25 June - 2 July 2018 Dragon of the Week: the Butterfly Dragon and quick look on other dragons from this week

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! This time I'm kinda late with the news. We have new Dragon of the Week: highly desired Butterfly Dragon, new Weekly Dragon pieces: Armory and Boss Challenge ongoing. Not to mention ongoing Crowded Nursery and Clan Siege and upcoming Dinnertime! Quite a lot to do! Gameloft definitely is trying really hard to keep our attention even during summer holidays. So, let's take a quick look on the dragons we can get this week, shall we?

Dragon of the week: the Butterfly Dragon

Although the Butterfly Dragon isn't a brand-new one and it has made a first appearance in the game over two years ago, it's been out of reach for most of the players until now. For the first time it came to Dragonlandia in a hatching event that was exclusive for French iOS players, and as a main leadeboard prize it was only awarded to the 0.3% of players who participated in it. Then it has been a reward for events two more times, but in both cases it was a main leaderboard prize in VIP-only events (a gold spending one and a food gathering one), awarded to the top 0.3% players who participated in them. So, kinda exclusive dragon, isn't it? And now it's breedable for the whole week!

Breeding

You probably know it already, but just to remind: to have a chance of breeding Butterfly, you need to breed the Geiger Dragon with the Mercury Dragon. The combination itself is rather a hard one, requiring you to have Mercury. And the breeding table is.... well. See it yourself. 

Dragon	Elements	Rarity	Breeding time	Hatching time
Snow Dragon			4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min)	6 h 30 min (5 h 12 min)
Minotaur Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)
Mud Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)
Armored Dragon			8 h 00 min (6 h 48 min)	11 h 20 min (9 h 04 min)
Eel Dragon			8 h 00 min (6 h 48 min)	11 h 20 min (9 h 04 min)
Tesla Dragon			10 h 00 min (8 h 00 min)	12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)
Rainbow Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)
UV Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)
Rust Dragon			14 h 00 min (11 h 12 min)	20 h 40 min (16 h 32 min)
Clay Dragon			18 h 00 min (14 h 24 min)	26 h 30 min (21 h 12 min)
Butterfly Dragon			26 h 00 min (20 h 48 min)	30 h 20 min (24 h 16 min)

So many possible outcomes! So long breeding times! It's great for a beginner player, who wants the Butterfly Dragon, but doesn't want to stuck for a whole week breeding duplicates of dragons they already own over and over again, but everyone else will gnash their teeth. Is Butterfly worth all this struggle with breeding?

As a battle dragon

The Butterfly Dragon has the base attack damage of 70 - it's a lot! 74 is maximum for an epic dragon, and most of epics are far below the Butterfly. And you know what? The divine Ares Dragon has the base attack damage of 70 too! Some other statistics: there are 21 epics with base attack with 70, 3 of them (including Butterfly) have the base health points of 208 and none of them has higher health points. 26 epics have base attack higher than 70, two of them (Stardust and Meteorite) have base health of 208, the rest of them - lower. And there are 173 epics in game so far. So Butterfly Dragon has got some really nice stats!

The elements are also great. Having energy as the base element maybe isn't great, making Butterfly vulnerable to offensive light attacks and void attacks that also take an on-hit effect, but on the other hand it also means resistance to fire and energy attacks with their area damage skills. I'd rather have a dragon with light as a base element (or even plant), but we can't have everything we want, can we? Energy and plant attack are respectively strong against metal and void elements - the only two (excluding legendary and divine) elements that aren't vulnerable to neither light nor shadow attacks. This means that the Butterfly Dragon can perform a stron attack against five different elements - quite a lot, especially considered that this number includes metal and void. The skills are super offensive, Burnout, Infection and light's area damage with triple element strengths should break through any opponent's defense. In the Enchantment League, Butterfly will be unable to use any common Damage Boost potion, which may complicate a bit making optimal decisions, but it's minor inconvenience when we're talking about a dragon with quintuple element strengths.

