Dragonvale Eggy Hatchy!

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Dragonvale is an App, launched in September of 2011, by Backflip Studios. The object of the game is to breed basic dragon types together, in order to get more complex dragons. It has grown into a game of more than 600 dragons, and almost the entirety of the game’s history is chronicled at a forum where I have been an on again, off again, moderator – The Dragonvale Community.

Like so many of these sorts of games, the life blood of Dragonvale has become a series of events. Eggy Hatchy was added to the game, at the start of the latest event, and took some trial and error to get used to. The basics of Eggy Hatchy are nicely explained by the moderator Quil in This Post. But I thought it would be useful for players to see someone play of all 5 Stages of a particular Tower, explaining the strategy used. It assumes you have a working understanding of the dragon breeding in Dragonvale.

The Game

The layout of each stage of the game, is a 4×4 grid of eggs, that all start at a level 1 (shown in the circle at their top right). A lot of the eggs are set for each stage, with a few eggs, and their overall position in the grid, being randomised. For example, a stage that requires cold and water elements, will have a certain number of cold, water, ice and iceberg dragon eggs guaranteed, and will randomise the rest.

The Goals are set for each stage, and are a combination of points required to be earned during the Stage and/or a certain number of dragon elements at a certain number of levels. The goals in the following picture are 20,000 points, 4 x Level 3 Cold and 2 x Level 3 Water. It is important to remember that dragon eggs can cover more than 1 element. So that a Level 3 Ice Dragon Egg would count for both Cold and Water. In this case it is a necessity, because 12 cold elements and 6 water elements are required, which is 2 more than the total eggs in the grid.

Also, completing the goals does not automatically win you the stage. You must complete it, by banking all eggs in the grid. Only when the grid is empty, do you receive the bonus points, and the reward for completing the level.

Every dragon egg you bank gets stored in the column on the right, with the sum of their points showing at the bottom of the column, so you can see how many more you need. Regular hybrids are worth hundreds of points. Golden Hybrid and Opposite Hybrids are worth thousands of points. Epics are worth 10s of thousands of points. And Twins, shown with a blue glow, are worth double.

Also, merging 2 identical eggs gets you a bonus level on the resulting egg. In the picture above, if you merge the storm egg into the Ice egg to the right, you will be left with 2 Ice eggs that can merge in the first column. When you merge those 2 Level 1 Ice eggs you will have a level 3 Ice egg, that you can bank to complete part of both your Cold and Water goal.

The Tower

I’m going to work through the Camp Lakeside tower, because it’s a relatively easy one. You only need 100,000 points to open all 5 Stages, and the goals themselves are relatively simple.

Stage 1 – 10,000 points

Stage 1 of Camp Lakeside is as simple as it can be. The goal is to collect 10,000 points. So it’s just a matter of merging dragon eggs until you get some rare ones that are worth some points to bank. You get 10,000 bonus points for completing the goal, and Stage 2 unlocks at 30,000, so you are actually trying to collect at least 20,000 points in order to move on up the tower.

There was no real game strategy to discuss here, so we’ll move on.

Stage 2 – 10,000 points + 1 x Level 5 Fire

Stage 2 requires 15,000 points and 1 x Level 5 Fire element. There are 10 fire elements available in this grid, 2 of which are Golden Hybrids and would be good to bank for the points. So the plan is to leave those eggs, and try and merge the other eggs together until we have a level 5 egg that contains a fire element.

But there are 2 fire eggs, helpfully right next to each other. Whenever you combine 2 identical egg types you get a bonus level.

So we now have a level 3 fire egg, and we only need a level 2 egg to merge with it, to get to the required level 5. I want to use at least 1 egg with a fire element, because if the resulting Level 2 egg is a fire hybrid, then I am guaranteed a fire hybrid when I merge it with my level 3 fire egg.

So the only real choice is to merge something with the Thunder egg next to the level 3 fire egg. I choose the Watch egg underneath it. And I want to make sure I am combining upwards, so that the resulting egg is in the same row with the twin fire egg.

We don’t have a fire element in that level 2 hybrid, but that’s okay, as long as the fire element from the Twin fire egg takes. If it doesn’t, we can merge the result with the Smoke, then the Dungeon, then the Ember and the Soot eggs, until we hit a hybrid with fire in it. The important thing to remember on each try, is to leave the resulting egg in a place that lines up with another fire egg.

But we hit it first time, and have a Level 5 Firefly to bank to complete that part of the Goal. Select that egg, and then choose “Bank”.

Then when can bank the 2 Golden Hybrids. The Soot egg is worth 6126 points when we bank it.

And the Ignite is worth 8676 points. With them both banked, we have 15,602 points total, and have completed the other goal. Including the bonus points, we have over 35,000 points from this Stage, and have easily unlocked Stage 3 (and 4 for that matter).

So it’s just a matter of merging the other eggs, and banking them when you get something worth some points. In this instance I managed an Iron Blossom and 2 Blazing Gales. More than 57,000 points with the bonuses, which unlocked Stage 5. This is important to know, because once you have unlocked the top stage, you don’t need to worry about points above what you need for your goals.

Stage 3 – 20,000 points + 2 x Level 3 Plant

Stage 3 requires 20,000 points and 2 x Level 3 Plant elements. Having a goal of multiples of the same type of element, means you need to use that many eggs (except for the bonus level you receive when you combine 2 identical eggs). As always, I will complete the element goals first, and try and do so without using any of the expensive dragon eggs. There are 3 plant eggs in the bottom row, so we’ll start with them first.

