Quests & Challenges

[center][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/67200709][img]https://www1.flightrising.com/rendern/350/672008/67200709_350.png[/img][/url][/center] With the long-awaited eye system update here, this project is complete. Above is the dragon who will be gened and eyedropped into Aku. [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/11#post_47420458]Here[/url] is my final word on the matter, with a gift for anyone who wants to claim it. Let this thread stand now as an archive. [b]Once again, Aku is free to smite the world as he did in days long past.[/b] ----- [center][img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/791264720644079627/794013386584621056/ProjectAku.png[/img] [/center] [i]Long ago in a distant land, I, the Eyepocalypse, unleashed an [b]unreasonable mechanic![/b] But, a [b]foolish [/b]dragon breeder, wielding a stubborn determination, stepped forth to oppose me. Before the final blow was struck, I [b]tore open a hole in their patience[/b], and flung them off of the pet sim, where my RNG is [b]law![/b] Now the fool seeks to return to their hobby, and undo the mechanic that is gambling for eyes...[/i] Do you want to know what it takes to breed an Imperial with Primal eyes? Way, [i]way[/i] too much effort. Come! Join me, and let us wallow in suffering together. If you want to buy some rejects, they will be posted on the sales thread, [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/baz/2969129/1]right over here[/url]. Table of contents: [LIST=1] [*][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/1#post_45670995]The Goal[/url] [*][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/1#post_45670997]The Plan[/url] [*][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/1#post_45670998]Milestones and Stats[/url] [*][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/1#post_45670999]How You Can Help[/url] [*][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/1#post_45671000]Costs So Far[/url] [*][url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/qnc/2946408/1#post_45671004]Pinglists[/url] [/LIST]

[center][b][i]The Goal[/i][/b][/center] Feast your eyes! [center][img]https://flightrising.com/dgen/preview/dragon?age=1&body=10&bodygene=1&breed=8&element=11&eyetype=6&gender=0&tert=37&tertgene=15&winggene=15&wings=169&auth=6b72284379ba57f03074078eb3c5ab190eb3a1f0&dummyext=prev.png[/img][/center] It's Aku from [i]Samurai Jack[/i]! Not too long after the eye types were added, I scried this wonderful evil guy, then lost heart when I realised just what kind of odds I was up against. To have a snowball's chance in the Great Furnace of getting this guy, I would need to: 1. Move to Fire 2. Get enough unrelated Imperial dragons to breed a set of Imperial clones: all Obsidian / Vermillion / Avocado dragons, of which one set needs to be able to breed with the other set. 2a. How many Imperial clones? Thirty-five pairs. Or, seventy dragons. This is how many I would need to ensure I was breeding five pairs each breeding cycle: by the time the last set was done the first set would be coming off of cooldown. 3. Smush them together until I get a Primal. On a male dragon. 3a. Posechange scrolls have added a tiny bit of hope here! Now I just need to get a Primal on any Obsidian / Vermillion / Avocado Imperial. ...Joy? 4. This also precludes breeding[i] literally anything else[/i] in my own nests until I get Aku, because, heck! What if I throw a fodder pair on and they give me a Primal? I actually started gathering dragons for this over a year ago, which you can see in my Project Aku tabs, but... whoof. I wanted to have 16 initial pairs to ensure I'll be able to get as many dragons of duplicate colours as I want, but I stalled out at two shy of the number of males I wanted start the project. What's worse, odd-coloured dragons are getting harder and harder to find, and anecdotally it seems to be at least partially because the current eye system further encourages breeding dragons that match their eye types. What if you get a Primal, after all? Do you really want that from a pair that's on opposite ends of the colourwheel from each other? It probably won't increase your goofy fodder dragon's sales price that much, if at all, that's for sure. This discouragement of wild breeding diversity makes it rough for folks like me who are going for strange combinations for our dream dragons. But after missing [i]Flight Rising[/i] over the course of a year and change, I'm back and I'm going to try to breed Aku. This thread to track my progress is as much a plea for a change in the status quo of the game as it is an actual breeding challenge. I hope that by chronicling the lengths I'm having to go to for this, the dev team and the playerbase can see, concretely, just how unfair the eye system is for breeders going for That Perfect Dragon. If tomorrow the site gets a way to roll for Primal eyes indefinitely on existing dragons, I might keep going just to have more chances while also using my rolls on a designated guinea pig, but if we get a way to just give Primal and other natural eyes to existing dragons outright, this whole thing will probably be dropped the instant I get an unbred male Obsidian / Vermillion / Avocado imp. The very instant!

