dragcave stuff
Sep. 21st, 2009 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelI have this habit of picking up eggs off the AP, because sometimes they're good ones to have (caveborn, or with a nice lineage, or fun codes, or whatever), and because I can 'throw them back' immediately if I don't want them.
(Really, I want a greasemonkey script that adds a view-egg link to the AP. but I don't know greasemonkey well enough...)
This habit of surfing the AP for CB eggs is a bad one, because I forget about the hold time for non-AP CB eggs.
... um. For those reading this that do dragcave but don't know the terms, AP = the Abandoned page, and CB refers to cave-born (as opposed to bred).
For those reading this that do dragcave and know all the terms, skip the explanation I'm about to give.
For those reading this that don't do dragcave, the basic mechanism is this:
Within the mythos of the Cave, you are stealing eggs from the dragons living in the cave, and raising them by hand, and then sometimes breeding two of your tame dragons together. There is also a pile of abandoned eggs that someone picked up and then put down again, and the (wild) mother dragons won't raise those eggs, so they're free for taking.
In more meta terms, there is a page that has up to three eggs, and an abandoned page that has eggs (and a very occasional hatchling) left by other people. The cave eggs are guaranteed to be CB (that is, not have parents); the abandoned eggs might be CB, or they might be bred eggs. Eggs, and young dragons, are "raised" by getting views and clicks, which is why I will sometimes post eggs and why there are communities like![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dragonspam. You can abandon an egg or hatchling at any time, until either you name it or it grows into an adult (or, y'know, it dies), at which point it goes to the AP.
(I know, that makes it all clear as mud, right?)
The other thing to know is that there are certain limits imposed. If you have four or more eggs at one time, or if you have four or more hatchlings, you aren't allowed to pick up any more eggs or hatchlings. (It is possible to get a fifth egg by breeding, though not more than five; it is possible to have up to nine hatchlings by careful planning [get four eggs, breed a fifth; when three have hatched, get two more and breed one more for a total of three hatchlings and five eggs; let the fourth original hatch; breed another; then have the eggs hatch before any hatchlings grow up]; but if you have 4+ eggs or 4+ hatchlings you cannot take any more from the cave or from the AP, and are considered scroll-locked.
(Scroll-locking can happen on the egg side -- by picking up a fourth egg from the cave or AP, by breeding a fourth or fifth egg from your adult dragons -- or on the hatchling side, by having an egg hatch while you already have three-or-more hatchlings.)
And to avoid people picking up eggs from the cave and immediately dropping them (in order to get rid of unwanted too-common eggs in favor of more desirable rarer eggs), if you pick up an egg from the cave, you can't drop it for five hours. Eggs off the AP do not have this restriction.
The last bit of relevant information is this: it is possible to trade an egg or an unnamed hatchling from one scroll to another, but not directly. Instead, at least for the moment, the method is basically "person A abandons the egg/hatchling and person B picks it up", only there is more communication so that things are synchronized and B has a chance of being the one to get the egg. But because it basically goes through the AP, person B can't be scroll-locked.
This is how I got into trouble.
I had, on my scroll, three hatchlings and two eggs. I was also expecting to get a (specific) egg-or-hatchling from someone, the last of a series of pending trades I'd arranged. Now, the hatchlings were nowhere near growing up, and the eggs were nowhere near hatching, so I was safe from accidental scroll-locking, and I could even pick up one more egg without locking myself.
So I was prowling (well, refreshing) the cave and the AP at alternating intervals, and saw an egg I sort of wanted, so took it, figuring that if I got a better egg I could abandon the first one; and then I saw another egg I sort of wanted, slightly more than the other, so I took it, and went to abandon the first one--
--but I'd taken both from the cave. So I couldn't abandon either one for five hours. And the scheduled trade time was about an hour away. And you can't really say "Thanks for breeding/catching the egg for me, I know I said I'd take it but can you hold on to it for a while longer?".
Which left me scroll-locked, by my own idiocy, and the two eggs I didn't care as much about were un-abandonable.
...
...so, I made a choice of which of the remaining two eggs to discard, and abandoned it, feeling a bit guilty, hoping it would end up in a good home.
And then I checked in later, after the trade was done, and the person who picked it up had a scroll consisting of four dead eggs and one hatchling (and my poor little ochredrake egg).
Argh.
#
Here, have some DCish cuteness:
(if you want to click them, that's great; if you just want to look at them, that's also great.)
(Really, I want a greasemonkey script that adds a view-egg link to the AP. but I don't know greasemonkey well enough...)
This habit of surfing the AP for CB eggs is a bad one, because I forget about the hold time for non-AP CB eggs.
... um. For those reading this that do dragcave but don't know the terms, AP = the Abandoned page, and CB refers to cave-born (as opposed to bred).
For those reading this that do dragcave and know all the terms, skip the explanation I'm about to give.
For those reading this that don't do dragcave, the basic mechanism is this:
Within the mythos of the Cave, you are stealing eggs from the dragons living in the cave, and raising them by hand, and then sometimes breeding two of your tame dragons together. There is also a pile of abandoned eggs that someone picked up and then put down again, and the (wild) mother dragons won't raise those eggs, so they're free for taking.
