FAQ
From Pet Dragons
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[edit] General Gameplay
What do I do first?
Well, first you're probably going to want to check out the Settings page to change your hatchling's information, and select a picture that suits your interest. The pictures have no intrinsic purpose or benefit other than to represent how you imagine your dragon. Then head back to your main page and take your dragon out hunting for a while. You can also go search around for gold and treasure, or train for combat against other dragons. Don't forget to invite your friends too!
What is gold for?
Everyone knows dragons love collecting gold and treasure. They hoard it in their caves, until they have enough upon which to rest their colossal bodies. For now, the gold doesn't really serve a purpose in and of itself, it's just there for its own sake. Collect enough and you could be displayed on a ranking page as one of the wealthiest dragons. There is also a Shop where you can purchase items to assist in your training and combat.
What does the "collecting skill" do for you?
The "collecting skill" is exactly what it sounds like: how skillful your dragon is at collecting gold. The larger the skill level, the more gold is gathered in a single turn.
What does the "Stay Inside" option do?
This option keeps your dragon from roaming around outside, making it undetectable to other dragons. Basically, what this means to you is that you have turned off PvP mode. Your dragon can not be attacked, but also cannot attack, help a friend in combat, or even use turns. If you choose to help a friend, your dragon will automatially leave the cave even if this option is turned on at the time, so be careful. Its original purpose is so that if you are away from Facebook for a long time, you won't return to find all of your gold looted away, like a pause game button. Note that while you could spend your dragons entire life inside (except for when you use your turns), this may not be the best way to get gold at higher amounts, and it certainly wont qualify you for the Greatest Fighters leaderboard. Besides, it's fun to fight!
How do I use a custom picture?
On the options page, in the box for a custom picture, you must enter the URL where the image is hosted online. It is not an upload from your computer. The picture must be hosted elsewhere, such as Photobucket or a similar image site. Make sure wherever it is, that the image source allows hotlinking, otherwise it may be blocked. Also remember to insert the URL of the image itself, ending with an image extension like .jpg, not the URL of a page that displays it. Again, make sure the image host allows hotlinking (most image hosts are fine with it.)
CORRECT: http://www.somewebsite.com/subfolders/dragon.jpg
INCORRECT: <a href="http://www.site.com"><img src="http://www.site.com/dragon.jpg"></a> This is what causes badly sized images on the attack and elders circle pages.
INCORRECT: http://www.somesite.com/subfolders/showimage.php?key=654908032.jpg This may look okay, but it's actually not an image at all. It's a webpage (the "showimage.php" page) that loads an image onto it based on the "key" you see in a URL. If you enter something like this, you won't get any image to show up at all.
INCORRECT: C:\My Documents\My Pictures\Dragon.jpg This is a folder on your computer, and the options page does not upload the image to the app. It will simply not be able to find the image and you won't get anything to show up.
[edit] Daily Turns
When do I get my turns back?
Turns are refreshed at approximately midnight Central time. That corresponds to 1am USA Eastern, 10pm Pacific, or 4pm in Sydney / Melbourne. Do I keep turns I don't use for the next day? No, your turns will not carry over if you do not use them. Turns are like time spent with your dragon. If you don't use them, they're gone. You should always have exactly 20 turns at the start of the day. One reason for this is so that dragons cannot stockpile turns, and then use them all when they are attacked to gain an unfair and unexpected advantage against their opponent.
How are turn results calculated?
For combat training, you always gain 1-4 points per turn. For gold, it's directly related to your collecting stat. Hunting for food is a little more complicated. In order to ensure that hatchlings can grow, there is a minimum weight gain per turn of 3% at the start. Then as your hunting stat improves this gradually increases, until your weight starts to put a limit on your growth. As your weight increases, the percentage of your bodyweight you can gain is cut back significantly. The theoretical max gain is around 13%, but this could only happen if you had a high hunting stat and somehow a very low weight to counterbalance it. In reality the max is around 6-8%.
What is the best way to use my turns?
Your guess is as good as any. There's no set way to get to the top. I would suggest making sure you keep up with combat training; try to train about as often as you hunt. Weight is what determines who can attack whom, so if you gain too much weight without training, you make yourself vulnerable. Many dragon trainers choose to gain as much fighting skill as they feel reasonable, which may or may not hit their skill cap at 10% of their weight. Some small dragons do this so they can fight cavers, which are dragons that only collect gold and hide in their caves to prevent being attacked. The way you use your turns depends entirely on your own goals for the game. That's the fun of it.
