This FAQ was written by a friend of mine for the new players of Dragcave.net over on the starting thread on a different website. However, I find the information very useful, and wish to share it with you!
Q: What is Dragcave.net?
Dragcave.net is a fun and free site where you adopt, raise, and breed dragons. It's a virtual pet site, and works on a ration of clicks/unique views/views to help your dragons grow.
Q: Well, what are clicks, unique views, and views?
A click is just that-when someone clicks on a picture of your egg/hatchling/dragon and heads over to the page. A view is how many times the image of your egg/hatchling/dragon is loaded up onto someone's computer. (i.e, if they were to refresh 10 times, that is 10 views). A unique view is awarded only once per IP.
Q: Once per IP, you mean FOREVER??
Not really. There's not been much clarification on this, but it seems to be once every seven days instead of once forever for the life of the dragon, which makes sense as it can take, at its longest, seven days for an egg to hatch and then another seven days for it to grow up into an adult dragon.
Q: So what's a dragon's lifecycle anyway?
A Dragcave Dragon has three stages of their lifecycle: There's the egg, which then must hatch. There's the hatchling, which then matures into a fully grown dragon.
Q: So, can eggs and hatchlings and dragons die?
Yes and no. Eggs and hatchlings can, in fact, die. An adult dragon can fend for itself, and does not die. It can, however, be taken off of your scroll if not viewed at least once every 8 weeks, which is easy enough to do.
Eggs can die one of several ways-they can die of what's called "Soft Shell", they can be killed by their player or they can just run out of time. Hatchlings also can die one of several ways-through sickness, being killed or running out of time.
Egg soft shell and hatchling sickness are caused by abnormal conditions in the egg/hatchling. There are two causes of disease:
* Having more clicks than unique views (type 1, quite uncommon)
* Getting too many views/unique views/clicks in a short period of time. (type 2, much more common)
Removing the sickness is simply a matter of removing whatever conditions are causing it. For example, if your egg has more clicks than unique views, then in order to get rid of the disease, then you need to get enough unique views so that the number of clicks becomes lower than the number of unique views. This is a bit complex, and I'll be covering this in a separate FAQ.
Q: My hatchling is here! But it has no wings/gender. What gives??
A hatchling only gains wings and a gender when it's close to maturing into an adult. Prior to that, you see neither of these things.
Q: I've got four eggs/hatchlings and I want more, but the site won't let me pick up any more! Why??
You are what's known in the Dragcave community as "scroll locked", which means there is no more room on your scroll for new hatchlings or eggs. As soon as you get at least four hatchlings or eggs, you are unable to pick up any more eggs *or* hatchlings until the hatchlings/eggs number less than four on your scroll.
Q: But wait a second, I looked at your scroll and you had like eight hatchlings! WTF, Witchiebunny??
I'm special like that. ^.^
Okay, I'm not. I just know how to work the system.
As long as you have at least three hatchlings and three eggs, you are *always* free to pick up one more of either, and if you have four hatchlings and three eggs, the eggs will still hatch into hatchlings, even if you're otherwise scroll locked. As for the unaccounted for 4th egg/hatchling, when you breed two dragons even if you have four hatchlings or four eggs, the game allows you to keep one egg from the clutch so you can have one egg you bred to end up at a total of four eggs, and four hatchlings and a potential of eight hatchlings on your scroll.
Beware, however, of breeding two dragons with more than 4 hatchlings or 4 eggs on your scroll. The egg(s) will be auto-abandoned upon breeding, with no input from you. I lost a gold egg that way recently. ._.;
Q: So tell us about Breeding dragons!
Well you see, when a mommy dragon loves a daddy dragon...*smack!*...ow....
Alright, seriously. At the most basic level, you need a male and female dragon to breed. In order to breed two dragons, they both *must* be on your scroll, you, unfortunately cannot breed a dragon from your scroll with a friend's dragon. To breed two dragons, you click on the "Action" link beside the dragon and then click on "Breed". Choose a dragon from the opposite s*x and click.
You'll know right away if you were successful, as you'll end up with either eggs, or nothing.
Q: Are there any ground rules for breeding dragons?
There are some. Rare dragons cannot mate with other rare dragons. Split dragons can only mate with other splits. You can only attempt to breed two dragons once a week, and even if they don't produce an egg, it still counts as an attempt. You'll know if you're trying to breed two incompatible dragons because they "won't go near each other".
Q: I notice there's other options in the Actions tab, what are they for?
Well, the options in "Actions" vary depending on whether you have an egg, a hatchling or an adult, but they are, more or less as follows:
Kill:You can choose to kill your egg, hatchling or Dragon. If you kill your egg to make space, the killed egg will count towards your "egg count" for an entire day, and you'll have to wait as long to pick up another egg. Plus, the killed egg will show on your scroll for two weeks.
Name: You can name your Hatchling or adult Dragon. Be warned, you can only do this once, and once done it can't be undone. It might be best to wait until the hatchling has gendered or even become an adult to name it-there's never "too late" to name your dragon, so take your time. NOTE: Giving your dragon an inappropriate name will more than likely result in the death of your dragon at the hands of the moderators.
Describe: You can type a description for your adult dragon. Descriptions are moderated, and again, inappropriate submissions may result in a dead dragon.
Abandon: You can only do this with an egg or an unnamed hatchling. Basically you leave it to be abandoned, and it appears on the Abandoned Page.
Freeze: You can do this with a hatchling-what it does is prevent the hatchling from growing into an adult and from then on you do not have to get it clicks to keep it alive past it's 7 day time limit.
Hide: This places a "fog" around your hatchling or egg, preventing it from getting views. Do this is you need to hide your dragon for any reason.
Breed: When a mommy dragon loves a-...okay I'll stop now.
Q: Do I have to feed my dragon? What do Dragcave Dragons eat?
Hours of your life. x3 Seriously, you don't have to feed them.
Q: So what's the difference between an egg that says "Egg stolen" and one that says "Egg laid"?
An egg that has been stolen has been taken from the cave entrance on the front page. An egg that has been laid was bred by a Dragcave user.
Q: What's the difference?
Some people are very, *very* serious about breeding their dragons and having clean lines. Some of them will be willing to drop rare dragons into your lap in exchange for caveborn dragons to keep the lines "pure".
Q: In other words, it only matters to people who take the game WAY too seriously?
Yep.
Q: I want to grab a caveborn egg, but I can't because the site says it's blocked by a huge pile of abandoned eggs.
It is, so to speak. The site blocks off the cave entrance when there's 25 or more eggs sitting unclaimed on the Abandoned Page. The only way to grab a caveborn directly from the site when this happens is to help clear out the Abandoned Page a bit by claiming an egg.
Q: I notice sometimes there's eggs going by fast on the front page, and other times there are no eggs at all. What's going on?
There is an hourly "egg drop" in which the site will randomly drop various eggs, three at a time. Depending on the time of day, these can be gone within minutes or they can linger through the next hourly drop. The drops happen every hour on the hour, and this is when there's the most people on the site.
Q: So why can I see the egg color on the Abandoned Page, but not on the front page?
The Abandoned page are full of eggs that were once claimed. Eggs that are on the front page haven't been claimed, and so are hidden.
Q: So how do I find out what dragon is in what egg if I can't see them?
By the descriptions. As a general rule, each dragon egg has its own description by which you can tell what type it is. Some are easy to tell what they are "Wow, purple isn't a color of egg you expected to see" and some are a bit more difficult to figure out. "This egg has some strange markings."
Experienced players can tell what egg it is by the description.
