or, All You Need to Know to Get Started With Dragon Battles Because Seriously, There Are So Many Guides and They're All Really Complicated and Say Different Things
First things first, those other guides are all actually amazing and once you get more familiar with the system you should go and read those and have fun doing all sorts of complicated stuff. But when you're just starting out, or you want to do battles and not die but don't have the patience for the in-depth stuff, this is the guide for you.
Also, I'm pretty much assuming that you're familiar with some kind of rpg battle system with elements, like pokemon. If you're not... well, it's not rocket science. Also, go play pokemon because it's awesome.
Part 01: Picking Your Team
There's a couple of things to keep in mind when you're making the first few decisions here, and it's stuff that's easy to miss out on but actually kind of really important. Here are the big ones.
- your three battlers should all be from different elements.
- one of those should be a magic dragon, the other two should be fighters.
- make sure they're dragons you're not going to sick of.
If you're just starting out, all you have is your two progenitors from the same flight. You don't want both of them to be battlers, so pick one. Pick the nice looking one, or the one that makes your heart go doki doki I don't know whatever, just pick one. Now, head to the Coliseum, add him/her to your party and check out what battle stones they already have equipped.
If they have Meditate and Contuse, they're a magician.
If they have Scratch and Shred, they're a fighter.
You need 1 magician and 2 fighters, so whichever of those your progen fulfils, you want the other dragons on your team to, well, fill out the rest. These generally go by breed, but I've seen a few exceptions and I have no idea whether they're just flukes or what, so basically just double-check before you decide on anything.
Fighters: Guardians, Mirrors, Spirals, Ridgebacks, Imperials, Wildclaws
Magicians: Fae, Tundras, Pearlcatchers, Skydancers, Coatls
Snappers: Snappers
ok so snappers have their own thing goin' on and we'll come back to them later. but anyway. there's a basic guide for what you're going to be looking for.
elements! elements are very important. HERE is a really great guide that shows you all sorts of detailed information about what element is strong against what - it's slightly more complicated than pokemon, and having a chart open while you're fighting is really handy. HOWEVER! the important part is the 'best combos' page of the spreadsheet.
Or just click right here to go directly there.
Basically, someone (gosh I wonder who) took the time to consider what combinations of elements would be best to make a well-balanced team, and I would seriously, seriously recommend taking its advice because if you have huge weaknesses, it can make some areas very, very, very tough to fight in!
So look through there. Find the element of your progen, figure out what other elements you're going to want to look for. Decide which elements go with which breeds for your fighters and magician. [PRO TIP: Take a moment at this juncture to go to the Auction House and look at prices for the different elemental attack stones. Each element will have a slash and a bolt, and while most are about the same general price, some of them have a crazy discrepancy - Arcane, for instance, is much much much cheaper as a bolt than as a slash. This is relevant because, if you want to have an Arcane dragon in your party, it's going to be a lot cheaper for it to be your magician rather than a fighter. Slash is for fighters, bolt is for magicians. Just double-check that you're not setting yourself up for super expensive battle stones later.]
Now that you're armed with breed and flight information, and it's time to head to the Auction House.
Stuff You Should Know:
- There are going to be a billion dragons for sale for under 6k treasure. I promise. Like, ask anyone who's been here, our dragon market is kind of a mess BUT new players can almost certainly reap the benefits, because it means you can find really, really pretty dragons of any breed you want for dirt cheap. YAY.
- Yes, 6k is dirt cheap. Go play Tidal Trouble and you'll make twice that in like, two seconds, it's seriously wonderful.
- Unfortunately you can't search by flight. You also can't search by age, and if you want to battle right now, you're going to want an adult dragon.
- But the more search criteria you put in, the less you'll have to hunt through. So if you want a particular gender or gene, go for it, be picky.
- You'll see a stone that denotes flight next to the lil gender symbol so just. Put in your search criteria, look at ascending prices, and go hunting!
- If you want adult dragons you will have to wade through a lot of babies so if you can be patient, they'll grow up in 5 days or less.
- Also there are probably a ton of cool giveaways?? Like, we haven't had new players in 500 years so I'm willing to bet that everyone is gonna be like HERE, HAVE DARGON.
- And last but not least... take the time to find a dragon that you actually adore. One that you won't ever want to exalt, even when the rest of your lair is filled with perfect triple-gened imperials and your next lair upgrade is 400,000 treasure and you want to claw out your eyes because the dragons are so pretty but you have NO ROOM. So, yeah, it's important. And like I said, there's a ton of cheap pretty dragons all ripe for the plucking, and making enough treasure for them is pretty easy and totally worth it.
Part 02: Battle Stones and Skills
There are like 500 guides that will tell you what to do here, but this is the newbie guide so this is not those guides.
