2021-05-21 - Dragon Cave's 15th Birthday!

[lexi_]

according to theory, today should be the randomized gemshard day, right?

[Kelkelen]

33 minutes ago, Fyrebird said:

I used to save old sprites before the Encyclopedia came out, and never deleted them. I'm only going to do one color.

 

Older on the left, newer on the right.

 

Manes (beards?) and mustache tassels are bushier.

Tail forks are thicker.

Antlers are less pointy.

Eyes are larger?

Oh no!  I hadn't seen this change yet.  Obviously the artist is skilled, this has nothing to do with their ability, but... this *really* changes the Gemshards' look!  Before, they had the whole "shard" theme going on, with their shard-shaped tassels and tapered horns, all slim points and smooth curves.  I don't like the fuzzy tassels, thicker horns and forks, and bigger heads -- I liked the small low-sloped snakelike heads, and the darker colors before.  Why do they have big bright patches on them, now? Why were they changed, at all?  This just massively bums me out. 

[Fyrebird]

@lexi_ Yes, today should be chaos breeding day for gemshards.

 

Everybody else, if you haven't yet, see my edited post for embarassing error. I have 9 sapphires, 8 of them CB. And yes, I have celestials.

 

So, I think I'll do two cb pairs (fingers crossed), and 5 celestial matches, choosing one sapphire (if I get them) from each of those to wilfully abandon. If there are multiples, somebody else will have to grab them and re-abandon. We're all relying on the kindness of strangers for these pink guys.

 

Has somebody started a topic in... is trading the best option?... to announce breeding times for abandoned sapphires, so people can look for them? I'll log my breed times and codes just in case one gets started. When I checked the cave at the start of this conversation the shortest times were 4 days 1 hour.

 

 

Edited to add:

The first mixed pair I bred gave me 4 sapphires, then 2 sapphires/2 celestial, then 1 sapphire/1 celestial.

Unfortunately I bred the messiest first (both only 2g, but not matching mates).

Next time I'll know to breed the CBs first for (hopefully) more 2g.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Fyrebird
Breeding detail

[HeatherMarie]

Okay, uh, help? What did I do wrong? I just EQed my two Cantor eggs and both died. They both had the big last-stage hole, were *under* 5 days unincubated, I thought their stats were fairly good (I have growing hatchlings with significantly less in both OVs and UVs).... Was it just bad luck? *grumbles at risky mechanic*

 

[lexi_]

i hope a date tracking feature is added to the time reference page, if gemshards are now determined by date laid/caught. that would be very helpful! i'm EST, so my time is always matched up with cave-time, but i know this will be very confusing for those not in my timezone. 

 

i'm also hoping the two gemshards i got lucky enough to catch today turn out some of the new colors... namely orange!  

[Tini]

1 hour ago, lexi_ said:

yeah, youre right.. not on the males, but definitely for the females at the very least  

oh sweet so they updated so they match within the color. love it even more now

[High Lord November]

Aww not a fan of the sprite updates for Gemshards. The rounder face and rounder horns are a pretty big game changer. I like my dragons looking fierce and sleek and sharp, especially for these Easterns. Honestly the horns look like toy horns now, or like they're made of plastic. Same way I feel with the Lacula face updates - just a rounder look for the face (and rounder teeth for some reason?) which really changes the personality of the dragon. The male's face also has a really odd shaped skull, very round and bare and large with massive eyes. Bummer. Once again more viper-like heads get changed for more mammal-like heads.

Edited May 24, 2021 by High Lord November

[Whirlaway]

21 minutes ago, High Lord November said:

Aww not a fan of the sprite updates for Gemshards. The rounder face and rounder horns are a pretty big game changer. I like my dragons looking fierce and sleek and sharp, especially for these Easterns. Honestly the horns look like toy horns now, or like they're made of plastic. Same way I feel with the Lacula face updates - just a rounder look for the face (and rounder teeth for some reason?) which really changes the personality of the dragon. The male's face also has a really odd shaped skull, very round and bare and large with massive eyes. Bummer. Once again more viper-like heads get changed for more mammal-like heads.

