Quests & Challenges

@Ganondorf Not sure if you already have a better match than this for the Lemon/Honeydew/Lemon project, but if not this dude is available to be picked up in the Travelling Dragons Hub thread: [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=33110849] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/331109/33110849_350.png[/img] [/url] I saw him and knew I'd seen something similar lately, and then I realized I saw it in your project thread.

@SongofSummer, He's really good, but I do already have closer dragon than he, the banana's pretty far off at this point.

[center] [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61243160] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/612432/61243160_350.png[/img] [/url] [i][b]Project Complete![/b][/i][/center] Wisher accepted a one-off dragon for this one, so I can now say it is completed! I'd love to take on another wish, but the rest of my projects, especially the Red/Banana/Amethyst project, are currently giving me the baby boom of the century, and I'm very tight on lair space. Maybe in a week, when I've gotten most of these dragons one way or another out of my lair. As for the rest of my projects, well, some are doing alright. The Turquoise/White/Black has half of generation 2 now, needing to rebreed the other half of generation 1 for better selection. The Red/Banana/Amethyst could be doing a little better, but also a lot worse, so I can't complain too much. The rest of my projects are slowly getting closer, pair by pair. But I will say, the ones who could be finished on any breeding now, are agonizing to see still in my lair. 9 of my projects are about as close to completion as they can get, and yet just won't give me the goal kids. It's... aggravating. I want them to be done. But the pairs just won't cooperate.

[center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61355342] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/613554/61355342_350.png[/img] [/url] [b][i]Project Complete![/i][/b][/center] There's going to be a slow stream of these, if all goes well. As I said, I have a lot of projects that are on the verge of completion, just needing a tiny bit better luck than what I seem to be cursed with. This one, the tertiary colour was slightly off (Sunshine instead of Sunset), but I could barely tell the difference, and evidently, the wisher also felt this was acceptable! I did also pick up a new project after the baby boom settled down and I got more lair space, and in typical fashion, I have picked up another deceptively difficult one. Not as challenging as the Red/Banana/Amethyst Wildclaw, but it's still a difficult wish. [quote][columns] [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=157&bodygene=22&breed=8&element=6&eyetype=0&gender=0&tert=99&tertgene=1&winggene=1&wings=148&auth=901507c02765744f4a32be30eefccb10f6893d7e&dummyext=prev.png[/img][nextcol] [b]DWF wish:[/b] Umber Pinstripe/Lapis Shimmer/Robin Circuit Ice male Imperial. Start date: May 13, 2020 [i]Status: 14/16 pairs acquired.[/i] [/columns][/quote] The colour range wasn't actually terrible. There was a good selection for it, up to 20 colours away. Good stuff for a difficult project. In addition, there was a dragon in the DWF Nursery available for this one, [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60441308]Moana[/url], another breeder had picked up [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61090570]Eventide[/url] when they were contemplating picking up this wish, and using the dragon search, I was able to trade for [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=59825980]Parneet[/url]. It is unusual for me to have such a selection of relatively close dragons right at the start, and I thought this project ought to be in the bag... until I noticed the fatal flaw. Every project has its quirks, and this one's quirk was the rarity of the genes available. None of the 3 I have acquired have Shimmer or Circuit, and to my horror, nothing in the pages of dragons 20 colours out had them either. I again turned to the dragon search to look for slightly longer-ranged dragons and found [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60350978]Cirrus[/url] and [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=57120549]Ryder[/url], from other DWF breeders who have them as long-shot dragons for their own projects. But a single copy of each gene needed is not going to work. Iridescent, Shimmer, and Circuit were everywhere when I first started playing in 2013, for the simple reason being that they were the only gem genes available. However, as the years have gone by, they've slowly fallen out of favour - Circuit somewhat quicker than Iridescent and Shimmer, as the playerbase has moved away from them and towards newer and much more popular and flashy gem genes. This project has been a reminder of this site-wide evolution, that even though there's lots of dragons in the colour range with gem genes for the secondary and tertiary... those gem genes aren't necessarily the right ones. Instead of having an 8-pair start, which would have been ample given the first 3 females I had in my hands, I have had to bump it up to a 16-pair start, with much wider colour ranges, just to bring in a larger selection of Shimmer and Circuit. (And naturally, I have not found a single dragon with Pinstripe, but that gene is currently the least of my concerns - we'll buy it if we have to.) I somewhat "rage-quit" on the first day when I realized what I thought I could do with just finding close dragons on the dragon search, would once again need a much larger breeding plan than anticipated. After getting over the slight disappointment, I have since been slowly picking up more pairs over the past week, and I am at 14 pairs and two unpaired dragons now. So, once I find partners for those two, I'll be set for another long haul. Now that I've bought most of the dragons I'll need for this project, and managed to complete the Navy/Eggplant/Sunset project, I am glancing at my mostly-empty nests and itching for... yet another project, naturally. A dangerous thing, to assume that just because my nests are empty now, doesn't mean I'm find to pick up another. But that hasn't stopped me yet.