STUFF YOU'LL NEED WITHIN 10 LEVELS
- elemental attack stones (two slashes, one bolt, in corresponding elements)
- might and acuity fragments (tbh though, you'll get these as loot drops so you can wait until your slots open up)
- Eliminate (you're going to need at least one)
- Discipline (at least one, eventually two)
- Aid
STUFF THAT ALSO HELPS
- buffs: barrier, haste, rally, concentration, etc (these are also a p common drop so i'd just let them accumulate until you get to higher levels)
- Guard (this is only useful if you choose to have a tank/defense dragon)
Now, what to do with them!
Obviously this is over the course of like, the first ten-ish levels, since the slots and required levels open up gradually as you level up. Also, your stat points accumulate with each level, but here's what you need to know.
You're gonna want your fighters with the elemental slash attacks, might fragments, and eliminate ASAP (go ahead and replace shred when you need to). Stats-wise, you're gonna want strength, agility/quickness, and everything else except intelligence in a 3-2-1 type of ratio. Don't put anything into intelligence.
For the magician, you want to get aid on there as soon as possible, and when you hit level 5, replace contuse with your elemental bolt. Your 3-2-1 for them is gonna be intelligence, quickness, and then the others minus strength. Agility is less important than for the other guys but quickness is good so you always have enough healing when you need it.
You can either have your two fighters balanced and tag team with them, or make one of them primarily a stat booster/defender and concentrate attack power on the other one. If you do, literally forget the other stuff and go for strength, agility, and quickness, and have your defender prioritize defense, magical defense, and vitality, and fill up the remaining three slots (aside from the elemental attack) with guard and buffer stones.
[PRO TIP: This is where the Snappers come in handy. Snappers come with Anticipate, which means they get breath when they're hit, and if conjunction with Guard and a high defense, it can be a really awesome way to generate breath. But it's not necessary, so if you've already purchased the dragon you want, you can still make them defend without Anticipate - especially since stat buffs give you breath, rather than requiring it.]
That's basically it! There's obviously a lot more to the finer points of strategy, which is discussed in other guides, but this is just so you can cover the bases when you're first starting so you don't get to like, level ten and realize you should really have been training with a better balance of elements and not wasting skill points and just, yeah. Start off right and your Coliseum adventure will have the maximum of fun, and minimum of frustration!
And if you have any questions please feel free to ask, I'm in no way an expert but if I don't know, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction.
First things first, those other guides are all actually amazing and once you get more familiar with the system you should go and read those and have fun doing all sorts of complicated stuff. But when you're just starting out, or you want to do battles and not die but don't have the patience for the in-depth stuff, this is the guide for you.
Also, I'm pretty much assuming that you're familiar with some kind of rpg battle system with elements, like pokemon. If you're not... well, it's not rocket science. Also, go play pokemon because it's awesome.
Part 01: Picking Your Team
There's a couple of things to keep in mind when you're making the first few decisions here, and it's stuff that's easy to miss out on but actually kind of really important. Here are the big ones.
- your three battlers should all be from different elements.
- one of those should be a magic dragon, the other two should be fighters.
- make sure they're dragons you're not going to sick of.
If you're just starting out, all you have is your two progenitors from the same flight. You don't want both of them to be battlers, so pick one. Pick the nice looking one, or the one that makes your heart go doki doki I don't know whatever, just pick one. Now, head to the Coliseum, add him/her to your party and check out what battle stones they already have equipped.
If they have Meditate and Contuse, they're a magician.
If they have Scratch and Shred, they're a fighter.
You need 1 magician and 2 fighters, so whichever of those your progen fulfils, you want the other dragons on your team to, well, fill out the rest. These generally go by breed, but I've seen a few exceptions and I have no idea whether they're just flukes or what, so basically just double-check before you decide on anything.
Fighters: Guardians, Mirrors, Spirals, Ridgebacks, Imperials, Wildclaws
Magicians: Fae, Tundras, Pearlcatchers, Skydancers, Coatls
Snappers: Snappers
ok so snappers have their own thing goin' on and we'll come back to them later. but anyway. there's a basic guide for what you're going to be looking for.
elements! elements are very important. HERE is a really great guide that shows you all sorts of detailed information about what element is strong against what - it's slightly more complicated than pokemon, and having a chart open while you're fighting is really handy. HOWEVER! the important part is the 'best combos' page of the spreadsheet.
Or just click right here to go directly there.
Basically, someone (gosh I wonder who) took the time to consider what combinations of elements would be best to make a well-balanced team, and I would seriously, seriously recommend taking its advice because if you have huge weaknesses, it can make some areas very, very, very tough to fight in!