As briefly outlined in The Goal, my ultimate aim here is to get an Obsidian / Vermillion / Avacado Imperial with Primal eyes. Hopefully a male so I don't need to get a posechange scroll, but since he won't be used for breeding, I don't really care that much if Aku needs one.

To get there, we're gonna have to grind the breeding system. Like. A lot.

To that end! I am gathering eight breeding pairs (sixteen dragons) to act as the initial base lineage. They must be within a Flint-Mulberry / Chocolate-Sanguine / Hunter-Leaf: a ten-colour range with five colours above the goal colours and five below in the wheel. I tried to make them all Imperials, but in the interests of just starting the project already, I've given in and scrolled some non-Imps in the right range to Coatls. All but one pair have a chance to throw an Obsidian / Vermillion / Avacado dragon, and the last pair is basically just there to round out the numbers.

Then! We breed to the second generation: at least four pairs (eight dragons) that each have a five-colour or better scatter around the Obsidian / Vermillion / Avacado goal. This will be made trickier by having to keep the lines separated for Generation Three: at least two pairs (four dragons) with a three or better scatter.

By this point I should start getting actual Obsidian / Vermillion / Avacado Imps reasonably often, and will begin amassing the Primordial Army. Once I have thirty-five pairs (seventy dragons) of breedable Obsidian / Vermillion / Avacado pairs, the earlier generations will be ejected for space and The Grind will begin in earnest.

And from there...

Well, from there, it's a question of rolling the dice, over and over and over, with no way to affect my odds, until I get a Primal. Breed, incubate, and hatch a bunch of identically-coloured dragons.

As I start the project, Flight Rising has a total of seven Obsidian / Vermillion / Avacado dragons, three of which are active.

We're going to be drowning in them by the time we're done here.

Moved to Fire: December 15, 2020
Gathered the Founding Sixteen: December 15, 2020
First Obsidian / Vermillion / Avocado dragon: December 25, 2020
First pair of Obsidian / Vermillion / Avocado Imperials
Ejected Generation One
Ejected Generation Two
Primordial Army assembled / Ejected remainder of Generation Three
Breeding Project Completion: May 3, 2021

Total dragons bought: 21
Total dragons bred: 54
Maximum number of dragons related to the project in lair at once: 79

Epic failures:
Times I got a Coatl: 1
Times I got a Primal on the wrong colours: 1

Times I got some other special eye type:

Goat: 3
Faceted:
Multigaze:

Hey, want to help me with this nonsense? You're a rockstar!

• If you, too, think having to breed like this for Primals (or Multigaze, or Goat, or Facet, or the uncommon-rare tints...) is unreasonable, mosey on down to the Suggestions Forum and leave your polite comment there in support of ways to revamp the natural eye system so it's more fair for all playstyles.
• Buy the rejects. I'll have a sales post set up once I start getting them. Anything that doesn't move for at least 15kt is getting tossed to either Mather or whoever I feel like supporting that week (probably Light...!)
• Check out where I am in the Milestones post and pitch in to help with whatever I need help with at the time, if you like. Maybe it's fresh blood, if you have a dragon that suits. Maybe it's items or gold for space in either my main lair or the Den. Maybe it's just encouragement; feel free to cheer me on in this thread! I won't say no to food for the Primordial Army or my Coli grinders, either.
• If you want to join my endeavours and breed some Akulings yourself, then... wow, you're really a rockstar! I'm not concerned about Being The First One To Do This: I just want an Aku of my own. If someone breeds him first and is kind enough to want to give him to me, I'm sure we can work out some kind of reasonable reward. Equally, if you breed him first and want to keep him, I don't blame you! Enjoy Aku and have my congratulations as I continue the slog!