[center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61482119][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/614822/61482119_350.png[/img] [/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61482120][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/614822/61482120_350.png[/img][/url] [b][i]Project Complete![/i][/b][/center] 1 in 4. Let's talk about 1 in 4. 1 in 4, or 25% chance, is very good when breeding dragons. Often, it's quite literally the closest odds for a pair you can make without one of the parents being the goal dragon already. When you have 1 in 4 odds, statistically, that means that on average, 1 in 4 of the thing will be what you want. If you have 4 tickets to a lottery that is 1 in 4, one of those, statistically, is a winner. If you have a breeding pair that has 1 in 4 odds for your goal, 1 out of 4 of the babies will be what you want. In theory. On average. Statistically speaking. In reality, 1 in 4 has become a bit of a pain in my neck. I vented about it a bit while trying to get Viridian from his now somewhat infamously terrible parents. [center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=54634733][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/546348/54634733.png[/img][/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=59243753][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/592438/59243753.png[/img][/url][/center] At first, all was well. In fact, their first nest was incredible! I got the goal baby, [i]and[/i] he was a primal! A triple Aqua Lightning primal? You can't get much cooler than that, and it was a pity that the eyes unfortunately didn't work for the wisher, and they didn't want to use a Vial of Tempered Sight on such a perfect dragon, so we figured, hey, it's 1 in 4, we can get a repeat no problem, and Empire got a home with the nester who hatched him. In reality, it took 6 more months, 5 more breedings, and 16 kids total to get a repeat. 2/16, 1 in 8... is not exactly 1 in 4, is it? But I figured, once it was done, that it was a fluke, that nothing could top that. Ha ha ha ha ha. [i]Ha ha ha ha haaaaa...[/i] At some point, I noticed that my Guardian project was... taking an abnormal amount of time. What I needed from the Guardians was an older brother and a younger sister, and for those to be the only two dragons in their parents' offspring list. The ideal was a wegg in Water, and then a wegg in Lightning, but that's absurdly rare, and the girl does still work with Water eyes, so the next best option would be a two-egg nest with an older brother and a younger sister, from Water. In order to pull this off, I don't just hope and pray I get a two-egg nest from a final pair in my breeding project. I have 4 identical grandparents with the colours and genes I need, breed them constantly, then pair their kids up with each other, so that I have a constant supply of potential parents for the two siblings I want. The end result is that for every 2-egg nest that is laid, there's a 1 in 4 chance of getting what I want. There are 4 configurations of kids in the nest: 2 males, 2 females, an older male and a younger female, and lastly, an older female and a younger male. 1 in 4. When I noticed that the Guardian project seemed to be taking a long time, I was getting fed up with constant nests of either 2 males or 2 females, and I could have sworn that's all I was getting. [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2689551/3#post_42627797]When I went and looked,[/url] it turns out I was right, that [i]was indeed[/i] all that I was getting. But, they finally did it yesterday. So, how many nests did it finally take to land that 1 in 4 odds? After a grand total of 44 nests, 2 were 4-egg nests, 17 were 3-egg nests, 20 of them were 2-egg nests, and 5 were 1-egg nests. Of the 5 weggs, 4 were female, and the singular male wegg did not get a repeat wegg, sadly. As for the 20 2-egg nests... the final count of the sexes was: 7 pairs of females, 9 pairs of males, 3 pairs of an older female with a younger male, and just 1 pair of an older male with a younger female. 1 in 4? More like 1 in 20. I am so glad to see the end of this project. Now, let's hope my other projects with 1 in 4 odds have better luck. But, given the triple Thicket's first nest contained nothing but Coatls, I have a feeling they're making an attempt to be even worse than these two.

