7 - 14 May 2018 Dragon of the Week Review: the Clover Dragon

Hello Dragon Ladies and Lords! I am sorry for my recent absence but I am back to blogging. Today I am gonna write about my thoughts on the new Dragon of the Week, that has arrived to our Dragonlandias just today: the Clover Dragon. As the solo event takes place this week, you will need to plan your breedings wisely to gather 4 , 3  and 12 for breeding hybrid dragons, on Tier 4, Tier 6 and Tier 8 respectively. This means you will either have much less time than usually for trying to breed DotW, or have hard time on your way to Bonsai Dragon. Is the Clover Dragon worth all this trouble? Let's see!

Breeding

Both parents for the Clover Dragon are common. The Seed Dragon, being common hybrid of plant and wind elements is very easy to obtain. Furthermore, the War Dragon is a guaranteed outcome when breeding the Fire Dragon with the Metal Dragon. So, the combination is a really easy one this time. All the possible outcomes are:

Dragon	Elements	Rarity	Breeding time	Hatching time
Smoke Dragon			0 h 30 min (0 h 24 min)	0 h 45 min (0 h 36 min)
Bee Dragon			0 h 45 min (0 h 36 min)	1 h 20 min (1 h 04 min)
Tornado Dragon			6 h 00 min (4 h 48 min)	8 h 30 min (6 h 48 min)
Venom Dragon			8 h 00 min (6 h 48 min)	11 h 20 min (9 h 04 min)
Razor Dragon			8 h 00 min (6 h 48 min)	11 h 20 min (9 h 04 min)
Cyborg Dragon			10 h 00 min (8 h 00 min)	12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)
Sunflower Dragon			12 h 00 min (9 h 36 min)	16 h 50 min (13 h 30 min)
Clover Dragon			22 h 00 min (17 h 36 min)	28 h 40 min (22 h 56 min)

Besides the Smoke Dragon and the Bee Dragon, all the possible outcomes have too high breeding times for this combination to be a reasonable one while struggling with Tier 8 of the Spring Fiesta. The Clover Dragon is the only one epic here, and the Sunflower Dragon is the only one rare here, so breeding this combination will not be any big help in ongoing Crowded Nursery event as well. On the other hand, the chance to get a Sunflower Dragon is nice opportunity for beginner players, and lack of other epics on this list means that getting the Clover Dragon should be relatively easy. 

Clover in battles

The Clover Dragon's statistics aren't perfect. 62 base attack damage is highly below what we expect from a battle epic. On the other hand, 230 base health points is quite a great score. There aren't many non-legendary, non-divine dragons that have higher base health points than Clover, and all of them have lower attack damage. Since the skills' power scales with dragon's attack damage, this high health points for low attack damage isn't a perfect deal, but the high health isn't the only advantage of the Clover Dragon. The  element set comes with a very useful, very versatile skill set. Earth skill and light skill mastery provides you with enough defensive, plant damage over time, potentially infecting other dragons, and light area damage  with triple element-strength can make great offensive. Another fact worth mentioning is that plant's and earth's element strengths don't intersect with light ones, so the Clover Dragon can make strong attacks against 5 different elements. Having plant as base element, Clover Dragon will take 50% damage from plant attacks (with their poison skills!) and water attack, for the price of taking 150% damage from metal and shadow attacks (as well as their skills). This may not be perfect, but resistance to plant skill is still something good to have, especially combined with the earth skill. In the Enchantment Arena, the Clover Dragon can benefit from common , uncommon  and rare  Damage Boost potions, which really helps making optimal decisions in many different situations. So, the overall Clover's battle performance can be really nice. She is really great dragon for Enchantment Arena, having 5 different element strengths, access to three rarities of Damage Boost potions, and high health points. She will not be that great in normal battles, where attack damage matters more than health points because of the skill scaling, but in my opinion, all her other advantages compensate this problem.

