9-15 April Dragon of the Week review: the Astronaut Dragon

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! Although current Dragon of the Week is still the Avocado Dragon, Gameloft has already revealed the dragon for upcoming week, which is the Astronaut Dragon! This text will provide you with information about Astronaut breeding, potential usages as battle dragon, parent, temple upgrading dragon and gold generation. Finally, it will help you decide whether you should try getting Astronaut Dragon for yourself. So, let's start!

Breeding 

Parents required for breeding Astronaut are Mercury and Salamander Dragons. While the Salamander Dragon isn't any problem, the Mercury Dragon is a rare bi-elemental of imcompatible elements and breeding him is very problematic.

Salamander Dragon can be a recommended dragon for exploring Mystic Cave and Magma's Lair, so it's likely you already have him fed to a few levels higher than most of your non-battle dragons. Mercury Dragon is much harder to get than Salamander, but also much more important. As a hybrid of incompatible elements, he is one of the required parents for three breedable legendaries: Siren, Titan and Vortex. He can also be a recommended dragon for exploring Ghost Ship. Breeding Mercury Dragon with Water Dragon results in guaranteed Water Dragon egg that is being bred for 5 minutes and hatched for another 5 minutes. It is the only way to finish quickly clan quests that requires two breedings of a dragon with metal element with any other dragon (unlike other breeding quests - water, plant and energy, that all have more than one possible way to be completed quickly). Therefore, Mercury is in my opinion the most important dragon of all incompatible elements hybrids and if you don't have him yet, Astronaut as Dragon of the Week is another reason to try obtaining Mercury.  

Breeding Astronaut Dragon takes 20 hours (16 hours), while hatching takes 23 hours (18 hours 24 minutes). This is quite a long time as for a Dragon of the Week. All the possible outcomes from that breeding are:

Dragon	Elements	Rarity	Breeding time	Hatching time
Boiling Dragon			4 h 00 min (3 h 12 min)	6 h 30 min (5 h 12 min)
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)
War 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)	9 h 40 min (7 h 44 min)
Armored Dragon			8 h 00 min (6 h 48 min)	11 h 20 min (9 h 04 min)
Elemental Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	19 h 20 min (15 h 28 min)
Rust Dragon			14 h 00 min (11 h 12 min)	20 h 40 min (16 h 32 min)
Astronaut Dragon			20 h 00 min (16 h 00 min)	23 h 00 min (18 h 24 min)

(Times in brackets refers to level 2+ VIP members)

Now, there are no possible epic outcomes from this breeding, and besides Astronauts, there are two rare tri-elementals: Elemental and Rust. For a begginer player who doesn't have many dragons yet, opportunity to get Elemental or Rust is really nice, but for advanced players, there isn't much to get from this breeding (except for the Astronaut of course). On the other hand, low rarity and breeding times for other outcomes means that once you have required parents, obtaining Astronaut should be rather easy. 

Astronaut compared to other dragons

The only dragon that shares the exact set of Astronaut's elements is the X-Ray Dragon, which is normally breedable and common. It is a guaranteed outcome from breeding Light Dragon with Void Dragon. So, you don't really need to breed Astronaut Dragon for his elements, as there is much easier to get option. There are also four tri-elemental non-legendary dragons that have both light and void elements: Stardust, Meteorite, Firefly and Professor. Gameloft has also designed the Foxglove Dragon with those elements, however it has not been oficially realesed yet.

Stardust is a normally breedable dragon, Meteorite is a limited-time, Firefly is the prize for day 365 log-in, and Professor is a reward for Mentor Program. So, while the players who are playing DML for over a year have Firefly Dragon, Stardust is any, other than X-Ray, rather easily-obtainable dragon for all the other players that has both light and void elements. Does it make the Astronaut Dragon someone special? With base of 570 gold per hour he is a bit nicer than X-Ray, but he can't be compared to the Stardust. However, being able to live in void or light habitat, he is still pretty nice option for gold generation, especially for new players. Astronaut has even higher base gold/hour than most of tri-elemental epics with void element, and although he can't be compared to top-tier gold generators like Stardust or Bronze, he is still better than most of the dragons. Especially if you are a begginer player and haven't unlocked light element yet, if you manage to get the Astronaut Dragon to be put in void habitat, he will probably be your best gold generator. 

As a battle dragon, Astronaut will not do well. Void attacks are strong to energy dragons, as well as light attacks, so having void element doesn't provide him with any additional element strength. Bi-elemental dragon will never be recommended battle dragon for an advanced players, and as a rare dragon, Astronaut isn't also easy to enchant, so there is no reason that new or casual player would pick him as a battle dragon. If you need to cover light and void element for the case of element-restricted battles in castle events, any of the epics shown on the right is a better option, and since the last castle event ended this week, there is no rush and you can patiently try breeding Stardust Dragon if you don't have him yet. Another nice option is the Yin Yang Dragon, which is legendary with light and void elements. It's unfortunately limited-time, but if you have it, it's worth considering.

If you need those elements on a fed dragon to upgrade your light and void temples, the epics above are also better options. They all produce more gold and give you one extra element. However, it may happen that you don't have any of them and a non-upgraded temple prevents you from progressing in the game. In this case, feeding Astronaut Dragon seems a good option, better one than feeding X-Ray, that has lower base gold per hour. 

As a parent, the Astronaut can fill nicely some niche role. Light element is never required for Dragon of the Month, and light-element dragons are never required parents for ordinary Dragons of the Week. X-Ray can't also be recommended dragon to explore any ruins and doesn't participate in enchanted breeding. Therefore, if you need light-void hybrid for breeding, there is no reason that having X-Ray would be better than having Astronaut, and fed Astronaut will produce more gold. Although you will never use Astronaut for any breeding other than regular breeding, he can be a nice option for breeding Stardusts (that are best gold generators in the game), bred with the Shadow Dragon. Another very good idea is to breed Astronaut with Rouge or Mummy - this gives you chances to breed two hybrids of incompatible elements: Magnet and Emperor, and a Stardust Dragon, while there are only two possible common outcomes from that breeding (Spikey and Nightmare) and no uncommon ones. Depending on what dragons you are missing in your Codex, there may also be some other nice ideas. 

Conclusion

Obtaining the Astronaut Dragon can be very hard if you don't have the Mercury Dragon yet, but once you got it, it shouldn't be a problem anymore. Astronaut isn't an option for a battle dragon, so element order doesn't matter for him. For any other use, he can be very easily replaced by X-Ray Dragon. Astronaut is a bit better option than X-Ray, because of higher base gold per hour. However, this doesn't make him a must-have. If you don't love him for the design and you feel like rushing the tries to get Mercury Dragon now is best idea, you can give Astronaut up. But if you already have Mercury Dragon, Astronaut is in my opinion really worth a try.

Please tell me in comments what do you think about Astronaut Dragon. Have a wonderful day at your Dragonlandia! :)