@Merlina4553 oooh, best of luck! I'm glad to be of help. ^_^ If you want, I can keep an eye out for any helpful hatchlings I might get for your project, I'm getting pretty close now, but two of the pairs in the project can still reach Crimson! ----- Having completed a couple projects, I of course have picked up a couple more as well. I wanted to talk about them in my previous post, but it was already getting quite long, and I needed a break from writing yesterday, so I have left them to their own post. That's this post. [quote] [columns] [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=107&bodygene=17&breed=10&element=4&eyetype=0&gender=1&tert=104&tertgene=21&winggene=24&wings=13&auth=51c71b098d13c8fb855d6464e01343697ca61605&dummyext=prev.png[/img][nextcol] [b]DWF wish:[/b] Brick Metallic/Mulberry Noxtide/Yellow Filigree Water female Wildclaw. Start date: May 19, 2020 [i]Status: 13/16 pairs acquired.[/i] [/columns] [/quote] The first new project is a DWF wish for @zona, who has asked to be kept up-to-date on the project, so I hope this is a helpful format for you! The first thing I noticed with this one, was its... startling similarity to another new project I recently took on, the Red/Banana/Amethyst Wildclaw, so I was, at first, a bit apprehensive, because [i]that[/i] one turned out to be the project with the rarest range I have ever seen. Thankfully, however, red-range/purple-range/yellow-range Wildclaws seem to be easier to get than red-range/yellow-range/purple range. This project was definitely a 16-pair start, but at the very least, I am feeling confident that 16 pairs will be able to get me to the goal, unlike the Red/Banana/Amethyst. Instead of searching out to 40-50 colours on average, I was searching out to 20-40 colours on average, and had plenty of choices. I've currently got 13/16 of the starter pairs figured out, and just waiting for the AH to replenish with more selection to secure the last 3 pairs. The cherry on top of this project has been Surprise. The singular dragon I found on the AH with a treasure secondary gene while having gem primary and terts... just happened to have Noxtide! A couple other notable dragons, at least to me, are Darkness, Blast, and Danger, all dragons from parents I've bought descendants of in the past for various different projects. This has been somewhat eerie to see - it's a small world, as they say, and an utterly tiny one for triple gem gene Coatls and Wildclaws. Maybe I should keep some of these around for future projects, seeing as I keep needing such dragons over and over again. [center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61287708][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/612878/61287708.png[/img][/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61112519][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/611126/61112519.png[/img][/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=59771517][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/597716/59771517.png[/img][/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=59505499][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/595055/59505499.png[/img][/url][/center] All in all, the project is shaping up nicely. It's not an easy one, to be sure, but so far at least, there aren't any obvious issues that would get in my way. Some of the colour ranges are quite wide, but still nothing compared to the Red/Banana/Amethyst's first generation colour ranges. [quote] [columns] [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=45&bodygene=20&breed=13&element=8&eyetype=0&gender=0&tert=9&tertgene=0&winggene=1&wings=13&auth=45eabe3c6aa3e29e89803148c6657b3eeb58edf2&dummyext=prev.png[/img][nextcol] [b]Personal Project:[/b] Gold Wasp/Mulberry Shimmer/black-range Basic Light male Skydancer. (To be ancestor of: Tan Ripple/Charcoal-Midnight Stripes/Charcoal-Midnight Okapi Lightning female Mirror.) Start date: May 21, 2020 [i]Status: Messiest start of any project I've ever had.[/i] [/columns] [/quote] The second project I've begun is for myself, and seeing as I completed the previous "complex" project, I can finally begin [i]this new[/i] "complex" project. And I am glad this project is only for myself, because... oh [i]dear[/i] is it a mess. This is one where I had started picking up dragons quite some time ago for this project - I actually began scouting for dragons when I finally got the grandparents for the two Guardians I finally got, because once I got them, the project could be complete on any breeding, so may as well get prepared for the next one. (44 breeding attempts later... I am wondering if I had jinxed myself.) And until I actually sat down and seriously looked through the project making pairs on Thursday, I was operating on the assumption that it'd be [i]nice[/i] if the Skydancer's tert could be in the black range, but not [i]necessary[/i], so I had a lot of dragons with... some very far tertiary colours, the worst offender being Mulberry here with [i]Gold[/i]. [center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=44892528][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/448926/44892528.png[/img][/url][/center] Of course, when I finally had a look at the project, I figured, okay, he may not [i]need[/i] Black, but it would be smart of me to get Black on him, because of the next step in this "complex" project. By himself, he's a pretty easy dragon to breed. However, I want him to be an ancestor of another future dragon of mine, and so, I will need to get from his colours to her colours... with just two generations in between. [quote] [columns] [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=76&bodygene=5&breed=3&element=5&eyetype=0&gender=1&tert=9&tertgene=9&winggene=2&wings=9&auth=72bac9655e15e5676580a74cf47e8bf8eda87a22&dummyext=prev.png[/img][nextcol] [b]Personal Project:[/b] Tan Ripple/Charcoal-Midnight Stripes/Charcoal-Midnight Okapi Lightning female Mirror, XYY preferred. Start date: Not yet started. [i]Status: Scouting for parents.