 

This is about how I feel on them. I preferred the reptilian vibe they had before this rounder, brighter update. 

Just my opinion, but I preferred the original Gemshards better. shrugs

[acm1923]

2 hours ago, Nicola said:

Mine switched after it received 4,103 Overall Views and 656 UVs

I took a screen shot when mine changed and it was at 4093 OV, 394 UV, 5 Clicks (not that the clicks matter I don't think)

Sapphires are one of my favorite breeds anyway, Love that they have some new colors (that pink will be interesting to get for a while but hopefully we will get an AP wall of them shortly!) I also bred every single one on my page to toss into the fray! ❤️ 

 

I am so glad there will be a more secure way of getting the Gemshard colors from now on! So hard to do lineage projects with them. Thank you spriters and TJ for this! I do wish they had shown up a little more in the cave to catch when released but oh well there is always the market. Hopefully we will get a schedule soon for the colors, all the Purple hatchies I have come across were caught on the 20th and the Teal babes were caught on the 21st, have not seen the Orange yet.. 🤷‍♀️ I guess I will aim for the weekends to catch or buy the new colors.

 

Excited for the new hybrid! That purple color is just stunning! ❤️ 

 

Was able to breed a pair of the new copper color from my Green Copper x Electric so happy to get lucky with that. 

 

I was lucky enough to catch a few pairs of the new Floret! Yay! Very interested to see how the new colors will work! So much mystery..  

 

Love the new Alt Electric colors, such pretty blue lightning! Was able to get a pair of them from the market as well! Catching them is hopeless for me, since I haven't even seen any in cave since Friday. Zoom Zoom! 

 

The new Piggy I will try to get later on, once my page clears, the color is very pretty though and an easy mechanic to follow for once.

 

Bought a pair of Cantos to ward for a white pair. I wasn't brave enough to EQ with my other eggs unhatched..  My friend used EQ on the Cantos she bought and it killed 2 of the 4 so that really sucks.  

 

All and All another interesting event for DC! Thank you TJ and Spriters for all your hard work with these new guys! Happy Birthday DC!!! 

 

Edit: Just saw the sprite updates for the Gemshard, I like the vibrant colors and scales for sure, don't mind the rounder look of them but that's just me. I have always leaned towards the bright colored and larger breeds anyway, they are cute either way. 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by acm1923

[Fyrebird]

Okay, finished breeding my sapphires, and here are the results:

♦ 6 sapphire eggs willfully abandoned and verified pink.

♦ 4 extra sapphire eggs auto-abandoned.

♦ 3 celestial eggs also auto-abandoned.

♦ 1 refusal  

♦ 1 extra celestial because I corporealized them all before realizing the sexes didn't match up with my extra sapphire. Now I've got a week to use it, once I figure out something else to breed. (Replaced it with an aeon, because I think it goes well with sapphires — also, what were the odds it would give me one of those instead?)

 

I recorded the codes of all 10 sapphire eggs, so if there's a log somewhere, I can put them in.

[Odeen]

25 minutes ago, Whirlaway said:

 

This is about how I feel on them. I preferred the reptilian vibe they had before this rounder, brighter update. 

Just my opinion, but I preferred the original Gemshards better. shrugs

 

FTR the gemshard has always canonically had a head shaped similarly to a ball python head (below), which was not reflected in the original sprites at all because I did not know how to sprite that shape. Gemshards have always been cuddly, gregarious, happy, and friendly goobers that were done a disservice by having sharp features.


 

[Fyrebird]

3 minutes ago, Odeen said:

head shaped similarly to a ball python head

OMG those pits! I never realized pythons had massive pits. Makes sense for ambush predators; I just always think of "pit" in conjunction with "viper."

