Suggestions

The Hibernal lair has been an awesome addition, and I understand the need for restrictions needed to balance out its benefits. The inability to bond with familiars being one that I shrugged and accepted, I have not been very consistent in bonding, historically.

With the immanent changes that make bonding more worth the hassle, it becomes more of a headache, due to the desire to have a specific dragon paired with a specific familiar, but not being able to interact with that familiar.

For example I have a dragon that is an homage to last years anniversary, and she’s understandably paired with the Slight Eyewing she’s unbred and a perfect candidate for the Hibernal lair, yet as it stands I would have to strip her of her Eyewing each day to place on a non-hibernating dragon, bond, then remove and replace on my hibernating anniversary dragon.

I can see two possible solutions.

One possibility is if familiars in the Hibernal den didn’t count against the only-one-can-be-equipped rule. Then familiars equipped on hibernating dragons would effectively be in a visible part of the hoard: inaccessible both to interact with and to count against equipping a duplicate on a non-hibernating dragon. Potential downsides would include dealing with the interaction of removing a dragon from the den when a duplicate is equipped and active elsewhere.

Another possibility is to simply make bonding an option for hibernating familiars. I personally would be okay with forgoing the treasure rewards if such needed to be the cost.

A third option would be to leave the den interactions as they stand and ease the process of finding and equipping familiars. Perhaps a shortlist of favorite familiars unique to each dragon, or an auto-unequip option when placing a familiar that is duplicated elsewhere. Anything to make it easier to juggle everything to push those heart bars up.

Thoughts? Anything I missed by way of other options or downsides to the ones proffered?

[quote name="Corviknight" date="2020-01-23 12:57:56" ] [quote]Another possibility is to simply make bonding an option for hibernating familiars. I personally would be okay with forgoing the treasure rewards if such needed to be the cost.[/quote] Who are they gonna bond with? The dragon is hibernating. [/quote] An interesting and valid approach. In my head since the familiar bonds to the lair and not the specific dragon I hadn’t considered the in-universe interaction between a sleeping dragon and their familiar.

I wish there were a way to make bonding possible in the Den. I have my entire lair set up all fancy there, save for my Coli dragons, primarily so that I don't have fodder getting in the way and clogging things, and I don't fancy the idea of buying a hundred fodder to keep around in my main lair just so I can bond familiars. I'd give up the treasure rewards of bonding too, if that was what it took. (But not the chests.)

Probably won't ever happen, though.

i would love familiar bonding in the den :>

i honestly dont see how it'd have a negative impact

No support
As it stand, bonding is one of the very few things you can't do with dragons in the HibDen, and I'd like for it to stay that way.
I only equip fully bonded familiars to my HibDen dragons, or keep those in the vault (there really isn't a reason to bond with 500+ awakened fams, 50G each isn't really worth it)

Knowing that I can't bond with them anyway, and that they're just there for display really does ease my mind a lot, otherwise I'd probably be compulsively bonding with those as well, or try to put un-matching fams on the HibDen dragons because they need bonding (aka aren't awakened yet)

If I want a specific fam with a certain dragon I just awaken it and then put it on the hibernating dragon afterwards.

I'd be fine with them being able to bond, to be honest.

From an in-game standpoint, it makes little sense though. A sleeping dragon can't really bond with a pet.

From a player standpoint it would be fine, since... sleeping dragons can apparently have familiars in spite of that..?

Either's fine, because both options make as much sense as each other.

I don't agree with the above comment though. Just because somebody's personal playstyle means they opt not to bond with awakened familiars, or whatever, shouldn't be a reason to discount the possibility for myriad other players who might find it useful and aren't bound by the compulsions or aversions of others.

On the one hand, I would love this because more dragons means more familiars to bond with, but on the other hand I can understand that dragons in the Hibden need SOME restrictions to them.

Right now, most of the 'restrictions' on them are things that players have wanted for a long time, and thus aren't actually restrictions but rather bonuses, so having something that cannot be done with the HibDen dragons that players would want to do, does make sense, since the hib den was meant to be a 'showcase' not just a dragon storage (whether or not it has turned into that is a different topic altogether)

To be honest I am just grateful that there weren't more restrictions on the HibDen dragons and that bonding was the thing they chose to disallow. IMagine not being able to change your dragon's apparel or skins without having the dragon moved out of the HibDen.

Also, the bit about the sleeping dragons having familiars, I mean why not, when I go to sleep my cats don't just go away, they still remain my cats. It might make a bit more sense if the famliars had to be awakened or at least friendly towards the dragons, but I would rather they not add that restriction (even though I don't have any familiars paired with my hib den dragons)/

Personally I don't have any objections to allowing bonding in the den. I don't really care one way or the other, I can't be bothered but if somebody else wants to blow through all their fams that much faster they'll still hit the wall of 'no more familiars' eventually so I'm not sure how much it really matters in the long run. But... [quote]One possibility is if familiars in the Hibernal den didn’t count against the only-one-can-be-equipped rule. Then familiars equipped on hibernating dragons would effectively be in a visible part of the hoard: inaccessible both to interact with and to count against equipping a duplicate on a non-hibernating dragon. Potential downsides would include dealing with the interaction of removing a dragon from the den when a duplicate is equipped and active elsewhere.[/quote] I kinda like this idea anyway. Equipping an extra (or [i]extras[/i] if someone wants to display their entire collection of Hedgehogs or Phytocats on all their HD dragons, I say let them) to a hibernating dragon could be a nice compromise- that would fit in perfectly with the display nature of the den, without prohibiting awakening the familiar elsewhere. It would have to be done in a way that isn't confusing when you're equipping familiars to regular dragons -since right now attaching awakened ones to denned dragons can be a way of keeping them off the equip list. But that whole system needs to be redone to be less awful anyway. So why not do this too?

[quote]One possibility is if familiars in the Hibernal den didn’t count against the only-one-can-be-equipped rule. Then familiars equipped on hibernating dragons would effectively be in a visible part of the hoard: inaccessible both to interact with and to count against equipping a duplicate on a non-hibernating dragon. Potential downsides would include dealing with the interaction of removing a dragon from the den when a duplicate is equipped and active elsewhere.[/quote] Considering I'm using my shame pile of future projects to keep awakened familiars out of the way, I wouldn't be in favor of this. In general, I like the idea of hibden as display only. We can't have the dragon DO anything, but we can do things TO them like change the way they look. This slots bonding as an action between the dragon and the familiar and I kinda like that.