Flight Rising Discussion

I think you've hit the nail on the head: nobody wants dragons anymore. There's now over 40 million dragons on site and far less lair space.

Lair space is expensive to maintain so most people don't usually buy new dragons anymore. Add to that the fact that it's been well over a year since the color wheel expansion and most people are coming down from that new color high. Color combos that were once rare are common now, so people don't have to hunt for days or breed as much for them. There are some rarer pallets that don't quite exist yet, or are still rare, but the super popular ones have been drained dry.

Dragons are a dime a dozen and no one's willing to shell out much for them anymore. :T

I think we've hit a stalemate. No new people are joining at the moment so there's no new faces snapping up dragons they like.

I'm hoping the open registration will help fix this stagnant market and boost some sales. Crossing my fingers.

@NanoRain yep, it's supply versus demand. there are a lot of dragons and not a whole lot of lair space. breeding is infinite and lairs cap out at 200 spaces (and plenty of users don't even go that far due to not wanting to shell out 1milT+ for five spaces at a time), so people will be picky with what they choose to get. and then you have users like myself who (for varying reasons, such as challenge) prefer to buy old dragons and/or G1s, which doesn't help those of you who have hatcheries. and yeah, dragons are pretty subjective even at the best of times, though admins never intended for dragons to be worth much and people have been moaning and groaning about the economy for literal years.

you may as well exalt. the dragons are pretty easily to replace.

Buy cheap, sell cheap, what's not to like

Fodder price *shrug*

What everyone else said, with a few additional thoughts:

-Certain colors + gene combinations look nice but are also very overbred. For example, triples with Pet/Butt/Glim. I learned the hard way not to sell this, and the only triples I sell now have unique gene combinations (like Pie/Paint/Circuit) or else I just sell doubles and XYZ. There are also doubles with colors that are done to death, so it's tricky to find a gene combination that isn't ridiculously common, and then there are colors that are not overdone but may be niche as far as who likes that color.

-I've had decent luck selling dergs with unique color/gene combinations at my pay-what-you-want hatchery, but I also have to bump my thread a lot, and I've found affiliates who also sometimes help out by bumping my thread for me. Like the others have said, it all comes down to finding the right buyer, but it helps if you have a list of breeding pairs with predictable color ranges that people browsing hatcheries can look at, and express interest in when new hatchlings from those pairs will be born.

-It helps if you have the latest genes - my hatchery does decently in no small part because I have breeding pairs with Bee. I spent no small amount of dragon cash getting dergs with Bee (or in a few cases, geneing them myself), and I still haven't made back the money I spent on genes, but I breed as a hobby rather than a primary source of income precisely because of the limitations of the dragon market.

If you're only selling on the AH and you don't have a hatchery thread, a hatchery thread will help with sales, but it is work to set up and maintain. I've found in my own experience that customers making offers and paying what they want helps dragons get sold - some people don't want to buy a pre-set price because they might think it's too much or, sometimes, too little (especially with undercutting being a way of life on the AH), so if someone tells me what they think it's worth and I find that reasonable, then that makes a sale.

And there are a LOT of nice dergs that go for fodder price on the AH - I can't begin to tell you how many pretty dergs I've bought at fodder price, exalted, and would have otherwise kept if I had lair space. So that's another consideration, every once in awhile someone decides to rescue cheap, pretty fodder and give them a home - I've done it myself. So you're competing with fodder sellers as well.

Fodder, of course! Nearly everything I sell is/was fodder, only exceptions being a few babies when Metallic and Alloy were new genes and I lucked out on a shiny lady.