Kitty

A primal, even if the colors didn't quite work was still pretty expensive, because it was so hard to get them. This post was from someone searching for ANY primal in 2019
This one was XXX Platinum with Light Eyes, so not really great (Arcane would've been THE primal for triple-platinum). But even this one with mismatchy eyes to colors was originally asking for 800g in teh AH and she sold at that price.

This quote was asking for 1200g for this non-matchy primal (Sanguine/Bubblegum/Latte) in 2019 and he sold at that price. But he did get exalted not too long afterwards when it became technically easier to get a more matchy color to match with Fire primal.

Welcome to FR! I hope you're enjoying yourself. Feel free to ask me about anything. I used to be in the Windy mentoring group, so I'm happy to show you around.


I can certainly tell you a "bit more", but buckle in, because this one has a lot of twists, and I have a tendency to ramble. :)

TL:DR version: Due to a game mechanic that players were using to play the RNG to make money, the AH was getting boring with only double or triple colored dragons being bred, specifically to best match the 11 Primal / Facet elemental eyes for the big money.

So STP was meant to inject weird color combos back in where they'd been pushed out by profit-chasing, using the widest possible stretch of colors on the wheel and the effects of certain genes to generate randomness. Some of the hatchlings are drek, some of them are interesting, some of them are gorgeous and have become permanent members of people's lairs

Like these pretty little randos of mine, from other Pondies, who are just totally unique looking

Raspberry/Saffron/ Buttercup

Driftwood/Carrot/ Peach

Orchid/White/ Storm

Very Long version:

Around 2018, after the game had been running for 5 years already, there was a massive change on one of the breeding mechanics. Eye Types were introduced.

Up until the Bounty of the Elements event, dragons only had 1 kind of eye color option based entirely on their flight. And that was accepted as just the standard part of the game. So your dragon's eyes only really mattered to very serious color matchers, and most people just focused on the three big body colors (primary - body, secondary- wings, tertiary- some special other effect), heritage, or lore or basically anything other than eyes that would make a dragon uniquely interesting on it's own.

Without going into the full Eyepocalypse thing (feel free to ask if you want more details though), the uncontrollable (until recently) nature of hatching eye types meant you had to be extremely lucky to hatch a dragon with a sought after eye type (Facet and Primal mainly) to begin with.

And then you had to be double-lucky to get a coveted eye-type on a dragon that was already pretty.

Getting something like this:

Terracotta Lionfish/ Terracotta Paisley / Terracotta Gembond / Fire Primal Eyes


Terracotta Lionfish / Bronze Paisley / Orange Gembond / Fire Primal Eyes

Versus hatchlings like this:

Mantis Lionfish / Sanguine Paisley / Cornflower Gembond/ Fire Primal Eyes


Terracotta Lionfish / Bronze Paisley / Orange Gembond / Water Primal Eyes

Where the first two look really nice with Fire Primal eyes, the third has fire primal eyes, but body colors that don't match, and the fourth has very close body colors, but Water Primal Eyes don't match that orange fire body.

The difference between these two matchy Primal hatchlings and the other two primals, would've been at least 2000g to start not long after the update. So obviously, if anyone wanted to sell expensive dragons to buy things they wanted, it paid to try to make your hatchlings match your flight's most expensive eyes in case you won the 'lottery' of primal eyes.

Because the eyes were totally random and totally uncontrollable at the time, everyone started to really lean towards only breeding dragons that would, if they were lucky, get one of those super rare eyes on a very matchy body, so they could sell it for a large amount of in-game currency. In 2019 even a non-matchy primal imperial could start at 699g and easily go up to 1200g.

I once sold a Obsidian/Obsidian/Mantis Wind Primal banescale for 5000g, one of only 2 I ever hatched in a whole year of trying to get a male Primal so I could turn him into this guy

So pretty soon, every hatchling in the the AH, except for those from brand new players who didn't know where the money was yet, pretty much were all XXY (Terracotta/Terracotta/Orange) XYX (Terracotta/Orange/Terracotta) and XXX (Terracotta) and all kinds of triple colors that happened to look good with any of the 11 primal eye options.

So the main auction house got very boring. And one of the most fun things about hatching dragons was trying to make their genes work with their oddball colors and accent colors.

Like, who would think Auburn and Grape would look nice together? It does with Poison Primary/Toxin Secondary genes.


Similarly Copper and Hunter also play very nicely together


They're not colors you'd get together if you're trying to get colors to match specific eyes due to how the color wheel works.


So there were fewer and fewer surprise! pretty color combos in the AH for purchase and basically everything was looking very similar.

Hence, Stock the Pond. Originally a play on people deliberately putting fish into a pond, so they could catch them later. My idea was to start encouraging people who didn't chase eye types, but still wanted to breed dragons anyway (and like me, don't really have the funds for constantly buying unhatched eggs for surprises) to make weird hatchling nests. If all our hatchlings were going to be dominance fodder anyway, then lets make pretty weird hatchlings and some of them. What you see in the STP thread is basically the variety the AH used to have when it came to dragons.