[/i] [/columns] [/quote] So, the dragons I picked up, with the awful tertiaries... several of them juuuuust barely reach the necessary black range, and 2 don't reach it at all. I'm going to really need to pay attention when I am pairing these kids up, because oh boy I could land myself in trouble with unpairable offspring. As for his great-granddaughter, I did some snooping, and realized I can very easily use a technique I have only used once before for a breeding project: The line/zig-zag method, rather than the pyramid method. Gold's a fair bit from Tan, but not impossible, and Tan/black-range/black-range is, evidently, [i]very[/i] popular, to the point that I can probably pick up potential partners with exact colours for each generation very easily. I probably need to pick my black, and that will probably wind up being Obsidian for its sheer abundance, but the potential to not need an elaborate pyramid is there, and I'm a little excited. But first, must get the Skydancer. I'll keep an eye on the market for potential parents for the Mirror in the meantime.

If I had a hatchery, what sort of hatchery would it be? I... am not fond of the format of hatcheries, having set little pairs with pretty little breeding cards, and pinglists of people who want to buy the hatchlings at ridiculous cost, in order to cover the cost of, often, gening up the parents in order to keep up with current trends. That takes a very different person than I to do. I am not convinced of a dragon's value above a certain point - around 50-100kt or gems is about the most I would charge for any one dragon, not including special features like primals, G1s, special IDs, or old dragons. If a dragon is none of those... I can breed it. I don't have to drop 500 gems on such a dragon, because I can play the long game and breed it, and make a profit while doing so. Therefore, as a buyer, I find hatcheries very unattractive, so as a seller, how am I going to convince someone else that the dragon is worth 500 gems? So, [i]if[/i] I had a hatchery, what sort of hatchery would it be? This actually has drifted in and out of my thoughts on occasion, and came back with force yesterday when I made a startling find. I was casually browsing the dragon search for a couple fan dragons I wanted to make, and for a potential future Zelda fan dragon, I was searching for dragons with Cream gem gene/Flaxen gem gene, the goal genes being Iridescent and Alloy. And I found... her. [center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=60592779][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/605928/60592779_350.png[/img][/url][/center] What's significant about her? She is in my friend's lair, and came from the exact same breeding project that [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2689551/3#post_42696199]I found [i]another[/i] absurdly lucky find[/url], a dragon now named [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=59802637]Reveck[/url], for my Orianna fan dragon project. Exact genes, exact colours. Again. What are the odds? And this got me thinking, Flight Rising needs more oddballs. My friend asked me for help on this project, because, strangely enough, a Cream/Gold/Terracotta Wildclaw is... very rare, an apparent oddball, even without the genes we needed. I've mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again, the community has a tendency to go for what is popular, AKA, what already exists, and rarely tries to do something [i]different.[/i] So, when someone [i]wants[/i] a dragon that [i]is[/i] different, it proves to be incredibly difficult to attain, because there really isn't much to be found outside of an incredibly narrowed pool of dragons. This problem really shows when I sell my dragons. I list all my dragons that I get from my various projects at 20 gems each on the Auction House, to make them high enough in price that they aren't immediately fodder, but low enough that most people can easily acquire them with the intent of not keeping them forever - such as with breeding projects. It turns out, a very large number, definitely more than half of them, do go into someone else's breeding project. I sometimes have repeat customers, buying up multiple dragons in the range they need, because the market is so starved. Therefore, if I had a hatchery, I would have two categories of breeding pairs: [LIST] [*]One, very wide ranges of colours, ideally triple gem gene Wildclaws and Coatls, with a good mix of all the gem genes, to breed and bring into existence, more rare colour combos. The gem genes/breeds would ensure that, even if they're the wrong genes, they can still be used to breed in the right genes easily. More dragons like the Coatl I found in my friend's lair, would come into being, and be very useful for someone else out there.