So look through there. Find the element of your progen, figure out what other elements you're going to want to look for. Decide which elements go with which breeds for your fighters and magician. [PRO TIP: Take a moment at this juncture to go to the Auction House and look at prices for the different elemental attack stones. Each element will have a slash and a bolt, and while most are about the same general price, some of them have a crazy discrepancy - Arcane, for instance, is much much much cheaper as a bolt than as a slash. This is relevant because, if you want to have an Arcane dragon in your party, it's going to be a lot cheaper for it to be your magician rather than a fighter. Slash is for fighters, bolt is for magicians. Just double-check that you're not setting yourself up for super expensive battle stones later.]
Now that you're armed with breed and flight information, and it's time to head to the Auction House.
Stuff You Should Know:
- There are going to be a billion dragons for sale for under 6k treasure. I promise. Like, ask anyone who's been here, our dragon market is kind of a mess BUT new players can almost certainly reap the benefits, because it means you can find really, really pretty dragons of any breed you want for dirt cheap. YAY.
- Yes, 6k is dirt cheap. Go play Tidal Trouble and you'll make twice that in like, two seconds, it's seriously wonderful.
- Unfortunately you can't search by flight. You also can't search by age, and if you want to battle right now, you're going to want an adult dragon.
- But the more search criteria you put in, the less you'll have to hunt through. So if you want a particular gender or gene, go for it, be picky.
- You'll see a stone that denotes flight next to the lil gender symbol so just. Put in your search criteria, look at ascending prices, and go hunting!
- If you want adult dragons you will have to wade through a lot of babies so if you can be patient, they'll grow up in 5 days or less.
- Also there are probably a ton of cool giveaways?? Like, we haven't had new players in 500 years so I'm willing to bet that everyone is gonna be like HERE, HAVE DARGON.
- And last but not least... take the time to find a dragon that you actually adore. One that you won't ever want to exalt, even when the rest of your lair is filled with perfect triple-gened imperials and your next lair upgrade is 400,000 treasure and you want to claw out your eyes because the dragons are so pretty but you have NO ROOM. So, yeah, it's important. And like I said, there's a ton of cheap pretty dragons all ripe for the plucking, and making enough treasure for them is pretty easy and totally worth it.
Part 02: Battle Stones and Skills
There are like 500 guides that will tell you what to do here, but this is the newbie guide so this is not those guides.
STUFF YOU'LL NEED WITHIN 10 LEVELS
- elemental attack stones (two slashes, one bolt, in corresponding elements)
- might and acuity fragments (tbh though, you'll get these as loot drops so you can wait until your slots open up)
- Eliminate (you're going to need at least one)
- Discipline (at least one, eventually two)
- Aid
STUFF THAT ALSO HELPS
- buffs: barrier, haste, rally, concentration, etc (these are also a p common drop so i'd just let them accumulate until you get to higher levels)
- Guard (this is only useful if you choose to have a tank/defense dragon)
Now, what to do with them!
Obviously this is over the course of like, the first ten-ish levels, since the slots and required levels open up gradually as you level up. Also, your stat points accumulate with each level, but here's what you need to know.
You're gonna want your fighters with the elemental slash attacks, might fragments, and eliminate ASAP (go ahead and replace shred when you need to). Stats-wise, you're gonna want strength, agility/quickness, and everything else except intelligence in a 3-2-1 type of ratio. Don't put anything into intelligence.
For the magician, you want to get aid on there as soon as possible, and when you hit level 5, replace contuse with your elemental bolt. Your 3-2-1 for them is gonna be intelligence, quickness, and then the others minus strength. Agility is less important than for the other guys but quickness is good so you always have enough healing when you need it.
You can either have your two fighters balanced and tag team with them, or make one of them primarily a stat booster/defender and concentrate attack power on the other one. If you do, literally forget the other stuff and go for strength, agility, and quickness, and have your defender prioritize defense, magical defense, and vitality, and fill up the remaining three slots (aside from the elemental attack) with guard and buffer stones.
[PRO TIP: This is where the Snappers come in handy. Snappers come with Anticipate, which means they get breath when they're hit, and if conjunction with Guard and a high defense, it can be a really awesome way to generate breath. But it's not necessary, so if you've already purchased the dragon you want, you can still make them defend without Anticipate - especially since stat buffs give you breath, rather than requiring it.]
That's basically it! There's obviously a lot more to the finer points of strategy, which is discussed in other guides, but this is just so you can cover the bases when you're first starting so you don't get to like, level ten and realize you should really have been training with a better balance of elements and not wasting skill points and just, yeah. Start off right and your Coliseum adventure will have the maximum of fun, and minimum of frustration!
And if you have any questions please feel free to ask, I'm in no way an expert but if I don't know, I'd be happy to point you in the right direction.
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