks so much to those who were brave experimenters and figured all this out and shared their knowledge with the rest of us! Bless you!

 

It may take me a very long time to get my scroll goals of all the colors, but at least I now know how to do it.

[Feathers]

Oh dang, I didn't expect a release this month -- cool. Honestly I've been kicking around, it'll be nice to have something to hunt in the caves.

 

Happy hunting, all!

[dragonpuck]

why are they gone already

exactly ZERO new release at the top of the hour

 a multiple  element release should NOT be this ratioed out already

[HeatherMarie]

7 minutes ago, purplehaze said:

 

It may take me a very long time to get my scroll goals of all the colors, but at least I now know how to do it.

 

I'm very much rethinking my base-goal of 20 of every breed/variant! Maybe these will need to be an exception to that. (I've already made exceptions in my mind for Neglecteds and Zombies...)

 

Honestly I have mixed feelings about such a complicated variant mechanic. On one hand, it's been super-fun following along and figuring it all out, and with so many different puzzle-pieces this will take awhile to collect scroll goals for all of them and therefore will keep many people playing more (well, possibly). On the other hand, it *does* seem needlessly complicated, and it's yet another breed that I really feel is making the forums/etc *mandatory* now. In the past few years we've gotten multiple new releases where the mechanics are only figured out through group effort on the forums or elsewhere, it feels like DC is no longer a stand-alone do-by-yourself game, if you aren't on the forums/discord/anything it'll probably be a loooong time before you'd figure out something this complicated. 

[Chaosdawn]

15 minutes ago, RainDear said:

Since I can't trade with myself, and seldom get offers on my trades, it looks like I can forget getting orange. Disappointment.

 

You can just send the egg to someone you trust and have them send it back. 

 

I'm available right now for anyone who wants to do this. I'll be hunting later for my own to turn orange.

[Guillotine]

44 minutes ago, Paintra said:

Yeah, I have to agree with the person earlier who said this is treading into the "annoying" territory. It seemed alright for a moment, when it seemed like it was only the last BSA used that affected the color. Especially considering the release was right before Valentine's, I'm starting to wish this release happened later rather than now. That's not to say I don't love the art nor the work the spriters have done, but figuring out the mechanic is supremely irritating.

Honestly if the egg changed color it'd be way less frustrating to deal with, as-is it's just obnoxious.

 

e: like, to be clear, when I first saw the hatchlings I planned on getting as many as possible! The sprites are lovely! but I do not want to deal with a blind-change mechanic!!!

Edited January 26, 2021 by Guillotine

[Windy]

I enjoy the new mechanic, I think it's creative and challenging. 

[Amberfly]

Honestly one of the colors being tied to teleport is dismaying. I rarely trade so getting those ones is going to mean a major alteration in my play style unless I want to abandon my goal of 10 CB of every dragon. I can handle having to influence, precog, and incubate in a certain order, but since teleporting erases influence on eggs and it's the last action performed that determines the color, doesn't this make orange ones effectively unable to be influenced? You'd influence and get whichever color that makes, then teleport to get orange but that erases the influence, and if the person who received it influences it it would no longer hatch orange. If that's how it works, you'd have to precog, hope for the gender you want, then teleport, and if it's not the gender you want you're just out of luck. And that is...not something I like.

[Lagie]

2 hours ago, TailedThief said:

 

people seem to notice them staying pink if a bsa is not used on them. Maybe that means if we use influence -but no other bsa- on them, they'll just stay pink, to. Because influence has no affect and all.

Well, red rdagons (incubate) turn them red.

Orange dragons (teleport) turn them orange

Blue dragons (precog) turn them blue)

and pink dragons (influence) turn them pink - but only if that's the ONLY thing you do to the egg, it seems so far.

[Guillotine]

I would consider it merely "an interesting puzzle" if even one of the following factors were different:

 

- Immediate visual change to egg.

- Eggs did not take several days real time to hatch.

- Speeding up hatching did not affect the color.

But the second one involves altering a core mechanic of the site and the first and third are not true. So it stops being "oh this could be fun to see what causes what" and into "why even bother".

Edited January 26, 2021 by Guillotine