In more meta terms, there is a page that has up to three eggs, and an abandoned page that has eggs (and a very occasional hatchling) left by other people. The cave eggs are guaranteed to be CB (that is, not have parents); the abandoned eggs might be CB, or they might be bred eggs. Eggs, and young dragons, are "raised" by getting views and clicks, which is why I will sometimes post eggs and why there are communities like
dragonspam. You can abandon an egg or hatchling at any time, until either you name it or it grows into an adult (or, y'know, it dies), at which point it goes to the AP.(I know, that makes it all clear as mud, right?)
The other thing to know is that there are certain limits imposed. If you have four or more eggs at one time, or if you have four or more hatchlings, you aren't allowed to pick up any more eggs or hatchlings. (It is possible to get a fifth egg by breeding, though not more than five; it is possible to have up to nine hatchlings by careful planning [get four eggs, breed a fifth; when three have hatched, get two more and breed one more for a total of three hatchlings and five eggs; let the fourth original hatch; breed another; then have the eggs hatch before any hatchlings grow up]; but if you have 4+ eggs or 4+ hatchlings you cannot take any more from the cave or from the AP, and are considered scroll-locked.
(Scroll-locking can happen on the egg side -- by picking up a fourth egg from the cave or AP, by breeding a fourth or fifth egg from your adult dragons -- or on the hatchling side, by having an egg hatch while you already have three-or-more hatchlings.)
And to avoid people picking up eggs from the cave and immediately dropping them (in order to get rid of unwanted too-common eggs in favor of more desirable rarer eggs), if you pick up an egg from the cave, you can't drop it for five hours. Eggs off the AP do not have this restriction.
The last bit of relevant information is this: it is possible to trade an egg or an unnamed hatchling from one scroll to another, but not directly. Instead, at least for the moment, the method is basically "person A abandons the egg/hatchling and person B picks it up", only there is more communication so that things are synchronized and B has a chance of being the one to get the egg. But because it basically goes through the AP, person B can't be scroll-locked.
This is how I got into trouble.
I had, on my scroll, three hatchlings and two eggs. I was also expecting to get a (specific) egg-or-hatchling from someone, the last of a series of pending trades I'd arranged. Now, the hatchlings were nowhere near growing up, and the eggs were nowhere near hatching, so I was safe from accidental scroll-locking, and I could even pick up one more egg without locking myself.
So I was prowling (well, refreshing) the cave and the AP at alternating intervals, and saw an egg I sort of wanted, so took it, figuring that if I got a better egg I could abandon the first one; and then I saw another egg I sort of wanted, slightly more than the other, so I took it, and went to abandon the first one--
--but I'd taken both from the cave. So I couldn't abandon either one for five hours. And the scheduled trade time was about an hour away. And you can't really say "Thanks for breeding/catching the egg for me, I know I said I'd take it but can you hold on to it for a while longer?".
Which left me scroll-locked, by my own idiocy, and the two eggs I didn't care as much about were un-abandonable.
...
...so, I made a choice of which of the remaining two eggs to discard, and abandoned it, feeling a bit guilty, hoping it would end up in a good home.
And then I checked in later, after the trade was done, and the person who picked it up had a scroll consisting of four dead eggs and one hatchling (and my poor little ochredrake egg).
Argh.
#
Here, have some DCish cuteness:
(if you want to click them, that's great; if you just want to look at them, that's also great.)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 01:57 am (UTC)Breed a fifth. (5 eggs, 0 hatchlings)
Wait for three to hatch. (2 eggs, 3 hatchlings)
Pick up two more eggs. (4 eggs, 3 hatchlings)
Breed another egg. (5 eggs, 3 hatchlings)
Wait for the last of your initial four eggs to hatch (4 eggs, 4 hatchlings)
Breed another egg (5 eggs, 4 hatchlings)
Have all remaining eggs hatch before any of the hatchlings grow up. (0 eggs, 9 hatchlings)
I've never actually tried that, but I'd assume it would work. The problem would be in managing to time it so that all the eggs hatched before any of the hatchlings grew up, but if you could carefully control their views then it should be possible. I think.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:48 am (UTC)And yeah, the timing is nuts, especially if you want all nine visible (you can delay adulthood by fogging the hatchling, and also delay hatching by fogging the egg, but if you have a fogged hatchling that would otherwise have grown up, it'll grow as soon as you unfog it again).
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:44 am (UTC)I picked up an awesome little summer dragon with the code "2of2" today. It was going to be my second summer, so I couldn't resist. Of course, now I probably shouldn't have any more summers... :)
(I still blame you, but it's so fun!)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:50 am (UTC)Not hard, just wait a day or two :D
(ps what's your scroll name, again?)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 03:49 am (UTC)And yay Dorkface! It also has Thuwed in its ancestry (Thuwed being dragons owned by TJ09 aka the person who created DC in the first place). \o/
...*and* it has an ancestor in common with my last summer. :D
no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 04:56 am (UTC)The lineages thing is turning out to be surprisingly fun. I'm eyeing all my dargons going "oo, who's in YOUR family?"