[/list] But... for a hatchery, no one wants to be pinged for pairs that have wildly different kids from their parents. They want kids that look like the parents. [list][*]So, two, I've often contemplated keeping the final pairings of some of my projects, especially the ones that hit a niche market that typically only contained very expensive hatchery pairs, or are just slightly different enough that they're not possible to attain anywhere else.[/LIST] That's what I did with the Emerald/Emerald/red-range Coatls for a while, and their kids sold like hotcakes, because there was no other Iri/Shim/Glim Emerald/Emerald/red-range Coatls anywhere else, and people really loved them for their Quetzalcoatl dragons. Additionally, I've had some of my other projects hit niche markets I didn't know I'd be uncovering, such as the Crimson/Crimson/Violet project and the Abyss/Denim/Flaxen project. Current projects whose final pairings I'd be tempted to keep include the Red/Red/Metals or Goldenrod Coatl. You want an Iron Man dragon? They're a dime a dozen, Crimson/Crimson/Gold Crystal/Facet/Circuit. Seriously, there's pages of them. But Red/Red/Metals, with Metallic/Alloy/Opal? Doesn't exist. [i]Yet.[/i] Another one would be the Red/Blue/White project. Search those colours, and it's non-stop "America", "Freedom" "CaptainAmerica", "Patriot", "Independance", "Steve", "Liberty" with a sprinkling of "MURICA". With Metallic/Constellation/Underbelly, a gene combination that really makes it pop like the American flag, though? May as well look on Mars. The last of my current projects that I would consider is the Midnight/Goldenrod/Goldenrod Wildclaw, for the same reasons as the above: Rarity. And I guess that's the point of hatcheries, to have something that no one else has, but everyone wants. But my goal wouldn't be to make a profit, it would be to spread the dragons far and wide and make acquiring different dragons easier. So... that's the sort of hatchery I'd have, I guess, a sort of chronicle of all the different breeding projects I've done, and all the niche, starved markets I've found, and the breeding pairs that helped fill in the voids.

[center] [url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61614073] [img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/350/616141/61614073_350.png[/img] [/url] [b][i]Project Complete![/i][/b][/center] Well, I did say it was going to be a simple one, since I managed to acquire a 1 in 8 pair right off the bat. You know what else I said? I said I bought an unnecessary pair, before finding the 1 in 8 pair. They heard me, apparently. They had a 1 in 48 chance, and they heard me call them unnecessary. Because while the 1 in 8 pair had yet to hatch her, the 1 in 48 pair surprised me with her instead. So, this one is done, and it's a nice break from the agony of trying to nail a 1 in 4 chance, that's for darn sure! ----- And naturally, I have picked up another personal project. [quote] [columns] [img]https://www1.flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=163&bodygene=1&breed=13&element=11&eyetype=0&gender=1&tert=161&tertgene=11&winggene=1&wings=13&auth=20c400faed7a01f519db537bc4a1ad4242e202a5&dummyext=prev.png[/img][nextcol] [b]Personal Project:[/b] Cream Iridescent/Mulberry Shimmer/Garnet Thylacine Fire female Skydancer. Start date: May 28, 2020 [i]Status: Why did I choose a 4 pair start?[/i] [/columns] [/quote] So, as my status line suggests... for some reason, I decided to go with a 4-pair start. This is [i]tiny[/i], and for the most part, the pairs work. There's two dragons that... should probably be replaced if possible, but otherwise the colours are within the ranges for 4 pairs. This is such a small pyramid, probably the smallest one I've done since pre-colour wheel expansion days. We'll see if I got overconfident with it further down the line, I guess. Other than that, not much to report. One project, the Violet/Fog/Yellow-Banana, got downsized when I got a good kid. Well, okay kid. It is such agony to me to ignore a gem gene. Her parents could have gotten Starmap on a kid, but she inherited Iridescent, and paired beautifully with another dragon that also didn't have Starmap. I normally wouldn't have done it and made the pair, but the wish is well old enough to get a gem gene from the DWF bank if needed, and I do have one other pair that still has, and is guaranteed, Starmap, so not all is lost... but it still hurts though, as I will have a final pairing with not-perfect genes when I could have had perfect genes. But this is a case where I could choose speed over genes, and because of the wish's age, I chose speed. I also had two nearly-perfect dragons hatch as well for two different projects... except for their sexes. One wisher has already turned one down, we'll see if the wrong sex works (or not) for the other. [center][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61711875][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/617119/61711875.png[/img][/url][url=https://flightrising.com/main.php?dragon=61702289][img]https://flightrising.com/rendern/avatars/617023/61702289.png[/img][/url] [i]Darn it, so close![/i][/center]