So the Butterfly Dragon is a really good choice for a battle dragon, isn't it? The problem is that Butterfly's elements are pretty common among the good battle dragons. Having many duplicated elements in your team isn't a good idea. Not only you will have really hard time during Boss Challenges and castle events, but enchanting your team will also be much harder. So the Butterfly Dragon may be really great pick for a beginner player, but if you are a veteran, think twice - will Butterfly be good for your team's balance?

Other usages

Assuming that we expect a really good gold generator to be able to live in void, light or shadow habitat (thus, legendary and divine dragons aren't good gold generators though they have really high base gold/hour because they must live in a habitat with low gold capacity), the Butterfly Dragon is within 8% best dragons in the whole game by the gold generation! You can put your Butterfly in the light habitat and enjoy it's amazing base 640 gold/hour. Well, it's not Stardust, but still one of the best possible options for generating gold and a new, pretty dragon to admire at the same time. Very valuable even for a veteran player and almost priceless for a beginner.

Butterfly will never be a good idea for a parent and I hope after so many posts about this I don't have to explain why. However, it may be a great help when you are upgrading your temples. There are only a few tri-elementals with the light element that aren't limited-time, which makes the Light Temple the hardest one to upgrade. If you don't collect enough limited-time epics with light element, you may be forced to feed dragons with only two elements, thus, spend more food to upgrade all the temples you need. Not to mention that having such a great gold generation potential, Butterfly is a really good idea to feed even if you only miss a dragon with plant or energy element to be fed. It can be replaced by the Spruce Dragon, who has exactly the same element set, but Spruce is Christmas-themed so it's very, very unlikely you will obtain it before winter.

Butterfly overall

The Butterfly Dragon is really worth having. It's design is truly amazing, it got even my heart despite how much I dislike the pink color and how much I love everything dark and nocturnal. And enjoying its beauty isn't in conflict with optimizing the gold production. Isn't it great? It can also be a reasonable fighter and help you greatly when you are planning leveling up your temples. On the other hand, breeding it will be very hard and it's the last week to get the Furnace Dragon. If you have to choose, the decision is probably very hard and there is no perfect solution. Feel free to write a comment about what dragons you already use in your battle team and I'll try to give you a piece of an advice :)

Boss Challenge main reward: the Seahorse Dragon

We've been having the Boss Challenge lately, and the strategy hasn't really changed. You can find my post with general tips about this type of event and a list of useful skills to train your sacrifice dragons here. If you really, really want the Seahorse Dragon and are willing to spend gems to get it, some tips on gemming in this event may be found here. Once again, dragon fury essences are cool, but everyone should get them easily, food and gold from laps 2 and 3 aren't worth your effort, so you can either go for a Seahorse, or relax and play DML only if you would be playing even if there wasn't an event. I mean, there are 10 gems per lap, a little gold and food, a few scrolls. It's definitely not worth setting up a timer for the middle of night or resigning a nice, summer trip. I have mentioned in my previous texts about Boss Challenge that laps 5+ can actually be a really cheap way to "buy" dragon piece tickets for gems, but this time I really advice you not to do so. There's something big soon, it would be a shame to loose some great prize because of missing gems that you have recently spent on dragon piece tickets. 

Seahorse Dragon itself isn't a must have. Base attack of 64 is quite an average, 212 base health points are nothing more than OK and yeah, the skills are really useful and a beginner player could benefit greatly from having Seahorse in their team. But really, if you want it for a battle dragon, breed the Agave. It will cost much less effort. The element order for Agave is different, but it doesn't change much in this case - both Agave and Seahorse will suffer strong attacks

from shadow attacks, Agave will also take extra damage from water attacks while Seahorse will take extra damage from earth attacks - both not having neither an on-hit effect nor a damaging ability. Seahorse is resistant to water attacks, which doesn't help much, while Agave is resistant to super offensive fire attacks - which makes Agave actually better battle dragon. Generating 390 gold/hour and not being able to live in any habitat better than plant one (or legendary/divine), Seahorse isn't any good gold