[Vampyre]

Personally I love this release!  I like the fact that 90% of the new stuff are breed only/alts. Means I didn't have to sit for hours trying to fight the lot of you during the hourly drop and 5 minute shuffles to fill up 😜 I can work at my OWN pace to get what I need of these guys without a sense of "hurry and get them now before the flood ends and they become invisible" like what happens with ALL new release stuff post flood for me.

 

I LOVE that they've planned it so that we'll still be puzzling out mechanics for weeks (looking at the Florets.) I enjoy watching the community come together to sleuth out the shenanigans and figure out how X, Y, and/or Z can be obtained.

 

Above all I LOVE best the mechanic for PINK Sapphires. Yes I know a lot of people hate this mechanic. But I love it in the sense that its kind of a community effort to get /everyone/ to have one. For those who are upset and complaining about not getting the eggs they need/want for potential lineages? When you breed and abandon you can ALWAYS politely ask using the parents' name for the egg's return. I'm sure lots of folks would be willing to return (especially since Pink will be the common AP color for Sapphires soon.) The Pink egg doesn't revert back to blue when traded that I've heard of so this should work. Personally I'm going to love hunting for these Pinks and seeing what sort of lineage ideas people have with their Sapphires.

 

 

The worst bit I think will be for future hatching of BLUE sapphires. But hopefully Fogging and the correct usage of hatcheries will keep them blue. I'm sure if it proves to be too impossible to keep them blue that TJ and the spriters will have a Powwow and rectify that. The idea is for this game to be /fun/ not impossible.

 

Even the parts of this release that I'm apprehensive about I kind of like. I've NEVER used earthquake or ward so the idea that I'll have to actually use these BSAs finally is interesting. I don't think either of these BSAs get a lot of use. Ward is kind of useless especially considering Fog works so much better. Plus Earthquake only seems to be used by the eager beavers during releases. So a way to make less used features of the game more used is nice!

 

 

That said? I bred and released 4 2gSapphire eggs that are at 6 days 17 hours right now. This is /my/ gift for whoever is lucky enough to grab them ❤️ (They are pink as I bred them specifically to abandon them "willfully" and they are showing as pink in my action log ;P)

[RainDear]

Well, after hunting for more than 3 hours and catching nothing in the cave or AP, I decided to breed my Copper Dragons for the new alt I got -

3 Alt Coppers

1 Brown Copper (now in the AP)

2 Electrics to Stun.

 

LUCKY ME!

[Odeen]

12 minutes ago, Fyrebird said:

OMG those pits! I never realized pythons had massive pits. Makes sense for ambush predators; I just always think of "pit" in conjunction with "viper."

 

Yup! They're heat pits - not just useful for vipers and the like. Birdz did a piece of gemshard fanart years ago (I think it's somewhere on DA) that shows the pits pretty clearly, but I also did these little doodlemaboobers recently (intended for use as forum avatars, so have at them - although I don't yet have any of the new colors lol oops) that also shows them off.

[Syiren]

2 minutes ago, Odeen said:

 

Yup! They're heat pits - not just useful for vipers and the like. Birdz did a piece of gemshard fanart years ago (I think it's somewhere on DA) that shows the pits pretty clearly, but I also did these little doodlemaboobers recently (intended for use as forum avatars, so have at them - although I don't yet have any of the new colors lol oops) that also shows them off.

I wasn't sure what to make of the new designs until seeing these. I was in the same boat with others that they like the more serpent/flat-like design before, but I love the heat pit look to these new ones! It doesn't really change them that much either, instead it sorta fills them out, the longer I look at them anyway, and with the zoomed in headshots of these guys? I love them so much more. And I don't know why the green one reminds me of Treeko, but it makes me want to hug it!

[TCA]

7 minutes ago, Odeen said:

 

Yup! They're heat pits - not just useful for vipers and the like. Birdz did a piece of gemshard fanart years ago (I think it's somewhere on DA) that shows the pits pretty clearly, but I also did these little doodlemaboobers recently (intended for use as forum avatars, so have at them - although I don't yet have any of the new colors lol oops) that also shows them off.