Can we get extra turns from items or achievements?
We currently plan to never have a means of giving dragons more than twenty turns in one day. The reason is that the balance of the game would become very complex, and it would likely cause a runaway where the most powerful or richest dragons gain more turns and thus increase their lead.
Why can't I train combat anymore? How much do I need to weigh?
The limit to fighting skill was put in place to stop some dragons from only training combat and not hunting, thereby letting them easily win against everyone in their weight class and overinflate their battle records. The limit is one tenth your weight. This makes it so small dragons can't become too powerful to pick on new dragons, but as you gain weight the cap becomes less meaningful, and you can train how you wish. The combat formulas are dependent on both weight and fighting skill. That means that just training combat may not be the best idea. Take the limit message as a hint - your turns would now be better spent hunting than training, as they will each give you a higher total combat advantage. On the other hand, if you're intending to not gain weight and just pick on small dragons, then you just prove that the cap is justified. Besides, small dragons don't have much gold to steal, so why bother?
I lost all my turns because of an error!!!
Here's what happens. You plug a large number into one of your training boxes, and click the button. You get an error that the page did not respond. You click "Try Again", and when the page loads, it says "You don't have time to do that today" and all of your turns are gone. The explanation: The first time you clicked the button to train and got the error, the training was executed! By clicking "Try Again", you REPEATED the action, and your turns were used again. However many times you attempted to load the page, that is how many times your number of turns was used. The important thing to remember is that even though the error box came up, because on the last attempt you were out of turns, all of the previous uses still netted you their rewards. If you pay attention to your stats before and after the error, they will indeed reflect the number of turns you used. Therefore: if you intend to only use some of your turns on one stat, and you get this error, reload the app from outside, instead of clicking "Try Again" so that you can keep the rest of your turns.
[edit] Combat
How does combat work?
An attack is basically an attempt at stealing gold from the target. You can go to the combat page via the link at the top and see a page of valid opponents to attack. You can only attack one opponent at a time. The time the attack takes to complete depends on what items you use, and varies between 7.5 and 13 hours. When you are being attacked, you don't have to do anything about it. You will see a red tab on your main page warning you of the attack. If you click on it, you will see a page where you can choose which items if any to apply to the combat. You can also ask for help from your main page. If a friend responds to your request before the end of the displayed time limit, then half of their dragon's power will be added to yours, up to a maximum of half of your power. There is also a tab on the combat page where you can assist friends without them having to ask your help. If you would like not to be shown on this page, you can uncheck the appropriate setting on your options page.
If an attacker wins in combat against the target, he will steal an amount of gold from the target, anywhere from 1% - 18.5% of the target's hoard. The default maximum is 10%, but this can be increased with items. If the attacker loses, nothing happens, but the loss is reflected in the attacker's combat record. Victories and losses from both your attacks and from attacks against you are counted towards your battle record, so make sure you train for defense.
On the technical side, combat is decided based on the ratio of combatant power. This number is calculated based on fighting stat and weight with a secret formula. This combat power can be boosted or harmed through use of certain items. An assisting friend adds half of their dragon's power to your own, up to a maximum of half of your power. The ratio of the two powers is fed into an equation that determines a probability of victory for the attacker. There is a magic number for this ratio above which the attacker always wins. Right now that number is 3. If either dragon or dragon team is three times the strength of the opponent or greater, victory is certain.
The amount of gold won from combat is determined by how decisively the attacker won. What this means in terms of formulas is that after a probability of winning is determined, a random "roll" is taken to decide who wins. The percent difference between the roll and the probability ( (p - r)/p ) is this decisiveness. This is then used to see how much gold is stolen, up to a maximum percentage of the entire hoard. For example, with no items that affect gold stolen, if you had a 0.6 chance of winning, and rolled a 0.54, the decisiveness is (0.6-0.54)/0.6 = 0.1, so you would take approximately 1% of the defender's gold. If you instead rolled a 0.12, you would steal (0.6-0.12)/0.6 = 0.8 = 8% of the defender's gold. Certain items boost the amonut of gold you can steal, or conversely, protect your gold from attackers by reducing the maximum percentage. What determines which dragons I can attack?