generator and upgrading fire, water and plant temple is really easy even without extra epics from events. A special thing about the Seahorse is that with its elements it may be really useful breeding a Dragon of the Month. Once again, it could be replaced with Agave. However, the next month starts soon and your breeding den is probably busy breeding Butterfly and will be so for the next couple of days unless you are super lucky. The Agave Dragon is 3rd dragon on my To-Get List from post speculating about July Dragon of the Month. So, if you don't have any fire-water-plant hybrid (Agave, Liquid Fire, Seahorse, Wooly, Redflower), getting the Seahorse from the event could possibly make you a little bit more prepared for what may come. But is it worth all this effort? You need to decide on your own. I'm probably a bit of a hypocrite here, discouraging you from paying attention to this event, for the Seahorse is one of the dragons I'm really, really in love with and if I hadn't had one before, I would probably be setting my alarm clock for the night and not going anywhere without a Internet connection for more than 2 hours this week.... It's just so pretty! <3 Luckily, I already have one, so my healthy sleep is safe.

Weekly Dragon Pieces: Armory Dragon

Weekly Dragon Pieces are rather something for the advanced players - it's hard to complete a dragon from there and a beginner player should rather think about completing regular piece dragons. So in this section, I will focus on advanced players.  Thus, it will be short. Because of two defensive elements, Armory has low attack damage in exchange for high health points which really isn't a good deal. Well, you still might need a dragon with fire, metal and earth (although I can't imagine decisions that would cause this need) for the case of castle events/boss challenges and you may want them on one dragon. But even if this case, if you think about weekly dragon pieces, it probably means you already have the Piggy Bank. Who has got better base element.

435 base gold/hour and being able to live in a metal habitat is fair enough not to complain, but let's be honest. Armory is a dragon for collectors. Try to get it when you love it for the design, not for any usages. How much will it cost you? Let's try to estimate, using official drop rates from February 2018, as they are our best available data. Let's assume all the epic cards have the same chances of being obtained. Thus, the chance to get Armory piece from 1-Piece Pack is about 3.4%, the chance to get Armory piece on a specific card from 3-Piece Pack is about 4.5%, while the chance to get Armory piece on a specific card from 5-Piece Pack is about 6.0%. This means the average cost of Armory would be about 357.000 clan coins if you purchase 3-Piece Packs, 415.500 clan coins if you purchase 1-Piece Packs and watch two ads per day for a free card, or about 268 dragon piece tickets. Quite a lot, but if you love the dragon and don't have anything else to spend your resources on, why not? After all, fun is the most important part of the game.

Conclusion

Butterfly Dragon is definitely most important of all the news we know by now. Seahorse and Armory are mostly for the collectors. However, I recommend you fight a battle of the Boss Challenge every time you play DML even if you don't treat this event seriously. Some extra gems are always a nice thing especially, when there are so many new things on the horizon. Also remember to participate in the Crowded Nursery event for (hopefully) four gems from milestones. Feeding event has been announced for this weekend and almost always weekend mini-events come in pairs - one for everyone, one for VIP members only. The VIP one, as far as I remember, has never been announced in the schedules, so it's very likely we will also get an unannounced event this weekend - probably gold gathering one. Chances are also that it will be a gem spending event, so if you plan any purchase (like extending your VIP), it may be a good idea to wait just a few more days, just in case. As there hasn't been any news on the upcoming new type of event lately, there isn't much we can do to prepare ourselves, expect for saving gems, food, gold, enchantment materials and Dragon Fury Essences, and maybe breeding the next Dragon of the Month possibly quickly - that's all. 

Please tell me in comments what do you think about those three dragons and the ongoing events. Have a wonderful day in your Dragonlandia!