I collected a total of fifteen dragons for the project (most of the Founding Sixteen plus two dragons who ended up as spares for the first generation) before I started tracking cost data. Most were for fodder price or a little over, so for the math we'll say I spent an average of 10kt on each of them.
15 dragons x 10Kt = 150Kt

Scrolls of Renaming (technically optional but needed for tracking who's matched with who):
3 at approximately 6Kt = 18Kt
Total: 168Kt

Flight Changes: 2 at 1.5KG = 3KG (One to move to Fire, and one to move back to Light when I'm done)
Coatl Scrolls: 4 at 2KG = 8KG
Smirch Genes: (Optional but allow me to immediately see the hatchling's tert)
3 at 5Kt = 15Kt
1 at 14,500t

Renaming scrolls:
(I actually get these from the Coli for the most part now, but this is meant to be data-gathering, so we're going to include them at MP price for the sake of argument.)
6 x 6,000t = 36,000


Dragons:
ThreeF: 150G
SixM: 500G
FiveM: 35Kt
"Falkor": 8G
"Unnamed Banescale": 7kt
FiveFTwo: 7kt
FiveMTwo: 6,500t
Treasure: 289,000t
Gems: 11,658G

And for this section, allow me to ramble for a little.

I was already an old, established lair with 180 regular Lair slots and something a little under 218 Den slots open when I started the project. I don't think lair space will be too much of an issue for me, though I will keep expanding my Den so I can hibernate as many of my permas and other projects as possible while I try to summon Aku, but it's a cost factor that would be prohibitive for a newer player.

I also, of course, already had many other support structures in place for the project as an old lair, in particular several teams of Coli dragons: multiple fodder trainers and multiple teams of grinders. These allow me to feed the horde of breeders and earn items and treasure for Den slots much more easily than a newer player.

I will leave the calculation of these more intangible costs to the rest of the thread for now, especially since we don't yet know exactly how many lair spaces I'll need open at the maximum point of this project. I suspect that maximum point is going to be somewhere in the late stages of establishing the Primordial Army, when I have a lot of them around but also at least their parents and possibly their grandparents. However, there's also the raising of hatchlings to consider once I do establish the Primordial Army.

My larger point in mentioning these costs is to provide a counter to the idea that the current eye system helps newer, less established players by throwing them a boon in the form of a special breeding-only eye occasionally. That may or may not be true for a playstyle of breeding dragons towards no particular goal or towards popular aesthetics for which founders can be readily bought at fodder prices (both great ways to play, I might add!), but for players who enjoy dedicated breeding projects for unique colours? Those are already more in the wheelhouse of veteran players, sure, but even newer players can start climbing the difficulty slope pretty early on. Something like this would be completely unattainable for a newer player, in terms of lairspace, regular currency, premium currency, knowledge of game mechanics, and simple time.

Just let me know which you'd like to be on!

Major Updates
(Milestones, new front page sections, etc.)
@beautifulglitter @Broadwaypaisano @Colormancy @cgeez @handdrawnviolist @JonSnOwO @KeirAutomaton @Penarrow101 @Recallback @taniquetil @Teletraan @TruthseekerSky6 @Vaixation @wintrecat @ZippoFeuer

All Hatches
@handdrawnviolist @Broadwaypaisano @JonSnOwO @KeirAutomaton @kijauni @Recallback @taniquetil @ZippoFeuer

Special Hatches
(Failstate eyes, Coatls, etc.)
@beautifulglitter @Broadwaypaisano @handdrawnviolist @JonSnOwO @Recallback @taniquetil @Vaixation @wintrecat @ZippoFeuer

When Project Over Only
@beautifulglitter @Broadwaypaisano @cgeez @Colormancy @JonSnOwO @handdrawnviolist @ProHomo57 @Recallback @taniquetil @Vaixation @ZippoFeuer

***

Sales: Please look up the sales thread for details.

Reserved

Reserved

Reserved