Compared to other dragons

Clover's element set isn't unique. The Paladin Dragon and the Li'l Angel Dragon both have exactly the same elements, thus, the same statistics. Furthermore, they both have light as their base element, so they are still resistant to plant attacks, but instead of resistance to water attacks, they are resistant to light attacks, which are far more offensive, and void attacks, that (unlike water ones) also have on-hit effect. Neither Paladin nor Li'l Angel would take extra damage from metal or shadow skills, but instead, they are vulnerable to legendary and divine attacks. So, theoretically, Clover would do better in very high-level League and Enchantment League, since most high-level players use legendary and divine dragons in their primary teams. However, Paladin or Li'l Angel would be much better pick for dungeon, and campaign map, which seems more important part of the game, and lower-level Leagues. So, unfortunately for the Clover Dragon, she looses this comparison. However, Li'l Angel is a limited-time dragon, and Paladin is a card dragon, which means it may take a long time (and many clan coins) to complete it. So, if you need this particular element set in your team, Clover may be your only reasonable pick. What about other dragons that can fill similar roles? Identical offensive rolle of light and plant attacks can be played for example by the Pitaya Dragon from the ongoing solo event, or the Pixie Dot Dragon, which is the current Dragon of the Month, so even though there is no normally-breedable tri-elemental dragon with plant and light element and the Jungle Dragon can't be recommended as a battle dragon because of light dragons being resistant to both of its attacks, the Clover Dragon isn't niche in this matter, for other limited-time dragons available to us now can replace her. Also a pair of light and earth elements isn't very unique, for the Fossil Dragon, the Crystal Dragon and the Crumbly Dragon aren't limited-time, and many of my readers have recently earned the Gem Dragon in mini solo event. The plant and earth pair is pretty common among dragons and can be easily covered for example by Shaman, Gorilla or Emerald. So, although the Clover Dragon could do well in a battle, I don't really see any big niche for her. Veteran players balancing their teams will probably pick Guardian, Pixie Dot, Crystal or Shaman. Beginner players may not have the Paladin Dragon yet, and Clover Dragon may be a good battle dragon for players around level 40, who has reticently unlocked the Light Temple. 

Other usages

The Clover Dragon has too many elements to be used for regular breeding. Light element is very unlikely to ever appear as required for a Dragon of the Month breeding, and as a limited-time, Clover will not be a parent neither for Dragon of the Week, or nor in enchanted breeding. 

Though the Clover Dragon can be replaced by non-limited-time Paladin for the case of upgrading temples, I still find her very useful in this matter. As I have mentioned in the Hippie Dragon review, there aren't many tri-elementals with the light element, so having extra one may in certain cases save you some food while planning your temples upgrades. Paladin works the same as Clover, but I have only got 4 Paladins during over 2 years of very active playing, which means the average one Paladin per half a year of very active playing. Waiting to get Paladin may therefore get you stuck for a long time, especially that you may need more than one. 

The Clover Dragon can live in a light habitat, which means that even a veteran player optimizing gold production hard may find a place for her. Base of 570 gold/hour can't compete with top gold generators, like Stardust or Bronze, but is pretty good overall. A beginner player who hasn't even unlocked light element yet will probably not have any dragon with higher base gold/hour than Clover has for a while, and even though this would mean putting Clover in plant habitat, it's still a great help.

Conclusion

The Clover Dragon doesn't have any big niche that she would fill, but I still find her a dragon worth having. Beginner player can make her one of main battle dragons after reaching player level 36, benefiting from her relatively high base gold/hour meanwhile. She can be helpful while upgrading temples, and even a veteran player, who has already upgraded all their temples and has got far better dragons in a battle team, can at least enjoy new, cute dragon at their Dragonlandia without worrying about the gold production, since she can live in light habitat. Unfortunately, she has pretty long breeding time, as well as long times of misbreeds, which is problematic especially now, when we have ongoing solo event and Crowded Nursery at the same time. The hatching event only gives you 4 gems from milestones, and some gold and food, so it can be ignored without big regret, or completed by hatching eggs from cards or dungeons, but the solo event offers us two new, pretty dragons and it would be very sad to loose it. However, I still believe it's possible to get both Clover and Bonsai with wise planning. The only tier of solo event that hardly needs our breeding dens is Tier 8, and Clover's breeding time is longer than time needed to finish Tier 7, so I recommend not to try getting Clover between finishing Tier 6 and collecting all the  from Tier 8. Outside of this interval, feel free to try! Especially if you are a beginner player and you try to breed a Sunflower Dragon, you should definitely try. 

Though I don't really need Clover Dragon, I will still try to get at least one of them this week, and I hope for two. Maybe they would bring me a good luck while spinning Otto's Lotto :) Please tell me in comments what do you think about this dragon. Have a wonderful day at your Dragonlandia!