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KeenBTF Mages can also be very useful. The battles won''t be ended as quickly as with a lvl 25 eliminate-equiped physical fighter (the eliminate stone is VERY powerful, and it works based on the STR stat, which I suspect is the main reason mages aren't as highly regarded - that and the fact that they can't attack and gain breath on the same turn, unlike a scratcher), but you can make a team of mages able to hold their own against enemies. (though I must admit that all of my teams so far have had at least one physical fighter on them, they have all also had mages on them who contributed to the team just as much as the physical fighters) If they have a heal and a regenerate between them, then you can get along fine without ever having to refresh due to low health or use heal potions. Contuse is a helpful stone to have to reduce the attack of the opposing team - especially helpful against bosses and for cases when the dragon is elementally weak against all of the enemies. Learn the elemental strengths of your mages - when your mage is up against an enemy that it is elementally strong against, the dragon's elemental bolt attack will do a LOT of damage. Keep an eye on the elemental weaknesses as well - if there's an enemy mage it helps to know who of your dragons is at risk.
This paragraph is a bit long and I'm not in the mood to edit it, so the short of it is: mages can't finish battles as quickly as eliminate-equipped physical fighters, but they can perfectly well be used in the coliseum, both as healers and for powerful elemental attack. Here's one of my best mages, he works in a team of three with a mage and a fighter and is great in the golem workshop because so many of the enemies there are weak to the arcane element.
I have raised a number of dragons to level 25 from scratch, without using any guides because I wanted to see how I would do it for myself, so I completely understand your sentiment about wanting to experiment. It's also fun to progress upwards through the venues. :) That said, the jump up to the Scorched Forest is a bit steep, so you might want to train your dragons in the venue below that for another level. They might not have the boost any more, but they still earn experience, and those extra stat points will make the scorched forest easier to handle.
Now, I didn't really read any guides in-depth, but I gathered a bit of info on the various stats, so here are my observations.
STR and INT - determine how much damage your dragon does. Most effective seems to be to choose either one or the other. Your dragon is either a mage or a fighter, there just aren't enough stat points available to make it good at both. Usually dragons using Meditate are made to be mages, because of the debuff on strength attacks that it carries. By the same token, scratch users are statted as fighters since scratch does damage based on strength. On that note, make sure to always check whether a stone does damage based on STR or INT - if a dragon with high INT and low STR tries to use a STR-fuelled stone, it will do abysmally little damage; same for a STR dragon using mage stones. Basically - choose whether the dragon will use strength or intelligence, and make sure the stones you give it are geared towards the correct stat.
QCK - this increases how often your dragons get a turn, which makes it another highly useful stat, for obvious reasons. The more often your dragons act, the less often the enemies have a chance at damaging your dragons. I try to gauge how much I need based on the enemies' and the dragons' turn frequencies - if I go into a battle and see that up next are mostly the enemies and rarely my dragons, then I need more quickness. If the frequency is about equal, I might add a bit, or I might focus on other stats for that level's stats instead.
DEF, MND and VIT - these affect damage to your dragon. Defence decreases damage taken from physical attacks, mind decreases damage taken from magical attacks. Vitality increases the number of health points the dragon has to lose before it goes down. I tend to add DEF and MND equally, but focus on VIT more, since it helps the dragon survive longer regardless of the attack type, thus feels more effective for me. However, this is definitely an area where I'd say you should try and experiment and see what works for you.
AGI - the oddest one. It's supposed to increase the chances of dodging and of landing a critical hit, but it barely seems to do anything. I don't know if it's bugged, or unbalanced, or what, but generally stat points you're considering putting here could be better used elsewhere. I still add a few here as a sort of good-luck charm, but I'm not sure to what extent they actually affect anything. (I keep wanting to do an experiment with two dragons, statted equally except for one having a ton of agility and the other - not, and recording who dodges and crit-hits and how often,, but I haven't got around to it yet)
Sorry this is rather long, but I wanted to share my observations on general principles rather than specific models. The guides are actually really cool in seeing how people have optimised stat allocation, but it's a lot of fun to experiment for yourself as well. If you have any questions about specific stones or something, feel free to send me a private message. Or reply here, whatever floats your boat.
Edit: And here's a team of two, a fighter and a mage, who I use as a pair in the kelp beds quite effectively.
Fighter and
mage, stats allocated on the go, whatever seemed like a good idea at the time in order to have them able to survive as a pair rather than a threesome as I had done before.
also yeah, there's plenty to do on flight rising without using the coliseum, if you don't want to use it. Personally I find breeding dragons, dressing them up and writing lore to be just as entertaining, perhaps even more so.
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