You can attack any dragon that is outside of its cave and that is between 75% and 133% of your weight. These numbers are inverses of each other, so that means that any dragon you can attack can also attack you back in revenge. The weight class descriptors, such as "Huge", shown on your main page and in dragon information have no affect on who you can fight, they are only a gauge of how large a dragon is.
How do young dragons have so many attacks on their record?
Even though you can only attack one opponent at a time, you can still be attacked by an unlimited number of opponents at any time, and defensive battles count toward your battle record. If this happens to you, don't worry, the opponents do not fight you as a team; each battle is executed separately.
I was going to help a friend in combat, but now I'm not? What happened?
When you respond to a request for help, there is a check to see if someone else has already responded first. If if the second dragon can give your friend more help he will remain for combat, and the other will return home. If your dragon is no longer out assisting for combat, or it seems like the assist was unrecorded in your combat history, it means someone came along with a dragon capable of giving your friend more help, and sent you home.
Why can't we see time remaining in our friend's fights?
If the time remaining were shown, it would be far too easy for trainers to assist every one of their friends as efficiently as possible and accumulate a large number of assists very quickly. This removes an element of uncertainty from the game. If you wish, feel free to talk to each other to say how long is left until a battle.
One of my friends' / opponents' dragons disappeared. Where did it go?
If you think you saw a dragon suddenly vanish overnight, it is not because there is a secret dragon police that is coming to drag unruly masters away. It is probably because they were inactive for two weeks, and the dragon went into hibernation. This means it was moved to a separate database table in order to clean our data and speed up game performance. That, or the secret dragon police took them away.
My combat history page seems incomplete.
The combat history only shows the last 20 attacks in any one column. If there is a recent assist missing, it is possible you were bumped from the assist before the attack completed.
My opponent suddenly got bigger while I was attacking!
This can happen if you attack a dragon that still has its 20 turns remaining for the day. If your target is not away from its cave, it is still possible to use those 20 turns to gain weight or fighting skill at the last minute.
[edit] Items
Can I buy more than one of each item?
No, for two reasons. For the equipment, this would let rich dragons become exceedingly powerful, fueling more battles and gold conquest in a neverending cycle. Secondly, this doesn't make any sense from a realism standpoint. It would be like a knight trying to wield a dozen swords, or wear 3 suits of armor into battle. However many you own, you only need one. Save your money. If you do attempt to buy a second of an item in the shop, it will tell you that you already own it, and not take your gold. For potions, the reason you cannot buy more than one right now is just a coding thing, it takes significantly more memory to store a variable number of items owned for each dragon.
Why can't I use some of my items in a fight?
There are two types of items, offensive and defensive. There is only one item that is both, and it is the Ora-Plated Tail Spike. Only offensive items can be applied when you select a target to attack. When you are under attack, and you go to your defense page from the red tab on your main page, you will only see defensive items to apply to that fight. Items that are checked are ones that are applied. When you attack, you cannot change the items you have applied once the attack begins, because your dragon has left the cave. When defending, you can change what equipment you are using at any time. In any case, a potion that has been applied cannot be taken back, because it has been consumed. All unchangeable item checkboxes, like potions used, are greyed out.
How are items factored into combat calculations?
The items in a fight are applied last, after power has been calculated and any helper strength is determined. Items that affect combat power boost it by a percentage. These percentages do not stack on each other. The percentage boosts they provide are added together. If for example you had two items that provide a 20% boost (which no item has), then the equation would be: Power = Power * ( 1 + 0.2 + 0.2 ), or a 40% boost. It is NOT Power * 1.2 * 1.2, which would equal a 44% boost.
Do items take effect when you assist friends?
The only item that does so is the Potion of Furious Angry Rage, or PoFAR. Both the positive and negative effects apply to any fight the dragon is involved in, and it is factored in last, with the other items. This means that if you are assisting a friend, and you would ordinarily hit the cap of 50% your friend's power, but you are anti-raging, you will provide less than 50% power assistance. On the other hand, this means that if you are on positive rage, you can contribute more than the 50% cap of your friend's power.