 

this is a completely unfair level of adorable oh my gods

[Fyrebird]

5 minutes ago, Odeen said:

 

I also did these little doodlemaboobers recently (intended for use as forum avatars, so have at them - although I don't yet have any of the new colors lol oops) that also shows them off.

 

Those are gorgeous! And since we can have animated avatars, once you get the other three colors done...  wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

 

I can't even draw good stick figures. The worst presentation I ever had to make in school was the teacher who made everybody do a "chalk talk" with little drawings to illustrate their subject. (We had to draw everything first and then point to it at the relevant part of the talk.) At least nobody laughed out loud.

[Pixxelation]

15 minutes ago, Odeen said:

 

same vibes, and i mean this as the highest compliment:

 

[lexi_]

i liked the older head shape, but if this matches up more with the way they were intended to look, then that's that. that art is sooo cute! i love ball pythons, so hearing this bit of information about them makes me appreciate the way the sprites look now  

 

actually, i'm getting a STRONG urge to start hoarding them now...

Edited May 24, 2021 by lexi_

[GalacticNovie]

Ah, I love the Gemshard update! The new sprites really do make them look happier and friendlier which goes well with their descriptions! I especially love the green male's sprite; never before did I ever think I was going to potentially hoard a specific color of a specific gender of a specific breed, but this update makes it really tempting despite the hassle of going through such a task, haha! My poor Pinks...

[Gremlins_Hotel]

I managed to acquire a single new Copper via my few CB Coppers on-scroll! The one successful breeding was between a M Rainbow Copper x F Electric dragon. I won’t post the poor baby here as the egg is already sick from people trying to unlock it for Encyclopedia on hatchery viewers (must assume this is true as I do this all the time for other things haha but what do I know). I have also managed to acquire a pair of the new Nilia alts!

 

I’m greatly tempted to start collecting Gemshards again after having not done so for a while with these new colors! However, trying to save shards for a Gold, as I don’t have a CB/Market one yet, so purely on hunting duty for those beautiful new Gems!

 

I am VIBRATING in my boots to discover how to get the new Florets. I wish I was kidding bruh but I love Florets an unreasonable amount.

[gotw3]

Oh my gosh, the AP is insane right now. I think, out of everything, Pink Sapphires are the eggs I can't really see myself getting in the future long past the release (I never check the AP, unfortunately) so I trawled the AP for a bit. Well over a hundred people there!

 

The Peach Florets are dropping en masse and too hard to resist (even while I'm so close to egglock), so hopefully my incuhatchable egg will skyrocket into the hatch zone before tonight ends and I go to sleep. I don't often say this, but I'm excited to keep hunting!

 

Edit: And oh my god, those avatars by Odeen make the gemshards look adorable!!

Edited May 24, 2021 by gotw3
gemshards being cute

[HeatherMarie]

3 minutes ago, gotw3 said:

Oh my gosh, the AP is insane right now. I think, out of everything, Pink Sapphires are the eggs I can't really see myself getting in the future long past the release (I never check the AP, unfortunately) so I trawled the AP for a bit. Well over a hundred people there!

 

 

Oh dang, and I thought it was bad yesterday with 50-odd people there! Wow. That's a lot of competition. 

 

@Odeen's *ADORABLE* Gemshard doodles are making me so freaking happy right now. They just look so happy and kind!

[gotw3]

Just now, HeatherMarie said:

Oh dang, and I thought it was bad yesterday with 50-odd people there! Wow. That's a lot of competition.

 

I consider myself quite the fast clicker (and more importantly, lucky enough to have a reasonable connection speed 😅) and I definitely missed quite a few Pink Sapphires. Not sure if they're dropping anymore (they were going roughly one every few minutes for a bit), but there's definitely competition! :')