I used up the 2 hybrids first, so that my last breed will be merging the plant egg. I will merge into the middle of the 3 eggs, underneath the Moss egg. This means we can merge up into it if the resulting level 3 egg does not have a Plant element.

Fortunately, the result was a Level 3 Seaweed egg, so it was banked. 1 down, 1 to go. The Moss egg can now be used for the second egg we need. I merge them up vertically into the Plant egg in the top row. If it’s not a plant hybrid, I have a Fungus egg to the right. And worst case, we can then start coming down into the Golden Hybrids until we get an egg with a Plant element.

But the resulting dragon egg was a Willow, which was banked to complete that Goal.

Then we banked the Golden Hybrids, which got us enough points to complete the second goal. After that, it was just merging eggs and banking the big ones. Although this wasn’t strictly necessary, because Stage 5 was already unlocked, it’s a good habit to get into.

Stage 4 – 25,000 points + 2 x Level 4 Earth + 1 x Level 5 Lightning

Stage 4 requires 2 different dragon elements. They total for 13 elements, and with only 16 to start with, it would mean only 3 eggs left to try and earn 25,000 points. The only way to achieve the level, is for 1 banked egg to account for 2 of the goal elements, so we need to make a level 5 earth/lightning hybrid. Best case scenario is that would take 5 eggs, then 4 eggs for the other element, leaving 7 eggs to make the points we need for that goal. We have a cluster of earth and lightning eggs in the middle right there, that should help us achieve that specific hybrid we need.

But first, we have a Twin Golden Hybrid. Which is too valuable to gamble with. The Twin Wisp dragon pictured is worth over 14,000 points, which is more than half way to our points goal. So banking that is step 1.

There are golden hybrids in the top right, so in order to hold on to them, I started merging the eggs in the bottom left. Merging them over to end in the cluster of earth and lightning eggs in the middle right.

After 4 combinations I had a dragon egg with Lightning but no earth element. I merged it with the earth egg directly above it. The level 5 dragon egg still had no Earth element, so I had to merge it with the Boudershock egg to its right, in order to try for the earth element. That resulted in a Level 6 Quake egg, which I could bank to complete that part of the goals.

So now I still need 10,000 in points and 1 x Level 4 Earth dragon egg. There are only 2 earth elements left, in the top row. The 2 eggs in the bottom right are a bit isolated. I merge them up into the main group, towards those earth eggs.

This resulted in an Ash dragon, with no earth element. I have one last chance to make an Earth hybrid, so I merged the eggs across to the left. The Ruin egg between the Ash and Glacier egg is not needed for levels and has no earth element. I could not merge it out of the way. I could have banked it for a few hundred points. If I was short by a couple of hundred points, I certainly would have regretted it.

The resulting egg was a Permafrost, another golden hybrid, which will bring out points total to 21,000. Now we just need to get another rare dragon at some point when we combine the last 4 eggs.

And fortunately enough we got a Golden Hybrid, on the very first merge. This is worth 7000 points, enough to complete the level.

Stage 5 – 30,000 points + 1 x Level 5 Cold + 1 x Level 6 Dark

The last stage in Camp Lakeside, requires 30,000 points and just 2 dragon elements, which hopefully can be combined. Looking at our randomised grid, it should hopefully be a relatively easy stage to complete. There is a nice path of 6 cold and dark eggs, that starts in the top row, and loops around under the Twin Crystal egg. There is only 1 egg with an unwanted element of air in the top left corner. Hopefully we pass that, and the last 3 cold/dark eggs can overwhelm it with the 2 elements we need.

Fortunately, the merge into the egg in the top left corner, resulted in a cold/dark egg. This means that the next 3 breeds can only result in a dark/cold egg.

But it’s still nice to see it, when it happens. Banking that egg completes both element requirements, and so all that is left is to generate the points. There are 2 Twin eggs in the grid, and combining with them always results in another Twin. So the plan now is to combine them with regular eggs until we hit a rare. 2 sets of rare Twins will get us along way towards the 30,000 points we need.

Fortunately again, the very first merge gives us a Twin Cyclone worth 13,000 points. So we bank that and work on the other Twin.

And fortune is with us again (or this stage is programmed to have a high chance of breeding a rare) as the first merge with the second twin is a Twin Mirror worth more than 14,000 points.

We now only need 702 points to complete the level. And after merging a few eggs along the bottom, I play it safe, and bank a simple Ruin egg. This 1227 points completes the final stage, and the Tower.

It occurs to me now, that the bonus points at Stage 5 in a tower don’t really serve any point. You don’t need them to unlock higher levels, as you are already as high as you can go.

To recap …

I completed Camp Lakeside with my first 5 tickets of the day. As I said it was an easy tower, and some fortune definitely went my way. But I hope I have illustrated how easy the game can be. And how it can add some much needed event currency. Things to keep in mind …

• Have a good look at the grid and look for groupings that will help you achieve the element goals.
• Work on the dragon elements first, but try and keep the rare/twin dragons for the points goals.
• Merging identical dragons is a good way to get bonus levels.
• A goal with 4 level 3 eggs of 1 element is much harder than 2 goals with 2 level 3 eggs of 2 elements.

Thanks for reading. I hope this has helped. Let me know if you have any feedback.