dragoncavers | Questions and help, please??

Is there someone out there that can use maths better than I can? I'm really confused now because I am trying to see what I am missing. Are alts counted in the running dragon count type? And if so, then just how many dragons are there in the cave now? I've lost track again. My scroll says I have 276 unique breeds, but I was told there were 274 breeds. Also, when is the egg/dragon counted towards the total? When it is stolen or when is it successfully grown?

Anyone having any luck with the new breeds? I've managed to breed the new Nilia Alt and the Royal Purple Alt. Sending out good vibes to all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

krait

I'm sorry; I'm decent at maths but no good at all when it comes to figuring out how DC counts things! DC math is a whole separate category, and far more arcane than algebra. :D

I've managed to catch a couple of the all-new Florets, and have bred a Royal hybrid and a Pygmy alt; traded a hybrid for a Gemshard that hatched light blue, but otherwise haven't messed with them. Haven't figured out the the other Floret alts, either, and can't seem to get my hands on any Sapphires or Cantors to play with those mechanics, but the Cantors have been figured out so I won't need to waste any on experiments when I do snag some.

From:

unbroken_halo

More than letters and numbers hiding in the equations, eh? Dragons playing with the integers? LOL!

I still don't have any original Florets and have yet to see any of the new ones in the Cave, so I figure I am going to have to do like I did for the Cantors and buy them from the market.

As for the Sapphires, I still don't understand the mechanics on achieving that particular alt.

And all my Coppers bred the other parents. I was so disappointed.

Edited Date: 2021-05-24 12:19 am (UTC)

From:

krait

Definitely! Probably a few imaginary numbers, too. (Since, y'know: dragons!) :D

That's funny; I've been seeing the new Florets in the Cave pretty regularly - tonnes more of them than I've seen Cantors or Sapphires, actually. Or Gemshards; I think I've seen exactly 3 Gemshard eggs in two days of searching. :/

From the hints in TJ's post, the Sapphire alts should work somewhat like Neglecteds, but in two directions - eggs that are "lonely" and don't get enough "attention" (clicks/views) will turn one colour, eggs that get a lot will turn a different colour.

Edit: It looks like I may be half-wrong about the Sapphires! From comments in the Forum, I gather that eggs that get a lot of "attention" will turn one colour, but the other colour happens when an egg is abandoned.

Edited Date: 2021-05-24 01:59 am (UTC)

From:

unbroken_halo

They are definitely stirring the imaginary numbers in the mix. LOL!

I must be really slow at the cave because all I am seeing are the same old eggs. I've been bouncing between the biomes and the abandoned page

From:

krait

I'm definitely having better luck on the :05 minute drops than at the hourly drop; I generally see zilch then. I park myself in the Jungle to refresh right on the drop, then bounce around to the other biomes a few seconds later if I fail to see/catch a Jungle egg.

I just bred about 20 Sapphires and abandoned them to the AP to turn pink, so they'll turn up in a few days! :D

Edited Date: 2021-05-24 03:11 am (UTC)

From:

unbroken_halo

I was waiting for the hour so I'll start checking on the 5's now.

And I didn't realize it took several days for the eggs to hit the abandoned page?!?! I'll have to breed my own Sapphires now and throw some to help.

From:

krait

Heh, yeah, the AP's eggs are generally under 7 days, so it takes a while for a freshly bred egg to lose enough time that it shows up. It can be really annoying when you're hunting for, say, a specific egg you lost, or something from a scheduled massbreed, because it's hard to predict precisely when "time of AP eggs" and "time left on egg I want" will match up!

(If anybody wants to look for the Pink Sapphires I bred, here's one of them to give you their time frame!)

From:

unbroken_halo

Jeez... It just dawned on me that they had lost that time waiting. I mean I realized they were at half time in the AP but it never occurred to me that they sat around chilling out in a queue waiting their turn to be shown on the AP.

I was like... 'They are just pixels. Who cares and why does it matter?' I never understood what people were talking about when they said 'bred time','cave time' or 'time left to hatch' other than what was actually shown on screen and I still don't, but I kinda feel really stupid right now.

Sometimes it amazes me I can function out in the real world. LOL!

From:

krait

Haha! Yep, they sit around stacked up in some digital waiting room based on their time left, highest time on top, until they get to the bottom of the stack and land on the AP!

It's probably most obvious at holidays, when the AP rules change so that holiday eggs are always further down the stack than non-holiday eggs, regardless of time. Right when the event starts, the AP goes from being full of regular, ~5day eggs to being full of 7-day holiday eggs, because the regular eggs got bumped to the top of the stack. Then a few days after the event ends, the AP goes from being full of ~3day holiday eggs to being full of ~1day regular eggs, when the holiday wall runs out at last and finally the regular eggs can get through! :D

Amusingly, eggs used to gain a day when they were abandoned! (Wow, I've been on DC a long time if I can remember that!) I'm glad that's not the case anymore.

From:

unbroken_halo

Yes! I remember the added day too! And I remember dropping eggs to gain back enough time to hatch them as well even if it meant changing bloodlines.

I didn't care too much about lineages when I first began playing, and while I still don't now, I try to get caveborn mostly because I hate seeing the little tombstones in my lineages. LOL!

From:

krait

I never understood what people were talking about when they said 'bred time','cave time' or 'time left to hatch' other than what was actually shown on screen and I still don't,

"Cave Time" is just the clock DC runs on - EST. Cave Time is visible at the top of your screen in most site skins, and if you click on it you'll get some other 'time' information, too, like the moon phases and the season, etc.

"Time left to hatch" should be easy; this is the text on an egg's page that reads, Egg will die if it doesn’t hatch in: X days and x hours.

"Bred time" would be the time the egg was bred (according to DC's clock). For example, Day/Night Drakes bred between 6:00 AM Cave Time and 5:59 PM Cave Time will produce Sunbeam eggs; if bred between 6:00 PM to 5:59 AM Cave Time, they produce Moonglow eggs. Bred time also affects which Solstice sprite is produced by breeding. (Daytime breeding produces blue Solstices; nighttime breeding produces rosewing Solstices. So being able to calculate when an egg was bred is essential to knowing what kind of Solstice you'll get from an AP egg!)

From:

unbroken_halo

Okay this helps so much and I understand why I have the spread of dragons I do since I was just going off the clock on the site.

Now I can help the bestie, who I just dragged in DC with me, get her day/night dragons and better time my own sets to fill out my scroll. Thank you so much for all your help!!

From:

krait

You're welcome! And be sure to invite your friend to the comm, too; we're always happy to help new players here.

Probably the most "math-y" thing to work out is bred times, since the others are provided on the page to you. For bred time, one has to remember that all eggs have 7d,0h when first bred, and then figure out from the Time Left when that would be.

For example, say I pick up a Solstice egg with 3d,5h from the AP at noon Cave Time, and want to know if it's going to be a bluewing or rosewing Solstice. 3d,5h + X = 7d,0h? X= 3d,19h - the egg was bred 3d,19h ago. To find the time of breeding, I would count back 3d,19h from noon of the day I picked it up.

However, since I all really need to know for a Solstice is whether it was bred during DC "Day" or DC "Night," I can ignore the days (counting back 24h will just put me back at noon) and just count back the 19h. 19 hours before noon would be 5PM, so the Solstice will hatch as a bluewing!

Edited Date: 2021-05-24 02:59 pm (UTC)

From:

unbroken_halo

I did! She works a ton but she subscribed to the comm. So I'll probably still be a go-between as I work less even though we are at the same place.

Also, ugh Algebra. LOL! But understandable. So after we clear up some space from this release, we will work on the day/night types. Thanks again for all your help!