DragonCave (Journaling January)
Jan. 31st, 2019 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kraitThe prompt from hamsterwoman was "Dragon Cave!"
Dragon Cave, DragonCave, DC or DragCave are all the same thing: dragcave.net, an online sprite-collecting/digital-pet game where you collect, trade, and raise dragons of many breeds. Your dragons are displayed on a "scroll" to let you keep track.
I started playing in, uh, Feb 25, 2009, wow. o.O My intention was to play just long enough to accrue a handful of dragons to put in my signature to decorate my posts on a forum I frequented. As a bonus, I could use them to decorate LJ posts, too. Instead, I fell captive and now I'm the mod of![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dragoncavers, meaning I run a community just so I can decorate it with dragons!
The most interesting thing about DC, I think, is that there's no set way to play. Some people just want one of every breed, from common to rare. Some people set a "scroll goal," such as having 5 of each kind. Breeding is completely optional, but can be done in many different ways, and some players end up producing lineages with special meaning or a visual pattern. Others prefer dragons without a lineage and focus on collecting those. Some players have fun with the naming feature, such as creating funny names or using an entire text within a lineage. [Note: those two aren't mine!] There are people who do roleplay, with a dedicated forum board for that or freeform via chat.
New breeds are released regularly, and there are also a number of tricky options you can mess around with: some breeds will produce hybrids when crossbred, or the color of the offspring can be manipulated. You can turn your dragons into zombies by killing them and successfully reviving them, or into "neglected dragons" which have a different sprite! There are unbreedable types that must be caught in the Cave or summoned by the actions of a dragon you own. There are eggs which will hatch into different dragons depending on the time of day or the phase of the moon. Some breeds are common and some are rare; there are players who do their best to figure out the ratio system and alter it, by mass-breeding certain types and estimating the offspring ratios!
Special new breeds are released on three holidays each year, with those breeds only able to produce their own kind of egg for a week at that holiday. Holidays usually bring fun mini-games ranging from an "Easter Egg Hunt" all over the site to an RPG adventure, but it's all optional and doesn't affect your game if you're not interested.
Basically, it's a wide-open sandbox and you can do your own thing. While looking at cute dragon pictures. :D
hamsterwoman was "Dragon Cave!" Dragon Cave, DragonCave, DC or DragCave are all the same thing: dragcave.net, an online sprite-collecting/digital-pet game where you collect, trade, and raise dragons of many breeds. Your dragons are displayed on a "scroll" to let you keep track.
I started playing in, uh, Feb 25, 2009, wow. o.O My intention was to play just long enough to accrue a handful of dragons to put in my signature to decorate my posts on a forum I frequented. As a bonus, I could use them to decorate LJ posts, too. Instead, I fell captive and now I'm the mod of
dragoncavers, meaning I run a community just so I can decorate it with dragons!The most interesting thing about DC, I think, is that there's no set way to play. Some people just want one of every breed, from common to rare. Some people set a "scroll goal," such as having 5 of each kind. Breeding is completely optional, but can be done in many different ways, and some players end up producing lineages with special meaning or a visual pattern. Others prefer dragons without a lineage and focus on collecting those. Some players have fun with the naming feature, such as creating funny names or using an entire text within a lineage. [Note: those two aren't mine!] There are people who do roleplay, with a dedicated forum board for that or freeform via chat.
New breeds are released regularly, and there are also a number of tricky options you can mess around with: some breeds will produce hybrids when crossbred, or the color of the offspring can be manipulated. You can turn your dragons into zombies by killing them and successfully reviving them, or into "neglected dragons" which have a different sprite! There are unbreedable types that must be caught in the Cave or summoned by the actions of a dragon you own. There are eggs which will hatch into different dragons depending on the time of day or the phase of the moon. Some breeds are common and some are rare; there are players who do their best to figure out the ratio system and alter it, by mass-breeding certain types and estimating the offspring ratios!
Special new breeds are released on three holidays each year, with those breeds only able to produce their own kind of egg for a week at that holiday. Holidays usually bring fun mini-games ranging from an "Easter Egg Hunt" all over the site to an RPG adventure, but it's all optional and doesn't affect your game if you're not interested.
Basically, it's a wide-open sandbox and you can do your own thing. While looking at cute dragon pictures. :D
no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 06:13 am (UTC)I'd forgotten how addictive it was.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-04 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-01 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-04 12:13 am (UTC)I figure if I focus on collecting all the CBs I want and producing all the lineages I want, I can always trade for Neglecteds later. :D Same goes for Zombies; they're last on my priority list because making them's complicated and takes up too much egg space I could be using for things guaranteed to turn out correctly.
(Or half-guaranteed, in the case of things like my Purple Neb x Cavern Lurker lineage! I mostly have good luck with Nebula colours, but of course I get my fair share of "why did you come out green AGAIN" results, too.)
no subject
Date: 2019-02-04 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-03 08:20 pm (UTC)*nod* It never stops surprising me not just how differently people approach the site, but how often two players can't even understand each other's priorities, like the people wondering on the form why CB eggs are "worth" more vs the people who are looking to collect the longest and messiest lineages, or breed hoarders like myself vs the people who were objecting at the monthly raffle requirements because they already had all the Xenowyrms their scroll goals required, and what were they going to do with all these random extra ones messing up their scroll?
I've been playing since late 2008 - this mint was my very first dragon. I picked up the site from some LJ friends listing their dragons at the bottom of their posts (though all my DC flisters from that time have abandoned both DragCave and LJ/DW, I think). And, in fairness, I also took hiatuses of several years from DC here and there, and tend to wander off after about a year of playing intensely and just tune in for the new releases.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 02:47 pm (UTC)I really love most of the breeds I decorated the post with, so I'm pleased to hear you like them, too!