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BATSINK
Time=Money
Choose which you'd rather spend.
Ideally, you could go to the AH and find parents identical to what you want but something minor like eye color is not what you want so you could breed them together in the appropriate nest until you got the eye and gender right.
Realistically you want at least two or four dragons (depending on available space and if you want a breeding pair of your ideal dragon) per project who are as close as possible to your ideal dragons.
Money:
If you've decided to spend money you're looking at buying dragons with the closest color range. I usually look at
this site to check how far away colors are on the color wheel and go no more than 2 or 3 colors off in each direction from what I want. Breed only matters if you want an imperial since all other breed changes are fairly easy to get.
Keep breeding them (and checking the AH regularly for closer color matches) in the appropriate elemental nest and then buy all the genes needed. For ease, name each couple so they ancestry lines are easy to follow like "PairOne" and "PairTwo" since you can also rename them something better later.
If a hatchling is closer to the ideal than the parents and you've got multiple pairs going you can hold onto it and breed it to one of the other pairs you've got going or one of their offspring depending on how small you can make the color possibilities.
Some good news is that you've chosen Innocent Lighting eyes so any Lightning eyes you hatch will work. Innocent is an unnatural eye type (it can't be hatched) so you need to apply a
Vial of Naivety to get them.
Time:
If you've decided to spend time you're going to need to study
this guide. Not only will you need to choose dragons close in color to what you want but they'll also either need to have the genes you want or breed the genes you want with an equal or higher rarity tier.
After that it's the same as spending money. Keep on checking the AH for closer matches since there's a ton of dragons being hatched every day and you could get lucky. Also, make sure to check the Assay Bloodlines page before you buy. Otherwise you'll be trying to figure out how many generations down you'll need to breed before using them or else reselling a dragon you can't use.
Also helpful is the
Data-Based Earning Guide because affording genes and space for breeding pairs can get pricey.
I want to live in Theory. Everything works there.
Have you checked the
Gem MP for Gene and Breed scrolls before buying an AH listing from me ending in
5g?